Mariella Luz 

My name is Mariella Luz we’re in Anacortes. Today is Saturday, January 28 2023. Would you all like to introduce yourselves?

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Denise Crowe  00:32

I'm Denise Crowe, and happy to be here today with you.

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Bret Lunsford  

And my name is Bret Lunsford. And I'm also happy to be here.

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Mariella Luz  

Awesome. Thank you so much. All right. So my first question is, why Olympia? How did you end up there?

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Bret Lunsford 

Denise was there. Denise was in Olympia long before I visited the town.

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Denise Crowe  01:09

I was born in Olympia, in the hospital on the Westside, and lived in Olympia with my parents for the first couple years of my life, and then moved to Tacoma, and then Gig Harbor. But all through my time, in my youth in the South Sound, Olympia was a constant. I always had family living in Tumwater and in Lacey, and went to Olympia regularly. When I was 13, my mom moved to Olympia from Gig Harbor, and started going back to school at Evergreen. So from all through my teens, Olympia was a place where I was spending time regularly and introduced to a lot of the Evergreen, Olympia, uh music and art scene. And then I went to my freshman year at Western, but then decided to go to Evergreen. That's what brought me to Olympia.

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Mariella Luz  

And when was that?

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Denise Crowe  

I graduated from Gig Harbor High School in 1983. And then went to Western, then in summer of ‘85, moved to Olympia or ‘84.

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Bret Lunsford  02:38

You were talking, you were talking to your mom the other day, Kate Crowe, about some of her first jobs and some of the people you met when she was working at the Olympia Film Society's early days of the Olympia Film Society. She had a job there. And you met Gary May.

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Denise Crowe  03:02

Gary Allen May and I met Steve Fisk and I met Calvin [Johnson]. By the time I was 14, I met Stella [Marrs]. A lot of the graphic arts people were really close. The graphic arts department at Evergreen were really close friends of my mom's. And, you know, she was  hanging out with a lot of much younger folks. If I'm thinking about like when I was in my teens, I remember very well, I was remember going to a Beaux Arts ball. Where my mom just kind of let me be there. And I'm pretty sure the Fastbacks were playing. Everybody was in these really wild costumes. And it was kind of one of those mind blowing experiences. As was a show that I'm pretty sure was at Girl City where I was probably fifteen. And I can talk about that, maybe a little more later.

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Bret Lunsford  

Talk about it now, what year would that have been?

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Denise Crowe  04:12

Um, boy, I'm not super clear on the history of Girl City. But Stella was a close friend of my mom's and from the time I was in my teens, I’d regularly spend the night with Stella wherever she was living. I remember she had this one studio apartment in a big building where she painted it, all the walls were hot pink and the floor was black. And she was making a lot of art with pink and black from really pale pink to black she was working a lot with iconic images of femininity from the ‘50s, ‘40s and ‘50s you know, making art and performing at that time.  Starting to sing, and singing with her own percussion, sometimes with various objects that, you know, without drums, typically sometimes bongos. And I remember in those years, there was a period of time where she was doing Girl City, which was down by the Smithfield. That was just a project she was so devoted to. There was some retail aspect of it. Although, you know,  it was, I guess, like a gallery also in a space where things were happening. And there was a show that I went to where I remember Rich Jensen got his haircut, as part of the show. There were various other performers. A lot of different kinds of music. And then, you know, being a teenage daughter at one point, my mom came out singing along with a song that was an old song, and I was gonna ask her about this, and she was wearing a red negligee. And at the time, her way of dealing with the controversy around either shaving your legs or not shaving your legs, which was a big deal, then, she did half and half. So one armpit was shaved and one leg was shaved and the other wasn't. So this was all on very full display. And she had a lot of pieces of burnt toast in a basket. So she kind of danced to the song and sang along and threw burnt toast at the audience. 

