Donnas Rock Hard

The venue could hardly have been smaller but for veteran Los Angeles rockers the Donnas, last weeks show at the Viper Room was one of their most significant. As about 200 friends, family and hangers-on squeezed into the tiny Sunset Strip venue, the all-girl rock quartet toasted their 15th anniversary.

A career in rock was not what the four 13-year-old Californian students had in mind when they formed.

"Show me a 13-year-old whos thinking about their career," Donnas singer Brett Anderson says. "At that age, we didnt even know what high school would be like, let alone the rest of our lives. Thats why our band worked, I think, because we didnt have some master plan."

The girls relationship, she explains, is akin to a friend, a sister and a business partner all in one.

The band, inspired by a love of punk and metal, released a cluster of independent albums through their teens. After graduating from high school, they hit college "for, like, a second," before ditching school for rocknroll by 1998.

Being young, female and, well, not unattractive meant they battled prejudices then and now.

"It was so similar to how it is now," Anderson says. "Weve always had a problem with people taking us seriously. Its been difficult trying to deal with it and not let it get to us. We were really cautious (with our career) to the point of people probably thinking were control freaks. But its all for a reason. The fact we had a slow climb meant that we didnt have a sharp drop-off."

The Donnas signed to Atlantic in 2002 to release their fourth album, Spend the Night. It was moderately successful. Two years later, the follow-up Gold Medal failed to replicate that success. The partnership quickly soured.

"The people we had relationships with at Atlantic were either moved on or fired," Anderson says. "Suddenly, we were dealing with strangers. So we started to think, Maybe we shouldnt be on this label any more."

As it happens, Atlantic harboured similar thoughts and there was a mutual agreement to dissolve the relationship.

So the band began their own label, which was not as difficult as they had envisioned.

"You get a distribution company and they deal with a lot of the nuts and bolts," Anderson says. "We outsourced publicity and merchandise, we have great management, booking and publishing. After we set up our label, we began to think, What exactly did Atlantic do? "

The band took baby steps in making Bitchin, their first self-released record, last year. Anderson says having no deadline changed the feel of the project. "You feel like if its not working, you dont have to bludgeon it into the ground, you can just let it breathe. Thats an amazing feeling."

They have started from scratch, playing South by Southwest this year and next week supporting Melbournes Kisschasy on an Australian tour.

Bitchin is out through Shock. The Donnas with Kisschasy play the Corner Hotel, Richmond, on May 28 and the Palace Theatre, city, on May 29.

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