A swan song isn’t always melancholic.
Sometimes it’s sludgy and grungy. Sometimes it’s biting, relentless, political, cynical and sarcastic and snarling. Just ask L7, the legendary punk, hard rock and grunge band that, after 11 consecutive years touring around the world, is embarking on its “Last Hurrah Tour.”
Better yet, save the date for Oct. 10 when the band visits Tucson, which is home base for guitarist and cofounder Suzie Gardner.
“Look out, because we’re going to be fucking barnstorming, man,” said Donita Sparks, L7’s frontwoman.
“I love Tucson, by the way. I think Tucson’s a really cool town. I think it’s got character, it’s got charm, it’s beautiful. I do dig Tucson a lot. I think it’s a hip town.”
According to Sparks, the tour will be the band’s last in the name of quitting while ahead.
“It’s been 11 years of milking this cow. And, you know, I love performing, I love playing, I love connecting with the fans. It’s a pretty cool lifestyle if you lean into it, and we just kept getting offers.”
“But it’s time to wrap it up and go out on a high, while people still love us and appreciate us, instead of fizzling out.”
Fizzling out is the great fear of any musical group, and a fear that L7 knows intimately. According to Sparks, fizzle out is exactly what the band did in 2001, when interpersonal conflicts and dwindling record sales put the band on an indefinite hiatus.
“We ran out of gas,” Sparks said. “It was pretty depressing, the way we went out. And so this is going out on a high, which our fans deserve and we deserve.”
L7 emerged in the mid-’80s as a product of Echo Park, LA’s punk scene, Formed by Sparks and Suzie Gardner (guitars, vocals), the band was a troubled and volatile project in its fledgling years. Before bringing on Jennifer Finch (bass) and Demetra Plakas (drums), the two founding members found themselves playing alongside “borderline dangerous” bandmates who were “outsiders to the extent of possible criminal activity,” Sparks said.
Back then, Sparks and Gardner could not fathom that down the road, grunge groups like Nirvana and Hole, riot grrrl acts like Sleater-Kinney and 7 Year Bitch, and mainstream pop icons like Lady Gaga would cite L7 as a direct influence. These days, Sparks still sees notable female musicians such as Phoebe Bridgers and Amy Taylor donning L7 tee-shirts and showing the band love.
“There’s a whole new school of female fronted bands that are very ferocious,” Sparks said. “And a lot of their fans seem to know about us too. And that’s very cool.”
“But did we think that when we were starting out? Hell no. We were a fucking mess.”
But Sparks knew that the sound was unique, and even in the early days she began to catch the scent of L7’s future influence. Travelling around for gigs, they saw themselves become feminist punk “pied pipers” of cities across the west.
“The next time we’d come through there would be 7 Year Bitch in Seattle or Tribe 8 in San Francisco, these punk, hard rock, all-female bands. And it was like, wow, that’s wild. You know, we kind of knew we were influencing at that point.”
L7 found critical and commercial success with their 1992 album “Bricks are Heavy,” which platformed alternative hits “Pretend We’re Dead” and “Shitlist.” The band took off, began touring with acts like Fugazi, Nirvana, The Breeders, and George Clinton.
“Some bands we didn’t even know were going to be famous, like Nirvana,” Sparks said. “So getting to know these people, getting to be friends with some of them, seeing them up close, has been very cool, and I’m glad I got to experience that. And I’m glad we were in that camp, you know, we weren’t in the camp of some bands I don’t like. Like we were in the cool camp with really cool bands.”
L7’s disbandment in 2001 led to over a decade of silence, until the group reformed in 2014, with Sparks, Gardner, Finch and Plakas. After touring for a few years, the band decided to get back in the studio for 2019’s “Scatter the Rats.”
The album, released through Blackheart Records and produced by Norm Block, received positive reviews. While a return to form, “Scatter the Rats” also saw the band toying with some more psychedelic sounds.
“We got pretty trippy on ‘Scatter the Rats,’” Sparks said. “We did some trippy shit, like on a song called Witchy Burn that didn’t even make the album, but it was a B-side of a single. And that got really trippy.”
On this final tour, L7 will be joined by Australian pub rock and punk outfit Amyl and the Sniffers, which the band supported earlier this year on a North American tour. The two bands’ collaboration arose from a chance encounter, when Sparks met Amy Taylor, Amyl and the Sniffers’ frontwoman, on the street in Los Angeles.
“I was like, ‘That’s fucking Amy Taylor,’” Sparks said. “So we had this meeting on the street and then I went to see them play a couple times and then they asked us to open for them earlier this year.”
“Amy Taylor from Amyl and the Sniffers is probably one of the greatest front people I’ve ever seen. She’s great, and she gives a shit about people and politics and, you know, they’re a hard rocking band.”
The “Last Hurrah Tour” will also honor bassist Jennifer Finch, who succumbed to brain cancer in the months preceding the tour.
“Jennifer was a very driven person,” Sparks said. “She was a very spring-into-action kind of person. She was very helpful to the band because she got a lot of shit done.”
“She was very much the person who was facilitating our next steps, you know, and as a performer on stage, she was phenomenal, very eye-catching. She just had great energy on stage.”
The band is bringing on Janis Tanaka, who played bass in L7 for a few years at the turn of the century, to carry the torch for Finch.
It was very fortunate that she was available, and she kicks ass and she’s back in the L7 fold,” Sparks said. “Janis is at the ready and she’s rocking and fans love her. So we and they are familiar with her. And so we really lucked out by getting her.”
