Goodbye Mother, goodbye friend
My mother's grave in Boise, Idaho
There I was at age 21, going to college after spending all of my teen years living a punk rock lifestyle. I lived with my mother, not because I had to, but because she had cancer and I wanted to be there. We had grown close as I got older. As I mentioned before, all of my siblings were much older than I. I was always Mother's baby in her eyes, but she also respected me as an adult. We shared intimate thoughts with each other (up to a point, of course). She was my friend.
I started classes in the Fall of 1987 at Boise State. I have to look at my transcripts to be sure but I took writing, art, and philosophy, I think. I had no strategy, really. I was good at art but had always done it my own way. I lucked out and had an amazing art instructor named James Russell, who was an anomaly at that school then, as BSU was really just a school to pump out business majors and football players. I am sure it has changed a lot, or maybe it hasn't. Russell and I became friends and he was a huge influence on my art, introducing me to collage and amazing artists I had never heard of. Sadly, we had fallen out of touch over the years.
I majored in art first but didn't have a definite plan as to what I would do with an art degree. I loved art, had done it since I could hold a Crayon, but when you start thinking of how to actually make a living at it, it gets tricky. I didn't want to try and make it as a fine artist, and I didn't want to be a graphic artist.
I abandoned art as a major and decided that writing would be a better choice. But I didn't want to teach and I didn't want to be a novelist or a technical writer. I had a vague idea that school was important, but in retrospect, a lot of my motivation came from doing well for my mom. She was very proud of me.
Mother went out of remission and the cancer had made it's point; it wasn't going anywhere permanently. She had chosen to fight it as long as she could, to see her grandchildren grow, to see me do well in college, which I did, I had a 4.0 GPA for a time. Soon, she began to stay at my oldest sister's place, whose husband made a good living as a lawyer. They had a beautiful house by the river and Mother could be more comfortable there, and there was always someone around to take care of her needs.
In 1987-88, chemotherapy was brutal. My mother was fatigued most of the time and she lost her hair (I always thought she looked much better with short hair that wasn't permed and dyed). For a time, she fought the cancer as best she could.
One day in 1988, as I drove Mother to my sister's place, she looked at me with weariness in her eyes and said, "I don't know how much longer I can do this." By 'this' I knew she meant fight cancer. Within a week I got the call that she had passed away. I lost my mother and I lost a friend and I still miss her.
After my mom died, I continued to live in the apartment I had lived in with her. I had some short-lived affairs around that time (one of which was with the afore-mentioned cocktail waitress at The Crazy Horse) and eventually moved into a little house by myself, only a few blocks from where SOC was now practicing; in Pat's basement at a house he and his girlfriend and her son had moved in to.
Doug
We had befriended a young, talented musician named Doug Martsch around the time we put out the 'A Street' album. In fact, there is a song we wrote in his honor, called simply, 'Doug'.
Doug, (State Of Confusion, 1988, lyrics by Pat Schmaljohn)
This guy got drunk and his name was Doug
He was as wasted as a slug
He passed out and he didn't go home
His mother was mad at him
Bein' the life of the party
was the death of him
Now his future is mighty grim
Except when his band has to jam
Mom said he can still jam
I woke up late today
Called the boss and had to say
I won't be comin' in today
Doug's band invited me to jam
(I wouldn't get anything done at work anyway)
Doug's band and me are gonna jam...
Note: this song was based on truth; Doug's mother, wonderful woman that she was, still allowed him to rehearse with his band when he was grounded. We thought this was so cool we had to write a song about it.
Doug was originally from Twin Falls, a town just South East of Boise. When we met him, he was fronting a band called Farm Days that played fun, folky tunes with clever lyrics ('Skippin' school to go skip rocks/Skippin' out on 'talk, talk, talk'). They had played a couple shows with SOC and we were impressed with them, and especially impressed with Doug's guitar playing and song writing. Incidentally, the bass player of Farm Days was Brett Nelson, who would later play bass in Built To Spill for a number of years.
I believe when we met Doug in late 1986 or so at SOC shows, he was about 17 years old, but wise beyond his years, and possessing a wry wit. The SOC boys and Doug hit it off smashingly and hung out together often, sharing music we liked with each other. He was very into David Bowie, The Replacements, REM, The Smiths and Lou Reed/Velvet Underground at that time (among many other bands) if I remember correctly. We of course shared all the hardcore music we were into. This was an exchange that shaped the sound of things to come.
