Join me as I talk to record producer/engineer, Steve Fisk. As a musician, he has been in bands such as the instrumental alternative/indie rock band Pell Mell and the electronic band Pigeonhed. He has long been associated with the Pacific Northwest music scenes recording such artists as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Unwound, Ben Gibbard, the Wedding Present, Beat Happening and much more! Fun talk.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
You are listening to the Figure Eats podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm your host, Nick Leap from the band High On
Stress out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and today's guest is a
record producer, audio engineer, musician, all around interesting fellow who
lives in Tacoma, Washington. His name is Steve Fiske, and
he has.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Recorded some of your favorite bands.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I can all but assure you that you own some
of his work, be it his work working with Nirvana,
Sound Garden, Screaming Trees, Mary lou Lord, past guest Unwound.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
You mentioned Afghani Wics.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, great stuff, tons and tons of great stuff, and
I have to say, oh, wedding present, My god, it
just goes on forever. No, That's what I can tell you.
Is also his sole duo, Pigeon Head, is pretty awesome.
It's something I wasn't familiar with ian I've been listening
to since we spoke this weekend. Awesome stuff, So make
sure to check that out. And without further ado, I bring.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
You Steve fisk All right, are we okay?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
We're good?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
All right?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
How's how's uh think you're out in Tacoma? They see that?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, Tacoma, Washington, South Dakoma. Nice.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Have you been there pretty much the whole time or
just kind of moving around the different areas over there.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
I was in Seattle for quite a while. I've been
here for six years. Nice.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Do you like getting Tacoma?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I like Tacoma quite a bit. Reminds me a little
bit of Long Beach. I grew up outside Long Beach,
got in southern California, and it's, uh, it's got a military,
you know base, so we got you know, that kind
of thing. So we've got people from all over the country.
And and it's also a port town, so there's unions
(02:05):
and all these things that hasn't common on Plum Beach.
And I'm doing a shitty job of describing it, but
it's a it's a working class neighborhood. And if there's
any entitlement, it's people feel entitled to tell you what
they're thinking, which is the opposite of Seattle, where people
(02:30):
don't tell you what they're thinking.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Really, So, yeah, a little more passive aggressive in Seattle.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah. No, there's a name for it. It's called the
Seattle Freeze. What is it called the Seattle freeze? Okay,
well we have Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Nice, I'm in Minneapolis, and they call it Minnesota nice,
but it's really just Minnesota passive aggressive. So I think
there's probably something to the fact that it's kind of,
you know, tricky weather, mid size, smaller cities.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
With a big help helping of that Midwest. Fuck you yes,
you know. Yeah, I'm from Minneapolis. Fuck you know.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Pretty much pretty much. Well, I appreciate you jumping on
here and chat with me. Thanks for checking out the podcast.
I appreciate that I was listening to the stuff you
sent me a bit ago. That's some crazy stuff for
really cool. Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Yeah,
so I hadn't heard the pigeon Head stuff, so tell
(03:34):
me about that a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
So you've got a.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Singer there, and then you're playing what was what's kind
of the basis of that band.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Uh, Pigeonhead formed in the early nineties, Okay, and I
was living in downtown Seattle and I had a small
studio and uh, Jonathan Ponaman from subpop mm HM had
introduced me to this friend of his that was this amazing,
(04:08):
for lack of a better word, a blue eyed soul singer.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, I noticed that on there. It's cool.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, that's Sean no very very wonderful, wonderful talent, and
we did a little bit of recording here and there,
and uh some point along the way this ties into
the Jesse Bernstein story. So I could back up and
(04:35):
give you a quick version of the Bernstein story. But
Jesse not Sean, Jesse not Sean, a little older than
everyone was, for lack of a better word, kind of
Seattle's Bokowski. Okay, he was part of the rock scene.
He'd been president in Seattle since the eighties and actually
(04:55):
had north his Northwest history going back to the seventies.
But he used to open for bands, Okay, so instead
of having an opening banyard have Jesse Bernstein, he come
out and give you as you know, salty, confrontational, you know.
For being West coast, it was a very East coast
(05:16):
kind of kind of thing he did. And it was,
you know, he was younger than Burrows, he was younger
than Pikowski, but they were clearly influences on him, and
he was very very well read. And Bruce Pattatt, the
other subpop guy not Jonathan, thought that he and I
should do a record together, and so we started working
on what would become the Prisonhead record. And this is
(05:39):
in the middle of Jesse having a profound mental problem
that he'd escaped in the past, and he had a
history with addiction, and so the last couple of years
were pretty rough, and he had a very very severe
decline just as we were starting to work on the
record and he took his life. Uh yeah, and so
(06:04):
I ended up finishing the record without him. But before
he passed, he had left me an angry, an angry
voicemail saying, I don't care if you like me. I'll
do it in the voice I don't care if you
like me. Finished the record. It's good work. Fuck you. You
(06:24):
know something like that. You know, he used to just
the scariest answering machine messages, you know, when I'm not
trying to make fun of somebody with their problems, but
just Jesse was. There's a wonderful documentary on Amazon Cold
I Am Secretly an Important Man that was made. Yeah,
(06:46):
well thats a taken from a poetry compilation of his.
But anyway, Sean really liked the record. Sean Smith, who
didn't exist at this point. And I did a lot
of beat programming, you know, break beats and collage elements,
(07:08):
and some other things, and that that was all part
of what the Prison record became, which is a very
unheard record in twenty twenty four. Very interesting to have
so many things in my in my discography that are invisible,
but the prison At record is almost invisible, and it's
getting reissued, so it's going to be out on subpop
(07:31):
in this Summersive platform next year. Yeah. But anyway, the
Bernstein record became an impetus for Sean and I to
get back together. And initially I wrote all the beats
and he sang and played some keyboards and pitch andhead
didn't work very hard, but we were together kind of
(07:52):
up till two thousand and one, and we didn't talk
to each other for about eight years, and then we
you know, played together more and put some finishing touches
on a record we'd started way back when. But the
point was is that without the Bernstein Record, there probably
would have never been Pigeonhead. And Sean at the time
(08:14):
was in a band called Bliss, which became Satchel, which
was a Seattle heavy guitar band that signed with Sony,
and he was also in Brad. He was the singer
for Brad, which oh yeah, it was Stone Coscert. Yeah. So,
and this was like Sean started with three bands he
(08:37):
passed a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think I heard that now the name is starting
to ring true because I feel like a lot of
people were talking about it on social media.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
A few years ago.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So got it.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, I remember that he's like Frank Sinatra. People fall
in love with him just based on his singing and
his lyrics and his vocal sound. So Sean, before he
left Planet I had a giant cult following, which I
think just gets bigger and bigger with his passing, which
is nice because it's great when people remembered as opposed
(09:11):
to the opposite.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Right, you spend all this time and effort and passion
on music, you kind of hope somebody is going to
be listening down the road, right Yeah, Legacy.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Anyway doesn't answer your question.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, no, absolutely Yeah. So did you say you finished
a record with him? Is that somebody?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
We have two records. We finished a third record. Actually
we got done in two thousand and one and went
through a little bit of reworking, but at this point
it's an unreleased third record that hopefully, well we'll find
somebody to put out here. It's actually twice has been
slated for release on different record labels, but record labels
(09:52):
don't last very long these days.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
It's not not what it once was.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
It no, to quote Mark Maren, it was a different time.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Oh you quoted Maren. I love that that whole bit
about it's a different time.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Nice. Nice.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So you you're a musician yourself. It sounds like, so
you started out playing music? Were you kind of a
guitar guy?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Growing up?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Keyboards?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
What what was it that you found yourself gravitating towards
when you first started to get into music.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Well, uh, I took advantage of what they would teach
me in elementary school. So I played cello for a
little while, and I say Barnett for a little while,
but I'm primarily a keyboard player.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Nice. Nice, What kinds of suffer you're listening to back then?
Speaker 2 (10:49):
When you kind of got into the keyboard on iron?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Butterfly broke all hairm the doors you know, it's pretty old,
you know, So favorite doors record?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
What do you get?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Soft Parade? I learned how to play playing along with
the soft Parade?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
All right?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, I still like the self titled I think my
favorite song of theirs is still Roadhouse Blues though, that's
my that's my jam out of that group.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, my favorite. I really liked the Soft Parade because
I was a Beatles head and so the Soft Parade
side too is a suite just like a road song
or something like Heavy Road, although I think it predates
Heavy Road. But that's one of the things I liked
about the Doors is they would do stretched out, insane
kind of headfucked pieces. So as a as a can
(11:42):
eleven year old, I was reimpressed, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, No, I remember getting into the Doors probably, I
was probably about eleven or twelve, and it definitely seemed
from outer space and like you weren't quite sure what
was going to happen next.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
They weren't. Well, I'll respect, I know you've got gray
in your beard, but but I just always make with
younger people is that you had to experience it as
the cultural zeitgeist of the day. You know, Wearing an
Abby Road T shirt means you found the Spotify page,
you know, so.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
You went to Target.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, probably, and maybe you passionately love and understand Abby
Road and the music recorded there, So you know, I
don't I don't shame anybody for their T shirt. But
the doors were nuts and they weren't like any other
band of the day. And the the Jim Morrison I'm
(12:44):
telling you the truth now thing, you know that that
that really spoke to the kid in me. I was like, oh,
this is this must be the truth, you know. And
the war was going on, you know, coch ten eleven,
but all the records kind of politically radicalized me. You know.
So I was I wore before I had a draft number,
you know, you know, sure enough I had a draft number,
(13:07):
you know.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, No, I I get what you're saying about that
cultural zeitgeist thing because I was.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I came of age in the early nineties.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Which was also another one of those another explosion. Yes, right,
So depending on where you were in that explosion, you
saw the same thing. You know, a musician would change
their clothes, and then your substitute school teacher would have
some similar thing. And then you go to Sunday school
and oh the Sunday school teacher's got a mustache. What
the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
You know, it's like everybody's wearing like converse. Now, yeah,
you know, yeah it you actually felt that change the
way that people were dressing the music they were buying,
and and.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I think we're probably I don't know, do you think
we'll ever have another one of those?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
No, the Internet, The Internet destroyed that destroyed wild There's
too much at once, and it's not worse, it's just different.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That's kind of my take on it as well.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I feel like there's just so much competition for attention
amongst art and music and movies and TV shows that
this is so fragmented that you can't have, you know,
another one of these things just kind of bubble up
and take over and be the focus.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Different thing.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
But Taylor Swift's got a little bit of that because
that's all anybody wants to talk about, But it's it
still feels like a very different thing because.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
That's you know, that's totally totally Top forty records anymore.
We can take away a few zeros, they're really Quincy
Jones talked about this. Somebody asked him about the music
industry and he just said, no, there is no music
industry that can in nineteen eighty eight, we sell too
many and Michael Jackson CDs in a weekend. That's a
(14:53):
music industry, you know. Yeah, eight nine CDs. Yeah, there
receipt that's when CDs are happening. So so yeah, the
scale of it and and also the the cultural weight
of music has changed. It may not come back. I'm
not sure. I was talking with the younger friend. Uh,
(15:19):
just like kind of what a thing Sergeant Pepper was
and how the Beatles started and you know, buttoned down sixties,
you know.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
And and and and they decided that things were going
to change, and and they you know, just through them
being whoever they were, and them having good you know,
machinery could help, you know, they changed everything.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And uh and uh, yeah, there's a lot of bad
came out of it. A lot of good came out
of it. But but yeah, you think, think about opening
the windows and you can hear Sergeant Pepper coming from
a house across the street. Well that was happening in
nineteen sixty six, sixty seven, you know, so right, you
know it was.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It's just crazy to listen to that stuff and go
from love me dude to day in the life and
a relatively short span of history. When you break it
down to a handful of years, just what they did
and how quickly it developed into that, it's pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Well, they couldn't do anything else. They were so famous
that they you know, had to kind of you know
that they they were siloed, you know, to use a popular,
popular terminology or whatever.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
So playing in bands back then, when you first started
with the keyboard, or were you just kind of playing
at home and doing your thing there or.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
How did no? My brother and I had a band.
We played in the garage. We annoyed our neighbors.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Were they were they understanding or were they upset?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
There was a barber that lived three doors down, two
doors down, and he hated it, and he kept his
mouth shut until he couldn't take it anymore. And then
he started pounding on the door. He wouldn't even talk
to my dad. He just walked up to our door
and started pounding on it while we were playing. So
he pound his hand as hard as he could and
then walk away. And somebody would tell us, oh, yeah,
(17:11):
mister Chitwood was here. He was pounding on the garage door,
you know. Oh yeah, we didn't hear him. It's worth noting.
In my high school and in my surrounding universe, before
I left California, I had met what would become half
(17:31):
of the plim Souls a million miles. Yeah, Dave Paua
Rest in peace. He was in my high school and
George Lynch from Docin Wow. I played in the band
with George Lynch when I was a senior.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah. And then when I was just slumming before I
went to college, I played a couple of jams with
Dave Alvin from the Blasters.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So yeah, well it was a small world. It was
a different time, you know, it's a different time. Yeah,
that guy's kind of a wizard, speaking of marin quotes. Yeah,
oh wow, that's really cool. So at what age did
you leave there? You'd mentioned over twenty where that you
(18:18):
left at twenty Yeah, okay, and then you went up
to Seattle from.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
There, No, Ellensburg. This was before slacking. But it basically
was like, you know, I had given up on Los
Angeles as a place to make music by the age
of twenty.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
And so everything I.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Could do here, yeah, I'm through with this town. This
town has cued me up and spit me out. You know,
I ain't never coming back. And I moved to eastern Washington,
where there was this beautiful small town that I visited
as a teenager that I said, well, this is a
place where I could breathe easy. And you grew up
(19:02):
in Minneapolis, right.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I grew up. I grew up in Surri, North Dakota,
of all places.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Okay, So I left at twenty ironically and came to Minneapolis.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
So I've been here longer than I was in North
Dakota at this point.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, my point is is that in Los Angeles you're
in a fish pool and you can't get out of it,
and the air sucks, and the water sucks, and if
you drive as fast as you can in any of
the four directions, you'll still be in the city for hours. Yes,
And I slowly realized that, like the frog and the
water that's getting hot, you know, I realized the water
(19:38):
was getting hot. I wanted to get out of there.
