LINKS:

donitasparks.com

myspace.com/donitasparks

Donita Sparks is more than just a good songwriter and talented performer. Best known for her years slinging catchy yet contemplative sludge in all girl legends L7, she has always been innovative, bold, bad ass and beautiful. Her contributions to music and the world are impressive, from inspiring some of the rowdiest, liberating shows in underground rock’s history, to getting L7 banned by the soulless eunuchs of the Christian Coalition, to helping form the Rock for Choice abortion rights organization, or penning irresistible grunge anthems like “Pretend That We’re Dead” and “Wargasm”. Sparks has greatly furthered the cause of not only female rockers, but of true rock and roll in general.

Now she’s back alongside L7’s drummer Dee Plakas (and some dudes) in Donita Sparks and the Stellar Moments, a poppier but nonetheless still rocking affair. Donita’s first basically solo album Transmiticate showcases her range as a performer, from the charming and soothing 60’s kitsch of “Creampuff” to the droning buzz and rubber bass guitar-bop of “Fly Feather Fly”. The material is frolicking and danceable but real and human, not some slapped together plastic mold pop-rock. It also has way too much attitude and big guitars still intact to be strictly considered pop. This may be more upbeat and no screaming, but some of this stuff could still burn a barn down as Donita’s upcoming shows with Mudhoney are sure to prove.

As if all this wasn’t enough for one person’s resume, Sparks has recently started a label, SparksFly, to release Transmiticate and teamed up with Kristen Hersh, of Throwing Muses fame, to launch a collaborative business venture, CASH Music (Cashmusic.org). It stands for Coalition of Artists and Stake Holders and is a revolutionary new subscription based site that might help some artists deal with downloading woes while also building music communities and rapport and involvement with fans. Not only is music available on the site, but fans can get involved and remix tracks and have a share of the business results. You can also hear plenty of good stuff from Donita and her crew including lots of Transmiticate and remixes, plus plans for spontaneous singles and more!

I talked via phone with Donita from my lair in Upstate, New York to her digs in L.A. and she was very chill, funny and informative. I learned about how to transmiticate, how she approached the new record and the need for CASH Music in the post-downloading world. She was a little late getting to the phone and called me back slightly winded, but then we had a very cool chat.


MORGAN Y. EVANS: So, uh, how’re you doing today? What’s new?

DONITA SPARKS: I ran to you, Morgan.

MYE: Oh, well that’s nice for a change. [laughing]

DS: See how professional I am?

MYE: First thing I want to ask…Transmiticate is your great new album. You always had a great screaming voice in the L7 days but are a good singer too. This seems a little more upbeat musically and fun, although even with L7 there was always fun and a sense of humor, like the album title Smell The Magic.

DS: Yeah.

MYE: I was wondering what you wanted to say with this record about yourself or stylistically?

DS: Well, let’s see…I know I wanted to keep it upbeat and to expand the musical palette. That song “Creampuff” that’s on the record, I actually wrote that when I was in L7 years ago.

MYE: Really?

DS: Yeah, and I just didn’t feel there was a place for it, you know?

MYE: It’s interesting you mention that song because I wanted to ask about it. “Creampuff” has this almost 60’s pop quality with dreamy guitar, like “Earth Angel” or something classic and bygone.

DS: Yeah, well I’ve always loved pop from the early 60’s era. That one, I felt I just didn’t wanna include it on an L7 record and this time I just said, “Screw it. I’m gonna put out whatever I feel are the best songs.” You know, as opposed to trying to fit into a kind of format or something. I’ve always been into it, but when L7 started we tried not to be really poppy because I wanted to be in a tough rock band, so that was something I consciously tried to avoid, like backing vocals and stuff like that. But as time went on I thought , this is such a big part of me so L7 got more and more into those kind of things. Melodic things as we went further ahead.

