It’s late Friday night. I’m in my basement and partaking in my favorite pastime: drinking and listening to records. Tonight’s spin: the first and only album from pre-The Godz outfit, Capital City Rockets. It’s nothing special, just some raucous rock n’ roll. Suddenly my phone goes off. I get a text along the lines of, “Hey dude! Wanna do this interview now?”. Sure! Hitter frontwoman Hanna Hazard and I had been planning this for some time. While the questions were written for her, she was joined by bandmates Adam “Lucky” Luksetich (guitars) and Ryan “Wizkid” Wizniak, who gave some pearls of rock n’ roll wisdom as well. What ensued was a nearly two hour conversation touching on everything from the DIY subculture and illicit substances, to social justice and KISS. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Who were your musical influences growing up? Was there any one band or musician in particular that made you say, “I want to do this.”?
Hanna Hazard: To answer the first part, the influences are Motörhead and fucking Girlschool and, to be totally honest, watching Cher get up on stage and be a 75 year old badass and Dolly Parton. They’re still killing it and honing their craft. But to be totally honest, the making me feel comfortable to do it was being at a DIY show and watching someone that everyone around me had touted as being this “amazing musician” and “This is gonna blow your mind!” It was probably 2008, here in Chicago at a place called Ruben’s Palace. Being there and watching this girl play with a loop pedal and her guitar, just looping her own music and singing over it. She got so into it, that the audience got into it. I was standing there like, “Oh my god! People like this? I could do this!” That is not to say that aesthetic of that music is not amazing. It’s not my aesthetic of music. But it made me realize, if this girl has the confidence to do that and people like it, I’m definitely gonna start a band.
I can name a lot of bands and a lot of influences, but really, it was watching a DIY show and being there on the first floor of this fucking screen printing factory. I’m stoned for maybe the third time in my life at 19 years old. I’m like, “What is happening? This is crazy!” Some guy is playing a guitar string screwed into a two by four with a contact mic. Some guy is playing a saxophone and jumping off a loft bed. The Puffy Areolas was one of the best bands I’ve ever seen. They were an old Chicago band. This was one show that they played. It was one of the first DIY shows I had gone to by myself. The cops showed up. They were arresting everyone for drinking. I thought, “I’m not 21, but it’s Chicago!” I was running away and remember my friends yelling, “They’re not really gonna arrest you! Come back!”
That’s wild!
HH: If I had a nickel for every time a guy told me that! *laughs*
*laughs* When did the idea for Hitter come to be?
HH: This was reminded to me when I was talking to the guys tonight. I played in bands with Adam for a few years. I had also played in bands with Ryan for a few years. I heard that they were gonna start jamming together and said, “You can’t just not include me!” When I brought it up this evening, Adam told me that Ryan said, “We should just ask Hanna and Madalyn (“Maddog” Garcia, bass) to be a part of this.”
Adam “Lucky” Luksetich: I had asked Ryan to start a band with me and be the drummer. He said, “Let’s get Hanna and Madalyn onboard because I want to play music with them too.”
HH: Madalyn was the bassist in Lil Tits. Apparently, I wanted to be a part of it and that was already the plan. *laughs*
Funny you mention Lil Tits, because that brings me to the next question. Before starting Hitter, you fronted the punk band Lil Tits. Would you attribute your time with them to Hitter’s underlying punk attitude, or was there a conscious effort to combine metal and punk?
HH: That’s a valid question. I don’t think of myself as approaching something like, “I’m attributing punk to this.” I think Adam said it best. He said he could write a riff for Hitter and bring it in. In his head, it sounds like Mötley Crüe. When he brings it in, Wiz puts the drums on it and I’ll add vocals. It’s this totally different beast of being this punk Frankenstein metal monster. It’s not something where I’d sit down and say, “No, we gotta add this punk aspect.” I think the punk aspect of Lil Tits, for years, was that we literally didn’t know how to do or play anything. We just wanted to do it and we made sure we did what we were faking, or what we were trying to do really well. Hitter is not the first band I’ve been in that was very technical, but also the band that was technical that I wanted to be technical with. I wanted to learn what is happening in each segment. There’s definitely a punk aspect of me being very brazen and loud over everything. We definitely like punk and metal is what I guess I should say.
It’s different on the listeners end. As a reviewer, I always listen to music and think, “What does it sound like?” I’m all nerdy about it. I’ll bring it up to a band and they’ll say, “It’s cool you heard that. This is what we really meant.”
HH: That’s the thing. I feel like my entire life has been, “It’s kind of like this!” “That’s not what we’re going for at all.” “Okay, fine.”
AL: It was just all of us playing what we wanted to play. It’s weird because Hitter is “too metal” for the punk kids, but “too punk” for the metal kids. The metal kids hear it and go, “Oh this is punk!” Then you play it for some punks and they go, “This is the most metal shit ever!”