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Bret Lunsford  07:11

I wasn't there. But I'd heard about these before I even met Denise. Because the Girl City shows both the art and the music that happened there- performance art too- were part of the lore of early Olympia when I was moving there and visiting there in the early 80s. So I guess I'll say that I became acquainted with Olympia. I first went to Evergreen, as part of a high school Journalism Conference in summer of 1980, before I was going to become the editor of my Anacortes High School newspaper, and kind of was aware that college towns had their own music scene they had radio station so I was somewhat aware of it.  But  the next year, my girlfriend at the time, Krista Forsyth started at Evergreen and was in the dorms. And I met Lois Maffeo in the dorms. And then I moved out of town and down to Tucson and was kind of following different punk scenes there. There was a lot of great punk shows and Olympia was in while I was in Tucson, in winter of 1982. I got the Sub Pop Fanzine that Bruce Pavitt and Calvin Johnson put out and it was the thinking around their approach to music.  Particularly decentralization was a theme that they were advocating and it resonated. And so, over that next year or two, I was in Tucson for the winter and then coming back to Anacortes and spending time in Olympia. And it was I think, if I might, I guess in the spring of 1983,  I’d just come back from Tucson and saw at the Smithfield cafe, a show with John Foster & the Pop Philosophers, Laura, Heather and Calvin, and then Wild Wild Spoons which featured Rich Jensen.  And it just kind of seared itself in my… it was like opening up a pathway in my mind because I had been kind of like in Tucson, traveling to Mexico visiting New York, where am I going to be? where? and I kind of made a decision.  I wanted to enroll at Evergreen after a couple years, a couple of gap years. And that just really excited me because I really loved the music I was hearing, the way that people were so much themselves as they were performing it. And it just, like I said, it was mind blowing to me that like, oh, wow, there's so much potential here. I didn't even think about myself becoming involved in it, I just loved what I was seeing and hearing. And I wanted to be around it. And so, when Calvin suggested that I become a part of this new entity called Beat Happening, I just decided to jump at the chance. And it was kind of a dare, because I didn't I wasn't from any bands. I'd never been in a band before I barely knew how to play chords on a guitar. But I just thought well, yeah, I'm gonna try to do this because it's quite an offer.

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Denise Crowe  11:46

Yeah, I think hearing the way you're describing it, Bret, that was true for me. And in terms of my teens to be [in] Gig Harbor was a very normative place. Very quiet little town at that time. And in, it probably was like, ‘81- ‘82, where I was having those initial experiences of going, just wow, you know, for, for people to be really creating a very close community. That was men and women, and older people and younger people, like it was multigenerational. It was so much more egalitarian. And females having the same just more of an equality within a space, and there being so much fun, and play, and it was just, it was vibrant. And you know, so as much as that experience of, you know, kind of an ultimate experience of seeing your mother on display when you're a teenage girl, and the oh, this is so weird, and then be like, well, I survived that and look at all of these people who are like, cheering it on and it's fun. And it's, you know, a side of her I'd never seen, really and that just being able to push boundaries of what was normal and for so many people to be encouraging each other in creating something that felt really new and fun and, and fully of that place.

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Bret Lunsford  13:50

Yeah, I also remember and Calvin and Stella had a duo that I saw perform once, it was called the Double O Three Legion. I have this recollection, and it was either a story that was told so well or a show I attended. And remember as if it were, you know, written up in my mind, but it kind of gets at some of the Seattle - Olympia tension that was that I at least intuited at the time. Maybe I'm making more of it than it was but I kind of have a sense of Stella was doing percussion with high heels on a drum. Like she was holding the points of these high heels and  banging them on a drum and it might have been a borrowed drum I'm for all I know. I kind of get the sense that there was tension around that. I can't say whether or not they were,  they completed their performance or if it was abruptly ended because it was not going in the direction that the promoter wanted to go in. This was just at a gallery. So I don't know, I can't trust my memory at this point. I'd want to hear other people's memories of it, but that was yeah, that was like “anything goes” and Stella being at the vanguard and, and being an equal participant and that was true. Something that I loved about Olympia was that egalitarianism that Denise mentioned. And I think that coming from Anacortes, which cross pollinating a lot with with Olympia, even, from from that day, Calvin talks about coming up to see a Grange show at the Summit Park Grange where The Spoiled played and the police came and the band got arrested and, you know, that his sense of of what shows could be was affected by that. And I know that, people from Anacortes and how they did things that Olympia from recording the Public Service (Jonn Lunsford’s band) cassette on KAOS radio, and they later released in Anacortes. That cassette culture from the liberation of Calvin deciding to record, to take a recording of the Supreme Cool Beings and have that be the first release on K. I remember him bringing that to me in Tucson like, this is just great news, it's so exciting. It's just a radio show that got dubbed onto cassette, some art was made and now it's a seed that's getting spread to all these different people. And of course, you know, Sub Pop was starting to alternate with fanzines to cassette compilations at that point, too. And so you are hearing,  you're getting this exposure to all these different places where people were doing independent music in their own way, and it meant for a really exciting time. And I guess I was gonna talk about [how] it wasn't just music, it really flowed into the way people were living their lives. I remember getting invited to play basketball. So somehow basketball came up. John Foster and Dana Squires, Toni Holm and Dave Rauh, they were all into playing basketball, and I went to play basketball and I've come from this, you know, playing basketball on my school teams.  And dropped out of the basketball scene at a certain point because I didn't want to be involved in how serious it got with coaching and competition. But then, the way that basketball was played in Olympia was whatever skill level you had, you just, I mean score, you didn't keep track of score. If somebody traveled or double dribbled that you just accepted that whatever they were doing was the way they played basketball. And so it was like punk basketball in a sense, and I just love that about it. And again it reprogrammed my thinking about yeah, we don't have to be as exclusive and doctrinaire as we might be, we can be more inclusive and more playful in the way that we're interacting on every level… the Olympia magazine that John Foster and Dana were involved in later had sponsored a Parks and Rec basketball team that we played on together, and that was a little more mainstream, but yeah, fun times. 