The air was just miserable in the seventies. Some people
don't think about this, you know, all the dystopian apocalypse
thrown at us by the millennials and disease and all
of that. Well, the air was worse, you know. Fifty
years ago we fixed a little bit of that, you know, So.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
You're telling me in some ways we were actually improving
as a society.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
If something, something gets done, yeah, yeah, but just as
in case the enemy sees his hat and he's a
white beard. I'm a hardcore unitarian leftist. I've been trying
as hard as I can to be as woke because
I can since age eleven, when we played war, we
didn't say jap we said Japanese. You know, so, so
in any way that I may accidentally say some stupid
(20:24):
old man thing that accidentally offends somebody, you should know
I'm trying as hard as I can. I'll look forward
to them. I have black friends. I have lots of
black friends. And that sounds like a joke, but they
fucking keep me educated and keep then tell me when
I'm fucking up. And I and I teach in a
(20:46):
school that has a lot of trans kids and neurodiversion kids,
and I learned a lot from them too. So so
I'm an old man with a beard, and I'm very opinionated,
but I'm not Mega, not remotely mega. This is a
blue head, this is not a red hat.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
It sounds like you're a Marin fan, and one of
the things. Do you listen to his podcast frequently or
just watch stand up or what's your what's your level
of Maron.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
I don't really spend a lot of time listening to
podcasts per se. But when I was learning how to
run all that immersive technology, yeah, I had a very
long commute, and so that's when I started streaming all
the Mark Mirren stuff that was on YouTube because that
helped keep me company for long periods of time.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, podcasts are great for road trips and long drives,
that's for sure, because I could suck up a couple hours.
But he's got a thing he talks about speaking of
woke culture, and he talks about certain comedians will say
you can't say anything anymore, and he says, wrong, you
(21:56):
can say whatever you want, but before you say whatever
you want, you have to realize that there are repercussions
to certain things that you can say or that you say.
So are you willing to deal with that or not?
And then make your decision. And I think he's absolutely right.
You could say shitty stuff as you want. That doesn't
mean someone's not going to be mad at you for it.
So you have to make these decisions. And he goes,
(22:19):
it's a hack thing to say that because you know
it's just a cop out. You're trying to rally one
side over the other. And I think that's actually really true.
I think, you know, you could still say whatever you want,
but not everyone's gonna like it. And the whole free
speech thing is, you know, I could say whatever I want.
It's free speech and you can't take it away. Well,
(22:39):
no one's going to throw you in jail for it.
They might think you're an asshole, but you probably are,
so do what you want, but also realize people are
probably not.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I was going to love what you say.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
So I think I like that theory that he has
about that if you want to be an asshole, well
then people are going to think you're an asshole. We
can shift back to music, just just to a limathy
amount emails I'll get. So, where did you say you
moved when you went to Washington Ellen Ellensburg? Is that
where the trees are from? That's how I met the trees,
(23:14):
That's how you met the trees. So were they kids
at that point? As I mentioned, I had Garlee Connor
on and he was talking a lot about growing up
and and you know, Agan was kind of the troublemaker
in town who had a cool voice.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Well, that's one way to put it. And I can
hear Mark landing and laughing right now because he was.
That was funny. Yeah, and he had a wonderful laugh,
Marking a wonderful, wonderful laugh. No, Mark Pickerel wrote me
a fan letter, really when I was living in the
(23:53):
Bay Area in eighty three. So when I moved to
Ellensburg in eighty six, the first thing I did was
look up Mark Pickerel and we became very good friends
and still are and six months later as recording the
Screaming Trees.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
What were you doing at the time you wrote the
fan letter? I was in pill Mel, Okay, so he
was a fan of El Mel was what did you
say he was a fan? No, No, he didn't know
anything about Mel. I had a forty five out in
nineteen seventy nine. All you kids out there, you.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Can all think you know about all the old people,
but I had a single out in nineteen seventy nine,
pre eighties. Okay, So that puts you're a viper Jackfair
a negative trend and anyway, sorry, that's just nonsense. But anyway, yeah,
I had a forty five and I can sign some
(24:51):
of them in this wonderful record store in Ellensburg, and
Mark Pott it and broke me a fan letter and
told me all about his band, which I think at
that point was called The Explosive Generation. I don't think
Lannigan was in the band at that point, but that
eventually became something like The Screaming Trees. Although maybe that's
(25:11):
maybe there's an origin story somewhere that I've just fucked
up by saying that out loud. You know, no, Explosive
Generation was a separate ban The Screaming Trees started on.
You know, who knows. But you know, it's a small town.
I mean, it's fucking four thousand people there. Seven thousand
is that It might have been fourteen thousand people there
by the mid eighties. But I was there for a
little while in the mid seventies, and I came back
(25:34):
in the eighties and it had grown.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Up and not that much. You know, wow, So it
is pretty small. How far away from Seattle is that.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
An hour and a half over the mountains? That means,
you know, Minnesota, boy, you know, winter times not so easy,
you know, because you got over the mountains. But eastern
part of the state might as well, be Montana or
Kansas or something. It's like the beginning. It's the end
of the Midwest. It kind of route worlds right up
to the mountains. And then on the other side you
(26:07):
got Seattle at Tacoma, Olympia, you know, Portland, all that.
But the eastern side it's rural and flat forever and
uh and and real redneck and real conservative. And anytime
you have that, then you have all this wonderful sub
boiling under. So it's kind of fighting against it. And
(26:27):
every small town in eastern Washington in the eighties they
had a small scene, and they had three or four
bell Weather bands that you know, went around and played
other places. So the scenes were all small, but collectively
it was a scene of about five to seven hundred
people in eastern Washington. And that's between tri cities Yakama, Ellensburg,
Moses Lake, Euphrata, and uh yeah, and that's about it.
(26:54):
We didn't have any truck with Boise. Boise was a
whole other vibrant thing. But in between Ellensburg and Boise,
he was Spokane, which is I have time to talk
about Spokane. Now I'm gonna get emails from Spokane. Yeah, sorry, everybody,
we're not going to talk about Spokane.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So when you got up there and you started working
with him, you had a studio already, or did you.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yes. My dear friend that I went to college with
in the seventies, Sam Albright, who's still in Ellensburg, he
and his father and some local artisans had remodeled pretty
much a burnt out building from nineteen thirteen and they
put in a soft industry downstairs, which made a lot
of money, and then the upstairs was a recording studio
(27:44):
slash video studio, few offices and it was very very nice.
I was kind of limited. It was an eight track,
but for me it was challenging. And yeah, a lot
do a.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Lot, you know, And how did you learn how to
do it? Did you learn back at California or.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
You know? I knew a little bit about that technology
from my education at Evergreen, and I went to Evergreen
specifically to play to the play around with their synthesizers.
And in the old days, synthesizers needed a multi track
tape machine. You can't really do anything with a synthesizer
(28:27):
by itself, because you build some thing and then you've
got to record it and then add something to it.
You have to have it all, you have to clear
it and do something. It's everybody's process is different. But
back in the old days, every synthesizer studio would have
a four tracker and eight track. So I learned how
to record, and I you know, learned. I did a
(28:48):
lot of composition in that situation, working on my own music,
and began to learn how to mix. But I never
recorded drums or anything. You know. I did a little
of that in the Bay Area, but I had a
lot of help. So in the eighties, actually eighty two
on I you know, I did some recording in San Francisco,
and I recorded this wonderful, wonderful band Paris Working that's
(29:12):
actually sort of getting hit again. They only had one
record out, but it was very cool and it was
you know, simple minds, Bowie early eighties giant stuff. My
good friend Phil Hurts played played drums in the band
and had other anyway, so I did some cool records,
but they were all done with engineers kind of running
everything where Ellensburgh. That's when I sat up the mics,
(29:35):
plugged everything in, you know, cleaned up the tape machine,
you know, got all the emulsion off the heads and
made records and sent them off to mastering. And you know,
sometimes I followed them down to the mastering lab and
learned about mastering. So and you know Sam Albright who
I just mentioned, you know, I mean he was already
(29:56):
a pretty savvy engineer when I moved back to Ellensburg,
so he showed me how he ran the studio. And yeah,
screaming Trees Other Worlds was the second thing I recorded there.
So I recorded a country record and then I recorded
Other Worlds with exactly the same setup. You know, it
didn't change anything because that's all I knew how to do.
(30:18):
So yeah, and it doesn't screaming trees. It doesn't country record,
it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
So the screaming trees were kind of your entry level
into kind of those scenes up there when you first
got up there.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yeah, I mean in the eighties. But there's a wonderful
Seattle band called the Beakers, and I recorded the Beakers
in their home, and then an Olympian that was like
eighty eighty one or something like that. And then the
place I lived in Olympia was all the roommates had
(30:52):
ship so we had dape machines and synthesizers and so
a lot came out of there. But the world hasn't
heard pretty much of it. You know, what was it
like going to Evergreen?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
You hear a lot about that that college, pretty liberal school.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
It sounds like, what what was it like going there?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I haven't heard much about it other than so and
so went there, So and so went there.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
You know, So what was it like? From your person?
Speaker 3 (31:15):
You don't know anything about the Joe Rogan thing or
any of that stuff. No, oh god, I want to
get into that, but you can.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Oh, here comes Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Google Joe Rogan and the Evergreen State College if you
want to learn all about Joe Rogan shooting off his
mouth and causing fear and or clothing and uh and
mega freaks overreacting and everything. But but every yeah, the
Evergreen State College recent last couple of years COVID. It
(31:49):
was when he was had a lot of foot mouth
in that COVID period. And you know, people, we shouldn't
take people like that that seriously, you know, but that's
another discussion. Go to Evergreen was great. Going to Evergreen
exposed me to a lot of stuff that somehow I'd
missed growing up in Los Angeles, and it was the
last of the free schools. There was Franconia, there was
(32:14):
fair Haven. I always forget the one in Yellow Springs,
but that was a seventies experiment that was just sort
of dying, this idea of schools with no grades and
individual contracts and you and the faculty writing evaluations of
each other at the end of the school year. You know. Wow,
so so yeah. And that's where I started working at
(32:43):
Radio Chaos KOs when I learned about independent music, and
and that probably was more influential on my career and
my ethos and my aesthetic, you know, for the rest
of my life. Was getting that that grounding and the
(33:03):
and you know, underground independent you know, music distribution and
the validity of the smaller voices and how there's nothing
wrong with the major label music. But that's easy to hear.
There's some things are hard to hear, you know, isn't
isn't it wonderful? I mean, I imagine you know who the
(33:24):
Shags are?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
I interviewed Dot Wigan for Off Magazine, which was a
magazine that came out of Olympia, Washington, I believe, and
Dot's still alive. She could, if he remembers, she could. Probably.
I think I'm the first person to get to her.
I'm thinking I'm the first press person to say, tell
me the Shags story. Really. Yeah, And because my good
(33:52):
friend Dave Rowl said, well, you know, somebody's got to
do this, and he's from Ohio, so he kind of
had a good angle on kind of what rural New
Hampshire was like, Yeah, a New Hampshire uh and uh,
And so we just started looking around the phone book
for Wiggins and uh and the first one I found
(34:14):
and free my New Hampshire. He said, God, I'm going
to make a real fool of myself. I'm gonna try
to do the voice. Uh said, no, that's not us,
but I know who you're talking about, and you and
hang on a second, you know. And so he went
out and uh got them to call me or something
like that. Yeah, the town is so small, so I
(34:35):
was one phone number away from reaching the Jags. Uh
and all that, and yeah, I thought was wonderful. And
also just like, why is somebody talking to me? And
we'd forgotten about this record and oh my god, some
people hearing this record. Oh my god. You know, we
were terrible. We got better, you know, you know so,
(34:56):
and that's funny how that works.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
It's the stuff that people fans go on for while
and they get better at things, and it's like I liked.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
It when they were sloppy.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we could talk about the the rest
of the interview, that's not but yeah, but anyway, that's
throughout magazine, through Chaos Radio, that's you know, I got
turned onto all manner of things.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
And did a lot of bands come in for interviews
and in studio performances And did you get a chance
to meet them there or how did you get in
with the with the rest of the scenes beyond the trees.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Well, Olympia, I had a big well the trees were
later I'm talking about happening nine eighty eighty one. Yeah,
and once again that was a different time. Uh. And
the Olympia had bands. You had had bands. Portland had bands. Uh.
(35:53):
People played on radio stations. But that, yeah, that happened
to Chaos, But visiting bands didn't do that as far
as I can remember. So how did I meet people
while I was in a band? And I opened some
shows in Seattle and I got to play with the
Beakers a few times. There was one big show where
(36:15):
I opened the first band whereas my band Customer Service,
and then the Beakers, and then Gang of Four. Oh wow,
the original lineup of Gang of Four. That's pretty awesome.
I opened for Ultravox. Wow, I know. Well it was
a small world, you know. Well it wasn't that much
(36:37):
is going on, you know, but these are big shows.
This is the show box. This is you know, anything
bigger in the show box when you're to the big
theaters in Seattle. So so that's why I met those bands,
and the Beakers introduced me a lot of people in Seattle.
I met a lot of people that way. How did
you eat the sub pop guys? Well, Jonathan wasn't a
(37:01):
sub pop guy. Jonathan was still in Ohio. Uh So.
Bruce Pabott was a student at Evergreen and he specifically
came there because we had this radical radio station and
we had this radical magazine. So he, uh, he was
from Chicago and thought that this was a much more
(37:22):
interesting scene and he and he did the sub pop
magazine in thes for college credit as part of his
education at the Evergreen State College. Wow, how's that he
were free? Right? Did they cost anything. I don't think.
I don't know if they even cost anything. I think
(37:43):
maybe they were bucked or a couple of bucks or something.
But so I know, that wasn't really sub pop proper.
