Former Motels Singer Eases Back Into Business

“I could be one of two kinds of grandmothers,” says Martha Davis, the former singer of the Motels, and a grandmother twice over--though a young one at just 43.

*

“I could be a baking grandmother--or a rocking one.”

And she doesn’t mean rocking chair .

“Grunge Grandma, that’s me,” she says, sitting on a thrift-store sofa in a setting that is more “Reality Bites” than “Cocoon”: a funky, hip coffeehouse that she and her boyfriend are building here, just down the street from the Buenaventura Mission.

It’s from this very ‘90s setting that Davis is resuming an active musical career. It’s been seven years since the release of her lone solo album, “Policy,” and nearly a decade since the last album by the Motels, which in the early ‘80s was one of L.A.’s top acts, bridging the gap between the punk scene of X et al and the polished California pop of Linda Ronstadt. Now, with a band of twentysomethings (mostly younger than her own two daughters), Davis is performing again, with a show tonight at the Troubadour.

She bristles at the term comeback , preferring to think of this as a second chance.

“It feels so great to do this without a record label--no big budgets, no big hopes,” she says. “Let’s just take the songs out and play them and see if people like them.”

That’s the way it started with the Motels. The group formed in Davis’ native Berkeley in the early ‘70s when she was a young single mother, then moved to L.A. later in the decade, just as the punk and power-pop scene was taking off. The 1979 Capitol debut album, “Motels,” and the sultry single “Total Control” were minor hits, and a second album, 1980’s “Careful” reached the Top 50.

But, Davis says, record company executives pushed the band into a middle-of-the-road direction, emphasizing Davis as the star and framing her with slick pop production. In commercial terms, it was a breakthrough: The romantic ballad “Only the Lonely” was a Top 10 hit in 1982, with its stylish, drama-dripping video an influential staple on the new MTV. The album, “All Four One,” also produced a hit in the song “Take the L,” and the next year the group returned to the Top 10 with the song “Suddenly Last Summer.”

For Davis, though, it was not a satisfying experience.

“I don’t like any of our albums,” she says. “The Motels were a quirky little band . . . but as new wave changed and the record companies changed, things happened, like an A&R; guy saying, ‘We need you to sound more like Heart.’ Well, no, we didn’t need to sound like that, but I wasn’t good at standing up for myself and would eventually say, ‘Well, maybe we should try it.’ ”

It was even worse with Davis’ solo album, a slick studio creation featuring guest appearances by the likes of sax smoothie Kenny G. Davis finally had enough and retired, living off the royalties of the Motels hits.

“I went to thrift stores, did furniture refinishing and just puttering. I called it my instant gratification period. When you write an album it takes a long time, and you record and it takes a long time. I did things where if I got an old chair and reupholstered it, I could stand back and look at it and feel like I’d done something.”

She kept her hand in music, writing lyrics for a musical based on the ‘40s movie “The Enchanted Cottage” and scoring independent films directed by her son-in-law Chris Matheson (he co-wrote the screenplay of “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” in which Davis had a cameo role). She watched the rock scene closely, intrigued by the music and personalities of Courtney Love, Eddie Vedder and other contemporary icons, but had little interest in getting back into it herself.

Suddenly last summer, though, she got a call from concert promoter Nikki Sweet, who encouraged her to perform again.

As far as dealing with the music business, Davis say she feels she’s much more prepared.

“I’m older and more confident,” she says. “I’m strong enough to go back in.”

* Martha Davis plays with Rat Bat Blue and the Hoodwinks tonight at the Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, 8 p.m. $12. (310) 276-6168.