MYE: Different sides. I really like “Infancy of a Disaster” off of your new record. It’s probably my favorite and the video seems like it was fun to make. I love the lyric where you say , “I already see it unfold.” It’s like those times you get in a situation and your gut tells you, “Oh shit, this is not gonna go good!” [laughing]

DS: Right. You know something bad is gonna go down.

MYE: You keep telling yourself, like, “No, it’ll be alright. No, no, everything’s fine… I knew it!” [laughing]

DS: Or you just have to keep your shit together and watch it unfold. Sometimes there’s not a damn thing you can do about it and you just have to watch while it strikes and hold it together.

MYE: Yeah, yeah. I like that you have dance-y stuff but with a live band. I like programmed beats and things also, but it is cool to have the swing to the drums. “Fly Feather Fly” and other stuff like “Into the Hi Fi” still has walls of guitars that you are known for built into the sound too.

DS: Yeah, I mean, Dee’s playing drums on “Fly Feather Fly” but we’ve got synthetic drums too. Anything that’s a synthetic drum on it, “Fly Feather Fly” and “Take A Few Steps”, I think…it’s synthetic and Dee playing. I mixed it together and left it sloppy. I didn’t line up every kick and snare hit on the tracks. I like it. Dee’s a very tight drummer but nobody is perfect, a machine. When it didn’t match up I left it. It adds a little listless edge to it.

MYE: I heard that “Transmiticate”, the name of the album, was a word you created combining “transmission” and “communicate”.

DS: Well, it was actually said to me by a friend regarding our relationship. He said we “transmiticate” , we finish each other’s sentences all the time. How I applied it to the record, it’s weird. In the last few years I’ve met bands who were younger and fans of L7 and I am now fans of theirs. It’s this weird thing. L7 was sending out messages to these kids in their rooms at home, and they went on to create and now are sending messages to me via the radio or whatever. It’s this weird, like, communication through transmission and recording, you know what I mean?

MYE: Yeah, definitely. Also, you all were good role models for the time for younger kids who wanted to express themselves. It was fearless. I feel bad for kids now who are sucked into American Idol. I think it’s a good year for women in rock. You’ve got the Breeders back and a new Metric record. Emily Haines, their singer, is fantastic. There’s your record. There’s lots of good bands with women and artists, I’m not saying that, but a lot of the mainstream is so saturated with American Idol culture. Paula Abdul, how can she judge these people? Her last hit song before Idol was hundreds of years ago with a cartoon cat. I think that show is like Karaoke for idiots.

DS: Well, when L7 was around there was a lot of crap too. There’s always been crap on the top forty charts. It’s rare when a band like Nirvana breaks through. When you look at it, it is mostly manufactured pop starts, sort of.

MYE: Yeah, absolutely, but I think L7 and your ilk stirred things up to a degree where you couldn’t ignore it and it was inspiring for kids, male and female, really.

DS: I’ve had a lot of interviewers say that to me and they feel there’s a void. But, there was a void before L7 too, and we filled that void, but we weren’t big money for the record label either. I don’t know if they knew how to sell us.

MYE: Well, it’s funny. Look at how the Stooges were derided by the industry at first and now they are a legendary band. They were so obviously great from the start but were taken for granted.

DS: Yeah. Who knows? Keep spreadin’ that one! [laughing]

MYE: [laughing] So you’ve started this new label SparksFly and also with Kristen Hersh you’ve started CASHmusic.org (Coalition of Artists and Stake Holders), a radical site where it’s an inventive subscription based music site where people can hear new music but also remix the songs. It’s a very cool idea. I remember the band Mogwai included files of tracks on their Happy Songs For Happy People album that fans could remix a track or two, but I’ve never heard of a whole site devoted to this level.