It wasn't a record label. It was more like an
audio magazine.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Like the Seeds of It.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Though. Well no, I mean, uh no, I'm going I'm
going deeper. A lot of the people on the sub
pop ca setts are the people that made eighties culture happen,
and Bruce did a lot to expose those people to
the rest of America. That's what subpop cassetts were supposed
to be. They were all second city bands.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Mhm.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
His idea was that there was a vibrant scene in
the American rock world that was all different than what
was going on in New York and Los Angeles. So
all the bands are on subpop. You know, we're from
these other cities and and I don't want to do
the roll call, but some of the people are still
making music.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, I sent you a Razorhouse track. Yeah that's cool.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Yeah, yeah, well that was the Boneman of Barumba. They
were on sub pop five. Okay, wow, Uh, nobody knows
who Jason and the Scorches are but Jason and then
I know, yeah, well they were Jason and the Nashville
Scorches on sub pop nine. Yeah, Jad Fairy, I know
(39:00):
that on sub pop you know, I mean you have
Japanese run sub pop. You know. Uh so I'll just
shut up right now. But but but but but but
that that's kind of like the the stupid endless bar
argument that you know, it was a lot more radical,
you know, in nineteen eighty one than it was, you
know in nineteen ninety one. Yeah, well did you see
(39:24):
so go ahead, Yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Were recording a lot of those bands at that time,
right for sub pop? You do love back about I
only do gotcha?
Speaker 1 (39:35):
And did you Forgee Me?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
On one hand? Okay?
Speaker 1 (39:40):
And what so you did?
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
That Sound Garden record was on sub pop?
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yes, okay, and you did some Nirvana stuff obviously whatever
happened to them that worked out?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
What else did you do for sub pop? Was on
Wound on sub pop?
Speaker 3 (39:59):
No? No, they were on the.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Oh yeah they were yeah. Wow, they were like heroes.
In my hometown in North Dakota, people were obsessed with
that band.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
They were so good. Yeah, they're still good even though
they've lost burn, they're still really good. They're still there there.
It's so wonderful that they're playing. But no, I did
love Battery. I did an EP for them. I did
uh uh Helio's Creed's Singles Club record, uh, you know,
(40:32):
and and a Seaweed remix that everybody hated and they
didn't like the mix or they didn't like this uh,
probably both. It was pretty weird. Uh yeah, but but
me and Seaweed liked it, so that's okay. Uh and
(40:57):
uh and then Beat Happening. Eventually we're distributed to Subpop,
as were some of the Girl Trouble records. So because
they worked on Beat Happening in Girl Trouble, then those
records came out on sub pop, even though I think
they might have been on K distributed by subpop or something.
But my sub pop thing isn't big. And and and
I just want Jack to get the credit because he
(41:17):
was doing three sessions a day and you know, and
really really honing his craft and uh and so yeah,
some people that don't know who Jack is, they meet
me and they think I missed her Seattle and no, no,
I'm the already weirdo Evergreen guy that moved to Seattle
and recorded the Funny Bands. You know, I was supposed
(41:38):
to record Earth that didn't come together. There were communication issues,
you know.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, I can't imagine what that would have been like.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Probably was like exactly like how it would have done
because Earth just did one thing and they did it
really well and they didn't need anybody any help. Yeah,
so so so it did. It didn't that didn't need
to happen. You know, they're kind of still around, aren't they.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
I thought I saw something a couple of years ago
that there was well the personnel has changed radically, but no,
Dylan Dylan still makes It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
And there's that wonderful documentary by Clyde Peterson. Uh even
Hell as its Heroes. Yeah, that's we're checking out as well. No, Dylan,
Dylan Dylan still makes wonderful music. That's cool, awesome.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
So how did you get involved with Soundgarden at that
point then?
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Because, uh, that was subpop they they wanted they were
going to do one they were going to do one
last record for a second record with Soundgarden before they
signed with SST, before they signed to A and M.
So it was actually kind of almost worked out at
that point, so they just went I was still living
in Ellensburg, then may come over and record them at
(42:47):
UH with through Drew canyol At using his mobile truck,
which has been on many indie records. But we UH
pulled it up behind the More Theater and recorded.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
An EP and the More Theater is that where it
was Wow, yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I can't even imagine what that would have been like
with Cornell at that point with that voice. Recording that
voice had to have been a real treat.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
I only did it once and we were in a hurry.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
And no time to think about it, no time.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
To think about it. Set up in a KG four
fourteen and probably into a tv X win twenty when
twenty when sixty compressor and then I don't know, maybe
there's some EQ there. I don't know, and true True
canulates set up most of that and so yeah uh
and and and that was all done in an overdub
(43:43):
that wasn't done enough for More Theater.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
So also you got the kind of like the live
takes at the War Theater and then you.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Right, and we've been asked at a at a actually
like a weird ad Studio. That true. It was doing
trades with down in Portland. So the X we had
his giant view of Portland at night. We're working the
night shift with this huge glass window in the city
and then working on these That sounds kind of awesome,
it was, except we didn't have time, and they didn't
(44:11):
know about time management, and the musicians didn't no no
dust Almond or in town. So Kim thought we could
take time off to go see dust Dollmon and have
them come back and sing back up. And I was going,
We've got today and tomorrow and we've got these many songs,
and I'm supposed to do a remix. So the whole
(44:31):
brutal truth was is that I had to decide that
the other way I was going to ever get the
time to do the remix was I had them roll
stems for me. I drew roll stems for me of
different sub mixes of FOP, and then I took that
back to Ellensburg and transferred it and onto a digital
machine on a pre Dad digital machine, and then I
(44:52):
took that and pasted it into an eight track over
in Ellensburg. So the pop remix is all made out
of stems. And stuff, and you're looking at like, what's
the fop remix? Well, uh, Down Garden had me do
fucked up remixes of several of their songs. So if
you go to Spotify, you can see all the fucked
up Steve Steve Fisk mixes, okay, and it's it's kind
(45:16):
of one of the things that kind of makes them
a different band than other these bands is that every
single record they put out is that we went Steve
Fisk to suck this up over here, you know, I did,
uh you know, I did remixes for the for the
comeback record, you know. So, so I'm very proud of them,
and they're very strange, and yeah, that's pretty awesome. Yeah
(45:40):
it is. And that's that's where, yeah, that that's where
I got to hang with them a little more in
the nineties. That was fun.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
And uh, Nirvana you did, was it? Staine and Benison
were the ones.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
That you Yes, there was an EP and I recorded
one side of the e P and the other side
was Jack tracks, uh, and there were five songs are recorded,
so I finished two for the EP and then the
other three are pretty radically bootlegged. And they were on
all of the subsequent Nirvana reissues.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, well, I was gonna ask you. I think I
saw something online. Did you work with Tangerine Dream on something? No? No,
I I mastered a record that was Tangerine Dream soundtracks. Okay,
but but no, I never met Tangerine Dream. I had
(46:34):
nothing to do with him. I just did some tweaks
on some stereo mixes that our friend brought in. Gotcha,
and and then since too. I also did other things
that I said that were kind of interesting to me.
You've worked with Ben Gibbert a little bit, So you
did that about a son? And then I think you
did was it the teenage fan Club covers record that
(46:54):
he did?
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Was that the two things? Yeah? And how'd that come up?
Speaker 3 (46:58):
And he also did a reverse gender version of and
I Love Her? Oh, and I nicked that for him? Yeah,
and I love him. There was a record that was
all gender swaps, nice and did a very much like
the trans Atlanta record.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
That's verty cool. I'm sorry, what what? What's what's the
cover record? I'm sorry?
Speaker 1 (47:23):
It's was it?
Speaker 3 (47:26):
They named one of their records after their records.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Fan Club band Wagon?
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Was that the one wagon? Which sounds like a death
Cab title, but it's actually paraphrasing them. Yeah, sorry, band Wagons,
forgive me about that in a long time. That was
a lot of fun too.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, I bet he's a talentson guy.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
So I'm very smart. Actually seems like it we uh,
we've got to hang a little bit. It sounds like
I'm saying I'm cool or something, but we've actually, you know,
stayed in contact, and he's a Jesse Bernstein fan. I
got to take him out to the lab in Redmond
and play him the immersive mixes of the Bernstein record
(48:09):
and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah, I want to dig deep into that so that
that Jesse Bernsteed thing you said is coming out soon.
There's really no way of finding it as of today.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
No, but if you google Jesse Bernstein in Prison, there's
four of the tracks live on on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Okay, yeah, that's that's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
So well, the record I'm the Fellow CD. The CD
does not go for one hundred dollars a copy. The
CD is very viable. Is out there anybody that's still
wants prison? Maybe I've seen it maybe once in a
while for over fifty dollars, But it's it's actually quite catchable,
and it's one wonderful CD. It's it's literature, it's not music. Yeah,
(48:53):
litera sure, with music is kind of a secondary thing
to it. You know.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
It's fascinating stuff. Just listening to one thing you sent me?
What are you working on now? What are you up
to currently?
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Well, one of the things I sent you was a
Chief Seattle by the Lazy Giants. Do you know who
the Lazy Giants are?
Speaker 1 (49:14):
I don't know the Lazy Giants?
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Okay? Do you know who the Toiling Midgets are? Now? Okay,
well they predate me. They're an ancient art punk rock
band from the Bay Area, Okay. And they've been together
on and off for years, and they started playing and
(49:40):
writing again recently, and they had to change their name
because they couldn't get bookings. So they went from being
the Toiling Midgets to being the Lazy Giants.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Got it?
Speaker 3 (49:50):
And I like that twist of the name. And they
are two younger casts that are new to the band.
But it's these two wonderful guitar players. One Ant Deluvin
pre eighty Seattle punk rock, Paul Hood from the Mesas
and many other groups, and then Craig Gray from the
(50:13):
Toiling Midgets, but before that he was a negative trend
with Will Shatter from Flipper, So dust off the cobwebs.
This is ancient punk rock history. And they just they
love playing together and they are very good and they
(50:34):
have their own kind of melodic, wanking feedback double guitar
thing and it's just gorgeous. And they've been doing it
for years. And there are wonderful Toiling Midgets records. You
can find them on the internet, you can find them
in streaming audio. They're all very available. But I got
(50:55):
to mix a record for them just recently and I
got to open them, uh last Sunday night they play here.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Yeah, nice, Yeah, that's cool. So be all new material
they're doing, yes, and it's really good. And they're still
growing and progressing and doing new things.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
And these are old men, yeah, you know, they're they're
just they're just good at it. And and then and
and they're very having me playing together. I were there
twenty people at our show on Sunday night. Yeah, and
they did not phone it in. They brought it one
hundred percent. That was just I love that. Yeah, yeah,
I love that. And you're still playing live yeah, yeah, yeah.
(51:40):
I opened sets here and there for for people, and
Lori uh Lori Goldson and I did a few things together.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah the yes, yeah nice. Still kicking around there.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
And then behind me you might see this sign that
says ty Wagner backwards. Yes, Okay, Me and this younger guy,
Hunter Lee. Here in Tacoma, we're producing a single for Tye.
Tye had big hits in the mid sixties and recorded
(52:17):
with the Wrecking Crew at gold Star and Wow. One
song in particular, it's titled I'm a No Count. It's
been covered by The Blues Explosion and other big deal
eighties and nineties in a garage bands. And Tie had
(52:39):
disappeared and sort of re emerged about eleven years ago,
and he was living in Washington and had done music
in a long time, and I got to play in
as a very interesting band with It was three old guys,
two young guys, and one the aged guy. But they
(53:01):
are all really really good at what they're doing, and
we basically, you know, we're like a gout bucket, you know,
garage rock band playing. We did one of his old
songs and then there's a new song as well, but
you know, it's bom bom bom kanad dumb dumb kannad.
And you know it's all nice fight in this thing.
(53:22):
But Ty what I don't know if you can read
the sign and says the the pioneer of garage rock,
Ty Wagner. Okay, so that's what Ty Wagner is. You know,
he's you know from that he's big sixty seven. He's
the real thing. I don't know how he is. I'm
(53:42):
guessing he's over eighty and he's still dressed of the part.
He's got side burns and really cool outfits and has
a very uh he's regal. He knows, he knows he's
the ship. But it's like not ubnoxious. It's actually really
fun during inspiring working with Ty nice.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
I lock this guy up. He sounds like a trip talented.
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
And there's some comeback footage of him where he's singing
again and doing his thing. He's played with some other
folks the Ugly Things, uh, comp that comes out the
Garage Rock book. You know about this Ugly Thing. It's
a Bible of garage rock, and I think it comes
out quarterly. And that's where he re emerged. You know,
(54:29):
somebody you know found him on Facebook and then all
of a sudden, ugly things says, oh my god, Ty
Wagner's alive. You know.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
So have you ever seen that searching for Sugarman documentary?
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yeah, inspiring him the same way. And the Monks documentary.
I just saw that last month. The Monk's documentary is
so wonderful, so beautiful. I don't know if you know
about that. No, I don't have. You're giving me a
lot of homework here. I kind of like it. Trans
Atlantic the trans Atlantic fee back. Okay, that sounds like
(55:02):
a death cab record, but that's uh it does That's that?
That's the Monks documentary.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Nice. I'll check that out too.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
Cool, So glad to hear you're still at it and
doing new things. It sounds like you're keeping busy looking
back at everything to date.
Speaker 1 (55:20):
Do you have.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
What what is your what record or what recording that
you've made is something that you're most proud of? First
thing that kind of comes to mind that you're like,
that's kind of the pinnacle of this thing.
Speaker 3 (55:36):
Well, I got three okay, uh uh that actually the
last two unwound records I did probably you know, and
they were done in a hurry, but that they were
a lot of fun and a lot of great ideas
(55:59):
flying around the other one with the other two. I'm sorry,
I'm not but I have thought about this quite a bit.