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Mariella Luz  

Denise, you mentioned that you went to Western and then came back to go to Evergreen. What made you decide to do that?

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Denise Crowe  20:08

Well, I really enjoyed my year at Western. And I'd say, you know, it was a year with a lot of growth and learning. But so much of that was with friends. The structure of the school, you know, really large, basic classes, like I did best in the higher level courses.  I was able to get into just where it wasn't as anonymous, you know, because literally going into a giant lecture hall with 500 students, and you just don't ever have contact with your professor. So there was a way where it just felt a little, like, you're just kind of going through the motions of it, you know, and the framework of it at that time, was just so much, you know, you hear the facts, you regurgitate them back, and then you get your grade. I think just the degree to which I'd had that connection with Evergreen and Olympia there was a way where that was calling, you know, and as I went home to Gig Harbor for that summer of '84, money was an issue too. And so, I ended up- you know, mom said, “Well, why don't you just come stay with me for a while.” And as soon as I was there, she was like, “Well, you may as well go to Evergreen.” And I was like, “You're right. Yes. “And so I started, you know, was soon living in more student house kind of situations and having my own experiences there. It was just right from the start. Being at Evergreen, it had such a different feeling of engagement academically. I knew as much as I might miss my friends at Western in Bellingham. I couldn't go back to that kind of college. I felt like I really just was where I needed to be.

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Mariella Luz  

And so how did your paths cross?

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Bret Lunsford  22:39

Well, I had moved in the fall of '83 to Olympia officially and started school there and had an apartment in the Martin apartments number 19.  There were a lot of friends who were living downtown and then taking the bus to campus and there was a lot of vacant storefronts in Olympia. I'd heard while I was gone about Brad Sweek renting a storefront and having a show where The Wipers played with Young Pioneers and Laura, Heather and Calvin I believe played at that show too. And so the apartments were cheap and you saw how people were just actualizing their creative visions.  Be it setting up a show,  being in a band doing art in public, be it graffiti or gallery, or whatever.  We brought back some big tape decks from our trip to Japan. Beat Happening had gone to Japan the previous or …. I'm losing track a little bit now of the exact order. But I do remember… I started in the Fall of '83 at Evergreen. At the Martin we did these shows in this alleyway where by candlelight and acoustic mainly or acapella. This was in just a few months before the Tropicana opened, but it was just playing with that idea that shows can happen anywhere. And they can be anything and it doesn't need to be, you know, a club with a bouncer and a sound person, you know? So, the Tropicana opened. We played the opening show. Then we went to Japan for a couple months in the spring of '84. And when did we…?

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Denise Crowe  25:45

I remember exactly when I met you.  Ok. . .  but our paths actually crossed prior to us meeting. Because when Bret was in Japan, and Calvin was in Japan, Stella was taking care of house sitting between Bret's place, and Calvin's place, she kind of had the run of those apartments. And I think Lois might have even been someplace.  Because I remember being in Lois’ place at one point. So in that spring, before school ended, I came down for an extended weekend, and hung out with Stella most of the weekend. I was at the Martin with Stella and I remember at one point, we went into Bret's apartment.  And that's where I stayed the night, was in Bret's bed. So there was this way, where you know, it's like, if you're in someone's space, you kind of, you know, get a feeling for who they are. And then once they were back from Japan, I had moved to Olympia. I'm pretty sure,I don't know exactly when you got back. But I remember hanging out with Stella and Francesca, a friend who I'd known a few years, because she was also friends with my mom and her daughter, Emily. Oh, maybe that  was close to then. But I remember standing on the corner of 5th and Washington. And I was on the north side of 5th and Washington corner. And Bret was on the south side. And Stella was like, “oh, there's Bret.” And so I remember us like,  kind of walking into the crosswalk. And then Bret backed up. And then we met on that corner for the first time. Soon after, maybe that same period, we went to your house for dinner with Emily, Francesca, and Stella. So, we then became acquaintances, and then friends and we knew each other for quite a while. I moved downtown. So we were just kind of often in the same gatherings of people. I also saw them perform quite a lot. Went to as many Tropicana shows as I could.

