Le Tigre's first tour in 18 years is championing feminism and challenging ageism

Q23:30Kathleen Hanna and JD Samson on resurrecting Le Tigre

In an interview from a few years ago, Kathleen Hanna called her band Le Tigre "the dance party after the protest."

Hanna, who's also known from her bands Bikini Kill and The Julie Ruin, formed Le Tigre nearly 25 years ago with her bandmates Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning. In 2000, Benning left Le Tigre and was replaced by JD Samson who's remained ever since.

Now, the band is back on tour for the first time in 18 years — and once again, they're using their infectious dance music to speak out about issues that matter to them.

In an interview with Q guest host Talia Schlanger, which has been edited for length and clarity, Hanna and Samson talk about resurrecting Le Tigre and why the objective of their latest tour is to bring together people of all ages and communities.

Talia: JD, what's it been like for you to be back on stage with Le Tigre?

JD: It's been so beautiful and invigorating, I guess, not just because of the fans, but also I think the relationship between the three of us has grown so much in the past 20 years, and it's fun to be together. Somebody mentioned something in a review about watching a band that has as much fun as the audience, and I don't know, that really struck a chord with me. Just thinking about that energy exchange, I think, has been kind of the takeaway for me so far.

Talia: Kathleen, can you take me back to the year that Le Tigre formed? Paint me a picture of how the band began.

Kathleen: I mean, it was really me and Johanna at first just writing the record ourselves in a really disgusting basement. It was actually a sub-basement of a sub-basement. So it's like two floors down, total fire trap, illegal rental, smelled like total fungus. But, you know, we had a 8-track reel to reel and a bunch of old '80s equipment, and we were both really into electronic music.

It was just this really amazing creative time of moving to New York and making the decision to kind of start, for the first time in my life — I had just been looking at so much negativity and negative stuff because my band Bikini Kill had gotten a lot of crap. There's a lot of violence surrounding our shows.

I was able to start looking at all of the positive things that were in my life and the positive things that had happened culturally. And Jo and I kind of became a songwriting team in that basement, and it was a really, really special time.

Talia: Bikini Kill was a massive part of the riot grrrl movement — hugely important, influential. As you mentioned, there was a lot of negativity that you had to deal with. And I think it's really interesting that you turn that into fun music, like you called [what you were doing with Le Tigre] "the dance party after the protest." How did that happen? How did you find the balance between expressing what you needed to express but also making it sound so fun?

Kathleen: Well, I mean, there's tons of bands that have done that before us, and groups like Public Enemy, Style Council, you know, Eddy Grant, Electric Avenue — great example of a song that's talking about poverty and racism wrapped up in this beautiful pop package.

It just really appealed to me because I want to talk about the world around me and how it affects me and my friends and other people. But also, in Bikini Kill, I was kind of sick of the violence. And when you're dancing, it's really hard to punch someone. It's like giving a dog a carrot to carry around in their mouth so that they don't bite anybody.

There were a lot of changes that we made in Le Tigre's live set that, to me, were really, really practical things, like charging more money. Because if you charge more money and you're able to pay yourself and have a decent crew so that you sound better every night, you not only have a better show, but jerky, crusty white dudes don't show up at your show throwing beer cans at your head because they will pay $5 to do that, but they won't pay $18 to do that, you know what I mean? So there are things like that. And also, making dance music just attracts a different audience. It attracts people who are coming to have a good time and not coming there to beat each other up or something.

Talia: It's a functional thing as well as an artistic thing. JD, what do you remember about those early days? I know that you joined a little bit after the first inception of the band, but did you have experience of that sub-basement of a sub-basement?

JD: Yeah, I think that one of my first experiences working with the band was in that sub-basement, and it did smell of fungus, but it was a really beautiful, creative space that gave us a lot of great memories.

I had heard of Le Tigre from some mutual friends, and had met Kathleen, Jo and Sadie actually separately, just from the feminist art community. I was a filmmaker at the time, so I got involved in the projection for the band. And then soon enough, Kathleen and Jo were like, "You're coming on stage!" And ended up rehearsing in that same sub-basement where I was helping them out with projection. So it was a really beautiful time. I felt super grateful to be involved in the next chapter of something that I thought was so revolutionary and important to my community, and the dance party after the protests, you know. It felt like such an important time to be there.

Talia: Le Tigre put out their debut album in 1999. For people who don't remember exactly what was going on, can you say why it was so revolutionary at that time? 

JD: For me, I was in college and we were really building a queer and feminist community that was about basically focusing on becoming a task force and changing rules and changing laws. We had the death of Matthew Shepard. We were protesting in the streets in the city, and this felt like a perfect way to connect and sweat with each other. 

Talia: Matthew Shepard is the gay man who was killed in a hate crime. Do I have that right?

JD: That's correct. So it just felt really important to be holding space with each other in a way that felt like we could transcend. I think dance music has a particular possibility of a spiritual connection to music and letting go through a journey. And so I think those loops and samples and beats really allowed for a different kind of live music experience and music experience in general, where people were able to lose themselves together and feel safe enough to do so. I think that it was a really important time for that.

