Knitting her way to the top

By CATHRIN SCHAER

Musician Kelley Deal is excited about coming to play in New Zealand. Is it our beautiful landscape that's enticing the Breeders' guitarist? Could it be our raging, rock'n'roll-loving audiences? Or maybe she has heard about the summery weather we've been having lately?

The answer: none of the above. Apparently it's the sheep that are looking particularly alluring to this former "riot grrrl" from Dayton, Ohio.

"I heard you have seven sheep per person there," says an excited Kelley on the phone from the United States. "And that's really exciting to me because I'm a knitter."

Yes, you read it right. Kelley, who has been described as "troubled" and "intense" with "a voice like honey-covered gravel", loves to knit. It all started while she was on tour after the one-time addict gave up drugs and alcohol.

The Breeders have been around since 1989 and, as the musical landscape has changed, so has life for Kelley and her twin sister, Kim, who form the nucleus of the band.

The Deal siblings got into music in their teens, with 17-year-old Kim building a private recording studio at the back of the family home. The name for some of these occasional musical pairings: the Breeders.

In her mid-20s Kim moved to Boston and became the bass player for legendary alternative band the Pixies. Kelley was thinking about going too - she would have been the Pixies' drummer - but decided to stay at home and continue working as a technical analyst.

In Boston, Kim started to feel restricted by a male-dominated scene led by Pixies' frontman Frank Black, so she established a side project with her friend Tanya Donelly of the Throwing Muses.

And she resurrected the name of the project she and her sister had. The new version of the Breeders released their first album, Pod, in 1990. Donelly didn't stay in the band for long and Kelley replaced her when she left.

In 1993 the Breeders released their second album, Last Splash, which sold two million copies. They toured with Nirvana and scored a worldwide hit with the heavy-but-catchy guitar-driven single, Cannonball - as one wag wrote, Cannonball was probably "the only song taunting the Marquis de Sade to get repeated play on MTV".

Queens of the grunge age, the Breeders were well received by critics and the public. Later, fellow indie band the Dandy Warhols even penned a homage, Cooler than Kim Deal, to Kelley's sister.

Reminded of this, Kelley laughs and says she has met the Dandy Warhols, they were really nice and, anyway, "I was born 11 minutes earlier than Kim so everything she knows, she learned from me".

But it was when they were at their most successful in the mid-90s that things started to go wrong for Kelley. The sisters had always sung about drugs and joked about their own drug use, but in 1994 Kelley's full-blown heroin addiction turned nasty. She was arrested for possession and sent to rehab in Minnesota in 1995.

Kim was left on her own and formed another band, the Amps. On getting clean, Kelley also released some of her own music.

So it was only at the end of the last decade, after years in the musical wilderness, that the Breeders got it together. Kim wrote new songs and sought out suitable musicians, and Kelley returned to the fold.

In a comeback one reviewer described as "more exciting than Kylie's", the group released a new album, Title TK, last year, their third in just under a decade.

The last time the Breeders came to New Zealand was 1994 when, as part of the Big Day Out lineup, they shared the main stage with acts like Soundgarden and Primus. And they were definitely one of the grunge flavours of that musical period.

But ask Kelley whether she feels their sound is out of fashion today and her tone gets a little menacing. "That's kind of a rude question," she says. "I don't feel like I've been left behind by anybody.

"I mean, maybe in five years' time they'll all go, 'oh, here's this great new musical movement - they sound just like the Strokes and the White Stripes'. Basically I think if it's good music it will stand the test of time."

She says practically the whole New Zealand experience will be new to her this time around. "I'm really looking forward to it because last time I didn't really see very much of the country. I only saw the insides of bars," Kelley says wryly.

"I was so drunk last time that this tour will be like coming there for the first time. This time I'm going to spend all my time in yarn shops."

A down-to-earth Kelley is open about her past problems. "I hate the misconception that I joined a band and became a heroin addict. I started shooting up when I was a teenager," she explains.

"I was a practising alcoholic in my day job. So I don't think it matters what career you're in. I mean, I was working for a defence contractor, I had top secret clearance, and I still did so many drugs."

But being on the road with a band again did lead to a recent relapse or two. "But I went straight back to treatment. And I'm on the right track again now.

"I don't do drink or drugs any more so I've got to do something with my hands, especially while I'm on tour. I heard that Emmylou Harris always knits while she's on tour, so I thought maybe I'll learn to do that."

Kelley enjoys the creativity involved - she reckons the artistic process in knitting is similar to that of making music, and the 40-year-old musician now sells her original, one-off knitted bags on her website (www.kelleydeal.net).

In fact, she's becoming so well known for it that an Australian woman writing a book about the craft called to ask for an interview - "nothing to do with music at all", says an astounded Kelley.

And in Europe, dedicated fans moshing in the mud and rain threw pristine balls of yarn at her while the band played. They had obviously kept them clean and dry especially for her.

"Yeah, I'm crazy about knitting," Kelley laughs. So you can probably guess what her message to New Zealand fans is going to be. "Please throw balls of wool," she says, laughing out loud at the thought. "That would be great."

* The Breeders play Auckland's Regent Theatre on Friday, and Wellington's Indigo Bar on Saturday.