Another Desert, Another Sea, which is three Mile Pilot, and
I produced that for Geffen and they got dropped and
that came out on Touch and Go with some stuff
(56:20):
that I didn't work on. Some other wonderful stuff they
did with another producer down in San Diego. But that's
where Pinned Back and Black Heart Procession came from. They're
all bands came out of Three Mile Pilot, which was
a wonderful party almost performance art band out of San
Diego that Tony Berg, my A and r at Geffen
(56:43):
got to sign Pill Melt. Yes, yeah, I thought I
would be I could produce that and anyway, that was
a fun record, and then both at Geraldine Fivers Records
I did I'm very very proud of. But I think
Butch has a aged really really well. I think Butch
by the Geraldine Fivers is a completely insane off the
(57:07):
hook record. Uh you know, melodrama of trans children, people
dying of aids, you know, all this recollections on a
dark past because Carla had a very dark past. It's
a beautiful record. Beautiful record, and many of the songs
(57:29):
are live with one of the people, and that means
the vocals were live.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
And Carla is really an amazing vocal talent. She's one
of my favorite writers and and and an amazing performer.
But her voice is really really something and I just
(57:56):
feel sola key that I got to work with her.
And John Goodmanson was there with me. John Gimmison was
a big part of my work with both Fivers records,
and he was a big part of both records, but
especially Butch. I mean we set her up so that
she can play guitar and sing live in the control room. Yeah,
so we had everything boothed off. So so it's it's
(58:17):
It was a band with really really wonderful takes and
great playing abillity. Nils Klein was in the band at
that point. Yeah, people didn't know who Nils Klein was
back then, but I certainly do now. Yes. So so anyway, uh,
really and and and William Tutton and Kevin Fitzgerald and
(58:40):
uh Jesse Green, Uh you know, really really really amazing
players and and and Yeah, they just delivered in her
hurry on time. We did one song a day and
every song was different, so we have a totally different
setup for each song, change the drum mics around, change
the drums around, and was really a luxurious in a
(59:04):
hurry schedule. And it did a lot of the Sunset
Sound Factory done in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (59:10):
Oh cool.
Speaker 3 (59:11):
Yeah, it was very very cool in an old room
and still had that weird white peg board would be
Aspesta Senate and yeah, it's just a blast. So yeah,
I I point a lot of people up the Butch
record when they asked me for a recommendation of some
shit I've worked on.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
Nice, I'll look at that.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
It's a savage record. It's very very good.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
Okay, it's because they're good.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
It's me. But I got that.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
But you didn't fuck it up, Steve.
Speaker 2 (59:44):
So what's one record that you feel like people should
really check out? And maybe that isn't no that's out
there that they should dial up and give a shot.
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Look the Bernstein record, which I didn't really produce. I
composed it, you know, and I orchestrated a bunch of
a bunch of prerecorded texts. But the Bernstein record is
worth finding. Although it's not streamable. Sorry everybody, it's not
streamable right now. But I'm very very proud of that.
And uh, and I'm very proud of both the Pitcheonhead records,
(01:00:22):
and as we move into the future, they are disappearing.
I mean, they're quite listenable, they're they're they're you know,
and all the streaming surfaces. But you know, Shahn's past
and we never worked really hard. We didn't you know,
we recorded you know, sort of three records over a
decade and didn't tour. So the idea that people don't
(01:00:42):
know who we are makes complete sense. And I got
a new project. So here's five and uh, there's only
a couple of singles right now. But I'm in another
situation with a poet, only in this situation it's a rapper,
(01:01:05):
Brody Stevens.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
And that's what you sent me. Yeah, yeah, that's a
grub stretch. Yeah I know that too. I was like,
I did not expect the rapping to come in, and
I'm like, oh, this is super cool.
Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Yeah, master by Jack and Dino was excelling as a
mastering engineer as well as everything else he does these days.
But yeah, there'll be a new Crumbs thing coming together
next year, and I'm very excited about that.
Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Do some deep dives and some of the stuff that
you brought up. I knew quite a bit of stuff,
and I did not know quite a bit of stuff.
So it's going to be fun to look.
Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
A little deeper. It's worth noting I come from a
long line of New England preachers and uh and school teachers,
and so the idea that all I do is at
this age is broadcast. You know, Oh check that out.
Oh no, you need this, you need this, you need
I mean I told you I'm teaching high school now,
(01:02:00):
so I yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Well tell me about that. What are you doing for
high school? What are you teaching?
Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Music? History? And recording? And I and and just to
briefly finish my point, somebody told me there's a whole
genetic thing that once a man. Maybe it happens with
women too, and maybe it happens across the gender diaspora.
I don't know. But past a certain point, you just
(01:02:28):
start debriefing because you realize the time is running out,
so you kind of start telling people things. You know.
So we never got around a very white We never
go around my connection to the monkeys, you know, well,
that's for another interview sometimes, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
But I've got a picture with Davy Jones right up here.
Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
Yeah, right there we go, So that'll remind you the
next time out. We'll have to talk about that because
it does connect in a metaway to Nirvana and a
lot of other things. But that's another story. But but yes,
right now, I've got the semester off because there wasn't
funding for it. But I'm an adjunct faculty at the
Tacoma School of the Arts. Although that's its acronym, and
(01:03:10):
it's one of three acronym schools that are funded by
Bill and Melinda Gates.
Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Oh yeah, their foundation.
Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
They somehow had this idea twenty two years ago that
there needed to be a special part of the Tacoma
High School, the high school system for special kids. So
I two days a week I was teaching and I
(01:03:38):
will pick this up in February again, but for two
semesters I was teaching recording and then also sort of
infrastructure of the alternative music business for seventeen year old kids.
And some of them are non binary and some of
them are actrum divergent, and it's it's just a wonderful
(01:04:05):
high school I mean it's high school, so everyone still
fights and everybody still has caddy little wars with each other,
but also everyone acknowledges that people are very special just
as they are, and so it's a very welcoming, wonderful place.
And this dude are smart as hell, and I get
to do fun things like they think. And I won't
(01:04:28):
delay with the thing. But here's a great story. He's
just a little bit of kind of fun I get
to have. For all of you that don't know this,
there's this wonderful band from Hoboken named the Feelies, and
when we's were made their first record. Their first record
is a clone of the Feelies Jacket, so it was
one of the exactly the same as the Pelice records.
(01:04:49):
It's a blue thing with the four members at the bottom.
Except the Feelies are very real people and they were
kind of airbrushed to look a little Hollywood where Weezer
are Hollywood. Okay, that's okay. It was a different time,
but the students at Soda this one semester sort of
(01:05:12):
were really into Weezer. Is this sort of pathetic dad
rock thing. They were into Weezer kind of for the
perversity of being into Weezer in twenty twenty three, twenty
twenty four. But the point of it was is that
I pulled up Buddy Holly. I had the stamps for
Buddy Holly off of Guitar Heroes, so it was a mabel,
not the real stamps, but something where you can pull
(01:05:32):
it apart and you can hear, you know, the guy
singing in falsetto through an entire track. It says like
he's standing on his tiptoes. Anyway, I pulled up the
Weezer jack and we talked about it for a minute,
and I said, oh, kids, you know about the Feelies
and this is the fun part of the story. So
I pulled up the Feelies jacket and they're going, wait
(01:05:56):
a minute, I love doing that. What what does it
sound like? And so I played them some feel these
tracks and like, wow, this is really cool. When did
this happen? Nineteen ninety one, nineteen eighty nine? And it
went no, no, and they all went, yeah, more shit
(01:06:18):
that happened in the past, Fuck this shit. You know,
they were just furious. I found something else they loved
that was very intriguing to them, and we were part
of the story. But it was like, it happened in
nineteen eighty, you're kidding, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
I love those threads. I love that sort of thing.
My daughter's super she's eleven. She's super into Olivia Rodrigo
and I don't know if you've heard this new Olivia
Rodrigo record, but there's.
Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
A big yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
It's so she was kind of a Disney thing and
then she put out this new record and it's like,
this is like a nineties record, and it's she's a
pop star.
Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
And I read an interview with her and the interviewer
was like, what, you know, who are your favorite bands?
And she's like Babes and Toilet and I was like, what,
this is Disney. So you listen to this record and
it's poppy, but there's a lot of little nods to
nineties music in there. And there's one song that I
was like, oh my gosh, I got to play Luscious
(01:07:21):
Jackson for my daughter and I played the song and
she's like, this sounds like Olivia Rodrigo, and I'm like,
other way, Olivia Rodrigo sounds like this. But it's it's
a pretty cool record for a top forty pop record.
It's kind of fun. To see the nods of the
some of the nineties stuff on there. But it's just
funny to see kids realize that this brand new, exciting
(01:07:44):
thing has a history behind it that they didn't even
know existed.
Speaker 3 (01:07:49):
Yeah. No, Well, I have a spiel about how intimidating
it is for a young person to have access to
one hundred years of music. You know, the computer, the
same thing they make the music on, also tells them that,
oh shit, this is the present, and the past is
like a bully, and the past will win every day.
(01:08:10):
The past wins, you know, and uh.
Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
It usually does if you. You know, when you go
to the source, usually the source is better than the
things that came after. Well, and that's why you have
to learn how to be patient.
Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
Like I I hated Kiss, you know, from the from
the get go, and I still hate Kiss, but I've
recorded so many wonderful bands that have been influenced by
Kiss in a very positive, wonderful way because Kiss was
the first radical thing they saw and they took inspiration
with it and made it.
Speaker 5 (01:08:40):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
I didn't bother to hate Corn, you know, because I
figured corn will there'll be something good coming down that's
Corn influenced. That will be that'll they'll make up for
all the indignities of having to listen to corn. You know,
that's a good phrase. And and and then corn is
(01:09:00):
fun compared to limp biscuit.
Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
You know, Oh god, you know bes compared to limp biscuits.
Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
Yeah, so so so you know, there's always something interesting
coming around. And that's the best part about this time frame.
Now is it fast? So the influences, you know, I
mean it is tired. I am tired of listening to
something and going, oh, I can hear the three records
that you think you're making at this point. So so
(01:09:32):
I'll stop, I'll stop, I get deep on this stuff.
I start talking about history is bunk. We we have
we have to we have to get all this ship
out of the way. And and no, you can't make
anything new with a guitar. You know, it's it's it's
it's kind of dead in the water. But at the
same time, it's a wonderfully expressive instrument and it's a
social protest thing. And you can take acoustic guitar with
(01:09:55):
you everywhere and sing a song. So I don't know,
I don't have any hard truths, you know, you know,
but it's so funny. It's it's funny to be living
in this wonderful time when all the cultures are melting
together and and and interesting music is coming out. Have
your auto Kamie Beaver, Obaki Tobaki Beaver, O Tobaki Beaver,
(01:10:18):
Japanese girl punk rock band okay uh and Beaver has
a few different on tenders and in a girl band
named itself something something Beaver. Then they are fucking with you. Yes.
O Tobaki means incredibly stupid, so their name is incredibly
stupid Beaver and they rock like hell and they say
(01:10:42):
it's like like thrash, but then they go through one
kind of thrash, do a faster kind of thrash, to
a slower kind and back to the faster thing and
they rock like hell Atabaki Beaver.
Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
Yeah, so break that down. It's all O toba kei
Altabaki Beaver.
Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
I feel like if I google that, I might end
up on some sites I don't want to be on.
No no, no, no, it's actually you're say I've done it.
All you get is videos. That's funny. It's funny and
music nowadays because it's like because of the way the
world and how quickly people can do things. You more
(01:11:25):
people can get stuff out in the world, which is
a really cool thing. But at the same time, it's
a drawback because everyone can get stuff out of the world,
so the sifting is a lot harder than it used
to be. But to your point on the guitar thing, like,
I think for anybody you know who plays guitar write
songs with guitar, I think the best thing that you
can do is go everything has been done and I'm
(01:11:48):
just gonna do my thing, because otherwise it's just yeah,
unless you're rewriting a whole lot of love or or
you know, sweet Child of Mine or something that's like obvious,
just write your songs. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I think that's a sound
point exactly. All right, Nick, Well, thank you for taking
the time. I really appreciate the opportunity to get up
here and talk too much.
Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Again, it's fun.
Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
About the Gold Records. I mean, they're here for this
is a power thing. This is supposed to be here
to impress people.
Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
That's oh is that incest side back there?
Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
Yeah, that's Canadian incesticide. So when a record has gold
in Canada. It's like ten thousand copies, it's not one
hundred thousand, so gotcha. It's not even real gold. It's
not even American gold. It's Canadian gold. But there's a cassette.
So there's a great casset and there's a gold cassette
that's for the spoon Man remix.
Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
Oh nice.
Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Yeah, the Spoonman Remix was kind of the B side
of Black Hole Sun, although it wasn't really pressed as
finally was a CD.
Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
I don't think I've heard the remix, and I'll have
to check that out.
Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Yeah. I could kind of make out the Incesticide cover,
but I didn't know what the other one was over there.
Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
Yeah. No, I'm very lucky. I have two Gold records
and they have paintings instead of photographs of the band.
That's pretty cool up on the wall, and there isn't
you know, Will Smith, you know that's awesome, God bliss,
(01:13:23):
Will Smith.
Speaker 5 (01:13:30):
Steve Fisk, record producer, audio engineer extraordinaire. I enjoyed that
he's He's a trip good guy to talk to, lots
of cool stories and I learned a lot, so I'm uh.
Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
I've already started the deep dive of some of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
But as I mentioned at the top of the hour there,
Pigeonhead is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
Check that out.
Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
That's his music and really really cool.
Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
In fact, there's a remix by the Low Fidelity All
Ours that did a Pitcheonhead remix years ago, and I
popped that on and wouldn't you know it, I knew
the song. So it's amazing how music all ties together.
Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
But I remember that song from years ago and it's fantastic.
That's Steve, So thank you for listening. Thank you to
Steve for coming on.
Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
High End Stress continues to work on new music brief
little break. Congratulations to our guitar player Chad on his
latest baby, and.
Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
We will be back at it soon. Hopefully have that
record out by spring, the follow up to twenty twenties
Old be honest. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
See you next time from Studio twenty four. This has
been the figure It's podcast in Minneapolis un more.
Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
I guess I'll out.
Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Feeling sick, feeling well.
Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
This same thing that check me I brought me down,
down down, and not.
Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
Only un lessons learn. I'll throw in the towel before
I get burned.
Speaker 3 (01:15:22):
Because this is an Ood.
Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
The cover bands, bad punk rock and all the things
I can't stand
You are listening to the Figure Eats podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm your host, Nick Leap from the band High On
Stress out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and today's guest is a
record producer, audio engineer, musician, all around interesting fellow who
lives in Tacoma, Washington. His name is Steve Fiske, and
he has.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Recorded some of your favorite bands.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I can all but assure you that you own some
of his work, be it his work working with Nirvana,
Sound Garden, Screaming Trees, Mary lou Lord, past guest Unwound.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
You mentioned Afghani Wics.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, great stuff, tons and tons of great stuff, and
I have to say, oh, wedding present, My god, it
just goes on forever. No, That's what I can tell you.
Is also his sole duo, Pigeon Head, is pretty awesome.
It's something I wasn't familiar with ian I've been listening
to since we spoke this weekend. Awesome stuff, So make
sure to check that out. And without further ado, I bring.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
You Steve fisk All right, are we okay?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
We're good?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
All right?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
How's how's uh think you're out in Tacoma? They see that?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, Tacoma, Washington, South Dakoma. Nice.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Have you been there pretty much the whole time or
just kind of moving around the different areas over there.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
I was in Seattle for quite a while. I've been
here for six years. Nice.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Do you like getting Tacoma?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I like Tacoma quite a bit. Reminds me a little
bit of Long Beach. I grew up outside Long Beach,
got in southern California, and it's, uh, it's got a military,
you know base, so we got you know, that kind
of thing. So we've got people from all over the country.
And and it's also a port town, so there's unions
(02:05):
and all these things that hasn't common on Plum Beach.
And I'm doing a shitty job of describing it, but
it's a it's a working class neighborhood. And if there's
any entitlement, it's people feel entitled to tell you what
they're thinking, which is the opposite of Seattle, where people
(02:30):
don't tell you what they're thinking.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Really, So, yeah, a little more passive aggressive in Seattle.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yeah. No, there's a name for it. It's called the
Seattle Freeze. What is it called the Seattle freeze? Okay,
well we have Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Nice, I'm in Minneapolis, and they call it Minnesota nice,
but it's really just Minnesota passive aggressive. So I think
there's probably something to the fact that it's kind of,
you know, tricky weather, mid size, smaller cities.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
With a big help helping of that Midwest. Fuck you yes,
you know. Yeah, I'm from Minneapolis. Fuck you know.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Pretty much pretty much. Well, I appreciate you jumping on
here and chat with me. Thanks for checking out the podcast.
I appreciate that I was listening to the stuff you
sent me a bit ago. That's some crazy stuff for
really cool. Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Yeah,
so I hadn't heard the pigeon Head stuff, so tell
(03:34):
me about that a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
So you've got a.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Singer there, and then you're playing what was what's kind
of the basis of that band.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Uh, Pigeonhead formed in the early nineties, Okay, and I
was living in downtown Seattle and I had a small
studio and uh, Jonathan Ponaman from subpop mm HM had
introduced me to this friend of his that was this amazing,
(04:08):
for lack of a better word, a blue eyed soul singer.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, I noticed that on there. It's cool.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, that's Sean no very very wonderful, wonderful talent, and
we did a little bit of recording here and there,
and uh some point along the way this ties into
the Jesse Bernstein story. So I could back up and
(04:35):
give you a quick version of the Bernstein story. But
Jesse not Sean, Jesse not Sean, a little older than
everyone was, for lack of a better word, kind of
Seattle's Bokowski. Okay, he was part of the rock scene.
He'd been president in Seattle since the eighties and actually
(04:55):
had north his Northwest history going back to the seventies.
But he used to open for bands, Okay, so instead
of having an opening banyard have Jesse Bernstein, he come
out and give you as you know, salty, confrontational, you know.
For being West coast, it was a very East coast
(05:16):
kind of kind of thing he did. And it was,
you know, he was younger than Burrows, he was younger
than Pikowski, but they were clearly influences on him, and
he was very very well read. And Bruce Pattatt, the
other subpop guy not Jonathan, thought that he and I
should do a record together, and so we started working
on what would become the Prisonhead record. And this is
(05:39):
in the middle of Jesse having a profound mental problem
that he'd escaped in the past, and he had a
history with addiction, and so the last couple of years
were pretty rough, and he had a very very severe
decline just as we were starting to work on the
record and he took his life. Uh yeah, and so
(06:04):
I ended up finishing the record without him. But before
he passed, he had left me an angry, an angry
voicemail saying, I don't care if you like me. I'll
do it in the voice I don't care if you
like me. Finished the record. It's good work. Fuck you. You
(06:24):
know something like that. You know, he used to just
the scariest answering machine messages, you know, when I'm not
trying to make fun of somebody with their problems, but
just Jesse was. There's a wonderful documentary on Amazon Cold
I Am Secretly an Important Man that was made. Yeah,
(06:46):
well thats a taken from a poetry compilation of his.
But anyway, Sean really liked the record. Sean Smith, who
didn't exist at this point. And I did a lot
of beat programming, you know, break beats and collage elements,
(07:08):
and some other things, and that that was all part
of what the Prison record became, which is a very
unheard record in twenty twenty four. Very interesting to have
so many things in my in my discography that are invisible,
but the prison At record is almost invisible, and it's
getting reissued, so it's going to be out on subpop
(07:31):
in this Summersive platform next year. Yeah. But anyway, the
Bernstein record became an impetus for Sean and I to
get back together. And initially I wrote all the beats
and he sang and played some keyboards and pitch andhead
didn't work very hard, but we were together kind of
(07:52):
up till two thousand and one, and we didn't talk
to each other for about eight years, and then we
you know, played together more and put some finishing touches
on a record we'd started way back when. But the
point was is that without the Bernstein Record, there probably
would have never been Pigeonhead. And Sean at the time
(08:14):
was in a band called Bliss, which became Satchel, which
was a Seattle heavy guitar band that signed with Sony,
and he was also in Brad. He was the singer
for Brad, which oh yeah, it was Stone Coscert. Yeah. So,
and this was like Sean started with three bands he
(08:37):
passed a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think I heard that now the name is starting
to ring true because I feel like a lot of
people were talking about it on social media.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
A few years ago.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So got it.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, I remember that he's like Frank Sinatra. People fall
in love with him just based on his singing and
his lyrics and his vocal sound. So Sean, before he
left Planet I had a giant cult following, which I
think just gets bigger and bigger with his passing, which
is nice because it's great when people remembered as opposed
(09:11):
to the opposite.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Right, you spend all this time and effort and passion
on music, you kind of hope somebody is going to
be listening down the road, right Yeah, Legacy.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Anyway doesn't answer your question.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, no, absolutely Yeah. So did you say you finished
a record with him? Is that somebody?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
We have two records. We finished a third record. Actually
we got done in two thousand and one and went
through a little bit of reworking, but at this point
it's an unreleased third record that hopefully, well we'll find
somebody to put out here. It's actually twice has been
slated for release on different record labels, but record labels
(09:52):
don't last very long these days.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
It's not not what it once was.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
It no, to quote Mark Maren, it was a different time.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Oh you quoted Maren. I love that that whole bit
about it's a different time.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Nice. Nice.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So you you're a musician yourself. It sounds like, so
you started out playing music? Were you kind of a
guitar guy?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Growing up?
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Keyboards?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
What what was it that you found yourself gravitating towards
when you first started to get into music.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Well, uh, I took advantage of what they would teach
me in elementary school. So I played cello for a
little while, and I say Barnett for a little while,
but I'm primarily a keyboard player.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Nice. Nice, What kinds of suffer you're listening to back then?
Speaker 2 (10:49):
When you kind of got into the keyboard on iron?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Butterfly broke all hairm the doors you know, it's pretty old,
you know, So favorite doors record?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
What do you get?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Soft Parade? I learned how to play playing along with
the soft Parade?
Speaker 1 (11:10):
All right?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, I still like the self titled I think my
favorite song of theirs is still Roadhouse Blues though, that's
my that's my jam out of that group.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, my favorite. I really liked the Soft Parade because
I was a Beatles head and so the Soft Parade
side too is a suite just like a road song
or something like Heavy Road, although I think it predates
Heavy Road. But that's one of the things I liked
about the Doors is they would do stretched out, insane
kind of headfucked pieces. So as a as a can
(11:42):
eleven year old, I was reimpressed, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, No, I remember getting into the Doors probably, I
was probably about eleven or twelve, and it definitely seemed
from outer space and like you weren't quite sure what
was going to happen next.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
They weren't. Well, I'll respect, I know you've got gray
in your beard, but but I just always make with
younger people is that you had to experience it as
the cultural zeitgeist of the day. You know, Wearing an
Abby Road T shirt means you found the Spotify page,
you know, so.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
You went to Target.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, probably, and maybe you passionately love and understand Abby
Road and the music recorded there, So you know, I
don't I don't shame anybody for their T shirt. But
the doors were nuts and they weren't like any other
band of the day. And the the Jim Morrison I'm
(12:44):
telling you the truth now thing, you know that that
that really spoke to the kid in me. I was like, oh,
this is this must be the truth, you know. And
the war was going on, you know, coch ten eleven,
but all the records kind of politically radicalized me. You know.
So I was I wore before I had a draft number,
you know, you know, sure enough I had a draft number,
(13:07):
you know.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, No, I I get what you're saying about that
cultural zeitgeist thing because I was.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
I came of age in the early nineties.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Which was also another one of those another explosion. Yes, right,
So depending on where you were in that explosion, you
saw the same thing. You know, a musician would change
their clothes, and then your substitute school teacher would have
some similar thing. And then you go to Sunday school
and oh the Sunday school teacher's got a mustache. What
the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
You know, it's like everybody's wearing like converse. Now, yeah,
you know, yeah it you actually felt that change the
way that people were dressing the music they were buying,
and and.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I think we're probably I don't know, do you think
we'll ever have another one of those?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
No, the Internet, The Internet destroyed that destroyed wild There's
too much at once, and it's not worse, it's just different.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That's kind of my take on it as well.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I feel like there's just so much competition for attention
amongst art and music and movies and TV shows that
this is so fragmented that you can't have, you know,
another one of these things just kind of bubble up
and take over and be the focus.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Different thing.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
But Taylor Swift's got a little bit of that because
that's all anybody wants to talk about, But it's it
still feels like a very different thing because.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
That's you know, that's totally totally Top forty records anymore.
We can take away a few zeros, they're really Quincy
Jones talked about this. Somebody asked him about the music
industry and he just said, no, there is no music
industry that can in nineteen eighty eight, we sell too
many and Michael Jackson CDs in a weekend. That's a
(14:53):
music industry, you know. Yeah, eight nine CDs. Yeah, there
receipt that's when CDs are happening. So so yeah, the
scale of it and and also the the cultural weight
of music has changed. It may not come back. I'm
not sure. I was talking with the younger friend. Uh,
(15:19):
just like kind of what a thing Sergeant Pepper was
and how the Beatles started and you know, buttoned down sixties,
you know.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
And and and and they decided that things were going
to change, and and they you know, just through them
being whoever they were, and them having good you know,
machinery could help, you know, they changed everything.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And uh and uh, yeah, there's a lot of bad
came out of it. A lot of good came out
of it. But but yeah, you think, think about opening
the windows and you can hear Sergeant Pepper coming from
a house across the street. Well that was happening in
nineteen sixty six, sixty seven, you know, so right, you
know it was.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
It's just crazy to listen to that stuff and go
from love me dude to day in the life and
a relatively short span of history. When you break it
down to a handful of years, just what they did
and how quickly it developed into that, it's pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Well, they couldn't do anything else. They were so famous
that they you know, had to kind of you know
that they they were siloed, you know, to use a popular,
popular terminology or whatever.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
So playing in bands back then, when you first started
with the keyboard, or were you just kind of playing
at home and doing your thing there or.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
How did no? My brother and I had a band.
We played in the garage. We annoyed our neighbors.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Were they were they understanding or were they upset?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
There was a barber that lived three doors down, two
doors down, and he hated it, and he kept his
mouth shut until he couldn't take it anymore. And then
he started pounding on the door. He wouldn't even talk
to my dad. He just walked up to our door
and started pounding on it while we were playing. So
he pound his hand as hard as he could and
then walk away. And somebody would tell us, oh, yeah,
(17:11):
mister Chitwood was here. He was pounding on the garage door,
you know. Oh yeah, we didn't hear him. It's worth noting.
In my high school and in my surrounding universe, before
I left California, I had met what would become half
(17:31):
of the plim Souls a million miles. Yeah, Dave Paua
Rest in peace. He was in my high school and
George Lynch from Docin Wow. I played in the band
with George Lynch when I was a senior.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah. And then when I was just slumming before I
went to college, I played a couple of jams with
Dave Alvin from the Blasters.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So yeah, well it was a small world. It was
a different time, you know, it's a different time. Yeah,
that guy's kind of a wizard, speaking of marin quotes. Yeah,
oh wow, that's really cool. So at what age did
you leave there? You'd mentioned over twenty where that you
(18:18):
left at twenty Yeah, okay, and then you went up
to Seattle from.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
There, No, Ellensburg. This was before slacking. But it basically
was like, you know, I had given up on Los
Angeles as a place to make music by the age
of twenty.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
And so everything I.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Could do here, yeah, I'm through with this town. This
town has cued me up and spit me out. You know,
I ain't never coming back. And I moved to eastern Washington,
where there was this beautiful small town that I visited
as a teenager that I said, well, this is a
place where I could breathe easy. And you grew up
(19:02):
in Minneapolis, right.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
I grew up. I grew up in Surri, North Dakota,
of all places.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Okay, So I left at twenty ironically and came to Minneapolis.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
So I've been here longer than I was in North
Dakota at this point.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, my point is is that in Los Angeles you're
in a fish pool and you can't get out of it,
and the air sucks, and the water sucks, and if
you drive as fast as you can in any of
the four directions, you'll still be in the city for hours. Yes,
And I slowly realized that, like the frog and the
water that's getting hot, you know, I realized the water
(19:38):
was getting hot. I wanted to get out of there.
