Kitto Info

PROFILE

Having toured 33 countries, KITTO is the epitome of indie, a road warrior who never gives up, an emotive guitarist and a helluva singer wrenching haunting lyrics from a deep communal well. Defiantly barefoot on stage, she's got the scorching commitment of a firestorm, with or without a backing band. She rocks! The Australian born, Swedish-based vocalist and songwriter's performances are littered with stories from Tasmanian hotel rooms, Hollywood’s underbelly, The Global Cafés and beyond!

2003 she supported the eclectic Jacque Higgins in Theatre De Verdun at the Nice Jazz Festival in France, shared the bill with Megadeath at the Midtfyn Festival in Denmark and, in September, became the first Aussie to rock the boards in the ex-Soviet country of Belarus. "It was an amazing eye opener," she said. "I got a glimpse into a country which is still battling the throes of post-communism, still in its transitional stages. Most folks have hardly got a dollar on them as wages are so low, so consequently the show was full of young journalists who got in for free, vying for a story and a chance to express their views and pitch questions to someone from the west."

Weeks later, she turned on a series of hot shows at a base at the North Pole. "It's everyone's greatest dream to actually go somewhere as extreme as the North Pole," she says. "For me it was about as Everest or as Dick Smith as I'll ever get." Kitto and her rock trio flew North 72 degrees to Svalbard for 3 gigs before an enthusiastic crowd of 1000.

In late 2004 Scandinavia, Kitto featured in a Swedish TV Gala ABBA The Tribute over 3 nites performing alongside Dionne Warwick & Eskobar, Shortly after Kitto made a pilgrimage to South Africa to perform on Robben Island, the home for 17 years to former political prisoner Nelson Mandela.

Last fall 2005, she commenced working on a new album with producer Michael Vail Blum (Suicidal Tendencies, New Radicals) recorded in Los Angeles, USA.

Aug/Sept 2006, Kitto recently completed a UK/SWE tour fronting (Janis Joplins original band) Big Brother & The Holding Company.

Meanwhile, her independent spirit has taken her around the globe on an 'extended working holiday' that's seen her strutting her stuff in 33 countries.

In discussing her work, Kitto says, “Music is a stand-by companion, a medium for interpreting life. It can be inspired by an observation or an overheard quote or an emotion immediately summarised or developed into song form. Sometimes the whole tune arrives with a melody lurking about, waiting for a story to inhabit. I tend to write in parables. Lyrics & music are everything to the writer and anything to the listener who can pick up on a line or a phrase and visualise their own personal interpretations. That’s one of the great things about sound; the listener isn’t encumbered with a director’s linear vision"

Critics have hailed her as a ‘vocal chameleon’ and a ‘musical abductress’. Whatever, Kitto’s intense. She doesn’t bleed words, she moulds them into sounds that soar. Reliving stories through songs, she spreads herself across the spectrum. She’s driven, barefoot on stage and swinging, always giving her all when she performs. Musicians who’ve worked with her will tell you “She has an improvisational mentality, the inflections are never the same.” American musos have hailed ‘her unique guitar style, exploding with complex rhythmic textures, subtle nuances and dramatic dynamics.’ Despite having nodules cut out of her throat a couple of years ago, the voice is big, afterburners blazing!

Hailed as ‘feminine Cobainesque’, her 2004 album Precious Junk showcases the talents of a dynamic guitar-wielding singer-songwriter. The album’s title was inspired by her toolmaker/engineer father who, when asked what he was doing admiring a few obsolete metal presses and statues scattered around the home yard, replied, “Ah, it’s just me and my Precious Junk.”
Dividing her time between homeland Australia and her European base in Sweden, Kitto’s attracted airplay recently with tracks like Bus Driver which topped the Swedish Spray Charts) and others from her solo debut Princess of Tragedy which was released independently in 2002. Early last year, I Wonder Why hit the play lists of over seventy radio stations across the nation. Read more at PRESS-MEDIA

Still submerged in 1960s sit-com fantasyland, with heroines like Samantha from Bewitched, Kitto picks up litter on the streets and believes “in the greatness of human beings, in the magic of creativity. Every single hour it has to move, that’s life reinventing itself every day.” It’s her mantra.

Kitto grew up listening to Bowie, Roxy Music and Neil Young alongside Oz rock bands like Australian Crawl and the Hoodoo Gurus. As a teenager in Victoria she learned to play guitar and started to explore the outer limits of her vocal chords, and when she was eighteen she got her first gig for forty bucks at Darwin’s long-gone Club Papillion. At the time she was in the navy, working on aerial maintenance out at Humpty Doo.

