Meghan Kreidler is an acrobat — or at least she feels like one most days. “I teeter back and forth between feeling very empowered and then just being totally thrown off by little things that happen in everyday life,” she says, “just behaviors that have been normalized by men, in particular, and how they talk to me and how they treat me.”
She’s speaking frankly about her song “Grown Ass Woman,” which appears on Vicious Kid, her third studio album with her band Kiss The Tiger. “The angel of death/Wants me to draw another breath/But angel won’t you leave me alone,” she sings, her voice coated in raw vulnerability over a quivering and dusty country-time signature. The video for the surprisingly stripped-down performance debuts today on Audiofemme.
“Grown Ass Woman,” and its tender climb to a thunderous vocal burst, speaks both personally and universally to experiences of womanhood. “There’s a lot of talk about feminism and female empowerment these days, and it feels like it’s very in style. That might make people think, ‘Okay, we’ve arrived. Women are equal to men.’ But in my experience, I still come up against moments in life, where I think, ‘What the heck? I thought I was this person, but now I feel so weak and vulnerable.’ I think I’m growing into a stronger, more nuanced person as I get older.”
With radical honesty, she reclaims her right to take up space. In another life, she may have simply swallowed micro-aggressions as an act of resignation, accepting the sting. But now, those moments seem to pop up more frequently, and she’s found herself “feeling a lot more hurt by them,” she confides, adding that she’s often “blindsided by those moments and not being able to respond back in the moment.”
The mid-album detour “is another one of those songs that is kind of scary for me. It’s a slow burn” she says. For a while, the singer-songwriter struggled with whether people would latch onto and appreciate its organic, subdued feel, but on a personal level, it’s opened the floodgates for her own needed transformation. “What I like about it is that it always forces me to face my fears and to tap into what makes me feel vulnerable. At the end of the day, when you’re able to grasp and own your vulnerability, that’s when your strength really shines through,” she says.
Back in April, Kiss the Tiger released a video illustrated and animated by Eleonore Dendy for “I Miss You.” Though very different from “Grown Ass Woman,” both videos frame visual storytelling “around a female experience,” a much-needed approach, particularly in the music industry. “We’ve tried to get women who are either featured in the video or who are working behind the scenes,” she says. The band enlists long-time friend and director Sha Cage for the clip, showcasing Kreidler pouring out her heart on a stage at the Cedar Cultural Center with glowing violet lights showering upon her shoulders. “I respect Sha very much as an artist. We couldn’t have done a music video for [this song] and not had a female director. That would have not made any sense,” she laughs.
The music video carries further significance as the camera pans to the concert crowd to reveal groups of young girls smiling up at Kreidler. It’s a simple gesture but a powerful moment to suggest representation remains crucial, inviting a new generation of hopeful women to not only see themselves on stage but to fuel them to follow their own dreams. “There are a lot of people that connect to our music, and when they see us live, they love it and have a great time. But I feel like women, in particular, are always really excited,” Kreidler reflects. “And it always really excites me when young women can see me on stage because whether they realize it or not, they’re probably having a moment where they’re like, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’”
“Probably the youngest girl [in the video is] the Asian girl. I’m Asian, and there are more Asian women in music that are at the forefront now than I remember when I was growing up. I was just reminded of the importance of that this past weekend,” she says. “We were playing a show, and this woman who I met recently was there, and she’s Asian. She was like, ‘I need to get my daughter to come see you guys. She’s just going through a moment right now. She dyed her hair blonde, and I just feel like if she sees you on stage that would click something into place for her.’ At the end of the day, that isn’t the only reason why I do this, but that is very important to me. When there are other Asian women in the audience, I see them and I recognize them.”
Growing up half-Korean in a suburb of Minneapolis, Kreidler didn’t have many Asian artists, in either music or theatre, to admire. “I am a little late to the concert-going experience,” she admits with a chuckle. Instead, she connected to such pop trailblazers as Christina Aguilera, whose 2002 Stripped album was remarkably influential on her life. “That album was kind of subversive,” she notes.
Admittedly, she “spent a lot of time listening to music that the dudes that I had crushes on listened to,” she says, listing off the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana. “That was all cool, but I’m still discovering and re-investing my time into artists that really do excite me.” Those artists include Patti Smith, an iconic pillar in the NYC punk scene.
More recently, she witnessed Japanese Breakfast play a show in Minneapolis, and it was life-changing, to say the least. “I saw other Asian people in the audience,” she says. Immediately after the show, Kreidler purchased band leader Michelle Zauner’s debut book Crying in H Mart: A Memoir, and it moved her to tears. “Within the first three pages, I was crying. It just felt like she was speaking to me even though I haven’t lost my mom,” she says.
Kiss the Tiger — rounded out with musicians Michael Anderson (songwriting partner, rhythm guitar), Bridger Fruth (lead guitar, pedal steel), Alex Sandberg (lead guitar), Paul DeLong (bass), Jay DeHut (drums), Victor Zupanc (piano, organ), Mark Moehlenbrock (guitar, piano), Diane Miller (guitar, backing vocals), as well as backing vocalists Chelsie Newhard and Andy Ebling — formed in 2016. Over five years, the mega-group have gained quite a bit of buzz around Minnesota, on the edge of breaking through the stratosphere into the national arena.
Originally, Vicious Kid was set for release early last summer, but the global pandemic forced them to slam on the breaks. That extra time to marinate with the music – and also reevaluate their career and ambitions – found Kreidler uncovering a deeper “appreciation and pride in what we’ve done as a band and what we’ve created,” she offers. “I revisited the songs so many times and wondered if we were going to want to put them out after this past year and a half, and I still kept finding myself being excited about the songs. Some of them we had started to integrate into our live show, but for the most part, we hadn’t played them that much. I still feel really proud of the songs and continue to find new layers as we play them live for people and build up that live muscle of playing.”
Vicious Kid may have been recorded nearly two years ago, at the tail end of 2019, but to Kreidler, it all feels fresh again. “Here I am talking to you about it and it still feels kind of new to me in a way and I think that’s exciting. Maybe it’s a testament to all the work that we’ve put in and the trial and error that we’ve gone through making albums and putting them out,” she says. “Music moves so quickly nowadays, and it feels like you have to be putting new stuff out all the time. I guess it just makes me realize that the lifespan of things is not as limited as we maybe think it needs to be.”
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