Kat Bjelland

Katherine Lynne Bjelland (born December 9, 1963) is an American musician.

Katherine Lynne Bjelland was born on December 9, 1963, in Salem, Oregon, to Lynne Irene Bjelland (née Higginbotham).

She is of English and German descent.

Bjelland was raised by her mother and stepfather, Lyle Bjelland, until age 3, when her mother separated from her stepfather and gave him full custody, after which he raised her as his own.

She was not made aware of her biological father until age 18, and did not meet him until age 23.

"[It] was weird", Bjelland recalled of the revelation.

"I was like, 'Huh? I have a different dad? I'm not Norwegian?!

Bjelland was raised in Woodburn, a small town north of Salem, which she described as "predominantly Orthodox Russians and Hispanics, so being white [was] more like being a minority... We lived at the edge of town, so there was complete wilderness behind us."

Bjelland's stepfather subsequently remarried, after which she claimed to have been physically and verbally abused by his wife.

"You know, I really hate to talk about it because she's great now, but in my childhood she was very abusive", Bjelland said.

"It probably did help my creativity a lot [though]. I was always grounded. I hate to talk about it because I feel like she doesn't think that she did it, but she was [abusive] and it influenced my life quite a great deal."

Bjelland became interested in music as a young child, and began listening to rock and roll records.

As an adolescent, she became enamored with Rush, and attended four of their concerts.

She also cited Kiss, Cheap Trick, The B-52's, the Plasmatics, and Captain Beefheart among her favorite artists while growing up.

Her uncle, David Higginbotham, taught Bjelland to play guitar in her youth.

Her first performance was at a small bar in Woodburn called Flight 99, playing with her uncle in a band called The Neurotics.

She attended Woodburn High School, where she played on the school basketball team and was a cheerleader.

After graduating from high school in 1982, Bjelland briefly enrolled at the University of Oregon, but dropped out after her freshman year and relocated to Portland at age nineteen.

During this time, Bjelland worked as a stripper to support herself.

She became introduced to punk music after attending a Wipers concert in Portland: "I didn't know about punk rock that much", she recalled.

"I was from a small town. All of a sudden I was like, 'What the fuck is this?.

At age nineteen, Bjelland purchased her first guitar, a Rickenbacker 425, from a pawn shop for $200.

In Woodburn, she joined The Neurotics, and then an all-female band called The Venarays, which Bjelland has described as "rock with a '60s edge".

The Neurotics were composed of Bjelland (rhythm guitar); her uncle David Higginbotham (lead guitar); Marty Wyman (vocals); Brian McMillan (drums); and Laura Robertson (bass).

Commenting on the band, she said: "After The Neurotics I got this band together with my best friends, so it was an all-girl band. We were called The Venarays. The name came from the [Latin] word venary which means "actively hunting out sex"! We began as a way of having fun with each other."

The band, however, was not exclusively female, as drummer Dave Hummel, and later, Jack Rhodes, were men.

After the dissolution of Pagan Babies in 1985, Bjelland relocated to Minneapolis, where she formed Babes in Toyland with drummer Lori Barbero.

She rose to prominence as the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the alternative rock band Babes in Toyland, which she formed in 1987.

She has been noted for her unusual vocal style alternately consisting of shrill screams, whispering, and speaking in tongues, as well as for her guitar playing style, which incorporates "jagged" tones with "psychotic rockabilly rhythms".

Born in Salem, Oregon, Bjelland was raised in nearby Woodburn, and learned to play guitar as a teenager from her uncle, with whom she performed in his band shortly after graduating high school.

Upon dropping out of the University of Oregon at age nineteen, Bjelland relocated to Portland, where she became involved in the city's punk rock scene.

There, she became friends with Courtney Love, and formed the band Pagan Babies.

The band's debut record, Spanking Machine, was released in 1990, after which they toured Europe with Sonic Youth.

In the mid-late 1990s, Bjelland collaborated on other musical projects, including contributing as a bassist in the band Crunt with her then-husband, Australian musician Stuart Gray.

This was followed by their second album, Fontanelle (1992).

The band would release their third studio album, Nemesisters, in 1995.

Babes in Toyland formally disbanded in 2001, and Bjelland began working with Katastrophy Wife, a project under which she released the albums Amusia (2001) and All Kneel (2004).

She remained out of the public light for several years before publicly revealing in 2007 that she had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.

In 2015, she reunited with Babes in Toyland and began touring internationally for the first time in over a decade.

Bjelland later retired in 2017.