Kira Roessler (born June 12, 1961) is an American musician and two-time

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

-winning dialogue editor. She is best known as the bassist for the influential

hardcore punk Hardcore punk (also known as simply hardcore) is a punk rock music genre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots can be traced to earlier p ...

band Black Flag from 1983 to 1985. Since the mid-1980s, she has been a member of the rock duo

Dos DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

with her ex-husband

Mike Watt Michael David Watt (born December 20, 1957) is an American bassist, vocalist and songwriter. Watt co-founded and played bass guitar for the rock bands Minutemen (1980–1985), Dos (1985–present), and Firehose (1986–1994). He began a solo ...

Early life

Born in

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134 ...

, Roessler lived there until age eight when her family moved to the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...

until she was eleven and thereafter in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, mostly in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

. Her brother is

Paul Roessler Paul Roessler (born August 27, 1958) is an American musician and record producer. Roessler was a prominent member of the L.A. punk scene during the late 1970s and 1980s. He played keyboards in bands such as The Screamers, Twisted Roots, 45 Grav ...

, a keyboardist known for involvement in several Los Angeles area bands including

The Screamers The Screamers were an American electropunk group founded in 1975. They were among the first wave of the L.A. punk rock scene. The Los Angeles Times applied the label "techno-punk" to the band in 1978. In the documentary '' Punk: Attitude'' ( ...

Career

Music

Roessler began studying piano when she was six but quit at age eleven. At fourteen she picked up the

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

and committed to learning the instrument. Her first band was called Waxx and she played her first gig at age sixteen at Whisky a Go Go. Other early bands were Sexsick, The Visitors, and The Monsters. She then joined with a post- Germs Pat Smear to form Twisted Roots. Members of Black Flag heard her playing while she was sitting in with L.A. punk group DC3. This led to her being asked to join Black Flag in 1983 to replace founding member

Chuck Dukowski Gary Arthur McDaniel (born February 1, 1954 ), better known by his stage name Chuck Dukowski, is an American punk rock musician most well known for being the bass player, and occasional songwriter for Black Flag. Career Early years Dukowski ...

. Vocalist

Henry Rollins Henry Lawrence Garfield (born February 13, 1961), known professionally as Henry Rollins, is an American singer, writer, spoken word artist, actor, and presenter. After performing in the short-lived hardcore punk band State of Alert in 1980, Rol ...

later reported that

Greg Ginn Gregory Regis Ginn (born June 8, 1954) is an American guitarist, bassist, singer and songwriter, best known for being the leader, primary songwriter, and the only continuous member of the hardcore punk band Black Flag, which he founded and led ...

, Black Flag's leader, guitarist and primary songwriter, had grown frustrated with Dukowski's failure to progress as a musician beyond the band's hardcore punk roots and was drawn to Roessler's more nimble and sophisticated playing.Henry Rollins. Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag. 2.13.61 Publications, Roessler was majoring in applied engineering at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

, and Black Flag's subsequent tours were worked around her school schedule, which was a condition for her to join the band. Her bass playing was featured on five of Black Flag's studio albums and two officially released live albums. During her early live performances with the band she was sometimes mistaken as male due to her androgynous appearance, and she subsequently dressed in more glamorously traditional female garb for the band's tours. She remained in the band until completing touring behind their album '' In My Head'' in the autumn of 1985, then graduated from UCLA in 1986. After Black Flag, she formed the two-bass duo

with

(to whom she was married between 1987 and 1994). Dos' most recent album was released in 2011. She wrote or co-wrote songs for what would be the Minutemen's final album, '' 3-Way Tie'', and contributed lyrics to Watt's post-Minutemen band Firehose. She later contributed artwork to Watt's first solo album, ''

Ball-Hog or Tugboat? ''Ball-Hog or Tugboat?'' is the 1995 debut solo album by American musician Mike Watt, previously known for his work as the bass guitarist and songwriter for the punk rock groups Minutemen and fIREHOSE. The title references the difference betwe ...