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Mariella Luz  

It's a little unusual, because I'll just interject really quick. It's like a lot of Evergreen students, at least when I was there, didn't live downtown. They almost all lived on the west side there. So like taking the bus from downtown that Evergreen was like, just didn't happen at that time. It's a shame. I mean, even now, Evergreen struggles to connect with the city of Olympia because they're sort of the campuses off and they don't really have a lot of like events and people are leaving and living downtown.

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Bret Lunsford  29:05

That's a perfect segue to the one of the places Denise and I got to know each other was we were both coordinating student groups.  I was coordinating the Evergreen Political Information Center.

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Denise Crowe  

And I was coordinating the Expressive Arts Network. So we had offices on the same hall, in like the library building. Yeah. 

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Bret Lunsford  

At that point, we started to envision with some of our friends this idea of all the student money that goes into the student groups, people who live off campus don't really get the benefit of the money they're paying. So we made the argument that there should be a downtown Olympia student organization, where the campus culture could be showcased downtown.  We made up purposely the longest acronym we could, which was the Greater Evergreen Students Community Cooperation Organization. The acronym sounded out to GESCCO. The way we pronounced it, and it was Denise and I with Clay Zollars and Argon Steel.  We got the money from the Student Government to open this place.  We rented the venue and started having these great shows, that our concept was to have it be something that anything could happen at and that a lot of people felt welcome in. So that wouldn't necessarily just become a youth punk club, as the Tropicana had kind of become. So our first event we purposely had the Young Pioneers playing,  a Zydeco band playing, and a swing band playing. A lot of events happened there. I remember, there was an event where people made paper mache dinosaurs, people would rent it for like a band, this kind of bar band cover band, called the Ducks played there for a reunion show from an earlier year at Evergreen. And that was, I didn't go to that. But I understand it went pretty well, the Wipers played there, Screaming Trees played one of the early shows there.

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Denise Crowe  32:09

We had some amazing shows, Mecca Normal. Yeah.

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Bret Lunsford  32:12

I met Jean [Smith] and David [Lester] from Mecca Normal for the first time when they were playing a Black Wedge tour.  The downside is you dream up this thing, like, oh, we're gonna we're gonna have a venue.  And actually, knowing how much work it takes to secure a space, pay for the space and manage the schedule, manage the volunteers, and was like “Oh. . .” , what we/I learned a lot from just like so much. But I took me  .. . I didn't get dissuaded from doing that type of event production for decades to come. So I must have had a lot of … I think I got a lot out of it. But I also realized how much it took to do it.  There were some memorable things that happened, the Olympia metal band  where they built their own giant stage out of plywood scraps, like the rejected plywood from the plywood mill in Olympia, somebody worked there. So they got all this cheap plywood and, and made a stage out of it there that ultimately was part of the demise of the venue.

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Denise Crowe  

I mean, it was a big stretch, you know, to put forward the proposal to figure out all of those pieces to get the funding and then be moving forward on that. You know, it was a big deal. We did do an independent contract for at least one quarter. We were reading and thinking about and writing about community writing about our experiences with it. And that very first kickoff event, I worked with the Senior Center in Olympia. We had a senior art show also on the walls that  was pretty fun. And then . . . I'm trying to remember, I was trying to remember the name of that swing band, but they were very popular in Olympia. So they kicked off the show. And then Young Pioneers played I'm pretty sure and then the Zydeco band kind of filled it out. I'm pretty sure that was the order, maybe Zydeco and Young Pioneers were switched, but we literally had, you know, punk rockers on the floor with seniors. And people were dancing together,  swing dancing together, and it was really fun and beautiful event. Always fun to hear the Young Pioneers and be present.  They always put on a great show.

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Bret Lunsford  35:10

Like any of the venues that happened in Olympia, from the Tropicana,  to the what's the place in A dorm, at the basement of A dorm, GESCCO. And then some of the other places, you know, I moved out of Olympia, after 1987 and visited again, you know, throughout the years following, but I was less involved directly with what was happening in Olympia, from ‘88 on. We, Beat Happening, put out their first record on K in 1985. And did a little bit of touring. And then in, I think it was an ‘86, summer of ‘86 that Calvin had shows booked on the east coast, but Heather was in LA. So Denise joined Beat Happening for that tour, and learned drums and we went together from Ellensburg, our first show was at the Velvetone studio, and then through to Columbus and in driveaway cars where you basically are delivering a car from one location to another. It was a cheap way for us to tour. 

