If you needed any more proof that the ‘90s are back, on September 30, Letters to Cleo released its first new music as a group in 17 years. The five song EP was fan funded through PledgeMusic, and the band is supporting it with five tour dates throughout the country, from October 20 through November 19.

With the band ready to hit the road again, Myspace caught up with Letters to Cleo frontwoman Kay Hanley to talk a little band history, including their reaction to their rise to fame, the time she ended up in handcuffs in a squad car and the fangirl moment gone bad that temporarily broke her heart.

You released your debut album, Aurora Gory Alice, in 1993, and "Here & Now" became popular really quickly. What do you remember about that rapid ascent? Did it feel like one week you were playing a small local bar, and the next week you were booked on MTV?

You know, it’s interesting, because I really just thought that was the way things went. I just thought we were getting a promotion at our job.

We had been in our band forever, playing clubs and steadily going from Monday night at 9pm, to Thursday night at 10pm, and headlining in Boston at the small clubs, and slowly filling up clubs in New York, DC, and Philadelphia, and doing that steadily for a couple of years, so when we signed our deal it was like, oh, alright, now it’s time for the record deal part of our job. Then we got on the radio and on MTV really quickly, so it seemed, at that time, like this is the way it works.

I’ve been in the business for a long time now, and I know that’s absolutely not the way it works. We were insanely lucky, and it was just a lightning in a bottle kind of thing. When our second album failed to catch fire the way the first one did, it was a reality check.

It sounds like you had some youthful naivete. A lot of times that’s a killer, but is there any way in which your youthful naivete played a positive role for you?

Oh sure. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We were just workhorses. We worked really hard. We all had day jobs. I would work a double shift at my waitressing job on Thursday, so I could hop in the van at midnight and be in New York the next day for the first show of our weekend tour.

[Because of this] when our second album didn’t do as well, it wasn’t like, oh man, I guess we just hang it up. It was like, alright, let’s get some college gigs and make some money to keep this thing going.

Do you remember how you quit your waitressing job?

You know, I never did.

So they’re still expecting you to come in?

[Laughs]

I think they’ve figured it out.

They would give me more and more time off, so when I would go on the road, even when we were on MTV and had a huge song on the radio, and I was definitely a recognizable person within the 128 belt loop in Massachusetts, I would come back from the road, and we’d have six weeks off, and I’d go back to work at the restaurant, because I didn’t know what else to do.

If I showed up for work today, they’d put me to work.

What moment, or event, did you consider to be the pinnacle of fame back then?

There were so many of those along the way. In ‘92, or ’93, we were in the WBCN Rock N Roll Rumble. That was huge, and then maybe hosting 120 Minutes was kind of a big deal.

A VERY big deal.

Yeah ... things that I’d previously fan-girled like crazy for, and then getting to do those things.

What would you say was your biggest fangirl moment?

One time, I think it was in ’96, we were on tour with Sponge and Our Lady Peace. Sponge was booked to play Conan, and it was a song I sang with them every night, it was that song “Molly,” so I came with them to do Conan.

Spalding Gray, an amazing writer and someone of whom I was a major fan, was on the show that night, and we ended up getting our makeup done in the chairs next to each other at the same time, and I was freaking the fuck out.

Finally I got up the courage to say, “Mr. Gray, I’m a very big fan. My name is Kay, I’m singing tonight on the show. It’s very nice to meet you,” and he just kind of sniffed at me and turned away, and I was like nooooo!

I learned a very valuable lesson, if you really are a fan of someone, or something, and you idealize them in a certain way, just keep your distance, let the fantasy live. It turns out he was an incredibly depressed person, he committed suicide about ten years later, but at the time I really took it so personally.

During all your time on the road, what’s the closest you’ve come to getting arrested without actually getting arrested?

Oh I’ve been arrested.

What did you get arrested for?

Assault and battery on a police officer. It wasn’t actually on the road, but it was after a show.

It was the night of our record release party for Aurora Gory Alice, the CherryDisc version (it was later re-released by Giant Records), at T.T. the Bear’s, which is kind of like our home base.

Next door to T.T.’s is a place called Middle East, which also has bands playing until last call. Invariably, both clubs let out at the same time, and all the bands load their gear out on Brookline Ave.

On this particular night, the Cambridge police decided that was not the way shit was gonna go down, and they started giving all the bands a hard time. One thing led to another, I thought I would be a hero and explain to the police, “We do this all the time. I’ve been doing this since I was 17 years old. It’s fine, we’re gonna be right out.” They were just like, bitch, no. The next thing you know I was face down on the hood of a cruiser in handcuffs.

The beautiful part of the story, aside from the story itself, is that Bonney and Jeanne, the owner and manager of T.T.’s, after everybody went away, they went back to T.T.’s, cleaned out the till and came and bailed me out in cash, which was amazing.

How did it go from “We do this all the time” to you being in handcuffs? Did you get a little acerbic?

Probably. I have a big mouth. Stacy, our drummer, I remember him trying to pull me away from the situation, being like, “Kay, it’s time to shut the fuck up, let’s just go.” He had my hands behind my back, trying to pull me away, and the cop was yelling at me, and he had his hand in my face, so I kind of felt like a caged animal. When I finally got free, my arms swung around and MAY have landed on the police officer.

So physics is to blame?

Right. I never would have attributed it to physics, but now that you have I would like to co-opt that language in the future.

Feel free! Moving to your current work, you recently released a new EP thanks to a PledgeMusic campaign. I noticed A LOT of memorabilia was offered up. Was there anything that was especially hard to part with?

We’ve had the same manager since the beginning, so his attic was filled to the gills with Cleo stuff. We were just like, “Let’s just get rid of it all.” Then stuff started coming up, like old Boston Music Awards, and the original handwritten lyrics for “Here and Now,” and I was just like, “Aw man, I don’t know how I feel about that,” so we ended up not putting those handwritten lyrics up, and a couple of other things, like a Boston Music Award, or two.

Other than your music, what are you working on now?

My big thing right now is that I work a lot on copyright issues and protecting songwriters’ and artists’ intellectual property in the digital marketplace. It’s critically important for young artists and songwriters to get engaged on this issue, because our intellectual property is being used to create fortunes for Google and streaming services, and we’re not getting paid, and if we are, we’re getting the scraps.

That's something I’m very passionate about right now. I’m co-executive director of Songwriters of North America, which is a non-profit advocacy organization.