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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 18, 2017)
Page 8 News Say hello to our Filthy Friends Street Roots • August 18-24 2017 Street Roots • August 18-24, 2017 special. I could tell that something unique was happening when wé started working together. J.C.: I also see you guys around town at shows. That’s new in some ways too: the punk and post-punk generation getting older and having kids and still having that be a big part o f their life. Corin: I think so. Obviously my life is different now, and having kids fills up a lot of it, but music didn’t become any less important to me. It’s not something that I ever lost any feelings for. It’s still something th at I really turn to in term s of looking for real truth. I feel like artists who really do that are very few and far between, but when, you hit it, and when you hit it in music, to m e it just replenishes all of my resources as a spiritual person, and as someone who is looking for truth in this world. I don’t see that in a lot of other things. I mean really good writing can do th a t But for me music is the most powerful source of i t J.C.: This is hardly the first time this has come up in American history, but does it feel like music can, or should be, more important than ever now? P eter: Y’knów, I told my daughter, we watched the election together? and she was dumbfounded, and I said, “you know what? When I was 13 my main fear was that Richard Nixon was going to kidnap me, shave my head, and send me off to Vietnam to die. This shit’s been going on forever.” Is it bad now? Yeah, of course it’s bad. There’s this great book by Jacques Barzun and it’s a history of the last 500 years (From Dawn To Decadence). And the whole theory of the book is, the last 500 years, this is BY JASON COHEN humankind’s step towards freedom. We don’t go back. STAFF WRITER Yeah, there’s th is shit going op. But we hav^m ore . ilthy Friends formed like most bands do. h i f a c t fre e d o m s to live lives in d iffe re n t w ay s th a n anyone it’s right there in the name: they are a bunch of did 60 years ago. And our job is to keep doing that. I people who like each other, playing music feel real positive. /P H O T O BY ING RID RENAN together. It just so happens that two members - Peter And it’s not that bullshit about how good music is . The Filthy Friends, from left to right, Scott McCaughey, K urt Bloch, Corin Tucker, Peter Buck and Linda Pitmon. Not pictured is Bill Rieflin o f K ing Crimson, who will join them on tour. Buck and Corin Tucker - are known for playing in two going, to happen with a bad government. Fuck that of America’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll bands (that would be sh it I’d rather have bad music. Well, we’ve got that R.E.M. and Sleater-Kinney, if it needs mentioning). And anyway. But I firmly believe that there’s a lot of the a hundred bands! Everyone in the band has a unique shows. It felt like a band. We never auditioned people. want to write songs that represent who you are, th e the rest of the group - previous Buck collaborators world that just doesn’t march to those drums 1 personality musically and we try to put all that world you live in and who you want to be. Every time Scott McCaughey, Kurt Bloch, Bill Rieflin and Linda anymore. J.C.: So Corin, you were the only person who hadn’t together. I’m kind of a communist. I mean, everyone you step on stage, be g re a t After that, it’s just a matter Pitmon - isn’t exactly weak in the resume department, played with everyone else before. involved all the way. of how much you’re gonna do i t Corin: Yeah, I have to adm it I felt really pretty with credits ranging from the Young Fresh Fellows to depressed after Trump was elected. For several Corin: Yeah, but my voice - it has a pretty big Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3 to King Crimson. J.C.: Bands are communist aren’t they? Corin: Yeah, he’s really serious. When I got the call/ months. But now I feel like it’s really lifted just personality. So that, in and of itself, when it comes into Misleadingly (and jokingly) billed in initial press and he was like, “let’s make a record together,” I was bécause he’s so incompetent. The utter lack of being a song, immediately can change things. I was just Corin: Our bands are. I really don’t think that most materials as “a David Bowie cover band,” Filthy Friends like “what?” Really surprised. It’s been such an able to get anything done is kind of cheering me up, to instantly comfortable. Peter is a really natural bands are as communal as REM or Sleater-Kinney. have indeed been that, taking on “Jean Genie" and interesting opportunity to work with someone that I be perfectly honest But I think in term s of music, I