OnStagePress got to sit down with Gina Katon of Little Miss Nasty and Gina and the Eastern Block for a personal discussion about where she focuses her creativity and how to succeed while dividing your focus on two very successful entertainment projects.
OnStagePress: Welcome to Portland again
Gina: Thank you, I love it here.
OnStagePress: So, you’re here with both of your projects, Little Miss Nasty, and Gina and the Eastern Block (GATEB). Which one is your favorite of the two? You express yourself differently in each one, right?
Gina: Yeah, it’s definitely different. Uhm, I’d say that GATEB is more personal, but Little Miss Nasty is my baby. I mean, they’re both my baby. However, I do get to express more of my past traumas and all that shit that makes a good song through GATEB. Little Miss Nasty is more imaginative and creating my own performance piece and meaning behind every number because it’s other people’s music really. So, it’s just different, you know? I feel like I push Little Miss Nasty harder because it’s just taking off in the most extreme for us. But, GATEB is still there for me, ya know? I can’t pick a favorite. It’s totally different. Totally different vibes.
OnStagePress: Well, your music with GATEB has been dubbed “Stripper anthems”. How does that make you feel?
Gina: I think it’s great. Every time we drop a song, we’ll get tagged in multiple videos of girls on the pole. Either pole classes or exotic dancers doing their thing. People feel hot and sexy listening to my music and they want to dance to it. And I think that’s awesome. I dance. I love dancing. I mean, fuck it.
OnStagePress: Are you afraid you’ll be pigeon-holed into that one kind-of subgenre?
Gina: I mean, I hope not. Now that I’m getting older and maturing more, I think our songs are coming out a bit more mature as well. And so, hopefully we can merge into an overall respected kind of vibe for all ages, you know what I’m saying?
OnStagePress: Sure, and when you’re writing music for GATEB, how much does Marc contribute to that process? Is it all coming from you and bouncing off of him, or it more of a mutual…
Gina: It’s definitely mutual. He’ll kind of sit there and come up with a really nasty bass riff. He usually starts with bass guitar riffs. I’m like, that’s fuckin’ sick, let’s do something to that and we’ll kind of build the background music around it. And then I’ll sit with it for a while and write all the vocals and he’ll help me modify the structure and change things to his knowledge. But sometimes, I’ll just come up with a sick chorus like “I have an idea” and he’ll come up with a whole song around it.
OnStagePress: You recently got to collaborate with Heidi Shepard…
Gina: I love herrrr!!
OnStagePress: How did that come about?
Gina: So, we were working on Freak On A Leash during lockdown and Marc was like let’s make it this hip-hoppy trap beat. I’m like “I don’t know if this is gonna work”, but he’s like “Trust me, it’s gonna be fuckin’ sick” and he’s like, then we’ll have a feature come in and scream over the top of it and I was like OK, who? So, we made a little list, and Heidi was on it and she was the one. We know her somewhat through L.A. just being around and her old music label Century Media would have these parties like “hi, hi, hi” but we were never BFFs, but she was still so gracious enough to jump on the project and go all in. Music video, everything.
OnStagePress: When I think of the Butcher Babies, I think of Carla as more of the screamer, scream-o type, right? Was she also considered on your list?
Gina: No, we just went for Heidi.
OnStagePress: It seemed to work out. You got a lot of views on the video for the song, and it turned out pretty well.
Gina: Yeah, I think it was a great thing for us to collab with someone bigger in the scent to ya know, Little Miss Nasty is a dance show first and for people to try to take it seriously as singing or being an artist or what-not, ya know, we kinda need a little push so it was good we could collab with someone like Heidi then it was all for the better.
OnStagePress: Let’s switch gears over to Little Miss Nasty and the dancing aspect of it. Are you formally trained in dance?
Gina: Oh yeah
OnStagePress: And all of your dancers are professional dancers…
Gina: For sure
OnStagePress: So, who does the choreography? Do you all kind of contribute to that, or does one person step up and say “I’m going to choreograph this set for this tour, or…
Gina: Basically, I’ve done the majority of the choreography, but starting five months ago or so, one of the girls who’s performing tonight, her name is Kyla Bollings, she stepped in as a choreographer as well, so two of the numbers tonight, she choreographed. Which you’re going to fucking love, cuz they’ll stand out. They’re different from the rest of the show cuz it’s Kyla’s choreography and she’s amazing. She just taught a class today in Portland actually at a studio. So, now it’s me and her, but throughout the show girls do have chances to freestyle or with direction, they kind of take their own flavor depending on the night. If the’re audience they want to fuck with them, or if they want to run over there, so there’s slight freedom throughout the show and each girl contributes their artistry and personality and stuff. So, it is a collective creative process, but I would say me, majority. Kyla’s coming in as my co-choreographer.
