Heavens To Betsy Unearths Lost ’90s Demo Ahead Of Fall Tour

More than three decades after it first helped give riot grrrl its raw, combustible voice, Heavens to Betsy is reopening the archive. Corin Tucker and Tracy Sawyer have announced baby’s gone, a 16-track collection gathering a previously unheard 1992 demo alongside the band’s 1993 and 1994 7” recordings. Kill Rock Stars will release it Oct. 16.

The collection arrives after Tucker (Sleater-Kinney) and Sawyer (the Husbands, the Flying Tigers, the Lies) reunited this summer for their first Heavens to Betsy concert in more than 30 years. They’ve also announced a fall tour, running from Oct. 16 in Minneapolis through Nov. 22 in Durham, N.C.

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baby’s gone centers around a demo tape recorded in February 1992 by Bratmobile’s Molly Neuman, whose liner notes accompany the release. The original cassette was recently rediscovered, digitized and prepared for mass consumption alongside the 1993 These Monsters Are Real and 1994 Direction recordings. A limited edition of the original demo cassette, complete with recreated artwork, is also planned.

The first taste is “ain’t never goin’ back,” a previously unheard lo-fi anthem that captures Tucker and Sawyer finding their footing in the fertile artistic community of early-’90s Olympia, Wa.

For SPIN, Heavens to Betsy have long occupied a crucial place in the riot grrrl story. Tucker was still a student at Evergreen State College when she started the band with childhood friend Sawyer, eventually bluffing their way onto a bill in 1991. Their “Axemen,” from 1994’s Calculated, distilled the movement’s confrontational spirit into a furious response to the privileged suburban world around them.

The rediscovered recordings also offer a snapshot of what made the band matter beyond its music. Heavens to Betsy gave Tucker and Sawyer a place to process the issues confronting them as young women while helping create a community where others could do the same. Their songs confronted rape culture, body shaming and the politics of gender while making room for queerness, friendship and collective strength — subjects that, as the band now sees it, remain painfully current.

“I wasn’t sure if I would ever revisit heavens to betsy,” Sawyer says, “and then when we started talking more about it, and feeling how relevant the subjects are today, almost even more so than they were back then… it just seemed like just the perfect opportunity to be doing this.” She adds that reconnecting with Tucker as adults and mothers has been “really cool,” with the music itself coming back almost instinctively: “Once we started playing again, it was like muscle memory.”

Tucker also remembers Neuman’s role in capturing the band at that formative moment. “Molly’s such a leader,” she says, recalling how the Bratmobile member recognized that young women needed tools to express themselves. Neuman simply checked out a Tascam from Evergreen’s AV library and recorded them.

Here are Heavens to Betsy’s tour dates:

10/16: Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
10/17: San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill
10/18: San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill
10/28: Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
10/30: Washington, DC @ Black Cat
10/31: New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
11/1: Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church
11/5: Seattle, WA @ Nuemos
11/8: Pasadena, CA @ Sid the Cat Auditorium
11/14: Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle
11/15: Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle
11/21: Athens, GA @ 40 Watt 
11/22: Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall

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