Continued from Part 1:

Fizz: (to Selene) So do you already have songs worked out in your head before you start working on a record, or do you wait until you start working on the music first?
Selene: No, I don't write whole songs until the music is done. I write poems though and sometimes they'll just fit, like "M.I.A." did. I wrote that out, and they just started playing this thing, and I was like, "I want to put that with this, just how it is, and make it work without changing the words at all."
Liz: Usually it works. I don't know what it is, but it usually works without Selene having to change the words to fit the music at all. For some weird reason it seems like it goes really well.

Fizz: So the next record won't be out for a while, like a couple years, or what?
Liz: A couple years!?!
Selene: It's supposed to be out in August.
Val: It better be out in August!
Roisin: Give us a little more credit.
Selene: Yeah, we record in April, and it's supposed to be out in August.

Fizz: What about some 7"s or singles?
Liz: We have one on this tour.
Selene: We have our tour 7" that we're selling ourselves. It's not out in the stores. We're going to do a 7" for a friend's label up in Seattle. It's called IFA Records. At some point in the near future, we're going to do a record for them. Jabberjaw [L.A. nightclub/coffeehouse] has been bugging us to be on one of their 7"s, and we haven't gotten our shit together in the past year to do it.
Liz: I'm really bummed we haven't done that yet. We were supposed to be on that first Jabberjaw 7" box set, but we didn't have our shit together. Now I wish we would've done it because there's a lot of great bands on that set.
Roisin: Like who, Liz?
Liz: Girls Against Boys!!! Thank you, Roisin.

Fizz: I heard Jabberjaw was going through some money problems right now, aren't they?
Roisin: (to Liz) Hey, didn't they give you free drinks recently?
Liz: Yeah, man, Jabberjaw just had a party, and they were giving everybody free drinks.
Roisin: Well, no wonder they're going under.
Liz: Well, if you're going to go under, that's the way to do it—buying drinks for your friends.

Fizz: Anyways getting back to your music, I was really impressed by the guitar work Roisin did on the new record. I don't think there was a big style gap left between Stefanie's sound and the way Roisin plays. To me it still sounds like 7 Year Bitch, you know what I mean?
Liz: I think it still sounds like 7 Year Bitch, but at the same time, I think it sounds totally different, too.
Selene: Yeah, I think it sounds different, too.
Liz: I mean, Roisin and Stefanie are truly poles apart on guitar playing.
Selene: They play really differently.
Val: (to Fizz) I think I know what you mean, though.

Fizz: I mean it could be really bad to have one guitarist with a distinct sound and then have another guitarist come in. But I think for 7 Year Bitch fans, it's not a total shock. I know that a lot of people didn't even know there was a new guitar player in the band.
Selene: Well, we didn't even tour extensively until Roisin was in the band. We went down the coast and played some little shows in San Francisco, which were a blast, but that's the farthest we went with Stefanie.
Liz: (to Selene) Well, we went to New York for that one show.
Selene: Oh yeah, the New Music Seminar, and that was the last show. We hadn't really played anywhere outside of Seattle.
Roisin: Plus when these guys were looking for guitar players, there were people that came in and could play really well that probably would've been able to just blend in with 7 Year Bitch's sound, but I hadn't been playing that long...and...
Selene: We could manipulate her. (laughter)
Roisin: So, in that sense, they just told me what to do, and I came in and did it.
Val: Yeah, and with both of our records people are always saying how sad and tragic it must be for us, like we're alone on some fucking island or something. When it's not just us dealing with the loss, it's our friends in San Francisco and Seattle and everywhere else that people are dealing with it, too. I don't want people to think we're just having all these horrible, horrible experiences...you know what I mean? Because we've turned it around...sort of, and gotten past all that.