The air was just miserable in the seventies. Some people
don't think about this, you know, all the dystopian apocalypse
thrown at us by the millennials and disease and all
of that. Well, the air was worse, you know. Fifty
years ago we fixed a little bit of that, you know, So.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
You're telling me in some ways we were actually improving
as a society.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
If something, something gets done, yeah, yeah, but just as
in case the enemy sees his hat and he's a
white beard. I'm a hardcore unitarian leftist. I've been trying
as hard as I can to be as woke because
I can since age eleven, when we played war, we
didn't say jap we said Japanese. You know, so, so
in any way that I may accidentally say some stupid
(20:24):
old man thing that accidentally offends somebody, you should know
I'm trying as hard as I can. I'll look forward
to them. I have black friends. I have lots of
black friends. And that sounds like a joke, but they
fucking keep me educated and keep then tell me when
I'm fucking up. And I and I teach in a
(20:46):
school that has a lot of trans kids and neurodiversion kids,
and I learned a lot from them too. So so
I'm an old man with a beard, and I'm very opinionated,
but I'm not Mega, not remotely mega. This is a
blue head, this is not a red hat.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
It sounds like you're a Marin fan, and one of
the things. Do you listen to his podcast frequently or
just watch stand up or what's your what's your level
of Maron.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
I don't really spend a lot of time listening to
podcasts per se. But when I was learning how to
run all that immersive technology, yeah, I had a very
long commute, and so that's when I started streaming all
the Mark Mirren stuff that was on YouTube because that
helped keep me company for long periods of time.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yeah, podcasts are great for road trips and long drives,
that's for sure, because I could suck up a couple hours.
But he's got a thing he talks about speaking of
woke culture, and he talks about certain comedians will say
you can't say anything anymore, and he says, wrong, you
(21:56):
can say whatever you want, but before you say whatever
you want, you have to realize that there are repercussions
to certain things that you can say or that you say.
So are you willing to deal with that or not?
And then make your decision. And I think he's absolutely right.
You could say shitty stuff as you want. That doesn't
mean someone's not going to be mad at you for it.
So you have to make these decisions. And he goes,
(22:19):
it's a hack thing to say that because you know
it's just a cop out. You're trying to rally one
side over the other. And I think that's actually really true.
I think, you know, you could still say whatever you want,
but not everyone's gonna like it. And the whole free
speech thing is, you know, I could say whatever I want.
It's free speech and you can't take it away. Well,
(22:39):
no one's going to throw you in jail for it.
They might think you're an asshole, but you probably are,
so do what you want, but also realize people are
probably not.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
I was going to love what you say.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
So I think I like that theory that he has
about that if you want to be an asshole, well
then people are going to think you're an asshole. We
can shift back to music, just just to a limathy
amount emails I'll get. So, where did you say you
moved when you went to Washington Ellen Ellensburg? Is that
where the trees are from? That's how I met the trees,
(23:14):
That's how you met the trees. So were they kids
at that point? As I mentioned, I had Garlee Connor
on and he was talking a lot about growing up
and and you know, Agan was kind of the troublemaker
in town who had a cool voice.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Well, that's one way to put it. And I can
hear Mark landing and laughing right now because he was.
That was funny. Yeah, and he had a wonderful laugh,
Marking a wonderful, wonderful laugh. No, Mark Pickerel wrote me
a fan letter, really when I was living in the
(23:53):
Bay Area in eighty three. So when I moved to
Ellensburg in eighty six, the first thing I did was
look up Mark Pickerel and we became very good friends
and still are and six months later as recording the
Screaming Trees.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
What were you doing at the time you wrote the
fan letter? I was in pill Mel, Okay, so he
was a fan of El Mel was what did you
say he was a fan? No, No, he didn't know
anything about Mel. I had a forty five out in
nineteen seventy nine. All you kids out there, you.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Can all think you know about all the old people,
but I had a single out in nineteen seventy nine,
pre eighties. Okay, So that puts you're a viper Jackfair
a negative trend and anyway, sorry, that's just nonsense. But anyway, yeah,
I had a forty five and I can sign some
(24:51):
of them in this wonderful record store in Ellensburg, and
Mark Pott it and broke me a fan letter and
told me all about his band, which I think at
that point was called The Explosive Generation. I don't think
Lannigan was in the band at that point, but that
eventually became something like The Screaming Trees. Although maybe that's
(25:11):
maybe there's an origin story somewhere that I've just fucked
up by saying that out loud. You know, no, Explosive
Generation was a separate ban The Screaming Trees started on.
You know, who knows. But you know, it's a small town.
I mean, it's fucking four thousand people there. Seven thousand
is that It might have been fourteen thousand people there
by the mid eighties. But I was there for a
little while in the mid seventies, and I came back
(25:34):
in the eighties and it had grown.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Up and not that much. You know, wow, So it
is pretty small. How far away from Seattle is that.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
An hour and a half over the mountains? That means,
you know, Minnesota, boy, you know, winter times not so easy,
you know, because you got over the mountains. But eastern
part of the state might as well, be Montana or
Kansas or something. It's like the beginning. It's the end
of the Midwest. It kind of route worlds right up
to the mountains. And then on the other side you
(26:07):
got Seattle at Tacoma, Olympia, you know, Portland, all that.
But the eastern side it's rural and flat forever and
uh and and real redneck and real conservative. And anytime
you have that, then you have all this wonderful sub
boiling under. So it's kind of fighting against it. And
(26:27):
every small town in eastern Washington in the eighties they
had a small scene, and they had three or four
bell Weather bands that you know, went around and played
other places. So the scenes were all small, but collectively
it was a scene of about five to seven hundred
people in eastern Washington. And that's between tri cities Yakama, Ellensburg,
Moses Lake, Euphrata, and uh yeah, and that's about it.
(26:54):
We didn't have any truck with Boise. Boise was a
whole other vibrant thing. But in between Ellensburg and Boise,
he was Spokane, which is I have time to talk
about Spokane. Now I'm gonna get emails from Spokane. Yeah, sorry, everybody,
we're not going to talk about Spokane.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So when you got up there and you started working
with him, you had a studio already, or did you.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yes. My dear friend that I went to college with
in the seventies, Sam Albright, who's still in Ellensburg, he
and his father and some local artisans had remodeled pretty
much a burnt out building from nineteen thirteen and they
put in a soft industry downstairs, which made a lot
of money, and then the upstairs was a recording studio
(27:44):
slash video studio, few offices and it was very very nice.
I was kind of limited. It was an eight track,
but for me it was challenging. And yeah, a lot
do a.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Lot, you know, And how did you learn how to
do it? Did you learn back at California or.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
You know? I knew a little bit about that technology
from my education at Evergreen, and I went to Evergreen
specifically to play to the play around with their synthesizers.
And in the old days, synthesizers needed a multi track
tape machine. You can't really do anything with a synthesizer
(28:27):
by itself, because you build some thing and then you've
got to record it and then add something to it.
You have to have it all, you have to clear
it and do something. It's everybody's process is different. But
back in the old days, every synthesizer studio would have
a four tracker and eight track. So I learned how
to record, and I you know, learned. I did a
(28:48):
lot of composition in that situation, working on my own music,
and began to learn how to mix. But I never
recorded drums or anything. You know. I did a little
of that in the Bay Area, but I had a
lot of help. So in the eighties, actually eighty two
on I you know, I did some recording in San Francisco,
and I recorded this wonderful, wonderful band Paris Working that's
(29:12):
actually sort of getting hit again. They only had one
record out, but it was very cool and it was
you know, simple minds, Bowie early eighties giant stuff. My
good friend Phil Hurts played played drums in the band
and had other anyway, so I did some cool records,
but they were all done with engineers kind of running
everything where Ellensburgh. That's when I sat up the mics,
(29:35):
plugged everything in, you know, cleaned up the tape machine,
you know, got all the emulsion off the heads and
made records and sent them off to mastering. And you know,
sometimes I followed them down to the mastering lab and
learned about mastering. So and you know Sam Albright who
I just mentioned, you know, I mean he was already
(29:56):
a pretty savvy engineer when I moved back to Ellensburg,
so he showed me how he ran the studio. And yeah,
screaming Trees Other Worlds was the second thing I recorded there.
So I recorded a country record and then I recorded
Other Worlds with exactly the same setup. You know, it
didn't change anything because that's all I knew how to do.
(30:18):
So yeah, and it doesn't screaming trees. It doesn't country record,
it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
So the screaming trees were kind of your entry level
into kind of those scenes up there when you first
got up there.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Yeah, I mean in the eighties. But there's a wonderful
Seattle band called the Beakers, and I recorded the Beakers
in their home, and then an Olympian that was like
eighty eighty one or something like that. And then the
place I lived in Olympia was all the roommates had
(30:52):
ship so we had dape machines and synthesizers and so
a lot came out of there. But the world hasn't
heard pretty much of it. You know, what was it
like going to Evergreen?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
You hear a lot about that that college, pretty liberal school.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
It sounds like, what what was it like going there?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I haven't heard much about it other than so and
so went there, So and so went there.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
You know, So what was it like? From your person?
Speaker 3 (31:15):
You don't know anything about the Joe Rogan thing or
any of that stuff. No, oh god, I want to
get into that, but you can.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Oh, here comes Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Google Joe Rogan and the Evergreen State College if you
want to learn all about Joe Rogan shooting off his
mouth and causing fear and or clothing and uh and
mega freaks overreacting and everything. But but every yeah, the
Evergreen State College recent last couple of years COVID. It
(31:49):
was when he was had a lot of foot mouth
in that COVID period. And you know, people, we shouldn't
take people like that that seriously, you know, but that's
another discussion. Go to Evergreen was great. Going to Evergreen
exposed me to a lot of stuff that somehow I'd
missed growing up in Los Angeles, and it was the
last of the free schools. There was Franconia, there was
(32:14):
fair Haven. I always forget the one in Yellow Springs,
but that was a seventies experiment that was just sort
of dying, this idea of schools with no grades and
individual contracts and you and the faculty writing evaluations of
each other at the end of the school year. You know. Wow,
so so yeah. And that's where I started working at
(32:43):
Radio Chaos KOs when I learned about independent music, and
and that probably was more influential on my career and
my ethos and my aesthetic, you know, for the rest
of my life. Was getting that that grounding and the
(33:03):
and you know, underground independent you know, music distribution and
the validity of the smaller voices and how there's nothing
wrong with the major label music. But that's easy to hear.
There's some things are hard to hear, you know, isn't
isn't it wonderful? I mean, I imagine you know who the
(33:24):
Shags are?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
I interviewed Dot Wigan for Off Magazine, which was a
magazine that came out of Olympia, Washington, I believe, and
Dot's still alive. She could, if he remembers, she could. Probably.
I think I'm the first person to get to her.
I'm thinking I'm the first press person to say, tell
me the Shags story. Really. Yeah, And because my good
(33:52):
friend Dave Rowl said, well, you know, somebody's got to
do this, and he's from Ohio, so he kind of
had a good angle on kind of what rural New
Hampshire was like, Yeah, a New Hampshire uh and uh,
And so we just started looking around the phone book
for Wiggins and uh and the first one I found
(34:14):
and free my New Hampshire. He said, God, I'm going
to make a real fool of myself. I'm gonna try
to do the voice. Uh said, no, that's not us,
but I know who you're talking about, and you and
hang on a second, you know. And so he went
out and uh got them to call me or something
like that. Yeah, the town is so small, so I
(34:35):
was one phone number away from reaching the Jags. Uh
and all that, and yeah, I thought was wonderful. And
also just like, why is somebody talking to me? And
we'd forgotten about this record and oh my god, some
people hearing this record. Oh my god. You know, we
were terrible. We got better, you know, you know so,
(34:56):
and that's funny how that works.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
It's the stuff that people fans go on for while
and they get better at things, and it's like I liked.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
It when they were sloppy.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we could talk about the the rest
of the interview, that's not but yeah, but anyway, that's
throughout magazine, through Chaos Radio, that's you know, I got
turned onto all manner of things.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
And did a lot of bands come in for interviews
and in studio performances And did you get a chance
to meet them there or how did you get in
with the with the rest of the scenes beyond the trees.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Well, Olympia, I had a big well the trees were
later I'm talking about happening nine eighty eighty one. Yeah,
and once again that was a different time. Uh. And
the Olympia had bands. You had had bands. Portland had bands. Uh.
(35:53):
People played on radio stations. But that, yeah, that happened
to Chaos, But visiting bands didn't do that as far
as I can remember. So how did I meet people
while I was in a band? And I opened some
shows in Seattle and I got to play with the
Beakers a few times. There was one big show where
(36:15):
I opened the first band whereas my band Customer Service,
and then the Beakers, and then Gang of Four. Oh wow,
the original lineup of Gang of Four. That's pretty awesome.
I opened for Ultravox. Wow, I know. Well it was
a small world, you know. Well it wasn't that much
(36:37):
is going on, you know, but these are big shows.
This is the show box. This is you know, anything
bigger in the show box when you're to the big
theaters in Seattle. So so that's why I met those bands,
and the Beakers introduced me a lot of people in Seattle.
I met a lot of people that way. How did
you eat the sub pop guys? Well, Jonathan wasn't a
(37:01):
sub pop guy. Jonathan was still in Ohio. Uh So.
Bruce Pabott was a student at Evergreen and he specifically
came there because we had this radical radio station and
we had this radical magazine. So he, uh, he was
from Chicago and thought that this was a much more
(37:22):
interesting scene and he and he did the sub pop
magazine in thes for college credit as part of his
education at the Evergreen State College. Wow, how's that he
were free? Right? Did they cost anything. I don't think.
I don't know if they even cost anything. I think
(37:43):
maybe they were bucked or a couple of bucks or something.
But so I know, that wasn't really sub pop proper.
