Redd Kross founder pleased to meet you onscreen

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This article was published 14/03/2025 (198 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

California band Redd Kross only played Winnipeg once in their career, to the best recollection of Steve McDonald, who co-founded the band with his older brother Jeff in 1978 — when he (Steve) was 11 years old.

“I know we played Winnipeg opening for the Doughboys in 1994,” he says, speaking of a time when the video for Redd Kross’s Lady in the Front Row was also getting played on MuchMusic. “We did an entire cross-Canada tour opening for them from Halifax to Vancouver.”

McDonald has returned to Winnipeg to play with grunge progenitors the Melvins a few times as well.

But still: Redd Kross is very much a cult band, beloved by fans of guitar music in the particular intersection of glam, bubble gum, hardcore punk, hair metal, grunge and power-pop: think Sloan or the New Pornographers, but primarily an American phenomenon.

That’s why it’s somewhat strange that the new documentary Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story is playing for a full week in Winnipeg at Dave Barber Cinematheque.

“I keep hearing about the film doing really well in environments where we had a hard time getting 20 people to a show,” says Steve.

“I get it: I’d rather sit in a nice comfortable movie theatre and watch a well-organized story being told, rather than the loud chaos of a show. That’s the cranky old man in me. But whatever gets you there, I’m grateful.”

Like any truly great music doc — like, say, the ones about Canadian metal band Anvil or fellow L.A. pop weirdos Sparks — the viewer doesn’t need to know anything about Redd Kross to enjoy the film, which features plenty of good-natured sibling bickering, an underdog story, drug addiction, missed opportunities, dozens of famous fans, and California history that spans the Beach Boys to Black Flag to Francis Ford Coppola’s family. Oh, and also: a kidnapping.

In the film, Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt describes Redd Kross as “a mixture of heaviness and happiness,” which sums up Born Innocent as well.

“They were cool because they didn’t care about being cool,” says another talking head. Redd Kross wanted to be the Partridge Family but one of their first gigs was a Grade 8 friend’s birthday party where they invited Black Flag to headline a suburban living room.

Redd Kross were early bloomers of the ’80s, poised to ride the alternative wave of the 1990s; they shared a manager with Nirvana and were cited as a major influence by all the key Seattle bands. But their major-label debut, 1990’s Third Eye, was an instantly dated commercial bid that fell between the cracks of the two decades. (One song is aptly titled Bubblegum Factory.) The band’s live show, however, was an undeniably ecstatic experience upon which they built their still-faithful fan base.

The McDonald brothers are the only consistent members of Redd Kross. “One thing I’m really proud of is that basically there’s nobody who was once a member of our band who wasn’t willing to participate in the film,” says Steve. “That bodes well for how we’ve managed things — and I’m not one to brag about how well we’ve managed things. I use the word ‘dysfunction’ quite liberally.”

Redd Kross took a hiatus between 1997 and 2006. Steve spent some time in A&R, where he tried to sign Montreal’s Arcade Fire, and produced albums, including the debut by Fun. — the band featuring now-superstar producer Jack Antonoff. Redd Kross began recording new music again in 2012. Its latest album, self-titled, is hailed as one of its best.

In a time when too many music docs are artist-approved hagiographies, Born Innocent pulls some punches — Jeff’s era of addiction is only alluded to — but the brothers did not have final-cut approval.

Steve admits his feathers were a bit ruffled, but adds, “I was definitely not interested in a boring, self-aggrandizing tale. Andrew Reich, the filmmaker, spent eight years on this. That gave me enough time to trust it was going in the direction I would feel positive about.”

Concurrent with the film is a book, Now You’re One of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross, an oral history by the brothers with writer Dan Epstein. “The book is a little more in-depth,” says Steve. “For the movie, Andrew essentially put 45 years into under 90 minutes. He trimmed up all the fat, and the book is filled with one man’s fat, but another man’s treasure. I forget which is in and what’s not in one or the other.

“Maybe if you see the movie, you’ll go on some kind of streaming platform and seek out the newest Redd Kross record — I think it’s a good cross-section of what we’re capable of. If you’re not sick of us after that, then there’s a book!”

arts@freepress.mb.ca