When she got out of the navy, Kitto returned to Melbourne and started working as an auto electrician fixing alternators. In her spare time she recorded an Opal menswear jingle, performed at Melbourne fashion parades and scored jobs playing covers in bars. It was in a St Kilda wine bar in 1989 that ex-Ferrets singer Billy Miller asked Kitto if she could ‘scream’. She let rip and scored sessions recording backing vocals for Miller’s new band the Gypsies. It was an engagement that led to tours with the Gypsies for a year with appearances on Hey Hey It’s Saturday and calls to provide backing vocals for recordings by Cattletruck and the Chantoozies. (For the record, Kitto reckons it was Billy Miller who taught her ‘the feel’).

She then teamed up with Gypsies drummer John Annas, a vigorous combination given Kitto’s “Free spirit, trust the universe, get on stage and do it” approach to music and what she calls “John’s professional approach, always taking responsibility… Playing with me was like riding a wild pony.” They toured from Melbourne to the outback, playing covers and introducing originals. Through Premier Artists’ Frank Stivala they got the opportunity to record demos with producer Ernie Rose (Little River Band/John Farnham). While Kitto wasn’t comfortable with the introduction of ‘musicians with briefcases’, the sessions led to the Mushroom Records single Blind Lead The Blind in May 1991. Resisting pressure to conform to female ‘pop star’ clichés, Kitto was developing an eating disorder – blowing out at 7-11’s, throwing up and getting on stage. Within weeks of the single’s release, Kitto and Mushroom parted company.

In the aftermath she spent seven months sitting on beaches writing songs in Indonesia, living in huts with a mosquito net and basic utensils in West Timor, Bali and Java.

Returning to Australia in 1993, Kitto supported Noiseworks in Darwin and then headed to Sydney where she met with Don Walker (Catfish/Cold Chisel) who propped her in his lounge room, listened to forty songs and gave her the elemental advice “a few lines tell a story, strip it back and let it rip.” It set her free. She had collaborative song-writing sessions with Rob Gale (Pearls & Swine), and performed in Sydney clubs like Round Midnight, the Manly Boatshed and Springfield’s. After she did shows with Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, of Steely Dan/Doobie Brothers fame, he extended an invitation to play in the US. On the eve of her departure, Kitto’s guitars and amps were stolen. She borrowed a friend’s guitar to earn enough money to buy an instrument for the trip.

In Los Angeles – the city of ‘pay to play’ Black n ’white café - Kitto went looking for a job pulling coffees and landed a gig playing at Beetlejuice on Melrose. She scored bookings at the Roxy, the Whisky-A-Go-Go and the Tatou Club and laid down demos with Michael Blum (producer for Suicidal Tendencies, New Radicals). When her US visa expired, Kitto returned to Australia to record her first independent epee 20 Jacksonia, and then headed for Europe in 1995, kicking off with an appearance on Good Morning Sweden and shows in universities and clubs with acts as diverse as Wilson Pickett, Bon Jovi and Megadeath.

By February 1996, she was playing the major Scandinavian festivals. Kitto then formed the band Baby Porcelain in London and spent the year’s 1997-99 touring Europe, including a performance for Princess Stephanie of Monaco at Café Replay. Taking a breather in the UK, Kitto took to busking on London’s iconic Portobello Road. Baby Porcelain’s last hurrah was the live CD Umbilically Yours released in 2000.

After solo shows in Australia, Kitto headed back to Europe in 2001, hitting the Spanish coast where she wrote ten songs in ten days. Returning to her current base in Sweden she formed her own label Whosjack - named after her mascot teddy bear – and went to work with producers Bil Bryant (Joan Osborne) and Anders Molin (Roxette) recording her debut album Princess of Tragedy.

Moving forward two years and onto her new album Precious Junk, Molin and newcomer Jan Destner have taken the elemental approach to Kitto’s sonic ideas, pressed the record button and ‘let her rip’ on what has become her strongest album to date.

“I chase themes constantly in order to understand or summarise the patterns of life”.

Bil Bryant, who co-produced Princess of Tragedy, believes “She’s totally committed to her music and she sings for her supper Kitto will give 100% every time. Very rarely do you find a musician like that.” USA/SWE

"Kitto meets the deadline of her expression". Brian Kramer (Guitarist/Songwiter) USA/SWE

“Only the immense, poetic beauty of Kitto’s lyrics can match her strong vocals. This is an artist with veracity, talent and a spirit that shines with intensity”. Beat magazine, AUST