Most long-running bands go through a lineup change or two in their time. But only a few have completely revamped their lineups as many times as The Motels has.

The ’80s new wave band, best known for singles “Only the Lonely” and “Suddenly Last Summer,” has officially broken up twice: once in the mid-’70s before even recording a studio album, then again in the late ’80s after its classic, hit-making period. But even within the band’s active phases, including the most recent beginning in 1998, there have been multiple complete lineup shifts, with frontwoman Martha Davis as the sole original member throughout all the band’s incarnations.

Ask Davis what incarnation the band is on, and even she sounds stumped — it could be the fourth, fifth, sixth or more depending on how you want to look at it.

“Oh man, it’s hard to know. Frank Zappa had 200 (musicians), I think I’ve had 1,000,” Davis said from her farm just outside Portland, where she’s lived for the past 13 years. “The original, original Motels were the Warfield Foxes, and then changed our name to The Motels, so that was the original band. Then there was the band that got signed to Capitol. … Then after that first album, then (guitarist) Jeff (Jourard) left and Tim McGovern came in, so the band was a little different again. … And then he left and Guy Perry joined the band. So that was a little different band again. And then in ’89, when the whole thing went — that band broke up entirely — I went on to make a bunch of crazy bands: Martha Davis Jr., WMDS — the Weapons of Martha Davis.”

The current lineup, featuring Davis, guitarist Clint Walsh, drummer Eric Gardner, bassist Nic Johns and ’80s member Marty Jourard on keyboards and saxophone, has been consistent since Jourard’s return in 2011 — and sans Jourard, the rest of the group has been together for at least 15 years, Davis said.

“I mean, it took a while for it to actually — at first it was just guys-that-were-playing-with-me kind of deal,” she said. “But then it just — it is a sensibility. … Musically, everybody’s on the same page. These guys are all younger, and they grew up enamored with ’80s music from a different perspective. They probably like it better than I do because it was after the fact for them. They were like, ‘Whoa, that stuff’s so cool!’ and I’m like, ‘Really?’”

When this group performs at the Tower Theatre on Friday, it will be the first time any version of The Motels plays in Bend. That’s somewhat surprising considering Davis’ longtime connection to Oregon. She moved to the state from Los Angeles after living in Seattle for a few months while performing at the dinner theater Teatro ZinZanni.

“Once I get home — because I travel so much for what I do and I’m always going to cities and stuff,” Davis said. “So when I get home to my farm, that’s where I stay. I’m very glad to just be home with the critters and stuff.”

Though Jourard lives in Seattle, the rest of the band is still based in L.A., which explains, at least in part, the delay behind March’s “The Last Few Beautiful Days,” the group’s eighth studio album and first since 2008’s comeback “This.” The release follows last year’s rarities set “If Not Now Then When,” 2011’s “Apocalypso” (recorded 30 years before its release, but rejected by the band’s record company in favor of 1982’s breakout “All Four One” album) and steady touring around the world.

“People are always (saying), ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ and I’m like, ‘But I never left,’” Davis said. “It’s just that I’m not the most social media-savvy person.”

Davis seems to be making a bigger push with “The Last Few Beautiful Days” than she did with “This” a decade ago. She consciously wrote in first person for much of the record, taking influence from the current political situation in the U.S. and beyond and her own life (including the death of her oldest daughter, Maria, in 2016).

“I wanted to do an album of my perception of this crazy, absurd world that we’re in, so I was looking at some of the different factors in the world,” Davis said. “But I didn’t want it to be a political album, because if you do a political album, then people just argue with you. But if you tell it like it’s all first-person — it’s all stories that you’re telling about yourself — then people don’t argue with you, they just listen to your stories.”

But Davis still had a hard time hearing herself in the songs. Then she happened to stumble across an older song, “Light Me Up,” which tied everything together.

“I was sequencing the songs and just putting them in the order I thought they should go in, and I realized that even though these are all supposed to be first-person, I didn’t hear myself singing them — even though obviously I was singing them, it wasn’t my voice I was hearing,” she said. “A lot of times I was hearing a male voice just in terms of, when you close your eyes and I pictured — I don’t know what this process is, but it wasn’t me singing; I was interpreting to what somebody else was singing. So I had completely missed the point of my intentions. … I dropped (‘Light Me Up’) in just mentally, I just put that song in, and all of a sudden, the lineup, exactly the order of the songs came to me, and all of a sudden it became completely first-person, and I was singing it.”