collaborator. And he’s obviously used to doing a lot of Sleater-Kinney really is, it’s a tribe,.it’s a commune “Rebel Rebel" at Buck’s Todos Santos music festival in obviously admire, who is also like, a door-wide-open really feel like music is an extremely powerful way of material and changing things really quickly, which is and it’s very democratic. And you know, it’s extremely Mexico soon after Bowie died in 2016. But the project kind of collaborator. I really felt like we were on equal people telling their story. And that’s how you can open how Sleater Kinney does everything, so it was just land trying at times, because we do have to come to actually started several years before that, as a studio footing immediately. up people’s minds. I think that’s part of why rock and of an immediate ability to feel like I could carve out a collaboration between Buck and Tucker, and this month consensus, but it truly has provided us with a life-long roll has been so powerful; P eter: I’d just come off of doing solo records where I space for myself. friendship. A lifelong feeling of, “we belong to each is its official coming-out This is a weird example, but (Tucker’shusband,' was the boss and had mostly wrote the songs myself. Filthy Friends’ debut album, Invitation will be Other.” And we did something that’s really important J.C j Did this scratch any particular itches for you that filmmaker Lance Bangs) and I went a n d saw The And I’m glad I did i t But Pm a collaborator. I like to released by Kill Rock Stars on Aug. 25. That same day, in term s of creating a community, showing women you hadn’t been able to express in your other bands? Revolution the other night. And it was just so work with people who have their own musical the band plays in Eugene, followed by an August 26 could be in that world just as equally as men are. Not incredibly moving that this band came out on the road personality and bring something I don’t have. I really appearance at Project Pabst in Portland. that there aren’t other women that have done that, hut Corin: Oh, it’s really, really fun. I mean, it’s a little and played these songs that they had written together. want stuff to not be me all the time. We started Street Roots joined Buck and Tucker in a com er for our generation it was still something that we more diva-y. A little more lead-singery. It’s also a really working and writing, it felt real immediately. And when booth at Dot’s in Southeast Portland to talk music, struggled with, and we needed to kind of do it our way. It was a really powerful expression because one of the different musical direction, sometimes, than anything things about the band that I think is really amazing is you’re writing, you’re forming a relationship. We were creative partnerships and politics, over nachos and Sleater Kinney would do. it’s a rock-n-roU band, and it’s truly integrated. There's J.C.: Both o f you are still playing music with friends acquaintances, but not best friends or anything. We non-alcoholic drinks. African-American people, there’s white people and it you made 20 or 30 years ago. built this relationship through creating stuff and finding J.C.: Between the Alejandro Escovedo record Peter Ja s o n C ohen: So was this originally just for fun, or brings together punk, and this kind of steady rock out what we had in common. That’s a very serious produced and now this, I feel like you’ve really given the P e te n It’s funny. My generation, literally my peer did you always know you had a band here? drummer, and Wendy, is almost like a j azz guitarist thing. world a new window into Kurt Bloch as a lead guitarist group, Dream Syndicate, Black Flag, all those folks, Everything thrown together is like 10 times more P e te r B uck: Every time I do music I’m really J.C.: So it started with just the two o f you writing? that was the first generation where everyone’s still interesting and more powerful and they were really a P eter: The thing about Kurt is, he can do anything, fucking serious about i t making music. Like, in 1972, The Doobie Brothers got band and they really cared about each other, even but I never give him direction. When you’ve got a player P eter: She sang on my first solo record and then we famous, b u t I bet all the other guys are selling though they had a lot of problems dong the way. like that you just want him to be himself. I’m like, C orin T ucker: So serious (laughing). just started writing. And within a few weeks we had six insurance. All of my friends who are my age, they’re And that to me was a super powerful lesson for “what do you think Kurt?” “Go for it!” or seven songs and we started recording piecemeal. America. We have-all these different people thrown all making records. No one’s getting rich, but that’s P eter: I