Music is an industry in which women are still set apart in some ways from their male counterparts. Although women musicians may not find their way to the Top 40 lists or get much airplay on radio stations, many have succeeded in supporting themselves through their art and garnering a supportive fan base. In recent years, musicians have struck out on their own apart from big labels, recording and releasing albums all on their own or with another artists or a smaller label that supports the musician's own vision. This migration has left more room for women artists like Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams, Ferron, and Melissa Ferrick as well as others to create and develop musical styles that often defy categorization and mix or redefine genres. One such artist is Bitch.

Bitch's musical career can be traced back to Sesame Street. The first episode she watched at age three included an overalls-clad cartoon character playing a fiddle while he counted. A year later, she started taking classical violin lessons and continued to do so for another 14 years until she went off to college at DePaul University. There she studied acting and theatrical arts. It was there that she also met Animal. It was Animal who convinced Bitch to take the violin out of the case and play again. She hasn't stopped making music since.

Bitch and Animal embarked on musical journey as a duo. In Provincetown, they played free shows at a pizza joint where they attracted the attention of Ani DiFranco's "merch girl." That contact with DiFranco was a turning point for Bitch and Animal. Righteous Babe Records even released their second album in 2001. The duo's last album together was released in 2003 and Bitch began her solo career the next year.

Bitch is finding that being a solo artist still has its challenges but overall it suits her. When I spoke with Bitch on a snowy February day, she said, "My name is Bitch. I'm an Aries. I like to be in control... but sometimes I long for another collaborator who can meet me on my level like Animal could."

There are other challenges Bitch must face like many other women in the music industry.

"Getting pigeon-holed because I'm a woman," she said was one of the biggest challenges. That and "dealing with some men's egos."

I asked her what her biggest challenge as a queer musician was. She replied with a little giggle, "having to go through life without breaking any fingers."

Bitch has been affected, influenced and inspired by many other musicians since she first saw the cartoon character on Sesame Street playing the fiddle.

She named a few for me, "Ani DiFranco," (no surprise there or here), "Amy Ray and Emily Saliers... I grew up listening to them. My best friend knew I was gay when I was listening to Galileo over and over."

Bitch also named a few others who each in her own way broke new ground for the women who followed them, "Joni Mitchell as a poet in the world, Nina Simone as an emotional singer, Sinead O'Connor as an all-round bad ass, Tina Turner and Tracy Chapman."

One of the strongest aspects of the women's music scene, queer or otherwise, is its collective or cooperative nature. From music festivals like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and the Lilith Fair to one generation of artists helping the next, women musicians seem to sometimes be as interdependent as they are independent. Bitch echoed this when I asked her if other independent women musicians have been important to her career.

She said they are, "absolutely priceless! Connecting with other women who have been trailblazers like Ani... having solidarity with other women doing the same kind of work has actually kept me alive."

Bitch's first solo album was released in 2006. Make This/Break This diverges from the musical path she had taken with Animal. It reveals Bitch's inner poet and lyricist in a whole new light. I personally love it and highly recommend it. I asked Bitch if we could expect more work like Make This/Break This in the future.

"Definitely. I come at the world and my music as a poet first. I hold my poet-self in high reverence. I've thought of doing a whole series like 'books-on-tape' but sort of with poetry and music," she told me.

But music isn't the only thing in Bitch's repertoire. If you remember, a few paragraphs back I mentioned that she studied acting and theatrical arts in college.

Her association with Ani DiFranco helped Bitch gain an international following. All kinds of folks worldwide have become fans of her music, left-of-center performances, and out-of-the-ordinary message. Bitch and Bitch's music found an audience with a whole generation of non-conformists and gender-queers including John Cameron Mitchell. Mitchell included Bitch in Shortbus which was a Cannes Film Festival hit in 2006. In 2009, the North Carolina Stage Company brought Bitch to Asheville to star in the theatre company’s production of Daniel McIvor's two-woman play, A Beautiful View.

When I asked Bitch about these acting experiences she told me, "I would like to do more stage and screen work. And I've been developing a piece in my head that I think of as a stage piece... a musical. I'm a trained theatrical actor so that play last summer got me back into that side of me.  I'm looking out for other opportunities 'cause I really love it."

(She also admitting that she periodically daydreams about the amazing breakfasts she had at Sunnypoint Cafe in West Asheville while she was staying here.)

Bitch has been working on another project with Margaret Cho that will also include a little acting.

"I'm collaborating with Margaret Cho on a record. She's written lyrics and asked different musicians to write the music. I'm doing one song and playing her girlfriend in a video for it."

Of course, she's still working on her own musical projects. Her newest album, Blasted, is due out in March. On her Web site, Bitch says, "I wrote this album in pieces, I was in pieces. Heartbroken and in my RV lifestyle where nowhere and everywhere is home."

I asked Bitch how this album came about and how long she has been working on it. She estimated that it took 10 months to complete. Recording started in October.

"It's hard to say 'when' it started. I'm always writing so it's hard to say when the first seed started... It really started last winter on a retreat with Ferron."

In 2008, Bitch produced an album, Boulder, for Ferron, a critically acclaimed songwriter, poet, and women's music legend from Canada. Bitch even drew in some other musicians to perform on the album with Ferron, musicians who have helped attract a new generation of listeners to Ferron's music. Amy Ray, Emily Saliers and Ani DiFranco all participated in the making of Boulder. Through that friendship, Bitch was able to "camp out" at Ferron's remote Michigan home. Bitch sat in on a writing workshop Ferron was facilitating. During that workshop, Ferron asked the group to "describe a time when we had our face in the dirt and what we saw," Bitch recalls on her Web site. That may well have been the starting point for Blasted.

"I didn't realize I was making an album 'til I was a couple of months into it."

What should we expect to hear on the new album?

"Expect a new breed of rock 'n roll," she told me, "with electric violin... not all rock 'n roll though.  I represent my own brand. People keep talking about how unique it is. I'm a hodge-podge queen."

Does she have a favorite track on Blasted?

"That always varies..." she paused for a moment then said, "Right now I'm really into Kitchen. It's fun to perform.  And Punk-Chew-Ation [I hope I spelled that right] is a favorite, too." At least for now, those are her favorite tracks. If you go to her Web site, you can check out a few for yourself and Kitchen is one of them.

Bitch has also put her producer skills to work on Blasted. It's the first time she has self-produced one of her albums. She told me she enjoyed the experience and described it this way, "You feel like the little ant standing before the mountain... then like the pterodactyl flying over the mountain."

Now that the album is done, it's time for Bitch to hit the road with the new songs on what will be at least a seven-week tour with 40-some shows along the way. Charlotte and Atlanta are already on the tour list but when I was speaking with Bitch she told me that Asheville had just been added.

"Producing appeals to the hermit side of me and the extrovert likes to go on tour." But as we talked about her upcoming tour she admitted, "I'm getting exhausted thinking about it... I tend to dread it while I'm getting ready but then I get out there and have a blast."

But she gets a lot out of touring, "I think it's given me a unique perspective on our country and humanity at large," she said. That unique perspective is yet another aspect of this already unique, creative and ever evolving musician who is forging ahead where earlier trailblazers left off.

Bitch's Blasted Tour will stop in Atlanta, Georgia on March 23 at Bellissima and in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 24 at the Evening Muse. For more information about these shows, the rest of the tour and Bitch, visit www.bitchmusic.com.