DS: Yeah, and Kristen and I are offering up a completely free download every month in lossless quality, very high quality. Better than an MP3. Also we’re offering our mix tracks because we want to encourage transmitication for all of these songs. We send out something and people remix it. I’m not doing it on every track because I think some stuff should be left mysterious, but Kristen’s just laying it all out there. So, it’s operating under a thing called creative commons, which is a looser copyright than how most pieces of intellectual property are covered. It means not all rights reserved, but most rights reserved. Meaning, take our shit, go have fun with it! Then if there’s any commercial usage, we get involved. It’s fair and we want to encourage fans to participate in creativity, and we’re also hoping that our fans and music fans in general will help sustain our careers and everyone involved in CASH.

MYE: It’s a pretty punk approach, a great aesthetic. Also, I’ve heard you have original artists getting involved. Is it anyone signs up or do you hand pick bands like a label?

DS: We’re hand picking bands right now, but it’s soon gonna be open to everybody. We feel there’s power in numbers. A lot of artists find that kind of community on their record labels. We wanna create that for independent artists. Sharing resources, sharing a community and cross pollinating us with our fans and people who are supporting CASH Music. That’s one thing, you kind of feel like an island sometimes when you’re not on a label, ‘cuz you don’t have anyone putting together a tour for you or anybody slapping you on a tour with another band on the label.

MYE: Tour support is crucial.

DS: Even just the association. If you’re on Sub Pop, chances are you’re gonna be touring with Sub Pop bands. That’s a really strong place to be. When you’re an independent artist, unless you’re very wealthy, like Nine Inch Nails, you need to form a community. That’s what we’re trying to do with CASH.

MYE: With downloading, of course, a lot of artists aren’t getting paid as well, if at all, though major labels often ripped off bands before. Still, it seems like more people know about more bands now. A few years ago I think things were more one sided. It was all jock rock on KROQ with hardly a female artist ever, maybe The Donnas once in awhile. I think if you could have a community like that, where fans can have more involvement to not only find out about more but also help sustain it, that would be ideal.

DS: Yeah, at the level that I’m at and the level that Kristen’s at, we have a fan base, but touring is really fucking expensive. Touring used to help sell records. Well now no one is buying records. Where does touring leave you? It leaves you really strapped for cash.

MYE: It’s all bout selling t-shirts now.

DS: The thing about selling shirts, that’s great, but people don’t want two t shirts. They want one, just like ten years ago, but ten years ago they were buying the record too. It’s kind of, there’s a need for CASH Music. Fans can say they want us around and want to support us and want us. We’re hoping true music fans are gonna help sustain the music.

MYE: You’ve been in the music business a while and I know it can be very stressful. Do you have any advice for people on keeping it cool under different circumstances, especially the ups and downs of the last few years with all the changing business models?

DS: You can’t bitch about something that’s way past being broken. You’ve got to come up with creative solutions to make it. For baby bands it is great right now because of MySpace. MySpace is great, period, for everybody for exposure. It’s also hard to be heard above the clutter though, above all those bands on there. You just have to be creative.

MYE: Yeah, past a certain point to make it bigger.

DS: That was something major labels were not good at at all. If you kind of take charge and think of interesting ways to market yourself, you’re gonna be better off and possibly in a major anyway.

MYE: It’s hard to figure out the best way right now, but it’s good that some options are developing.

DS: Yeah. Things are popping off and replacing that old fucking dinosaur that was broken. That’s why we have American Idol, to support that dying fucking dinosaur.

MYE: I wanted to talk about Rock For Choice for a minute [the Pro-Choice organization featuring rock concert benefits with acts like Fugazi, Pearl Jam and L7 that Sparks helped kick start in 1991]. I always had a special place in my heart for that organization and when I was like, 16, I even organized a benefit for Rock For Choice in my hometown. I’m from Woodstock, NY.

DS: Awwwww…! Right on!

MYE: It was cool and I had to go on public TV in front of the town board, and this is like fifteen years ago, give or take. They say we can do it publicly, it was a lot of organization. So we go and get it started and then they have a few people protest and dismiss us on a hair of an excuse saying it was an out-of-town organization and so we couldn’t use the property they had agreed for it to be on. We ended up lying and saying it was for something else, like just a special community music day, but we still sent Rock For Choice the door, which was only like six hundred bucks at that point.