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Denise Crowe  

Yeah, so that was September of ‘86. 

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Mariella Luz  

And what year was GESCCO?

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Denise Crowe  

Spring of ‘86.

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Bret Lunsford  36:54

So we started it from the late Fall through the Winter, got it going. Ran it. And then by the summer, we were kind of passing it to the next year's crew, who ran it for another year. That was Alice Wheeler, Margaret Doherty, and I can't remember who else but they were primarily involved. Yeah. I guess we- students are so transient, and it would have taken more planning towards sustainability for us to see it continue. And that's not what we were thinking about in our early mid 20s. Yeah, it was too much in terms of sustainability, more like, “let's do this thing now.”

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Denise Crowe  

I think from the college's perspective, it just felt a little too out of their control. And there were real liability issues.

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Mariella Luz  

And where exactly was it?

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Denise Crowe

Cherry and . . .

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Bret Lunsford  

It was just kitty corner from where the municipal building is now,  I think,

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Denise Crowe  

Yeah, 5th and Cherry. Corner of 5th and Cherry. It's been like a fitness center. Oh, yeah. It was a car garage for a long time.

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Bret Lunsford  

Like a train store or something for a long time. Could have been that too. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

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Mariella Luz  

The CrossFit Olympia, I think it is currently.  Do y'all have any stories about the Tropicana?

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Denise Crowe  

Tropicana.

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Mariella Luz  

Well, and also I'll just say really quickly, Calvin and I were chatting and he said that the Beat Happening never played GESCCO because of the timing, because Heather was in LA. And just the way that panned out that that y'all never played there.

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Bret Lunsford 

That's true. That is true.

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Denise Crowe 

That's interesting to think about.

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Bret Lunsford  39:12

Yeah, I remember Calvin. I remember being at GESCCO and Calvin came to tell me that Rough Trade wanted to release the first record in the UK.  But we were that was a little bit of a dormant period in a sense.  And I just had a conversation with Calvin and Heather about the 35th anniversary of the release of Jamboree. And that was part of that conversation, was that first record could have been the last- the only Beat Happening record and there was a time where I didn't know whether or not we were going to do more. And then Rough Trade US was going to put out another record and we booked the time at Velvetone with Steve Fisk.  Mark Lanegan, and Gary Lee Connor, were co-producers with Steve.  And that record kind of started us over again in a sense,  to put out and do the tours and put out the rest of the records that we would go on to make. Talking about the Tropicana, so many bands came through there to play. It was almost like you couldn't go to every show. Because they're probably in and what span of time was it? I mean, I think it was maybe a year.

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Mariella Luz 

Just a little less, I think.

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Bret Lunsford  

Yeah, cuz we, but I mean time seemed so long when you were living it in your early 20s. 

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Denise Crowe  41:33

It was Mecca, the Tropicana was Mecca. I mean, it was just like, you were always aware of the show. Can I go? Can I make it? At one point, I was living up on the west side and walking down that like Fall of '84 and just walking down and going to a show at the Tropicana and then you know, midnight 1am walking back up, you know, it was a very different feel. I mean, alone, you know, walk back up that hill alone and felt perfectly safe doing so. A lot of people would walk to get there, or, you know, carpool. And it was so vibrant. There was always a crowd.

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Bret Lunsford  42:25

There was always house parties going on or apartment parties that people would have. There's the show that happened on the Olympia Capitol steps. The Rock Against Reagan show in the fall of 1983 was a pivotal kinda like, you know, here's the Young Pioneers and the Wimps playing to this big audience, or relatively big, of punks on the Capitol steps. That kind of like what you know, we need to be pushing, we need to be activists with our music, was not necessarily with a particular kind of orthodox message. Just getting being an example of, of singing your song. And so that was the inspiration to do the alley shows like, well, we need a place to play. Let's just do it where we can and then once the Tropicana was secured, then that became all that energy went into to that. Heather moved back from Seattle back to Olympia and stayed there for a while and did art, and trying to think of different shows. I remember, setting up a show for Greg Sage and the Rejectors, maybe, and Rancid Vat. Seeing posters for Butthole Surfers? I didn't go on that show.

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Denise Crowe  

That  Butthole Surfers show was legendary. The after party was out at the Caddyshack.

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Bret Lunsford  

Yeah, yeah. But so many different bands in that short space of time. The posters that you could be reading from, would just be you know kind of make people's mouths water. Even the shows that I got to see, I don't know, what percentage of this shows a lot of the shows, and put on some shows. But I still feel envy for the shows I didn't get to go to. And then . . .

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Denise Crowe  

How many shows did Beat Happening play there?