It wasn't a record label. It was more like an
audio magazine.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Like the Seeds of It.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Though. Well no, I mean, uh no, I'm going I'm
going deeper. A lot of the people on the sub
pop ca setts are the people that made eighties culture happen,
and Bruce did a lot to expose those people to
the rest of America. That's what subpop cassetts were supposed
to be. They were all second city bands.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Mhm.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
His idea was that there was a vibrant scene in
the American rock world that was all different than what
was going on in New York and Los Angeles. So
all the bands are on subpop. You know, we're from
these other cities and and I don't want to do
the roll call, but some of the people are still
making music.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, I sent you a Razorhouse track. Yeah that's cool.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Yeah, yeah, well that was the Boneman of Barumba. They
were on sub pop five. Okay, wow, Uh, nobody knows
who Jason and the Scorches are but Jason and then
I know, yeah, well they were Jason and the Nashville
Scorches on sub pop nine. Yeah, Jad Fairy, I know
(39:00):
that on sub pop you know, I mean you have
Japanese run sub pop. You know. Uh so I'll just
shut up right now. But but but but but but
that that's kind of like the the stupid endless bar
argument that you know, it was a lot more radical,
you know, in nineteen eighty one than it was, you
know in nineteen ninety one. Yeah, well did you see
(39:24):
so go ahead, Yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Were recording a lot of those bands at that time,
right for sub pop? You do love back about I
only do gotcha?
Speaker 1 (39:35):
And did you Forgee Me?
Speaker 3 (39:37):
On one hand? Okay?
Speaker 1 (39:40):
And what so you did?
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
That Sound Garden record was on sub pop?
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yes, okay, and you did some Nirvana stuff obviously whatever
happened to them that worked out?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
What else did you do for sub pop? Was on
Wound on sub pop?
Speaker 3 (39:59):
No? No, they were on the.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Oh yeah they were yeah. Wow, they were like heroes.
In my hometown in North Dakota, people were obsessed with
that band.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
They were so good. Yeah, they're still good even though
they've lost burn, they're still really good. They're still there there.
It's so wonderful that they're playing. But no, I did
love Battery. I did an EP for them. I did
uh uh Helio's Creed's Singles Club record, uh, you know,
(40:32):
and and a Seaweed remix that everybody hated and they
didn't like the mix or they didn't like this uh,
probably both. It was pretty weird. Uh yeah, but but
me and Seaweed liked it, so that's okay. Uh and
(40:57):
uh and then Beat Happening. Eventually we're distributed to Subpop,
as were some of the Girl Trouble records. So because
they worked on Beat Happening in Girl Trouble, then those
records came out on sub pop, even though I think
they might have been on K distributed by subpop or something.
But my sub pop thing isn't big. And and and
I just want Jack to get the credit because he
(41:17):
was doing three sessions a day and you know, and
really really honing his craft and uh and so yeah,
some people that don't know who Jack is, they meet
me and they think I missed her Seattle and no, no,
I'm the already weirdo Evergreen guy that moved to Seattle
and recorded the Funny Bands. You know, I was supposed
(41:38):
to record Earth that didn't come together. There were communication issues,
you know.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yeah, I can't imagine what that would have been like.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Probably was like exactly like how it would have done
because Earth just did one thing and they did it
really well and they didn't need anybody any help. Yeah,
so so so it did. It didn't that didn't need
to happen. You know, they're kind of still around, aren't they.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
I thought I saw something a couple of years ago
that there was well the personnel has changed radically, but no,
Dylan Dylan still makes It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
And there's that wonderful documentary by Clyde Peterson. Uh even
Hell as its Heroes. Yeah, that's we're checking out as well. No, Dylan,
Dylan Dylan still makes wonderful music. That's cool, awesome.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
So how did you get involved with Soundgarden at that
point then?
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Because, uh, that was subpop they they wanted they were
going to do one they were going to do one
last record for a second record with Soundgarden before they
signed with SST, before they signed to A and M.
So it was actually kind of almost worked out at
that point, so they just went I was still living
in Ellensburg, then may come over and record them at
(42:47):
UH with through Drew canyol At using his mobile truck,
which has been on many indie records. But we UH
pulled it up behind the More Theater and recorded.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
An EP and the More Theater is that where it
was Wow, yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
What was it?
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I can't even imagine what that would have been like
with Cornell at that point with that voice. Recording that
voice had to have been a real treat.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
I only did it once and we were in a hurry.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
And no time to think about it, no time.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
To think about it. Set up in a KG four
fourteen and probably into a tv X win twenty when
twenty when sixty compressor and then I don't know, maybe
there's some EQ there. I don't know, and true True
canulates set up most of that and so yeah uh
and and and that was all done in an overdub
(43:43):
that wasn't done enough for More Theater.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
So also you got the kind of like the live
takes at the War Theater and then you.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Right, and we've been asked at a at a actually
like a weird ad Studio. That true. It was doing
trades with down in Portland. So the X we had
his giant view of Portland at night. We're working the
night shift with this huge glass window in the city
and then working on these That sounds kind of awesome,
it was, except we didn't have time, and they didn't
(44:11):
know about time management, and the musicians didn't no no
dust Almond or in town. So Kim thought we could
take time off to go see dust Dollmon and have
them come back and sing back up. And I was going,
We've got today and tomorrow and we've got these many songs,
and I'm supposed to do a remix. So the whole
(44:31):
brutal truth was is that I had to decide that
the other way I was going to ever get the
time to do the remix was I had them roll
stems for me. I drew roll stems for me of
different sub mixes of FOP, and then I took that
back to Ellensburg and transferred it and onto a digital
machine on a pre Dad digital machine, and then I
(44:52):
took that and pasted it into an eight track over
in Ellensburg. So the pop remix is all made out
of stems. And stuff, and you're looking at like, what's
the fop remix? Well, uh, Down Garden had me do
fucked up remixes of several of their songs. So if
you go to Spotify, you can see all the fucked
up Steve Steve Fisk mixes, okay, and it's it's kind
(45:16):
of one of the things that kind of makes them
a different band than other these bands is that every
single record they put out is that we went Steve
Fisk to suck this up over here, you know, I did,
uh you know, I did remixes for the for the
comeback record, you know. So, so I'm very proud of them,
and they're very strange, and yeah, that's pretty awesome. Yeah
(45:40):
it is. And that's that's where, yeah, that that's where
I got to hang with them a little more in
the nineties. That was fun.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
And uh, Nirvana you did, was it? Staine and Benison
were the ones.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
That you Yes, there was an EP and I recorded
one side of the e P and the other side
was Jack tracks, uh, and there were five songs are recorded,
so I finished two for the EP and then the
other three are pretty radically bootlegged. And they were on
all of the subsequent Nirvana reissues.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, well, I was gonna ask you. I think I
saw something online. Did you work with Tangerine Dream on something? No? No,
I I mastered a record that was Tangerine Dream soundtracks. Okay,
but but no, I never met Tangerine Dream. I had
(46:34):
nothing to do with him. I just did some tweaks
on some stereo mixes that our friend brought in. Gotcha,
and and then since too. I also did other things
that I said that were kind of interesting to me.
You've worked with Ben Gibbert a little bit, So you
did that about a son? And then I think you
did was it the teenage fan Club covers record that
(46:54):
he did?
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Was that the two things? Yeah? And how'd that come up?
Speaker 3 (46:58):
And he also did a reverse gender version of and
I Love Her? Oh, and I nicked that for him? Yeah,
and I love him. There was a record that was
all gender swaps, nice and did a very much like
the trans Atlanta record.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
That's verty cool. I'm sorry, what what? What's what's the
cover record? I'm sorry?
Speaker 1 (47:23):
It's was it?
Speaker 3 (47:26):
They named one of their records after their records.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Fan Club band Wagon?
Speaker 3 (47:31):
Was that the one wagon? Which sounds like a death
Cab title, but it's actually paraphrasing them. Yeah, sorry, band Wagons,
forgive me about that in a long time. That was
a lot of fun too.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, I bet he's a talentson guy.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
So I'm very smart. Actually seems like it we uh,
we've got to hang a little bit. It sounds like
I'm saying I'm cool or something, but we've actually, you know,
stayed in contact, and he's a Jesse Bernstein fan. I
got to take him out to the lab in Redmond
and play him the immersive mixes of the Bernstein record
(48:09):
and all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah, I want to dig deep into that so that
that Jesse Bernsteed thing you said is coming out soon.
There's really no way of finding it as of today.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
No, but if you google Jesse Bernstein in Prison, there's
four of the tracks live on on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Okay, yeah, that's that's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
So well, the record I'm the Fellow CD. The CD
does not go for one hundred dollars a copy. The
CD is very viable. Is out there anybody that's still
wants prison? Maybe I've seen it maybe once in a
while for over fifty dollars, But it's it's actually quite catchable,
and it's one wonderful CD. It's it's literature, it's not music. Yeah,
(48:53):
litera sure, with music is kind of a secondary thing
to it. You know.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
It's fascinating stuff. Just listening to one thing you sent me?
What are you working on now? What are you up
to currently?
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Well, one of the things I sent you was a
Chief Seattle by the Lazy Giants. Do you know who
the Lazy Giants are?
Speaker 1 (49:14):
I don't know the Lazy Giants?
Speaker 3 (49:16):
Okay? Do you know who the Toiling Midgets are? Now? Okay,
well they predate me. They're an ancient art punk rock
band from the Bay Area, Okay. And they've been together
on and off for years, and they started playing and
(49:40):
writing again recently, and they had to change their name
because they couldn't get bookings. So they went from being
the Toiling Midgets to being the Lazy Giants.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Got it?
Speaker 3 (49:50):
And I like that twist of the name. And they
are two younger casts that are new to the band.
But it's these two wonderful guitar players. One Ant Deluvin
pre eighty Seattle punk rock, Paul Hood from the Mesas
and many other groups, and then Craig Gray from the
(50:13):
Toiling Midgets, but before that he was a negative trend
with Will Shatter from Flipper, So dust off the cobwebs.
This is ancient punk rock history. And they just they
love playing together and they are very good and they
(50:34):
have their own kind of melodic, wanking feedback double guitar
thing and it's just gorgeous. And they've been doing it
for years. And there are wonderful Toiling Midgets records. You
can find them on the internet, you can find them
in streaming audio. They're all very available. But I got
(50:55):
to mix a record for them just recently and I
got to open them, uh last Sunday night they play here.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Yeah, nice, Yeah, that's cool. So be all new material
they're doing, yes, and it's really good. And they're still
growing and progressing and doing new things.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
And these are old men, yeah, you know, they're they're
just they're just good at it. And and then and
and they're very having me playing together. I were there
twenty people at our show on Sunday night. Yeah, and
they did not phone it in. They brought it one
hundred percent. That was just I love that. Yeah, yeah,
I love that. And you're still playing live yeah, yeah, yeah.
(51:40):
I opened sets here and there for for people, and
Lori uh Lori Goldson and I did a few things together.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah the yes, yeah nice. Still kicking around there.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
And then behind me you might see this sign that
says ty Wagner backwards. Yes, Okay, Me and this younger guy,
Hunter Lee. Here in Tacoma, we're producing a single for Tye.
Tye had big hits in the mid sixties and recorded
(52:17):
with the Wrecking Crew at gold Star and Wow. One
song in particular, it's titled I'm a No Count. It's
been covered by The Blues Explosion and other big deal
eighties and nineties in a garage bands. And Tie had
(52:39):
disappeared and sort of re emerged about eleven years ago,
and he was living in Washington and had done music
in a long time, and I got to play in
as a very interesting band with It was three old guys,
two young guys, and one the aged guy. But they
(53:01):
are all really really good at what they're doing, and
we basically, you know, we're like a gout bucket, you know,
garage rock band playing. We did one of his old
songs and then there's a new song as well, but
you know, it's bom bom bom kanad dumb dumb kannad.
And you know it's all nice fight in this thing.
(53:22):
But Ty what I don't know if you can read
the sign and says the the pioneer of garage rock,
Ty Wagner. Okay, so that's what Ty Wagner is. You know,
he's you know from that he's big sixty seven. He's
the real thing. I don't know how he is. I'm
(53:42):
guessing he's over eighty and he's still dressed of the part.
He's got side burns and really cool outfits and has
a very uh he's regal. He knows, he knows he's
the ship. But it's like not ubnoxious. It's actually really
fun during inspiring working with Ty nice.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
I lock this guy up. He sounds like a trip talented.
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
And there's some comeback footage of him where he's singing
again and doing his thing. He's played with some other
folks the Ugly Things, uh, comp that comes out the
Garage Rock book. You know about this Ugly Thing. It's
a Bible of garage rock, and I think it comes
out quarterly. And that's where he re emerged. You know,
(54:29):
somebody you know found him on Facebook and then all
of a sudden, ugly things says, oh my god, Ty
Wagner's alive. You know.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
So have you ever seen that searching for Sugarman documentary?
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yeah, inspiring him the same way. And the Monks documentary.
I just saw that last month. The Monk's documentary is
so wonderful, so beautiful. I don't know if you know
about that. No, I don't have. You're giving me a
lot of homework here. I kind of like it. Trans
Atlantic the trans Atlantic fee back. Okay, that sounds like
(55:02):
a death cab record, but that's uh it does That's that?
That's the Monks documentary.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Nice. I'll check that out too.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
Cool, So glad to hear you're still at it and
doing new things. It sounds like you're keeping busy looking
back at everything to date.
Speaker 1 (55:20):
Do you have.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
What what is your what record or what recording that
you've made is something that you're most proud of? First
thing that kind of comes to mind that you're like,
that's kind of the pinnacle of this thing.
Speaker 3 (55:36):
Well, I got three okay, uh uh that actually the
last two unwound records I did probably you know, and
they were done in a hurry, but that they were
a lot of fun and a lot of great ideas
(55:59):
flying around the other one with the other two. I'm sorry,
I'm not but I have thought about this quite a bit.