In Farm Days, Doug played acoustic guitar mostly [after thinking about it, this is not true (that memory disclaimer is for real, you see) as I now remember he played his gold Les Paul guitar in Farm Days, which he still has], but later, for a short time joined a band called Suiciety (featuring the drummer from Dirt Fishermen, Glen Newkirk, and the singer from the B-Sides, Cathie Crooks - see previous and upcoming blog entries for details on those bands). I saw them play at a garage show once. I was blown away with Doug's electric guitar playing. At that time, in that band, it reminded me a little of D-Boone from The Minutemen.
State Of Confusion ends and Treepeople begins
Around this time, Erik had been bar tending at a restaurant called Jake's (where I had bussed tables for a time). He was also attending college at BSU, majoring in business. We saw less and less of him. He rarely showed up for practice and often canceled at the last minute for shows we had set up months prior. It became clear that he was done sewing his wild oats playing punk music.
State Of Confusion at the Brass Lamp Pizza House, 1987, featuring Troy Wright on drums
Since Erik was barely involved in the band at this point, we kicked him out and moved on. A young drummer from a local punk band called USA named Troy Wright started playing drums for us. We played a couple shows with that line-up, but the chemistry wasn't there. He had big shoes to fill as far as playing drums, and he did his best, but it just wasn't working. Troy still plays music to this day and his current band, The Sandusky Furs, opened up for State Of Confusion at our reunion show last year. He drums and sings, and they were awesome.
[Since writing this, I have corresponded with Troy Wright and he brings up some other details I forgot, some involving chronology. This is exactly why I have the memory disclaimer! He remembers that the first time I played drums for SOC was at a party at a house that some friends lived in where shows happened, called the '5th Street House'. The line up was SOC, Grind and Dunce Cap (for whom Troy played drums, and this is the band that became USA minus a member). Troy recalls that I was playing drums because Erik couldn't make it, and he asked why we weren't playing any of our fast stuff, and I told him it was because I couldn't play the fast songs, so he sat in on some songs, I-84 and Public Lands and others. As a result of this we asked him to play in the band, which lasted about 8 months. Then he recalls, "Another item I remember. I was still in SOC. I came to SOC practice one day and I could hear you guys and doug rehearsing. I walked in the space and you guys were clearly excited. One of you guys asked if I wanted to hear what you were jamming on. You guys tore into Kid Dynamite by Squirrel Bait and it sounded incredible. I am not sure if you guys were named Treepeople yet....". I had forgotten that we covered that song. The drummer of Squirrel Bait, Ben Daughtry, was a big influence on me then, and a big reason why I laid down so many fills everywhere. Thanks, Troy for filling in the gaps!]
So I took up the drums and we asked Doug Martsch to play bass. There were many songs I could not play on the drums as they were way too fast for my level of skill, so we played the slower songs like 'Anarchy Street' (though this song sounds pretty fast to me today!). We played a couple shows with this line up, but it wasn't really working. Though I picked up the drums pretty quickly, I just couldn't pull off super fast hardcore drumming, period.
When I entered the jam room one day, I saw Doug showing Pat how to play some bass parts for a song he wrote, and we started jamming with this line-up. My drumming style fit well with his songwriting style and things began to click.
Doug played acoustic guitar and Scott continued playing his crazy, buzz-twang electric country guitar through the same thrown-together amp going through the cabinet Erik built. His style, slowed down, was very unique, and kept the same punk energy while stretching out his leads to fit the slower, more folksy punk we began to form.
We started cranking out songs because Doug had written many already, and Scott started writing slower punk songs that he sang on with a gruff, Pogues-like style. Pat became adept at laying down solid bass-lines as a backbone and I started experimenting with different beats, not really knowing what I was doing, but somehow pulling it off (it would take years for me to feel like a 'real' drummer). In listening to recordings from that time, I laugh at how I added drum fills everywhere. We quickly developed our own sound based on all of these elements.
A band needs a name...
We went through that painful stage of coming up with a band name; nothing seems good enough, everyone wracks their brain. For me, it is constantly on my mind, I am forever thinking of names and ideas from where a name can come. I thought about how we lived in Boise, 'The City Of Trees' and came up with the name 'Tree Dwellers', but there was a local cover bar band called 'Curb Dwellers', so that didn't work, but everyone liked the 'tree' part, so we kicked around variations and came up with 'Treepeople'. Later, we found out about the environmental organization of the same name. Keep in mind there was no Internet in 1987 to simply google your name idea on and see if it was taken. The Treepeople organization still exists and you will see info on them if you google the name.