OnStagePress: OK, now we got to see you last fall at the Bossanova Ballroom and we noticed that the audience was a good eclectic mix of folks, but probably more feminine dominated. Would you say that’s your target market?
Gina: Yeah, our YouTube analytics is 80% women. And some of our social media and other pages are as well. We do a lot of girl nights in San Francisco, and L.A. It’s like mainly lesbians, it’s just women love this shit. And not just lesbians, of course they do, but even straight women, you name it. It just brings them that power and sort of charges up their batteries of you know like “Fuck that, I’m a badass too. If I wanna be hot and sexy, I can do that. If I wanna be hardcore and headbang and act like a man, I can fucking do that” you know, cuz we cover such a wide range of feels and expressions, you know what I’m saying? It just like triggers them to know that women don’t just have to be what society wants them to be.
OnStagePress: Right, why box you into one role? It’s a way to break out and be different and like you said, “fuck it”.
Gina: Yeah, Fuck it!
OnStagePress: How about the music? When you choreograph the show, do you choreograph it around the music or do you choose music around the dance or is it…
Gina: It’s tricky! Well, normally, we start with the song and you kind of have a vision in your head and you see the piece moving and you’re like “ooh, ooh”, or sometimes, I start with wardrobe. If I have a sick mask, I’m like what can I do with this? And I apply it like my favorite dark song and then I have the concept and then the moves come kinda last. So everything else kind of structures it in your mind and then you’re like “how do I fill this out”. It’s interesting. Choreography is probably one of the hardest and weirdest things, I think… to structure and set. Cuz, there’s like a million things you can do. Just like song writing. I’m here, or here. Is it a one or on two. There’s just so many options.
OnStagePress: Another show that came through, was the SuicideGirls show. It’s so different from what you guys are doing. You’re dance is far more intricate whereas theirs seemed more wardrobe based. Would you agree with that?
Gina: Oh, for sure. Our group is compiled of professional dancers from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York. And I know the SuicideGirls are gorgeous and amazing at what they do. I feel like they have professional dancers here and there, but they are more model driven and the whole look, the inked and alternative vibes and performance art and very theatrical. And I think we’re more dance and choreography driven. It’s just in our blood.
OnStagePress: One of the things, before we got started, I got to sit down with Marc and he was saying you guys might be interested in doing a monthly rotation through Portland. What is it about Portland that would draw you here?
Gina: Honestly, since we started coming here which was probably 2017 at Bossanova Ballroom, we came up like every 5 months or so and every time, it was a smash. People, it was packed. They were loving it. There was a line down the block and we’re like “holy shit, like we’ve never even been here and people are fucking loving this” and the promoters are crushing. And I don’t know. I feel like Portland has that sort of alternative, eclectic, uh vibe. You know, the strip clubs every fucking block, all the girls are tatted and pierced up. It’s just that like grimy, dirty, grunge edginess up here. And I think that the people are open minded enough to appreciate a show like ours whereas if we went to ya know, some bible belt city, they’d be like “what the fuck is happening, like, hide my eyes”.
OnStagePress: And with a burlesque show like this, you try to be edgy, but not too much. How do you draw the line between what’s too edgy and what’s…
Gina: Yeah, I feel like our show, even though it’s edgy and nasty and pushing boundaries, I feel like it’s still kinda classy ya know. Like, we’re all classicly trained dancers and we just want to keep the sorta the it’s not prudeness, it’s not prudeness at all… we just wanna keep… my parents come to the shows. And they love it. And, some of the things push it a little bit too far for them but I just want it to be eventually like a household name and not be too over the top like people are like “oh shit, put that in the closet and never let it out.” I want it to be and experience for a lot of people.
OnStagePress: Portland almost fits that perfect niche of the target audience you’re talking about right?
Gina: Yeah!!
OnStagePress: What would your advise be for girls of all ages? What’s the one thing you’d want to say to girls of all ages? Is it different from an 80 year old woman to an 18 year old woman? What would be your advice?
Gina: What would my advice be for girls of all ages? Well, this is kinda how I’ve lived my life and speaking of… I feel like everyone else is so worried about what everyone else thinks. You know, they hold themselves back like “What are my parents going to say”? They want me to go this for my life, what what do I want to do? Or what is my boyfriend gonna think if I go over here and join this crew or what are my friends going to think if I try to become a singer and they don’t expect it. And it holds so many people back and I would just say Fuck it. Go out there and do whatever you want. This is your life and people will come around. If they don’t support you for whatever reason, that’s on them, but you’re gonna feel way guiltier for yourself if you don’t go for what you want and do what you want to fulfill your passions just based on the fear of what other people think. So I’d say rip off the band-aid and go for it.