DS: Oh my God, what a joke that they did that!

MYE: It was really frustrating because it would’ve been much bigger.

DS: Yeah, I mean that’s really a shitty excuse to cancel the benefit.

MYE: That was before the sort of conservative revival too, that has led us to the present shitty state of things.

DS: It’s pretty shocking.

MYE: I was wondering if that organization still exists in any form?

DS: It does. I’m no longer involved, but they put on a concert every couple of years. I went to one a few years ago with Melissa Etheridge and Sheryl Crow. It’s not the flavor of the month anymore, even though the need is still there.

MYE: Especially how the Supreme Court is stacked right now.

DS: Yeah. I’ll tell you though, we had so many bands play benefits for Rock For Choice. It was amazing, and it was before the Free Tibet stuff. A lot of bands also maybe felt they did that cause already and so were gonna do another cause for their next benefit. So, you know, they still occasionally do a concert, but they are working full time now for the Feminist Majority Foundation.

MYE: Oh. That’s good to know. I was gonna ask you, speaking of working full time, how do you have a home life doing all this and having your own company now?

DS: It’s not hard. It’s hard when I’m on the road. That’s always been tough. It’s ok, I have a home life. Earlier on in L7 it was tough because we’d be out for months and months and months and there was no home life. I’m doing less touring on this record and it’s doable.

MYE: You probably do a lot of work from around there to be in one spot and keep the label up and moving.

DS: The internet is so good for that. You can be doing business with people in Minneapolis and New York and the internet makes that possible.

MYE: It gives me so much respect for 80’s hardcore bands or a lot of the punk bands who didn’t have so many things people take for granted now.

DS: Yeah, you’d be cranking and Xeroxing 24/7.

MYE: I was watching some L7 videos the other day, and new stuff too, getting in the spirit of this and I wanted to ask you…the video for the L7 song “Everglade”, that was probably my favorite L7 song ever and the video is so rowdy, a raw rock show with fans going nuts. I miss when Nirvana was on the MTV awards and it was chaos with people really spontaneously stage diving. Now there’s like a pre-picked crowd who stand before the stage at events and yell “Woo” and wave their arms and that’s fucking it. So lame. “Everglade” was such a crazy video, it looks like it must’ve been fun with everyone going crazy.

DS: Our shows were pretty fucking crazy. I mean, that was wild, but we had shows where people were passing out from the heat and literally sweat was dripping off the walls and ceiling.

MYE: [laughing] Awesome.

DS: I mean, really! [laughing] Our shit constantly getting unplugged from people coming onstage and stage diving or grabbing us. For me, I’m claustrophobic and I don’t like crowds, so for me , I was freaking out, like, “Wow!” I remember one time we didn’t even have a barricade, in Flagstaff. They just set up chairs!

MYE: [cracking up]

DS: [laughing] Like that was gonna stop anybody. We kept calling it the chair-icade. People were just flying over the chairs, throwing the chairs.

MYE: [laughing] Throwing them at each other, I was gonna say!

DS: The club owners were just looking at this like, “What the fuck is going on!?” They had no idea what to expect, what hit their town.

MYE: Kids in the early nineties would straight up take your guitar and start playing it and hug you.

DS: Yeah, the chair-icade. So “Everglade”, we did a free show and invited a bunch of friends down and played a few songs and took the clips from that.

MYE: For the new band, the Stellar Moments, I was wondering how that came together. I always like when it’s a name, like, Elvis Costello and the Imposters or this and that. What made you pick the Stellar Moments as the tag on?

DS: At first I was just calling it Donita Sparks and then I thought I needed to put more to this name because they were gonna associate Donita Sparks as what I was doing in L7. So I needed to like…

MYE: Set a mood to it.

