For almost 20 years, Kristin Forbes has worn her nom de guerre, Lady Hatchet, like a suit of armor, fearlessly following her muse and love of Jamaican music into the many musical projects and places it has taken her. She is a multi-instrumentalist, as well as a singer/song-writer and band leader, who has played guitar, bass, and even keyboards for some of the most renowned American ska bands (The Slackers, The Toasters, The Pietasteres, Stubborn All-Stars).

For fourteen years, she led The Scotch Bonnets, a punky-reggae crew out of Baltimore, as they toured the United States extensively, released two albums of her songs (an infectious blend of Jamaican-inspired grooves mixed with American rock and R&B stylings) on Jump Up Records: 2019’s Come On Over and 2023’s re-release of the Bonnets’ 2013 debut Live Ya Life, as well as numerous singles and the 2014 Quest EP in collaboration with HR of Bad Brains.

Kristin, who started playing ska in Boston in the late 1990s and self-released her first solo EP in 2002, spent a month on the Vans Warped Tour in 2011, playing with Fishbone’s legendary frontman Angelo Moore; that collaboration became the 2015 album, Ska Do Au Ska Don’t (released on Japanese label, Ska In The World).

Around the same time she became Lady Hatchet, Kristin started playing in Baltimore’s premiere ska-reggae band The Players Band when she moved to Charm City in 2008 and is now their full-time bass player. In 2019, she became the lead guitar player in an all-female lineup of Strykers Posse, a foundational roots-reggae crew that began in Baltimore in the 1980s.

During the pandemic, Hatchet produced numerous songs that became two solo Lady Hatchet EPs (including Odds & Ends on Jump Up), 20 episodes of a live stream variety show called A Slice Of Hatchet, and developed her acoustic ska act, which led to a solo European tour in 2022, two solo Midwest tours in 2023, a southwest tour in 2024 with Claire Liparulo (of The Freecoasters), and her first Nashville showcase.

Also during the pandemic, Lady Hatchet helped to start the all-female ska super group Rude Girl Revue, which features queens from the hottest ska bands on the East Coast and made its debut at the 2021 Supernova International Ska Festival. With three 45 records and a retrospective CD on Jump Up, a self-released digital EP, and appearances places as disparate as Ska Brewing in Colorado, Slackfest Chicago, and The Big One Festival in the UK, Rude Girl Revue has become an outlet for some of Hatchet’s most overtly feminist songwriting.

At the end of 2024, when opportunity presented itself, Lady Hatchet Quartet launched as a satellite band of Rude Girl Revue, Featuring four members of the greater group and reinterpreting Hatchet’s real ska-inspired sound with big, girl group harmonies, The Quartet made its electric debut opening for The Slackers on their 2024 December 2024 East Coast Holiday shows. They were then asked by Skavoovie & The Epitones to open for them on their 2025 reunion shows. They are currently recording their debut album with NYC ska capo King Django at his Version City Studio.

Hatchet now divides her time between forwarding the Quartet, playing acoustically in/around Baltimore and West Virginia with bassist Jade Tremba, and playing guitar with Dunia Best in her group, Dunia & Aram (in 2026, she accompanied the group to Europe for a featured performance at the Freedom Sounds Festival in Cologne, Germany), doing all this while teaching guitar lessons in the Washington DC-area, which she has done since 2008.

Lady Hatchet has proudly been sponsored by Reverend Guitars since 2019 and has paid her mortgage since 2010 with income solely made through music. No one can ever say that Lady Hatchet isn’t doing the damn thing.