i've toured a fair amount. i have also been the "lady at home" just about as much.

this topic has been an oft discussed one as of late and i feel strongly enough about it to feel the need to write about it (from utrecht, holland, sans boyfriend, none the less).

saying it eloquently seems difficult. but i'll do my best...


ladies and gentleman of the world-- when your partner in crime is off having the time of their life mean phone calls, threats, sobbing, demands and manipulation don't make you too desirable to come home to. terms like. "i hope you're having fun!", "i can't wait to see you!" and "i miss you tons!" are all acceptable. if we're talking to you once a day make it good! why make your daily 10 minutes annoying? that leads to no phone calls, folks.

i am appreciative of the partner i have. and i have learned alot about myself as a girlfriend this month. when we talk (fairly rarely) i'm met with sweetness, encouragement and excitement. i'm left with a smile on my face, the reassurance that things are great and the knowledge that my dude is confident enough to know i'm his lady.

he reminds me that i am myself. he is himself. being together in the same city is great, but guilt-free life experience is top notch.

so, that's that. remember, needy-ness sucks and confidence rules.

On occasion I have intelligent things to say, and I find it slightly ironic that my entire life is in still photos, and when i finally open my mouth it ends up in High Times.




thanks be to Justin Hampton for writing a well-informed article.

we're getting so close to launch, so exciting.

can't believe it's been 3 months since i last wrote one of these.
the summer tour, october insane travle schedule, london, the loft downtown.....
all of these things already seem like distant relics of my life past....

i'm not even sure where to begin. almost daily i think of witty, anecdotal things and contemplete writing about them....but they are never as clever or revolutionary in type as they were in my head, in the shower at 2AM.

well, in the wnter i took a couple of months settling back in a normal life....did a couple of performances, alot of introspection and made some big life changes as a result.  i patiently waited for the next thing.....because that's how my life works.

so, since i get alot of questions about how i came into doing what i do, i figured i'd just lay it all out on the line. i'm in the mood. just back from coffee with erin, caffinated and ready to rumble.

here's the deal: in retrospect my life has been a lucky one. i have amazing parents, somehow fell into the punk scene right after my 15th birthday, moved to san francisco at 17 and things just went from there...without giving away too much of the private stuff, in 2001 i was about to graduate art school, met a boy and a few months later we were rebuilding a fomerly abandoned farmhouse in the middle of acres and acres of strawberries....i started bellydancing, worked at a record store and went on tour. life was awesome.

next we moved into a little storefront in ventura about 1/2 mile from the ocean...again with the building....lofts and plumbing and walls...nights and nights of band practices and dance rehersals...i had become pretty into bellydance at this point, but it was still pretty casual. in the summer of 2003 i went travelling alone, planning to meet up with the boy in richmond, VA and visit a friend, stayed with my BFF in gainesville for a while....long story short, i ended up travelling a bit longer becuase the tour i was meeting up with (circle jerks/ GBH/ the bronx/ missing 23rd) needed another merch person....when i finally got back to california i quit my buyer/ record store job and took a desk job.

i worked for a pretty good company, but after a year i was busier and busier with dance and costuming. i felt overwhelmed trying to teach classes, do shows, sew and still have fun...so i quit the job. i just did. mike thought i was crazy....that was august of 2004 and it was my last actual job. it's been hard.

i'm not going to lie and say it's been easy. but i suppose my pride has gotten in the way. working for someone else would be giving in, admiting that i can't make it for myself...and i wasn't ready for that.

in all of this i had danced with miss monica fernandez. we were polar opposites. at the time we started dancing together i lived in a house with no hot water/ shower, a sink that ran greywater, i went to shows....monica was a hip-hop loving, empowered lady....somehow we met in the middle.

she became involved in an amazing LA production company, the do lab...who was in the process of forming a vaudeville circus troupe.....she and i became the troupes bellydancers and on december 31st, 2004 Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque premeired.

in february of 2005 (i think, ugh) i was trying to fall asleep and it hit me; the sisterhood dance collective...

i had been dancing fulltime with a troupe for a few years, but it never felt like we went anywhere...mixed levels of dedication, etc. i auditioned for the bellydance superstars in january of 2005, and won a spot. trained with jillina and all of the BDSS dancers in april of that year, didn't know where was up from there.... teaching was amazing, it felt right and i had a growing base of dedicated, amazing women in class. but none of that was IT.

dancing with my students was IT. just dancing, drinking wine at rehersal, making up funny moves and getting all fancy. when i first formed the sisterhood, i approached my first teacher, ayse cerami, about co-facilitating it. it seemed inline with what she had always mentioned...so we did it. here's the first blurb i ever wrote:

"The Sisterhood Dance Collective: A project based in Ventura County, California. Bringing women together with the common interest of Tribal Style Bellydance, it is a no audition required troupe focusing on supporting one another in endeavors dance-related or otherwise. The Sisterhood is defined by it's strength in numbers and unique ability to work on ourselves while becoming stronger dancers and forging strong friendships--one of the beautiful benefits of dancing tribal style!"

we did a few festival shows with 20+ dancers. people marvelled at the sheer enormity of it. it gained steam, an LA chapter opened.

i stopped working with lucent that spring because i lived over and hour out of LA and with so much going on the drive was killing me....

in february of 2006 i left ventura and moved to LA. Lucent Dossier were still friends, and now i was right here in the middle of it. I did Coachella with them, and that next week the head of Lucent, Dream, asked me if i'd like to do a summer tour with some band called Panic! at the Disco. sure, why not? i had toured a  bit in the past, why not dance AND tour?

so that i did. around the same time i also taught with ayse at tribal fest (talk about an honor to be asked! when did i become popular enough to teach at THE event.)

the rest is history i guess.....i had known the dresden dolls casually through a friend, performed with them here and there....they were openers on the summer panic! tour and at the end we discussed working together. so then we did.

back to present. i moved into a new house 2 weeks ago. we had a fun little housewarming. a friend brought a giant pink starfish pinata named patrick (spongebob, i hear?) mike and i are here, together again. we live in the center of hollywood, with two of my favorite people ever (who also happen to be some of the most talented fellas ever). it's quiet here, aside form the hum, slam, shimmy, rumble of skingraft designs.... there are birds and trees. alot different that our more-urban-than-urban downtown loft. it's peaceful. the cat loves it....

2 days after the pinata, i walked to my car, over a block away (oh yeah, i bought one of those too, car-owning for the first time in 15 months! she's up for sale now, i hate cars. sorry. yuck....) and there was a pink cone head. it was mutalated and soggy, just sitting there in the gutter.

something big is in the works (well TWO things!) one for me and one for us... i don't want to jinx it yet, though, y'all will see soon enough...i'm soon opening LA class session, finally, before i leave for june and forming an east LA sisterhood chapter (the 4th one! weird!). i hear 5 and 6 are in the fetal stage, too! i'm excited to reunite with the "fam", get up to date about what amazing shit has happened in my absence....

i'll add some pictures of all of this later and fix the million typos i see, i'm headed out to see big business....and rumor has it the melvins are playing...fuck yeah.

love.
love.
goose.
katie kay

PS. i missed so much.
i'm going to fix it this weekend....
i didn't even talk about what bands i want y'all to hear, food you should eat, people you should hate....
soon, my kittens.