DS: Exactly. So I set a mood to it and people will go, ”Wow, the Stellar Moments.” It doesn’t sound like, grungy. It sounds spruced up. So Dee and I, after L7, went on this indefinite hiatus. [laughing] Dee and I were still playing together every day, and a couple of years after that we formed the band. I found a couple guys. Now I even have a new guy because I put the guitar down for half the set.

MYE: Oh yeah? Free to jump around.

DS: Yes! I am a full-on front person for half the set which is a blast! I get to put down that ball and chain for half the set. I love playing guitar, but sometimes it restricts you ‘cuz I worry about going out of tune or missing a note. This is just pure fun.

MYE: Everyone wonders why guitarists do those high kicks but what else can they do?

DS: Oh, I’ve got some high kicks! I’m telling you. HIGH kicks.

MYE: [laughing] Don’t be ashamed of that shit. It’s awesome.

DS: Oh, I’m not. In fact, there’s a couple of pictures of me doing high kicks. Somebody from Fazer Magazine caught a really good kick recently.

MYE: Hopefully not to the nose.

DS: No, very Radio City Rockettes. It’s a high one. [laughing]

MYE: Any more videos for this album planned?

DS: That would be fun, I’d like to do that. We did the one for “Infancy of a Disaster” totally for cheap, like zero. We had friends shoot it and another friend edit it.

MYE: Well, it suits the vibe of the song anyway.

DS: People really like that video and we just got together one night and did it. That was pretty fun. We’ll do another video and then we’re going to Europe in September. We’re gonna do a West Coast Tour in August and head to Europe in September, and then I think I’m gonna start working on my next record.

MYE: Do you want to do one a year at this point?

DS: I’m really into the idea of releasing a track whenever I finish it and then maybe pulling a collection together with unreleased tracks and stuff and release it as a record. I don’t like that pressure as a record. I think it stalls me up a little bit.

MYE: It’s part of the old model too. I mean, it’s cool if you like that. Albums are great but it’s also fun to do it like early rock n’ roll singles.

DS: Yeah, I’m really into that. Everyone’s like “The Album!” The Rolling Stones used to do two albums a year. We’re making one every three years or whatever. It’s not the same.

MYE: Well now you can react to what’s going on around you kind of month to month or immediately or whatever.

DS: Yeah, and the toughest thing about when you finish a record is that you have to wait to release the record. Either you have to wait because of your distributor, when they have a time slot to release you, or when the label is ready and have a slot when nobody else is releasing. You had to go out ahead of time three months for press also. Now artists are saying, “Fuck it! We don’t wanna wait when we have the internet.” The Raconteurs to Nine Inch Nails are releasing things promptly.

MYE: There were always horror stories. I mean, recently that band Rye Coalition, who are great, they did a CD called CURSES and worked on it with Dave Grohl even. The song “Burn The Masters” is totally killer. Production started in 2004 but it didn’t get released until 2006! Their label apparently didn’t give a shit, even with a name like Dave Grohl attached--stuck in limbo!

DS: L7 got stuck in limbo for a fuckin’ year and it really stalled us out.

MYE: Which record was that?

DS: The Beauty Process. It was our last record for Warner Brothers, and it’s like they released it and dropped us. “You fuckin’ assholes! If you released it when we were hot it might have done something!” But they let us cool down, then they dropped us.

MYE: Then it’s your fault.

DS: Yeah, then we didn’t sell records.

MYE: I don’t remember it being in stores, assholes.

DS: “Isn’t it your job to help sell the records?” We’re the artists, you sell the fuckin’ record! Get all feisty Morgan! Hot and bothered.

MYE: Well, I’m also a musician, so…

DS: So you know about it.

MYE: Well, anyway…I really admire what you’ve done with the new ventures. Also with your career in general. It’s very inspiring.

DS: Thanks, that’s so sweet.