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Bret Lunsford  

At least four, we played the opening show. We played a show opening for Black Flag.

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Denise Crowe  

I was there (laughs) that was certainly a taste of what punk rock meant to other people. And especially the singer of that band at the time.

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Bret Lunsford 

And then we I don't know, what was the show? What was the venue that happened after GESCCO? That was downtown.

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Mariella Luz  

Reko Muse?

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Denise Crowe  

Yeah.

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Bret Lunsford  46:09

Yeah, I remember playing at least one show there. I'm pretty sure. When did Arrowspace happen?  Was that in the ‘90s? ‘90s. Yeah, some really good venues had happened over the years. And we probably could have a timeline sorted out about them. But I've gotten to see shows and play a lot of them. And it's special. You think about what it takes to get on stage and what you hope for as a musician from an audience. And Olympia, at least in my experience of it, has always offered quality ears as an audience.  Like wanting to understand, and a reverence for what was being offered. And that is, it happens elsewhere too. But I hadn't experienced that quite as strongly in Olympia, as I mean, the way that it happened in Olympia was unequaled anywhere else that I've attended shows. And I think that became a habitat, where people could feel heard and feel like they could take the step into, from audience to stage. That was I mean, that was a big deal. A big thing for me to do. And I think it's just a place where in Olympia, that became a part of its energy, as its culture was to say, “well, we should be. Let's keep being open. Let's keep expanding. What can go on here?”

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Mariella Luz  

Yeah, I've been listening to some interviews from folks from  this, that are reflecting on this time period. And a number of people have pointed to the International Pop Underground festival, that like lived outside of town, as coming to town and being the reason why they moved to Olympia because of the like, what you just said, the the way people were, they just felt like, “oh, wow, this is this place is different.” People are experiencing community or, you know, a music scene in a different way than they had ever seen or participated in before.

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Denise Crowe  49:00

Well, one interesting thing that's coming to mind is how going to shows in Seattle at that time, even with bands that you'd feel a real affinity for, you know, a mix of Olympia or Tacoma bands and Seattle. There just was such a different feeling at venues. You know, it's like people would go and be too cool to move their bodies. You know, it was just so strange. Yeah, it was a very …it just wasn't as enjoyable. I'm making a big generalization. There were certainly shows and parts of the scene that were different. But just in general was not as fun to see a show in Seattle as it was just to do that in Olympia or at these…you know, creating venues that weren't bars was a big part of the feeling of that.  And it's so interesting thinking about the ways in which even after we moved to Anacortes, there being as vital a connection with Olympia friends, Olympia music making, Anacortes friends, Anacortes music making.  We certainly continue to do a lot of show promotion, and creation and band inspiration in Anacortes. Not only was Bret continuing to be really involved with Beat Happening for many years, even after we were here… friends making music got more connected with Olympia friends, making music, or K records. One of the partnerships that was so great was when Bret and Calvin decided to do a whole series of Northwest shows, not in Seattle, not in Tacoma, but going to Aberdeen going to Port Townsend, going to Anacortes, and the whole goal was to be bringing bands to towns throughout the Pacific Northwest, that otherwise didn't have shows happening, or really established venues. And I think it was giving mutual exposure for both artist and audience in those places. And some of those experiences were just really beautiful.

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Bret Lunsford  51:41

Yeah, Sound Out Northwest was the concept. And that happened after GESCCO, after I'd moved to Anacortes.  We had a number of those shows with that concept of . . .  I read a lot and heard a lot about the glory days of the Northwest garage rock- the Sonics, the Wailers, the Kingsmen, et cetera. And they would play these big shows, all over the Northwest and Pat O’Day was a DJ, who also was a show promoter who would book these high school dances or shows in armory buildings. The Northwest had its own circuit, such that the bands, like the Sonics, were making so much money doing this Northwest circuit that they weren't really thinking nationally.  That kind of like, became its own country, then almost. Thinking about that, like, well, we should be thinking about the whole state and all the people, not just, what Seattle is doing.  Or even Olympia, for that matter. It was experimental, you know, we weren't good at it, really. So it was hit and miss, like, you know, the show that we did, that we tried to do in Port Angeles that we couldn't.  A lot of towns had restrictive youth show laws. So trying to like, you couldn't do a show in Port Angeles. So you had to do a show and Sequim. And then no one shows because you have to rent a cop. But then the next show we had at the VFW hall in Port Townsend was just this incredible show. And Dead Moon and Capping Day played. There were some really good, really good shows. 

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Denise Crowe  

I remember Heavens to Betsy, playing in Aberdeen. 