We began to play a lot of parties and after a while we were playing every weekend. We played a few cover songs, among them Cat Steven's hit 'Wild World' which we named 'Cat Scratch Stevens' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqIznzPiai4) which was a hit among our quickly growing fans. I wrote our theme song, 'I Am A Tree', and played guitar and sang on it, (something that would never happen in this band, or any I was in later, again [I take that back, I briefly fronted a band in Seattle in the late nineties singing and playing bass and writing the songs, called 'Panic Bird']) and Doug sang backups, while Scott played drums. It is kind of a silly song, the lyrics are very hippie-ish, but I was trying to carry over some of Pat's environmental concerns he had expressed in SOC songs. His approach was far more original than mine, as you can see from the lyrics to 'I Am A Tree';
I Am A Tree (Treepeople, 1988, lyrics by Wayne Flower)
I am a tree
I got my roots in Mother Time
The rain cleanses me
And all that it can find
I'm as old as them old hills
So please, let me be
Leave the green to grow
Wild, wild and free
(Chorus)
I exhale so you can breathe
And you do the same for me
I am Brother Tree
(Repeat verse)
We ended every set with this song. We also wrote a silly, short song called 'Smokin' And Drinkin' which we always played right before we played the 'Wild World' cover. We were unaware at the time that a few bands had already done 'Wild World', like Black Uhuru. The same was true of the Velvet Underground cover we did, 'Sweet Jane', but they were crowd-pleasers.
Treepeople in the early days (maybe not as quite as early as this entry tells of, and I have no idea where this was -The Zoo club? - or who took this. Send me pictures, Boise peeps!)
No Mouth Pipetting demo tape
A few words about our first demo, named 'No Mouth Pipetting' by Pat. We recorded it in yet another farm studio, but this one was a little nicer, I forget the owner's name but I do know that he was in the world famous Idaho country rock band called 'Pinto Bennett and the Motel Cowboys'. He was a nice guy but he didn't really understand what we were trying to do. He got good sounds but when we mixed it, it didn't sound quite right in terms of the feel of how we sounded live. But it was our first release, with the aforementioned Cat Stevens cover and my silly hippy song. The original version of 'Size Of A Quarter' which we put on our later EP, 'Time Whore' is also on this tape. Doug's lyrics were sort of carry overs from Farm Days lyrics (and the song 'Bed Of Nails' was a Farm Days tune), lots of personal politics, and he played acoustic on all the songs, flanked by Scott's buzz twang, guitar neck climbing leads. My drumming, as I have mentioned, was hyper, and there were drum fills everywhere.
I also sang a song I wrote the lyrics to called 'Lovely and Electric' which was widely misunderstood. In the song, I was trying to address something I had thought about in terms of men's relationship to porn and how that affected their relationships with women. One thing I had noticed was that older men looked at women in porn that were the same age as their daughters. They would of course kick anyone's ass who hit on their daughters in front of them, but at night they were masturbating to women the same age. I saw this as a major hypocrisy and a major affront to women. People did not take it that way. I suppose I could have expressed it in a better way. I hope I have somewhat addressed it here, all these years later.
We put this out as a cassette and Pat designed the cover on his Mac home computer, which became his role for future releases, T-shirts, stickers and flyers. We gave away tons of these tapes when we played and sent a few out for reviews to generally positive response.
Here is a Last FM link to the No Mouth Pipetting track list: http://www.last.fm/music/Treepeople/No+Mouth+Pipetting
From parties to bars
We began to play The Crazy Horse regularly, and were able to fill the place. We wanted to play some bigger shows, like the shows that happened at a bar called The Bouquet in the heart of downtown, where some bigger, touring bands played. We found out who the booker was, a man named Allen Ireland (still active in promoting music, as far as I know) and we found out through a mutual friend that one of his favorite songs was the Camper Van Beethoven song, 'Oh no!' from their first album (an album we were listening to regularly) so we learned the song and invited him over to hear us play in our jam room. We played our set and 'Oh no!' and he booked us a show at the Bouquet with The Flaming Lips, another band we had come to listen to. This was the only time we engaged in such shameless sucking up! Hell, it got us a show, I guess...
Neon sign for The Bouquet, a music venue and bar in Boise, Idaho
I have vague memories of the Bouquet show, strangely enough. I remember that the big stage and professional equipment threw us off a bit. The crowd wasn't sure what to make of us. The Flaming Lips in 1988 had a big and loud sound and I remember being totally blown away by them and my drumming was influenced by their drummer from then on. We were playing pretty much every weekend at that point. We had a solid following of fans who were very responsive to what we were doing. We had stumbled into something pretty good and we were ready to take it where it could go.
Next time: The Zoo club shows, The Dirt Fishermen, Caustic Resin Treepeople's first demo and the search for a bigger pond
No comments:
Post a Comment