Heavens to Betsy releases first record in 32 years featuring archive Baby's Gone

Heavens to Betsy, the pioneering feminist punk duo made up of singer and guitarist Corin Tucker and drummer Tracy Sawyer, has announced its first release in a whopping 32 years. The collection is called Baby's Gone and comes out on October 16 via Kill Rock Stars on two vinyl variants, CD and cassette. As a taste of what's to come, Tucker and Sawyer have already put out the raw, lo fi single 'Ain't Never Goin' Back', a track that reflects the unpolished energy of the band in its earliest days.

Baby's Gone features sixteen songs and draws on two types of source material. Seven of the tracks come from a demo tape recorded in February 1992 by Molly Neuman of Bratmobile, using a four track recorder she borrowed from the media library at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. That tape circulated at the time on only about a hundred self dubbed cassettes. The remaining nine tracks are taken from the band's three 7 inch releases: the untitled 1992 split with Bratmobile, the 1993 EP These Monsters Are Real, and 1994's Direction. Kill Rock Stars was able to create a new master recording from one of those cassettes after Tucker had long assumed the original physical master was lost for good. Alongside the regular edition, there will also be a limited reissue of the original demo tape with recreated artwork. The record also includes new liner notes from Neuman.

Tucker describes Neuman as a leader who immediately understood how important it was for young women to have access to the tools they needed to express themselves. "She grasped right away that it was important for young women to have these tools to express themselves. She was so confident and so unafraid to just be like, 'Yeah, why don't I just record that for you? I'll just check out the Tascam from the AV library at Evergreen and do it,'" Tucker said in a statement. Sawyer adds that she was initially unsure whether she would ever return to Heavens to Betsy, but that the ongoing relevance of the themes tipped the scales. "I wasn't sure if I would ever revisit Heavens to Betsy, 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. Just to know each other again as adults and as mothers, it's really cool. Once we started playing again, it was like muscle memory," Sawyer said.

Heavens to Betsy was formed in the early nineties in Olympia, Washington, right when the riot grrrl movement was at its peak. The band played its very first show, a two song set, at the legendary International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia, on a bill that included Fugazi, Bikini Kill and the Melvins. Tucker and Sawyer were barely out of school at the time. The band was active from 1991 to 1994 and released one studio album alongside those 7 inches, Calculated, in 1994. Together with Bikini Kill and Bratmobile they formed the core of the riot grrrl scene, a movement that translated academic feminism into a language that teenage girls could actually connect with. Themes like sexual abuse, body shame, abortion and the oppression of women run throughout their work and, according to Sawyer, feel at least as relevant today as they ever did.

In June, Tucker and Sawyer played their first show in 32 years, after a homemade photocopied flyer showed up on telephone poles around Portland. Kill Rock Stars had approached the two about giving the demo tape a proper wide release, and cautiously suggested that maybe they could also think about playing a show. Both women were hesitant at first, but the enthusiasm of the crowd, including twentysomethings who knew the lyrics by heart, swept away any remaining doubt. In the lead up to the release of Baby's Gone, the band will head out on a US tour in October and November, hitting cities including San Francisco, Portland, New York, Chicago and Seattle. The tour kicks off on October 17 in San Francisco.

For Dutch music fans, the Heavens to Betsy reunion is a significant moment in the broader history of alternative and riot grrrl music. Tucker is also well known outside this band as a member of Sleater Kinney, and the influence of Heavens to Betsy stretches far beyond the underground: artists like Olivia Rodrigo cite the riot grrrl movement as a direct source of inspiration. Baby's Gone now offers, for the first time, an easily accessible collection of the band's early work for anyone who wants to dig into the roots of that influence.