Fizz: Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I don't think of Viva Zapata as a sad record—it kicks ass. It's a great record, so I think that's just how Mia would've wanted it.
Val: Cool, thanks a lot.
Selene: Yeah, she would've been proud of it.
Liz: You know, it's really weird, I mean sometimes I just really wish Mia could hear that song ["M.I.A."]. Like, sometimes I think about Stefanie and wonder what she would think of that song "Rock a Bye," which we wrote with Stefanie, but didn't have lyrics to it yet. And then after she died we finished it. It's just too weird sometimes, because I remember learning that song with Stefanie.
Selene: Yeah, that was a total Neurosis-inspired song. Musically that's what we were trying to get at. It was right before we were going to New York, and I was like, "Fuck, man, that sounds great!" Then when we came back, and we were going to finish the song, we never got a chance to, because Stefanie died just a few days after we got back.
Liz: We listened to Neurosis non-stop when Stefanie died. I mean we would just get totally drunk and sit in front of the stereo playing Neurosis super loud.
Selene: Because they were all with us in New York, and we all hung out and partied together. They were just so cool. Then they took off on tour and got the news about Stefanie when they were in Houston. Then when we saw them play live again, we were just a mess, just a total fucking mess.
Val: It's like their music can totally convey that type of pain. It was just so bad, just monumentally bad.
Selene: Even still when I see them—like the other night we saw them play in Atlanta—I get chills just watching them. Even after seeing them play, for like five or six years now, they still really blow me away!

Fizz: I really wanted to ask you guys about Stefanie, I mean, what was she like? Because in the picture on Sick 'Em she seems so happy and jovial, like the life of the party.
Selene: Yeah, she was totally out there. She was a wild little wahini. She was the life of the party. She was the party! (laughter) She really was, you know? She was the most popular girl I've ever met.
Liz: That's a really good question. People never ask us that question. That's really cool. I mean, I think about Stefanie every single day. She was really an amazing person. Before I ever even met her, I had seen her around Seattle. She was, like, the queen of the scene, obviously. I'd see her pouring herself beers at all the bars. I'd see her get up on-stage with L7 and sing a song with them. She knew everybody, and I'd see her ruling on the pool table, and she was so beautiful, just gorgeous. I remember being kind of intimidated by her like, "Who's that girl?" I remember the first time I went down to the practice space to play with Selene and Val, and then there she was. I was like, "Oh, my god, it's that girl playing guitar." She was really enigmatic. But she also had a real dual personality. I mean, she could get really excited and happy and then get really upset and freaked out, too.
Selene: Yeah, she was a good tantrum thrower, too. She could throw a tantrum like no one else.
Liz: She was a problem child. Sometimes I wonder what the band would be like if Stefanie was in the band now. I mean, I totally love Stefanie, but in all honesty sometimes I just think, "Man, it would be so different." It would be like everything was always hanging from a thread all the time, because that's how she was. Everything was always on the edge with her. I don't know if we'd be organized enough to go on big tours or have a major label deal.
Selene: And, like, with Roisin—she's a Virgo, and she's organize crazed. Everything's got to fit into its proper place with her.
Val: We'd always have to go find Stefanie, too. We'd have to drag her out of coat closets and shit, and be all, "Alright, Stefanie, quit kissing the boy, let's go." (laughter)
Selene: I know—she had lots of boyfriends.
Liz: Oh, I know a good Stefanie's boyfriend story. We were recording for this compilation this one time. We recorded a couple songs, and at the end Stefanie was insisting that we dedicated this one song to one of her boyfriends at the time.
Selene: We had decided we were just going to thank a couple of people, and Stefanie kept saying, "No, we gotta thank so-and-so, and we gotta thank my boyfriend, and..." So we were all like, "No, Stef, we're only going to thank a couple people." I mean, they had only been together for like three days! (laughter)
Liz: Yeah, it was some guy we didn't even know.
Selene: So we're just like, "No, Stefanie, we're just thanking these people." So Stefanie just got really pissed off.
Liz: And then way later at practice one day, when we had all forgotten about it—Stefanie had thrown a tantrum, we had some beers and it was OK—I'm all, "Hey Stefanie, do you remember when you wanted us to dedicate "Antidisestablishmentarianism" to some guy, who was that?" And she couldn't even remember! (laughter)