7 Year Bitch

Okay, you know that 7 Year Bitch is coming back to town, right? You also know that they have a new album coming out a day or two after their show. SLUG got to talk to Valerie Agnew on the phone. She’s the drummer.

SLUG: Hi. Is this Valerie?  

Valerie: This is Valerie.  

SLUG: Well how you doing?  

Valerie: I’m really tired but I’m doing good.  

SLUG: Your friend Jenny said to tell you ‘Hi.’  

Valerie: Jenny Bendel?  

SLUG: Yep.  

Valerie: Oh good.  

SLUG: I just talked to her a minute ago. So, hi from Jenny.  

Valerie: Okay thanks. (Jenny Bendel runs Plain Janes PR and she keeps SLUG up to date on what is happening in Seattle. I was talking to her about Home Alive, a subject you will read more on later).  

SLUG: Okay. I guess you saw Stone Fox when you were in San Francisco.  

Valerie: Yep.  

SLUG: How’d you like them?  

Valerie: I love Stone Fox. They rule.  

SLUG: Yes, they do.  

Valerie: They’re totally excellent. They’re really cool. We played one show with them. We did an outdoor benefit at this warehouse in San Francisco that we were doing for Mia Investigation Fund and we got to play with them which was really cool. The last show I saw with them was at the Bottom Of The Hill. But I think they rock.

The mention of the Mia Investigation Fund led directly to a few words on Valerie’s involvement with Home Alive. She is a co-founder of the collective which was established to offer practical and creative approaches to fighting violence. The Mia Investigation Fund provides financing for the ongoing investigation into the murder of Mia Zapata. The previous 7 Year Bitch album was titled Viva Zapata and it was dedicated to her memory. Home Alive has recently released a CD titled The Art of Self Defense. Valerie stressed that her involvement with Home Alive is separate from her work with 7 Year Bitch. Their contribution to the album is “Mad Dash,” a tune written specifically for Home Alive. I won’t include our conversation on the project here. Hopefully it will appear in the next SLUG. The current state of affairs in Utah is such that The Art of Self Defense is required for arriving home alive.

Valerie: But anyway back to 7 Year Bitch shit.  

SLUG: Woman playing rock music. Have you ever listened to The Trash Women?  

Valerie: The Trash Women? I don’t think so. Who are they? Where are they from?  

SLUG: Well, the record came out of Bellingham, it’s on Estrus. I just thought you might have heard of them. But the reason I asked is that Selene used a bullet mic to record some vocals.  

Valerie: On some songs.  

SLUG: Yeah and it gives some of those songs a really weird sound.  

Valerie: Yeah, like a kind of more of a little more texture to it.  

SLUG: But anyway some of the vocals remind me of the Trash Women. They seem to do that. I don’t know if they’re recording with a bullet mic or if they’re just doing it.  

Valerie: Distorting it or… yeah. Recording this last record was like an amazing experience for us. It was the best recording time we’ve ever had. We worked with Billy Anderson. But he was like so, he just was excellent to work with for us. We were at Brilliant Studios. We lived in the studio and so we really just like absorbed ourselves with recording. We were just very focused on what we were doing and we tried out a lot of different things that we had never really understood enough before. We wanted to get as much of a live sound cause that’s the kind of band we are. But we didn’t use any of the studio technology to achieve that cause we were, you know, afraid of it sounding really slick or really pumped up. We were recording with Billy and we learned that it’s silly. You can use the technology but that doesn’t mean that you’re falsifying anything that you’re recording. You’re just, its all natural sounds that we got out of everything. I don’t know, he just has a way of doing it. But we had a lot of fun with with it. It was really cool. I think we’re pretty happy with this record. We’re really excited about going out and touring it.  

SLUG: I’ll tell you, I think it’s the best one you’ve done yet, but it’s darker. It’s a lot darker. Okay, in the press thing they sent me, the interview in RIP, it says that you’re all happy but the albums dark. So are you happy cynics maybe?  

Valerie: I guess you could say that. I mean we like to have a good time and playing is totally a fun thing but there’s other things about life that aren’t so happy. There’s a pretty good mix of both, if that makes any sense (at this point Valerie confers with Elizabeth Davis, the band’s bassist). Elizabeth, would you say we’re happy cynics? She said ‘Absolutely. Aren’t most smart people happy cynics?’

SLUG: Can you talk about the songs at all or is that more for Selene? “Crying Shame”?  

Valerie: Oh, you mean lyric-wise?  

SLUG: Do you have any idea what she’s, what some of them, are about?

Valerie: Yeah, I know what they’re about. I don’t know, hang on. It’s about like relationship-wise or friendship-wise or whatever. I mean, I think some of them are about specific things and some of them aren’t and it’s probably better for her to talk about it than for me. I know that for me, a lot of the lyrics on this record, I think that Selena has gotten really good at articulating things that a lot of people could relate to. You know, for me, some of these songs, when we played them and I hear the lyrics played, I can relate to them from things that have happened in my life with relationships that I’ve had and that’s really cool. I mean we always get behind what she is doing. What she is thinking about. There’s never been a song that she’s done that I’m like ‘Oh, God, please don’t say that,’ or something like that. But it’s just about you know, life experiences, going through stuff.  

SLUG: What songs would you say stand out to you?