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Bret Lunsford  

I'm not sure, that might have been the next tour that we did when Stuart Moxham came. Okay. Okay. But we did a kind of Northwest tour with Heavens to Betsy, Beat Happening, Lois & Stuart Moxham.

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Denise Crowe  

And that was like a storefront in Aberdeen? Is that the one I'm remembering?

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Bret Lunsford  

I can't remember. I have to go to a photo poster archive.

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Denise Crowe  

The Sound Out Northwest shows I mean a lot of the bands - Screaming Trees,  Mudhoney and Nirvana and Tad, Beat Happening. You played some of those. 

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Bret Lunsford  55:00

Well, I remember a really fun Mudhoney, Mecca Normal, Beat Happening show with the Anacortes Eagles. That was another part of my particular taste, and I think it was shared. Like, let's mix up the bill. Yeah, let's try to have variety. And within that say, like, there's a sense of openness, you know, beyond tolerance, but openness to which, which reminded me of the early punk shows that I would go to, in Seattle or Bellingham.   Once hardcore kind of landed as this thing that became, like, hard to tell the difference between punks and jocks.  That was when the feeling I got when punk shifted into being, like hard, people had a hardcore mentality. And it just got more closed minded, at least my experience of it. And so, yeah, that was a strong hope always to have a varied lineup. And that was true, I mean, it informed, you know, like, for us to be playing shows with Girl Trouble, and the Screaming Trees, Mecca Normal in Bellingham, or wherever. That was when we would put the local heavy metal band and the local folk band on a show on a bill with Beat Happening.  Some strange dynamics that was a part of what it was like when you extend that, and I don't want to skip too far forward. But when we were having shows at What the Heck Fest, some of my favorite things were the cross-pollination you'd get between the visiting musicians, the local bands, and the local audience.  Everybody's minds were expanded a little bit. And everybody, especially if they were having a fun time, were then in the mood, to kind of extend themselves and to go further into getting to know the town they were visiting, the people that were there, and the people that were visiting.  And I think when you have a place where there's a radio station or a venue and, and young people, especially not exclusively, but mostly young people get that education, about what a creative life can be. I know for sure that the things that we were doing in Anacortes affected people like Phil Elverum and Karl Blau, and Jacob Navarro, and that they then became kind of like a next generation, coming back to being involved in Olympia, and, and bringing that back to Anacortes. I think that as you live your life, you take for granted the normalcy of the life you're living, but the way that the culture of Olympia-and the whole of the Northwest-but my experience of the Olympia music scene and the creative as artists that were operating there, in the early ‘80s, through the ‘80s, and the ‘90s, it became a way of life that I just kept living, both Denise and I, and doing other things as well, but also doing that and having a lot of energy and inspiration to continue doing it and being rewarded for the effort we put into it. So seeing to the relationships that it takes to continue creative infrastructure, that people can be creative, but it helps to have a radio station, it helps to have a printing press. It helps to have studio space where people can do work, gallery space where you can show it or perform. And when you have those things, when you have a fanzine, or a blog, or a magazine and independent radio station, 

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Denise Crowe  

a college,

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Bret Lunsford  59:53

Yeah, those things really contribute.  It was because we were doing shows in Anacortes that the college students from BC, who were looking to do a venue decided, let's do this Department of Safety experiment in Anacortes. You never know, what you do creatively be it a band, a venue, is going to inspire other people. But it's vital, you know, it's like consumer culture, fine. But if it's, if you're exclusively consuming and you're not creating anything, that's what was so exciting to me about Olympia. Oh, wow, you can borrow a bunch of cassette decks and get some blank tapes or used tapes, even at a thrift store.  Put out your own release and give it to your friends. And you know, that was like important to me, when my brother Jonn Lunsford and his friends in the band, their high school band Public Service, Bob Vaux and Nate Lindberg and Todd Harris, to bring them down to Olympia to record in the KAOS studio.  And then take that recording, and put it on a tape, and then bring that back to Anacortes and print up, you know, whatever it was 80 or 100. And then all of their friends are listening to that tape of their friend's band, while they're driving up and down Commercial Avenue. Their friends' bands’ [tape] is their favorite tape. You know, that's kind of like, you're following through with it.  That was introduced to me whenever I got my DJ job at the radio station at KAOS.  That philosophy, and John's band, The Pop Philosophers aptly named, because they took their principles, and at the radio station, and said, if we believe in independent music, then we're going to require, as management, we're going to require our DJs play mostly independent music. They developed this green line policy, which literally put a green piece of tape on the spine of all the records that weren't from a major label. And you were you were supposed to, and most people did, because they believed too, that you should be playing this music that doesn't get heard, that doesn't get promoted as much. And you discovered incredible things by doing so.