mean, I am. It doesn’t mean I don’t have fun Corin: He’s got such great instincts. He just feels together and we have our problems but we’re spending not really the point. doing i t And when I used to drink, I’d have drinks and J.Ci: So when did the rest o f the band come into the what should happen on the song, and you’re like, “Oh time together and welove each other and we have to do it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not fucking serious picture? yeah, that’s exactly what should happen.” C orin: I still find a lot of reíd joy in playing music rem ember that part erf i t about i t and performing and writing. It’s something I don’t find P eter: It started out with the band on my solo I’m not sure that we had professional ambitions. But P e te r: I take K urt around on my solo things and J.C.: Ifrttr first single, “Despierta” has been received as in other piafes in my life in that specific way. So record. And that just worked very well. We did a few you want to do great work, you want to be here, you people are like, “who’s that guitar player?” He’s been in something o f a Trump-era anthem. finding someone else to collaborate with is pretty Portlanders Corin Tucker and Peter Buck talk about their brand new band. F Page News Corin: It was written before Trum p started running. That to me was about change in this country and this hope of mine that power is . gonna start changing hands in our country. If more diverse people start getting-involved, and start voting and being involved in politics, if you just look at the numbers, they’re really changing. So that was my hope for what was going to happen in the election and things didn’t go that way, But it’s a little bit of a fighting song, a bit of a rallying song, and that kind of works to call' someone out like a Trump, ju s t to be like, listen; your power is really tenuous, which I feel like it is. It’s tumultuous times that we live in right now. J.C.: A n d you’ve said “No Forgotten Son,” was written about Trayvon Martin, which, unfortunately, hasn’t dated a t all. Corin: That one just hit me like emotionally. Sometimes, for me when I write a song, something is bothering me in my head that I don’t even know how to articulate, but it spills out when I start writing a song. It becomes about something that I didn’t realize I was consciously thinking about. Because (Trayvon Martin) was just this kid. That resonated with me because I’m raising a kid who’s really close to that age, who does stupid shit. Like, goes off in th e middle of the night for Skittles and an iced tea. He does stupid shit all the time and he’s out late at night when he shouldn’t be because that’s what teenage boys do. And like, how could the price for that be your life? That’s just. ..it’s mind boggling. And it’s unacceptable. So that’s kind of where that song came from. And of course, I think that we have a larger problem at work. W ehave a police system that’s so clearly-broken. That so clearly needs to be deeply reformed. That so dearly is suffering from the militarization of policing. But when you write a song, you’re trying to reach someone emotionally. That story just got to me. J.C.: Corin, you lived in Eugene and Olympia, and Peter, you are from Georgia but got here via Seattle. Do you feel like what brought you to Portland initially is still here? Corin: I do. I mean, it’s kind of so in your face now, because there are so many people that moved here. It’s almost like, be careful what you wish for. “Oh, we want to create this alternative community!” P eter: Hey, you know what though? Do you need/ more insurance adjusters or lawyers? I’d rather live in 4 a place where I can come to Dot’s and yeah, everyone’s got tattoos and I know it’s the Portland thing and Portlandia of course. But those people know how to use a city. They’re interesting. I like th a t I travel all the time and I end up in a lot of small towns and I look around and go, “how would you live in this place?” I grew up in Roswell, Georgia, for God’s sake. This feels pretty nice. Corin: The greatest measure to me is the community that my kids are growing up in is so great and so kind. I mean, public high school is still public high school and there’s still jocks and mean people and drugs and what have you, but when Trump was elected they had a unity assembly, and the kids formed a circle around the gym and were like, “for those of you who are immigrants, we’re not letting ICE touch our property. They’re not coming in here. You are safe here.” That’s pretty incredible for a bunch of high school kids to have the depth to reach out and say, “we care about you and these are our values. Our values are people-first” I’ll fight-traffic any day to b e in a city where that’s how kids are brought up to treat each other.
