Interview: Donita Sparks (L7)

Pioneering Riot Grrrl band L7 is back together and were planning to visit New Zealand in May with shows in Wellington and Auckland.

Chances are, those shows won’t happen and hopefully will eventually be re-scheduled.

Nevertheless, the 13th Floor’s Marty Duda did speak to L7 frontwoman Donita Sparks a few weeks ago, before all this Carona Virus business took over. We thought you still might like to listen in, or read along. Back then, the main topic of conversation was the American Presidential election.

Click here to listen to the interview with Donita Sparks:

Or, read a transcription of the interview here:

M: Have you been to New Zealand?

D: The band has once, I think it was like ’93, maybe ’92. So just once.

M: I imagine it was kind of a blur back then

D: It was a bit of a blur yeah. We got to see some nature, I think that we were just really excited to be in the Southern Hemisphere.

M: Well that can be exciting. So you’re coming back, that’s very exciting as well. We’re looking forward to that.

D: Yeah, we were bummed out. Last time we went to Australia, which was I guess a couple years ago, we were very confused why we weren’t playing New Zealand We’re coming this time so looking forward to it.

M: Now are you in L.A? Is that a correct assumption?

D: Yes and it’s raining which is really weird for Los Angeles.

M: It was raining here today as well. We had like fifty days of no rain and then suddenly we got a little bit of non-drought weather.

D: Alright

M: Yeah so hooray.

D: Party!

M: And you guys are having another super Tuesday weather aren’t you?

D: I believe so. Our California super Tuesday was last week or the week before I can’t remember. I wanna keep an eye on this one too but I don’t know if returns are coming in yet today or what’s going on.

M: And do you have opinions about it? About the whole election thing?

D: I’m gonna back whoever is selected.

M: Fair enough, at this point that’s ……

D: Backing whoever wins. I don’t care just fucking get in there, get in the oval office. So that’s where I’m at.

M: It’s gonna be a toughie I think but we’ll see what happens. Fingers crossed.

D: We’ll see what happens.

M: I was just realising, my daughter, who’s forty, is very excited about you guys coming and she wants to see you cause she was a big fan twenty years ago or so and I realised, that’s probably the age group that you’re playing to these days, kind of forties and fifties is that right?

D: Yeah, I think the sweet spot for the most damage we did as far as getting to peoples’ psyche’s or whatever, would be about the forty year old range. But now we’re getting the younger kids in too who have never seen us and they’ve heard rumours, but they’ve never seen us. So it’s a really great combo of kind of middle aged people on the younger side with young kids so very cool.

M: Does that affect your performance? Do you have to think a bit about what you’re going to do when you know that there’s that kind of age group in there?

D: No, I think that they’re used to be…we had to police the audience a lot back in the day, even though there was security, the crowds would get very unruly and we don’t have that as much anymore. There’s a lot of dancing, there’s a lot of pogoing, an occasional crowd surfer but nobody gets onstage to dive or if they do, it’s not good. We have a barricade now, for the most part, we don’t always have a barricade, but there’s a little less danger to us onstage because it used to be complete mayhem so I think there’s probably less danger but more fun at our shows now.

M: You must probably feel safer and everyone else has to as there’s less, like you say, less danger.

D: Yeah, you know, listen. The women is our audiences, they don’t take any shit. So it’s like if you are getting out of line they’re gonna shut you down pretty quickly and that’s after years and years of dealing with a lot of violent or pushy people at shows so it’s for the most part I think  a pretty joyous occasion when we’re playing..

M: Now you and Suzi have been playing guitars together for like forty years now, I’m curious as to what kind of relationship you have musically between the two of you that’s built up.

D: We have a very good relationship musically, we both crack each other up a lot and if we come up with a riff that sounds really diabolical, we think it’s funny and it rocks us but we also get a kick out of it it’s like, ‘oh that’s fucking badass,’ you know? But we’ll laugh because it just sounds diabolical. It’s fun to write with Suzie. We both understand each other, we have shortcuts with each other. (Sorry my cat has been yowling lately) Yeah we just have a good musical connection.

M: What drew the two of you together initially? Was it music or was it other stuff going on and then music came along?

D: We were both on the same scene in Los Angeles which was kind of a seedy, art punk underbelly of Los Angeles so you know the scene, so we had mutual friends and we just sort of got together. She played me a demo tape that she had of some stuff. I was in another band, she was in another band, but she had played me this stuff she was working on and I really like it because it was hard rock, nobody was playing hard rock in the art underground so it was sort of our approach and it was very unique at the time and in our scene so that’s how we connected.

M: Very good, and now the four of you are back together again and was it kind of weird when you first reunited a few years ago or was everything kind of just back to where it was?

D: It was totally weird but then once we started playing, it sounded great. When Dee’s playing well, she’s our drummer she’s so great, we can make so many mistakes but Dee makes us sound great. We often tell our sound man hey put the boo boo filter on ok? We may fly off the rails sometimes, but Dee holds us somewhere near the tracks.

M: Yeah you need somebody in the band like that, somebodies got to know what they’re doing.

D: Yeah she’s great, I mean we all know what we’re doing but she’s so solid that if we’re busy entertaining or something, she’s just holding it down. Cause we are show folk. We are show folk and we like to put on a good show and that sometimes involves playing the wrong notes and she will hold it down.

M: Very good

D: You know what I’m talking about you know?

M: Yeah, well I did play in a punk band once in a long time ago, back before, way before you so I know about wrong notes.

D: Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

M: Scatter The Rats, tell me about that.

D: That’s our album. We’re still touring it, it came out last year, we’re still hitting some places we haven’t played in a while, we’re still promoting the record, we like the record, our fans are liking the record. Suzie and I collaborated on a couple songs, the rest of it we all kind of brought in individually.

M: How did it feel being back in a studio together? Cause it’s a different kind of thing than playing live.

D: It felt really good. We put out a couple singles before this and we were in professional studios, but for most of Scatter The Rats, we were recording at a producers house in kind of bohemian part of town and it was really great cause it was just a very relaxed atmosphere with a guy we trusted a lot as our producer Norm Block that;s his name, and we did a couple tracks with Nick Launey as well so it was a really great experience.

M: Very cool. So is this a continuing thing? Are you guys gonna record more and plan on staying together or is this a kind of limited project?

D: I don’t know. It remains to be seen. We just recorded a couple songs for a single that’s only gonna be for this Australian tour and New Zealand tour. We covered a Joan Jett song called Fake Friend and we did our own arrangement of it, we did our own take on it and she makes a guest appearance as a vocalist and a guitar part. So we’re putting that out as a single for this tour.

M: Cool. I just saw that documentary about Joan Jett.

D: Oh yeah, I loved that doc it’s great love that doc.

M: She became my new hero at that point. Just wanted to get up and salute her.

D: Yeah, she’s amazing.

M: And you’re album is being distributed by Black Heart Records is that right?

D: That is correct. Manufactured and distributed.

Keep an eye out for L7 re-scheduled NZ dates.