Talia: Kathleen, can you remember a moment on stage where you realized exactly what JD is describing, that you were facilitating this collective experience?

Kathleen: One of the times when I realized that we were achieving what we were trying to achieve, was when we played this show that was called [Last Call with Carson Daly]. It was like a nighttime music show or something.

We didn't know that people in our community knew we were playing and got tickets and showed up. So when we walked on stage to play, there were all these people — some who were artists and activists that we knew, and just a big group of queer art makers [and] rebel rousers — right in front of us dancing.

I felt so loved and supported in that moment. It made me feel like this is a huge achievement. I don't know, it was just a really big moment for me. It wasn't necessarily like, "Oh, I've done this great thing." It was more like, "People appreciate us and that feels so good."

If you can't feel free dancing in these spaces that are typically created for straight white guy rock bands or whatever — if you can't have five minutes where you can dance and be really goofy and have a good time with your friends, how are you going to expect freedom in the rest of your life?

Talia: Can you compare the moment that you just talked about on the Carson Daly show to what's happening now and who you're seeing turn up at your shows to dance in these spaces that you're creating?

The lyrics feel just as relevant as they did 20 years ago.- JD Samson

JD: Sure. I think [our recent show in Paris] is a great example of seeing an intergenerational crowd of feminists and queers kind of come back to where we left off in the early 2000s. By the second song, we had people crowd surfing. In the balconies, we could see friends of ours, filmmakers, artists, people that are some of our idols dancing. And in the front row there were six year olds who were at their first concert ever.

So I think this juxtaposition of young and old is really taking us back to this realization that this is like a reunion of not just each other and the audience, but a concept of being smart and having fun while doing so. It's really powerful to stand onstage and talk about critique and talk about, you know, not having autonomy over our bodies. And the lyrics feel just as relevant as they did 20 years ago. It's complicated, difficult, sad, depressing, frustrating. But being in that room together with all these people that feel the same way as us and are all fighting the same fight is kind of the beauty of it. 

Talia: I can't imagine how gratifying that is. When you decided to pack up your bags and tour together again, what were you expecting? What were you hoping for?

Kathleen: I didn't really have any expectations except for I wanted to have really cool videos and really cool costumes and play really well. It's kind of up to the people who want to come what it's going to be like. You just don't know until you go out there. So I wasn't really expecting anything.

When the show started selling out, I was expecting people to show up, which was great, but … especially right now, when people are so divided here in the United States — the un-United States — there's so many things dividing us. And one of those things is, you know, generations.

[Generations] were started as a marketing concept to create a group called "the teenagers" that could be marketed to. Now we have all these names like Baby Boomer and Gen X and Gen Z, and part of it is like, yeah, there can be funny stuff about, "Oh, this group of people did this or this." But by separating us into generations, we're not sharing information with each other. And I need the younger generation to call me on my shit. [The younger generation] know the language that is being used now and they can be like, "No, that's not how we talk about that anymore. Here's how we talk about it." And I learn from that, and I feel really, really lucky that so many younger people are doing such great intersectional work.

So what I'm seeing is that they're coming at political and social and cultural issues always from a larger lens. And I think that's really beautiful and really important. There's also things that older generations have learned that we need to pass down — not in a condescending way — but share our histories like, "Hey, you're not alone in experiencing speaking out and then having this horrible backlash against you."

That's been one of the great things, is being like, these people are occupying the same space, people of all different ages are looking at each other with admiration and love. You know what I mean? Like, we like the same thing. We found something we had in common. And I guess I hope that there's a little bit of ageism being challenged in what we're doing. And it is pretty remarkable to be in my 50s and be out on stage again and having a larger audience than we often did back when we first started. We sometimes played to 200 people, and now we're playing to thousands. 

Talia: Maybe can we end by just talking about the value of being in a physical space and sharing music?

JD: I would say maybe the climax of the show is this medley that starts with the song Get Off the Internet, and it's kind of a re-imagining of the song — new production with robot voices kind of suggesting an AI identity, and the words are "get off the Internet, I'll meet you in the streets."

We leave the stage for this to do a costume change. It's not a song that we ever have done live, but I think it really plays an important part in the show where people just recognize that they are there together. And I think obviously the internet has brought us a lot of community and a lot of great things, and I don't think that there is this black-and-white thinking around the internet and technology in general, but I do think that it is a really special moment in the show to recognize the presence of each other and being at a venue, listening to live music.

Kathleen: We're not even on stage. They can look at the video, but that's the time where people start looking at each other and going, "Wait, what's happening? Where are they? What happened, where'd they go?" And that's by design. 

Talia: Well, I think it's really cool what you're doing. Congratulations on this really cool tour that you're having, and bringing people together like this.

The full interview with Kathleen Hanna and JD Samson of Le Tigre is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview produced by Lise Hosein.