Alongside Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, Corin Tucker and Tracy Sawyer created a feminist punk vernacular that\u2019s still inspiring the likes of Olivia Rodrigo. They recall the clarity and conviction of their historic teenage exploits<\/p>\n
Back in June, a cut-and-paste photocopied flyer began appearing on telegraph poles around Portland, Oregon, promoting a DIY show by an apparently defunct band at an intimate community space. The band hadn\u2019t mentioned it online, but hopeful fans bought every ticket anyway. Their bet paid off: the gig really was the first in 32 years for Heavens to Betsy, the pioneering feminist punk duo of drummer Tracy Sawyer and singer-guitarist Corin Tucker \u2013 the latter\u2019s band before Sleater-Kinney unleashed her visceral vibrato unto the world. Tucker proudly made the flyer herself.<\/p>\n
Heavens to Betsy were barely out of high school when they played their very first show, 35 years ago this week, in Olympia, Washington, a two-song set as part of a now-mythical indie fest dubbed the International Pop Underground Convention. The festival also featured the likes of Fugazi, Bikini Kill and Melvins; meanwhile Heavens to Betsy had practised only a couple times. Before an audience of about 100, Sawyer was so terrified that all she could think was, \u201cThis has to be over soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
This summer\u2019s gig was less frightening, looking out on kids the same age that Tucker and Sawyer were when they started the band. \u201cThey were singing along to a lot of the songs,\u201d Tucker, now 53, says on a video call from her home in Portland. \u201cThey knew all the words and were screaming them at the top of their lungs.\u201d After the gig, Sawyer, 52, recalls from her yard in Oakland, California, \u201c20-year-old kids came up to me and said, \u2018I\u2019m learning to play drums by listening to Heavens to Betsy records.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Those early-90s feminist-revenge songs \u2013 about body image, sexual abuse, abortion, periods, worker exploitation, defying a world that conditions women to be small \u2013 will underpin the band\u2019s upcoming tour of the US, as well as Baby\u2019s Gone, a new LP collecting a 1992 rare demo tape and two 7in EPs. That inventive eight-song demo was recorded by Molly Neuman of Bratmobile with a four-track she checked out of the media library from Evergreen State College in Olympia, and only circulated on around 100 cassettes dubbed by the band.<\/p>\n
Active from 1991 to 1994, Heavens to Betsy released one album, Calculated, and rounded out riot grrrl\u2019s OG trifecta alongside Bikini Kill and Bratmobile (who have both reunited in recent years to rapturous crowds). Turning their spare setup into an extreme sound, Heavens to Betsy made songs that were emotional, fearsome and dead serious. \u201cI will decide my life \/ No man is gonna rule my life,\u201d they declared on Decide.<\/p>\n
Riot grrrl records and zines \u2013 which, in Tucker\u2019s words, put academic feminist ideas into a teen-girl vernacular \u2013 have struck a chord with every subsequent generation, echoing through the DIY underground on to the 2010s defined by Tavi Gevinson\u2019s Rookie magazine. Olivia Rodrigo claims it as an influence; Bikini Kill will play her women-led Daisy Chain Fields festival in California this month. But the enduring power of this incendiary music has always been how its rawness leaves the door open, telling fans that they could do this, too.<\/p>\n
Heavens to Betsy were originally signed to Kill Rock Stars. Last autumn, the label approached Tucker and Sawyer about a long-overdue wide release for the demo. \u201cThe whole thing felt like an impossible dream,\u201d Tucker says. \u201cI thought I had lost the physical master a long time ago.\u201d But the label was able to make a new master from the cassette, and as they emailed back and forth, they slyly floated another idea: \u201cAnd you guys could do a show, maybe?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think both of us were like, I don\u2019t know!\u201d Tucker laughs nervously.<\/p>\n
The duo had only kept in touch \u201ca little bit\u201d, Sawyer says, in the decades since their breakup; both are mothers of two. \u201cI was apprehensive about the thought of playing these songs from when we were so young,\u201d Sawyer admits. \u201cPlaying them now in our 50s felt daunting, like, does that even make sense? A whole lifetime has passed. But the more we talked, and the more I started listening to the songs again, it absolutely made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tucker hadn\u2019t listened to some of those spartan demo recordings since the tape came out. \u201cThere\u2019s a really particular voice with Heavens to Betsy, a way of writing a song that speaks to the clarity you have as a young person: This is wrong. This is not OK. I felt really energised and empowered by that voice coming back into my life,\u201d she says. That invigorating clarity pierces Heavens to Betsy songs in bloodcurdling, teen-girl screams \u2013 which, Tucker concedes, she could not realistically pull off in 2026 and make it through a whole show. But she hopes her conviction will communicate that anger. \u201cIt\u2019s really important to me that that comes across in a way that\u2019s absolutely not softened for people,\u201d Tucker says. \u201cThe voice of Heavens to Betsy was uncompromising, unfiltered and it never apologised for its rage and revenge-seeking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tucker and Sawyer first met as middle schoolers in Eugene, Oregon, bonding over REM, the Cure, and Depeche Mode at sleepovers. They saw shows constantly \u2013 the Replacements, Firehose \u2013 and watched the music documentary Athens, GA: Inside\/Out relentlessly. Their fixation on the Athens scene \u2013 including REM and the likes of B-52\u2019s and Pylon \u2013 incited what Tucker calls a \u201cpretty bonkers\u201d and penniless cross-country train trip in summer 1990. The pair rented an apartment for a month to \u201cstudy the scene\u201d, bought a drum kit, watched Pylon through the window of the 40 Watt Club (they were too young to enter), and dubbed themselves Heavens to Betsy.<\/p>\n
By the time Tucker arrived at Evergreen State College in Olympia that autumn, she had already crossed paths with Bratmobile singer and Girl Germs zinemaker Allison Wolfe, who hipped Tucker to the fiercely independent Oly scene. That year, Tucker made a film about local music and closely studied the bands she saw live: Beat Happening, Mecca Normal, Calamity Jane. Heavens to Betsy was still just an idea, but Tucker wrote lyrics to a song about menstruation and societal shame she called My Red Self. \u201cI started telling people about our band when we hadn\u2019t played a single show,\u201d Tucker says. \u201cOr had a practice. No songs either,\u201d she laughs. \u201cWe had a concept.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an instructive blueprint. \u201cYou manifest it,\u201d Sawyer offers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd believe in it,\u201d Tucker adds. \u201cYou have to create the world before anything else, and cling to it. That\u2019s true about every creative idea: you need to commit to that world. And once you do, then you can make it real for everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n