Another Desert, Another Sea, which is three Mile Pilot, and
I produced that for Geffen and they got dropped and
that came out on Touch and Go with some stuff
(56:20):
that I didn't work on. Some other wonderful stuff they
did with another producer down in San Diego. But that's
where Pinned Back and Black Heart Procession came from. They're
all bands came out of Three Mile Pilot, which was
a wonderful party almost performance art band out of San
Diego that Tony Berg, my A and r at Geffen
(56:43):
got to sign Pill Melt. Yes, yeah, I thought I
would be I could produce that and anyway, that was
a fun record, and then both at Geraldine Fivers Records
I did I'm very very proud of. But I think
Butch has a aged really really well. I think Butch
by the Geraldine Fivers is a completely insane off the
(57:07):
hook record. Uh you know, melodrama of trans children, people
dying of aids, you know, all this recollections on a
dark past because Carla had a very dark past. It's
a beautiful record. Beautiful record, and many of the songs
(57:29):
are live with one of the people, and that means
the vocals were live.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
And Carla is really an amazing vocal talent. She's one
of my favorite writers and and and an amazing performer.
But her voice is really really something and I just
(57:56):
feel sola key that I got to work with her.
And John Goodmanson was there with me. John Gimmison was
a big part of my work with both Fivers records,
and he was a big part of both records, but
especially Butch. I mean we set her up so that
she can play guitar and sing live in the control room. Yeah,
so we had everything boothed off. So so it's it's
(58:17):
It was a band with really really wonderful takes and
great playing abillity. Nils Klein was in the band at
that point. Yeah, people didn't know who Nils Klein was
back then, but I certainly do now. Yes. So so anyway, uh,
really and and and William Tutton and Kevin Fitzgerald and
(58:40):
uh Jesse Green, Uh you know, really really really amazing
players and and and Yeah, they just delivered in her
hurry on time. We did one song a day and
every song was different, so we have a totally different
setup for each song, change the drum mics around, change
the drums around, and was really a luxurious in a
(59:04):
hurry schedule. And it did a lot of the Sunset
Sound Factory done in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (59:10):
Oh cool.
Speaker 3 (59:11):
Yeah, it was very very cool in an old room
and still had that weird white peg board would be
Aspesta Senate and yeah, it's just a blast. So yeah,
I I point a lot of people up the Butch
record when they asked me for a recommendation of some
shit I've worked on.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
Nice, I'll look at that.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
It's a savage record. It's very very good.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
Okay, it's because they're good.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
It's me. But I got that.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
But you didn't fuck it up, Steve.
Speaker 2 (59:44):
So what's one record that you feel like people should
really check out? And maybe that isn't no that's out
there that they should dial up and give a shot.
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Look the Bernstein record, which I didn't really produce. I
composed it, you know, and I orchestrated a bunch of
a bunch of prerecorded texts. But the Bernstein record is
worth finding. Although it's not streamable. Sorry everybody, it's not
streamable right now. But I'm very very proud of that.
And uh, and I'm very proud of both the Pitcheonhead records,
(01:00:22):
and as we move into the future, they are disappearing.
I mean, they're quite listenable, they're they're they're you know,
and all the streaming surfaces. But you know, Shahn's past
and we never worked really hard. We didn't you know,
we recorded you know, sort of three records over a
decade and didn't tour. So the idea that people don't
(01:00:42):
know who we are makes complete sense. And I got
a new project. So here's five and uh, there's only
a couple of singles right now. But I'm in another
situation with a poet, only in this situation it's a rapper,
(01:01:05):
Brody Stevens.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
And that's what you sent me. Yeah, yeah, that's a
grub stretch. Yeah I know that too. I was like,
I did not expect the rapping to come in, and
I'm like, oh, this is super cool.
Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Yeah, master by Jack and Dino was excelling as a
mastering engineer as well as everything else he does these days.
But yeah, there'll be a new Crumbs thing coming together
next year, and I'm very excited about that.
Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Do some deep dives and some of the stuff that
you brought up. I knew quite a bit of stuff,
and I did not know quite a bit of stuff.
So it's going to be fun to look.
Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
A little deeper. It's worth noting I come from a
long line of New England preachers and uh and school teachers,
and so the idea that all I do is at
this age is broadcast. You know, Oh check that out.
Oh no, you need this, you need this, you need
I mean I told you I'm teaching high school now,
(01:02:00):
so I yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Well tell me about that. What are you doing for
high school? What are you teaching?
Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Music? History? And recording? And I and and just to
briefly finish my point, somebody told me there's a whole
genetic thing that once a man. Maybe it happens with
women too, and maybe it happens across the gender diaspora.
I don't know. But past a certain point, you just
(01:02:28):
start debriefing because you realize the time is running out,
so you kind of start telling people things. You know.
So we never got around a very white We never
go around my connection to the monkeys, you know, well,
that's for another interview sometimes, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
But I've got a picture with Davy Jones right up here.
Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
Yeah, right there we go, So that'll remind you the
next time out. We'll have to talk about that because
it does connect in a metaway to Nirvana and a
lot of other things. But that's another story. But but yes,
right now, I've got the semester off because there wasn't
funding for it. But I'm an adjunct faculty at the
Tacoma School of the Arts. Although that's its acronym, and
(01:03:10):
it's one of three acronym schools that are funded by
Bill and Melinda Gates.
Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Oh yeah, their foundation.
Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
They somehow had this idea twenty two years ago that
there needed to be a special part of the Tacoma
High School, the high school system for special kids. So
I two days a week I was teaching and I
(01:03:38):
will pick this up in February again, but for two
semesters I was teaching recording and then also sort of
infrastructure of the alternative music business for seventeen year old kids.
And some of them are non binary and some of
them are actrum divergent, and it's it's just a wonderful
(01:04:05):
high school I mean it's high school, so everyone still
fights and everybody still has caddy little wars with each other,
but also everyone acknowledges that people are very special just
as they are, and so it's a very welcoming, wonderful place.
And this dude are smart as hell, and I get
to do fun things like they think. And I won't
(01:04:28):
delay with the thing. But here's a great story. He's
just a little bit of kind of fun I get
to have. For all of you that don't know this,
there's this wonderful band from Hoboken named the Feelies, and
when we's were made their first record. Their first record
is a clone of the Feelies Jacket, so it was
one of the exactly the same as the Pelice records.
(01:04:49):
It's a blue thing with the four members at the bottom.
Except the Feelies are very real people and they were
kind of airbrushed to look a little Hollywood where Weezer
are Hollywood. Okay, that's okay. It was a different time,
but the students at Soda this one semester sort of
(01:05:12):
were really into Weezer. Is this sort of pathetic dad
rock thing. They were into Weezer kind of for the
perversity of being into Weezer in twenty twenty three, twenty
twenty four. But the point of it was is that
I pulled up Buddy Holly. I had the stamps for
Buddy Holly off of Guitar Heroes, so it was a mabel,
not the real stamps, but something where you can pull
(01:05:32):
it apart and you can hear, you know, the guy
singing in falsetto through an entire track. It says like
he's standing on his tiptoes. Anyway, I pulled up the
Weezer jack and we talked about it for a minute,
and I said, oh, kids, you know about the Feelies
and this is the fun part of the story. So
I pulled up the Feelies jacket and they're going, wait
(01:05:56):
a minute, I love doing that. What what does it
sound like? And so I played them some feel these
tracks and like, wow, this is really cool. When did
this happen? Nineteen ninety one, nineteen eighty nine? And it
went no, no, and they all went, yeah, more shit
(01:06:18):
that happened in the past, Fuck this shit. You know,
they were just furious. I found something else they loved
that was very intriguing to them, and we were part
of the story. But it was like, it happened in
nineteen eighty, you're kidding, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
I love those threads. I love that sort of thing.
My daughter's super she's eleven. She's super into Olivia Rodrigo
and I don't know if you've heard this new Olivia
Rodrigo record, but there's.
Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
A big yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
It's so she was kind of a Disney thing and
then she put out this new record and it's like,
this is like a nineties record, and it's she's a
pop star.
Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
And I read an interview with her and the interviewer
was like, what, you know, who are your favorite bands?
And she's like Babes and Toilet and I was like, what,
this is Disney. So you listen to this record and
it's poppy, but there's a lot of little nods to
nineties music in there. And there's one song that I
was like, oh my gosh, I got to play Luscious
(01:07:21):
Jackson for my daughter and I played the song and
she's like, this sounds like Olivia Rodrigo, and I'm like,
other way, Olivia Rodrigo sounds like this. But it's it's
a pretty cool record for a top forty pop record.
It's kind of fun. To see the nods of the
some of the nineties stuff on there. But it's just
funny to see kids realize that this brand new, exciting
(01:07:44):
thing has a history behind it that they didn't even
know existed.
Speaker 3 (01:07:49):
Yeah. No, Well, I have a spiel about how intimidating
it is for a young person to have access to
one hundred years of music. You know, the computer, the
same thing they make the music on, also tells them that,
oh shit, this is the present, and the past is
like a bully, and the past will win every day.
(01:08:10):
The past wins, you know, and uh.
Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
It usually does if you. You know, when you go
to the source, usually the source is better than the
things that came after. Well, and that's why you have
to learn how to be patient.
Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
Like I I hated Kiss, you know, from the from
the get go, and I still hate Kiss, but I've
recorded so many wonderful bands that have been influenced by
Kiss in a very positive, wonderful way because Kiss was
the first radical thing they saw and they took inspiration
with it and made it.
Speaker 5 (01:08:40):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
I didn't bother to hate Corn, you know, because I
figured corn will there'll be something good coming down that's
Corn influenced. That will be that'll they'll make up for
all the indignities of having to listen to corn. You know,
that's a good phrase. And and and then corn is
(01:09:00):
fun compared to limp biscuit.
Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
You know, Oh god, you know bes compared to limp biscuits.
Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
Yeah, so so so you know, there's always something interesting
coming around. And that's the best part about this time frame.
Now is it fast? So the influences, you know, I
mean it is tired. I am tired of listening to
something and going, oh, I can hear the three records
that you think you're making at this point. So so
(01:09:32):
I'll stop, I'll stop, I get deep on this stuff.
I start talking about history is bunk. We we have
we have to we have to get all this ship
out of the way. And and no, you can't make
anything new with a guitar. You know, it's it's it's
it's kind of dead in the water. But at the
same time, it's a wonderfully expressive instrument and it's a
social protest thing. And you can take acoustic guitar with
(01:09:55):
you everywhere and sing a song. So I don't know,
I don't have any hard truths, you know, you know,
but it's so funny. It's it's funny to be living
in this wonderful time when all the cultures are melting
together and and and interesting music is coming out. Have
your auto Kamie Beaver, Obaki Tobaki Beaver, O Tobaki Beaver,
(01:10:18):
Japanese girl punk rock band okay uh and Beaver has
a few different on tenders and in a girl band
named itself something something Beaver. Then they are fucking with you. Yes.
O Tobaki means incredibly stupid, so their name is incredibly
stupid Beaver and they rock like hell and they say
(01:10:42):
it's like like thrash, but then they go through one
kind of thrash, do a faster kind of thrash, to
a slower kind and back to the faster thing and
they rock like hell Atabaki Beaver.
Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
Yeah, so break that down. It's all O toba kei
Altabaki Beaver.
Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
I feel like if I google that, I might end
up on some sites I don't want to be on.
No no, no, no, it's actually you're say I've done it.
All you get is videos. That's funny. It's funny and
music nowadays because it's like because of the way the
world and how quickly people can do things. You more
(01:11:25):
people can get stuff out in the world, which is
a really cool thing. But at the same time, it's
a drawback because everyone can get stuff out of the world,
so the sifting is a lot harder than it used
to be. But to your point on the guitar thing, like,
I think for anybody you know who plays guitar write
songs with guitar, I think the best thing that you
can do is go everything has been done and I'm
(01:11:48):
just gonna do my thing, because otherwise it's just yeah,
unless you're rewriting a whole lot of love or or
you know, sweet Child of Mine or something that's like obvious,
just write your songs. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I think that's a sound
point exactly. All right, Nick, Well, thank you for taking
the time. I really appreciate the opportunity to get up
here and talk too much.
Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Again, it's fun.
Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
About the Gold Records. I mean, they're here for this
is a power thing. This is supposed to be here
to impress people.
Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
That's oh is that incest side back there?
Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
Yeah, that's Canadian incesticide. So when a record has gold
in Canada. It's like ten thousand copies, it's not one
hundred thousand, so gotcha. It's not even real gold. It's
not even American gold. It's Canadian gold. But there's a cassette.
So there's a great casset and there's a gold cassette
that's for the spoon Man remix.
Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
Oh nice.
Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Yeah, the Spoonman Remix was kind of the B side
of Black Hole Sun, although it wasn't really pressed as
finally was a CD.
Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
I don't think I've heard the remix, and I'll have
to check that out.
Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Yeah. I could kind of make out the Incesticide cover,
but I didn't know what the other one was over there.
Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
Yeah. No, I'm very lucky. I have two Gold records
and they have paintings instead of photographs of the band.
That's pretty cool up on the wall, and there isn't
you know, Will Smith, you know that's awesome, God bliss,
(01:13:23):
Will Smith.
Speaker 5 (01:13:30):
Steve Fisk, record producer, audio engineer extraordinaire. I enjoyed that
he's He's a trip good guy to talk to, lots
of cool stories and I learned a lot, so I'm uh.
Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
I've already started the deep dive of some of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
But as I mentioned at the top of the hour there,
Pigeonhead is fantastic.
Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
Check that out.
Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
That's his music and really really cool.
Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
In fact, there's a remix by the Low Fidelity All
Ours that did a Pitcheonhead remix years ago, and I
popped that on and wouldn't you know it, I knew
the song. So it's amazing how music all ties together.
Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
But I remember that song from years ago and it's fantastic.
That's Steve, So thank you for listening. Thank you to
Steve for coming on.
Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
High End Stress continues to work on new music brief
little break. Congratulations to our guitar player Chad on his
latest baby, and.
Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
We will be back at it soon. Hopefully have that
record out by spring, the follow up to twenty twenties
Old be honest. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
See you next time from Studio twenty four. This has
been the figure It's podcast in Minneapolis un more.
Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
I guess I'll out.
Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Feeling sick, feeling well.
Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
This same thing that check me I brought me down,
down down, and not.
Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
Only un lessons learn. I'll throw in the towel before
I get burned.
Speaker 3 (01:15:22):
Because this is an Ood.
Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
The cover bands, bad punk rock and all the things
I can't stand
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