Le Tigre

We started in 1998, when Kathleen moved to New York. Having just put out her first solo record, Julie Ruin, it seemed logical to try and translate that album into a live show. Not wanting to perform alone, she asked Jo to help her with the project. (Jo had just bought a sampler and was getting into home recording too).Earlier that year Kathleen had gone to Chicago and made a video for the Julie Ruin song "Aerobicide" with her friend Sadie Benning. Sadie expressed interest in doing visuals and/or helping with the music for the live performances Kathleen was planning. So back in New York, Jo and Kathleen worked hard, trying to re-shape the Julie Ruin material into a live show, but ended up writing new songs together instead. They sent cassette tapes of what they were making to Sadie in Chicago and she visited New York and began working with them on their new, as-yet-unnamed project. This material ultimately became the first Le Tigre album.Because we wanted to have a visual component to accompany our live performance (and couldn't afford to buy a video projector) we made a slide-show that had to be manually triggered. Our first show was on a snowy night at a collectively run queer art/performance space in Brooklyn called Dumba. The line-up at that time was Kathleen, Jo, & Sadie, with JD Samson running the slide projector . JD came on tour with the band as the slide technician/roadie, but it was immediately apparent that she should have a more active role in the performances. We were already talking about having her dance and sing back-ups with us on stage when Sadie decided she didn't want to be in Le Tigre anymore. Since a month long US tour was already booked and Jo had quit her job to do it, we asked JD if she would become a full-fledged member of Le Tigre. Luckily she said "yes". JD added an undeniable flair and charisma to the live show and took to touring and recording like a fish to water. Since then we have put out three records and gone on 8 tours, and now we have a video projector and two crew members to make our team complete: Dusty Lombardo, the best merch-selling video tech around; and Killer, the sound woman everyone wants to steal!