HH: It’s so true! We don’t fall on the line of anywhere.
You’re as high energy on stage as you are on record. Myself and other fans/critics have compared you to the late Wendy O Williams of Plasmatics. Do these comparisons bother you?
HH: There’s nothing about that which bothers me because I think she’s an absolute icon. I just think you guys said the word Lemmy wrong.
Hmmm…
HH: To be totally honest, that is such an amazing comparison and it’s fucking awesome. I just can’t even take credit for being like, “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to emulate!”, when I’ve literally just been a fucking weirdo listening to Motörhead and Misfits my entire life. I don’t even want to do Wendy a disservice by being compared to her. I don’t even think I’m that cool. Instead, I say, “Well, Lemmy’s the dude.” I try to sound like Elvis and Lemmy and Danzig all DNA’d into one person and that’s me.
The first and only time I’ve seen Hitter was at this past February’s Music Frozen Dancing festival. You opened with a scorching cover of KISS’s “Detroit Rock City”. Are there any other songs Hitter have covered and what songs would you like to cover in the future?
HH: Publicly, we haven’t covered any other songs. Actually, *to Adam* should we announce this in an interview?
AL: At this point, fuck it.
HH: Okay, so Hitter has this side/underground band called Pit. We recorded a demo and played one show. It’s all the same members, so if we’re talking about covering songs with the same people, we covered “In League with Satan” by Venom. Pit has a Bandcamp. There’s four original songs we’ve written. It’s the same members, but it’s definitely a different band. Going back to Hitter, we’ve worked on or talked about covering multiple songs, one of them being “Highway Star” by Deep Purple. Another one is “Return of the Warlord” by Manowar. And another one we’ve talked about is “Your Love” by The Outfield. I feel like the common joke between bands is, “Dude, wouldn’t it be so funny if we covered this song?” It’s so funny until you’re onstage doing it and you’re like, “Oh my god. No one gets this joke now.” So yeah, in public, we’ve only done KISS “Detroit Rock City”.
AL: You know, KISS is where the idea for this band was really put in motion. We saw KISS at the Chicago Open Air fest in 2017 at Toyota Park. Hanna and I went out to see them and I had never seen KISS before. And I was like, “Holy fuck!” It was incredible. I was expecting nothing because it’s KISS…
HH: Adam and I had never seen a big venue band before. Adam came to me and said, “We’ve got this limo we can be a part of and see KISS.” Everyone in the limo was taking ecstasy and cocaine. It was insane. We showed up at the venue and I was like, “What’s happening right now?” Then KISS came on and the fire, the lighting, Paul Stanley on the zip-line. It was the best show I’ve ever fucking seen and it was an open air stadium.
AL: I just remember being at that show thinking, “This is the kind of shit we gotta do. We gotta simplify and just fucking rock out. This is what I wanna do so bad.” Then a year later, we finally started Hitter, but that was the first time the idea came to my brain.
HH: It made sense to cover “Detroit Rock City”.
AL: It’s also the hardest KISS song.
HH: It IS the hardest KISS song.
But you rocked it!
HH: Thank you!
Last year saw the arrival of new bassist, Rusty Gloeckle. How has his inclusion impacted the band?
HH: He has been such a refreshing being in a band that WANTS to be in a band. He’s someone that, when you’re playing and practicing, says, “Should we do it like this?” This isn’t like any band I’ve ever been in. There’s a difference between someone who’s like, “Yeah, I’m down to stay here for five hours and work on this.” and “I have to go get groceries.” Rusty’s also in Midnight Dice and runs Hoove Child Records. He’s also in Fer de Lance.
I love Ryan and Adam. I’ve been in bands with them forever and I’m used to how we communicate. So it’s nice to have someone new that’s on our level. It’s not that we’ve made our brain work way and someone new comes in and says, “You guys are psycho. What the fuck are you doing?” He comes in and gets it because he wants to play music. We can play a song 20 times in a row and he’s not mad about it.
AL: He cares a lot about what we’re doing, so he’s not afraid to give his opinion.
HH: He feels comfortable doing that because he knows he wants to be there and we want him to be there. It could be an analogy for any relationship you have. It’s very nice to have someone that wants to be a part of it. *laughs*
Your debut full length, Hard Enough, is very raw and hard hitting. Was the entire album recorded live?
HH: Well, when I tell people we recorded it “all live in studio”, I mean we didn’t overdub. Maybe we added a second vocal track or second guitar track. It wasn’t at the same moment we started “3, 2, 1!” We didn’t all play at the same time.
AL: It was guitar and drums together with scratch vocals. Then we laid down another track of guitar and another track of bass. Hanna did vocals over that. It was all recorded on two inch tape. It wasn’t a band jamming in a room all mic’d up.