Valerie: For me, lyrically? That I could relate to? Oh God, let’s see, “Deep In The Heart,” “Misunderstood,” “History of My Future.” Yeah, anybody that’s ever broken up with somebody could relate to this record.

Next comes the scoop on an upcoming video and the album’s single “24,900 Miles Per Hour.”

Valerie: Yeah, what do you think about that song being a single?

SLUG: I don’t know, it would work.  

Valerie: That’s going to be our single off the record. We’re doing a video for that. Yeah, its going to be fun. We’re going to be filming that pretty soon actually. On the 20th we go to Chicago to film that. But I won’t tell you anything about it. You have to see the video.  

SLUG: If I turn on MTV?  

Valerie: Oh, I don’t know about that.  

SLUG: You don’t think they’ll okay it on MTV?  

Valerie: Oh, I don’t know, you know. There’s nothing on this record that’s supposedly “radio friendly,” or whatever, so who knows what the hell’s going to happen with it. We’re just going to do it and have fun with it and hope it gets played. I’d like it to get played on a lot of, like, you know, smaller underground video shows and stuff. I think that would be cool. We have a pretty good idea for it and I hope it turns out good.  

SLUG: Okay, I’ll watch for it. See if I can watch it sooner or later.  

Valerie: Yeah, I’m sure it will be. If not, fuck, I’ll just send you a copy of it.  

SLUG: Here’s another question. You toured with Silverfish.  

Valerie: That was our first U.S. tour.  

SLUG: Yeah, Leslie Rankin has a new band. Do you have any fond remembrances of her?  

Valerie: Leslie Rankin is great. Her band is called Ruby now, or I guess that’s the album. I haven’t actually heard her new stuff, but I think she’s a really powerful singer and performer – a really intense woman. I think she is really smart. A lot of fun. We got to see her kind of on and off in Seattle when we were back in town but she was busy recording and I think she’s not even in town anymore so we haven’t seen her in a while. But Silverfish, that was a good first tour for us to go out with. They were very inspiring. I think our favorite band to tour with has been Alice Donut. Yeah, they’re great. They broke up.  

SLUG: They did? They just put out a record six months ago.  

Valerie: Yep, they broke up. It sucks cause we wanted to do another tour with them. But I just talked to this guy the other day. I think, they’ve been doing it, they’ve been at it for so long and they all want to kind of just do some side projects for a while. Who knows, they might end up getting back together eventually. But I think for now they’re just kind of into something else.  

SLUG: The last time you came to town it was in a bar and there were a lot of people outside that couldn’t get in to see you.  

Valerie: This is Salt Lake City right?  

SLUG: Yeah.  

Valerie: Yeah, I remember that.  

SLUG: And this time its an all ages show, so I don’t know you’re going to get, I think you’re going to get, I think you’re going to get a lot more of your fans this times.  

Valerie: Yeah, you think?  

SLUG: Yeah, well I guess here’s the question. You finally get to reach that audience, the audience that you couldn’t reach in Salt Lake the last time.  

Valerie: Yeah, the last time that we went through there actually the first time we went through there we met a woman named Sunshine.  

SLUG: Yeah, Sunshine’s a friend of mine.  

Valerie: Yeah, what’s the name of her band?  

SLUG: Deviance.  

Valerie: Deviance, right, and I just talked to her about three weeks ago. She called me and said that she’s got some new members in her band. But we played with them and talked to her quite a bit. She was like, ‘You know, we could help you guys figure out a place to play here that’s all ages.’ A lot of it I think for bands going through towns like that is that, a lot all age venues are pretty – it’s weird – they’re not permanent places, it’s like, they switch around a lot.  

SLUG: Warehouses and stuff.  

Valerie: Yeah, so it’s hard from a booking standpoint to find where they are and then you wonder if when you get there if they’re still going to be open. But we really wanted to do an all-ages show there and a lot of our fans are like … we get a lot of letters from young girls and stuff and we are always really into reading them and try to respond to them as much as we can. We get a lot of letters saying that it helps them through certain things or that they can totally relate to where we’re coming from and they thank us and that is always really cool to hear. Cause I know, you know, before I started playing, I couldn’t remember being affected that way by bands, so we really appreciate it, and we’re really looking forward to playing a show like that. It’s always really frustrating. We go and play and we know there are people that can’t get in. I hate that. We all do.  

SLUG: The kids are standing outside.  

Valerie: Yeah, that sucks. Cause I know when I first moved to Seattle I wasn’t old enough to get into bars and I lived with Mia and those guys and they would play like on New Years Eve and I couldn’t get in and it’s just so fucking frustrating. That whole liquor law thing just pisses me off. Cause there’s a lot of places, a lot of states where you can get in, like in New York. You get a different stamp and you can go into the club but you just can’t drink. You get a wristband if you’re old enough to drink and if you don’t have a wristband you can’t order anything from the bar. That seems to be a pretty civilized way to handle it but for some reason a lot of states are just way back in prohibition time. They’re still fucked up.  

SLUG: Especially this state.  

Valerie: Yeah, so we’re psyched about that.

Gato Negro comes out on March 12. It is an amazing, incredible record. I’m hoping it makes 7 Year Bitch rich and famous. But, like Valerie said, the radio still needs to catch up. The names will play The Bar and Grill on March 10 and it is an all ages show.

Read more from the SLUG archives:
Written in Blood
SnoCore Tour: February 1996