''. She appeared as a backing vocalist on the '' Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three'' tribute album in 2003 along with other musical artists, including other Black Flag veterans. In December 2018, Roessler joined with Devin Hoff to form the two-bass band AwkWard and released their first album ''In Progress''. On August 13, 2021, on the Protonic Reversal podcast, Kira revealed that an album of solo material would be released on October 19 on Kitten Robot records.

Film work

Roessler now works as a dialogue editor on theatrical films in Los Angeles, sometimes credited under her full name, sometimes simply as ''kira''. She has worked on productions including '' Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'' (2002), '' Under the Tuscan Sun'' (2003), and '' The Twilight Saga: New Moon'' (2009), and has also appeared onscreen in the documentaries '' We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen'', '' American Hardcore'' and ''What Drives Us'' . She has won

s for her work on the ''

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...

'' episode "Don't Tread on Me" as well as her work on ''

Game of Thrones ''Game of Thrones'' is an American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for HBO. It is an adaptation of '' A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, the fir ...

''. Most recently, Roessler was involved in the sound editing team that won a 2016 Oscar for '' Mad Max: Fury Road''.

Discography

;Twisted Roots *''Pretentiawhat'' (1981) ; Black Flag *'' Family Man'' (1984) *''

Slip It In ''Slip It In'' is the fourth studio album by the American hardcore punk band Black Flag, released in 1984 on SST Records. ''Slip It In'' is an extension of the sound Black Flag utilized on its second album ''My War'': heavy, cathartic, intense ...

'' (1984) *''

Live '84 ''Live '84'' is an album released by Black Flag in 1984 on SST Records. It is a live recording of a show played in 1984 and features mostly tracks from ''My War'' and '' Slip It In''. A video was shot simultaneously and was briefly available th ...

'' ive(1984) *''

Loose Nut ''Loose Nut'' is the fifth full-length album by American band Black Flag, released in 1985 on SST Records. Track listing Personnel *Henry Rollins – lead vocals *Greg Ginn – guitars *Kira Roessler – bass, backing vocals * Bill Stevenso ...

'' (1985) *''

The Process of Weeding Out ''The Process of Weeding Out'' is the fifth EP by American band Black Flag. One of the most potent realizations of guitarist Greg Ginn's fascination with the avant-garde, ''The Process of Weeding Out'' is described by critic Chris True of AllM ...

'' P(1985) *'' In My Head'' (1985) *'' Who's Got the 10½?'' ive(1986) ;

dos DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

*''

'' (1986) *''numero dos'' P(1989) *''uno con dos'' (1989) ** CD compiling the first two Dos releases *''

justamente tres ''justamente tres'' ("just three") is an experimental indie album, the third by the band dos featuring Mike Watt (Minutemen) and Kira Roessler ( Black Flag). At the time, they believed this album might be their last (hence the "just three" titl ...

'' (1996) *'' dos y dos'' (2011) ;AwkWard (with Devin Hoff) *''In Progress'' (2018) ;Other *''

Minuteflag ''Minuteflag'' was an experimental jam band collaboration between members of the American punk bands Minutemen and Black Flag. Their only release, an EP, consists entirely of instrumentals with the exception of "Fetch the Water" which features ...

'' (1985) *'' Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three'' (2002) *'' Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie: Reinterpreting Black Flag'' (2010)

References

External links

*
Kira Roessler interview
by

Alice Bag Alicia "Alice" Armendariz (born November 7, 1958) is an American punk rock singer better known as Alice Bag. She is the lead vocalist and co-founder of the Bags, one of the first punk bands to form in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. Her first bo ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roessler, Kira 1962 births Living people Musicians from New Haven, Connecticut American punk rock bass guitarists Hardcore punk musicians Black Flag (band) members Dos (band) members University of California, Los Angeles alumni SST Records artists New Alliance Records artists Kill Rock Stars artists Primetime Emmy Award winners Women bass guitarists Alternative rock bass guitarists Guitarists from Connecticut 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century women musicians American women in film American sound editors Women sound editors 20th-century American women guitarists