HH: Also, Adam played the bass, the guitar, and the second guitar on the album. I did scratch vocals for the drums and the guitars to go off of. I did actual vocals afterwards, but we only bought out three days. So I did ten songs with multiple tracks in two days. At the same time, I was the daily driver for 97.1 The Drive (Chicago classic rock station). The day they picked me as the daily driver to record all my shit was the day we recorded vocals. So we were six songs in and I was recording for the Drive like, *in a raspy voice* “My name’s Hanna Hazard. I live in a castle…” My voice didn’t work at all. Anyways, long story short, it was live sounding, but we didn’t do it live.
Well that definitely helped because listening to it, I can’t help but hear the same atmosphere/approach as those early 70s hard rock bands like KISS, Humble Pie, etc.
AL: I think that’s a testament to the way we recorded it. Taylor (Hales), the guy we recorded it with, he doesn’t do a bunch of studio trickery. If you can’t play the part, it’s gonna show up on the tape. It’s all analog. I feel a lot of bands, especially in metal, record on…
HH: DragonForce! *laughs*
AL: There’s just a lot of computer tricks and Pro Tools and stuff. We used Pro Tools in the final mix, but all of the recording was one take. There’s no messing around.
HH: Taylor recorded the song you love, “29 Levi Slim”, which I love too, the entire Midnight Dice / Hitter split, everything Lil Tits has ever done. I don’t want to do something in the studio that we won’t be able to do on stage. I don’t want to be on stage and be like, “Can you cue the back track right now?” When Taylor mixes and records us, he’s not going to do a bunch of illusions to make it sound one way. It’s going to sound the way that it sounded. He’s just going to make it sound how you want it to sound.
My favorite songs on Hard Enough are “Reach Out” and “Glowin’ Up”. Could you tell me the stories behind these songs?
HH: Yeah! It’s funny because today, somebody who likes Hitter through our Facebook page was like, “Hey, I’m reaching out. I wanna reach out.” I thought, that sounds weird…oh wait, that’s lyrics from our song! You know the times you look back and are very real with yourself at 2 or 3 in the morning? You’re fucked up and want to reach out to everybody. You want to reach out to your ex or something that was good before and you think, “Oh I fucked up in that scenario. Fuck I wanna reach out.” “Reach Out” is literally you curbing yourself from doing the stuff that you’re gonna regret in the morning. It’s about wanting to make connection and then choosing not to do it because it’s not in the best mental health for yourself.
“Glowin’ Up” is also a hate story. I don’t know you personally, but how many times did you feel horrible growing up when people made you feel like shit? And then years later you’re like, “Dude, fuck you. I’m here and I’m doing this and I’m not ashamed of what I’m doing. You had no reason to treat me this way or make me feel like shit.” So “Glowin’ Up” is like, “Dude, I’M glowin’ up. You’re not doing shit.” They’re both kind of mean now that I say it out loud.
You also released a split with Midnight Dice entitled Midnight Hits, which features one of my favorite songs of the year, “29 Levi Slim”. Was this recorded specifically for the split or had it been recorded during the Hard Enough sessions?
HH: First of all, I love that you’re calling it “the Hard Enough sessions”. I’ve never thought about it in that phrasing. Who are we? Zeppelin? *laughs* That was recorded specifically for the Midnight Dice split. We had it written, but it was recorded for that split. Midnight Dice did background vocals.
AL: Both the Midnight Dice song and the Hitter song were recorded together in the same day, in the same studio over 8 hours.
So in that respect it’s more of a collaboration.
HH: Well vocals are recorded last and we were the last do to vocals. It was Amanda (Martillo) from Midnight Dice who suggested everyone sings “29!!!” I was like, “Yeah! Let’s fucking do that!” My favorite part of that song is hearing all of my best friends sing “29!” I can hear everyone’s voice and how they sing it. It’s all of Midnight Dice, all of Hitter, and Taylor (Hales)! Taylor is also a member of Paper Mice who you should check out and the GM of Electric Audio.
Finally, I know it’s hard to say due to the world’s current events, but what are Hitter’s plans for the future?
AL: It’s weird. We’re in quarantine. We wrote a bunch of new songs.
HH: We’re working on a whole new record.
AL: It’s hard to focus on anything else because there’s other things we’re focusing our energy on. It’s an unprecedented time in history.
HH: It’s happened before, but not to this degree with this many people and this much social media.
AL: Compared to the Great Depression, I think this is worse, but people have other things to distract themselves. There’s so much other shit going on…
HH: Hitter isn’t gonna try to be on the forefront of playing shows when shit opens back up. I want to do that, but we’re not trying to ignore that this is a pandemic. I feel like a lot of bands are doing that. My whole thing is we need to take a step back and acknowledge this is a pandemic and there’s a movement and a revolution happening right now. Black lives do matter. This is a thing that is happening. I still want to work on our shit, but I’m not gonna say, “Dude! Check out Hitter! We’re doing a drive-in show!” So yeah, the future of Hitter is…real.
AL: Only Hitter is real.
HH: Too real!