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Mariella Luz  

It's an incredible policy. You know, it gets brought up time and time again, and how impactful it was. At KAOS, but within the Olympia punk scene. So it seems like such a small thing. But like you just said, like incredible ripples.

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Bret Lunsford  1:03:05

It's a principle. It's like, yeah, style is great. But if it's just lip service, when you say this principle of independence, this principle of decentralization, we're going to enact it, we're going to invest in it, this is the way we're going to do things. You know, for Beat Happening, saying we're not going to play at age exclusive shows. We're only going to play at shows where anybody can come in, and didn't mean that sometimes they were bar shows, but they were bar shows that were essentially speakeasies, and anybody could get in. So that was an important thing that made us get creative in how we were doing things.

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Mariella Luz  

Just to sort of circle back, you had mentioned the Rock Against Regan show in '83, and how that created a lot of energy at that time towards venues and playing places. Do want to talk a little bit about the politics of that time and how that might have impacted your work in collaboration. The two of you or separately.

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Denise Crowe  

I wasn’t at that show.

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Bret Lunsford  

She was still in high school, or no, you were at Western, okay.

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Mariella Luz  

In general, I mean, like, you know, we think about how politics impacts [art]. There have been many waves. But in my age, Rock Against Reagan was one of the first sort of like, political anti-establishment where punks, people, and artists were reacting to the government.

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Denise Crowe  1:05:01

I think, right in that time, there was also a kind of precursor to a draft. And it was like the initial males at 18 were supposed to register [Selective Service System]. Because I remember going to a big protest in Bellingham to the post office, '83-'84. So I'm not sure exactly when that was trying to, you know, they were trying to initiate that, but I remember the focus of it was “no draft registration.”

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Bret Lunsford  1:05:38

Yeah, I think that it's safe to say that most people who are associated with punk rock were against the policies in the wars of Ronald Reagan. And that trying to find some meaningful activism that linked what you actually cared about. And say, “hey, I didn't know shows could happen on the back of a flatbed truck in front of the State Capitol, I didn't know such a thing could happen.” And so you say, we can take our beliefs, political or otherwise, and do them anywhere. And an audience will come.  We'll see each other and like, recognize, this is something that's happening, and it could happen anywhere, and it should be happening more places. And implicitly, well, we better start doing more. So if I'm thinking through, you know, yeah, it was a great time, really inspiring, really fun. But it was also like the “...” is:  more needs to be happening.

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Denise Crowe  1:07:07

I think also,our whole sense of perception of what culture is and what activism is, has so profoundly been changed by computers and personal telephones.  At that time, mainstream media was just the dominant way that people got any information and just regular culture was so intertwined with television at that time. It was just so homogenized. And even though Reagan had been in power for quite some time leading up to fall of '83, so many things were changing, in a way that, that anyone who was not a supporter of Reagan was profoundly aware of.  The degree to which things felt like they were shifting to more of a media being used as a tool by a political movement of the right against personal freedom while saying they were for freedom. You know, just that degree to which there was this glossy image being projected about, you know, how wonderful Reagan was. The underbelly of that was just, we were just all too aware of it, that it was really like a form of fascism, and theocracy. And the only way you could really feel like you had any power to do anything was to join together with people around you. That there just weren't those ways of expressing yourself other than your own zine.

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Bret Lunsford  

Yeah, that is …

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Denise Crowe  

or your own cassette tape.

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Bret Lunsford  1:09:35

Yeah. Media that's a huge like… I moved to Olympia. I didn't have a phone in my apartment. Yeah. Partly because, you know, it's like, part of it's just the expense of it, you know, it's an extra cost and that most of us were living pretty hand to mouth. So I didn't have a phone, I had to go to a phone booth if I wanted to call home, writing letters to communicate. I didn't have a television in my apartment and most people didn't. In the downtown, you know, punk group - not that we were even self identified as punk.  I think that was another thing, is like well, if once you kind of take on the awareness of punk then maybe you're so punk, you're not calling yourself punk. But how did we find out about things? You know, just paying attention in real life.

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Denise Crowe:

Flyers on a telephone pole. 

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Bret Lunsford:

Yeah. There's a weird cat. I'm gonna go look at that.

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Denise Crowe 

Because you're walking.

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Mariella Luz  

Bret it looks like you have some notes. Do you have anything you want to cover?

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Bret Lunsford  1:11:08

Not really, I think I've covered most of it. I just wrote out kind of a timeline of the period that I was in Olympia just so I kind of have, I wouldn't be struggling as much to remember. I don't really have anything more that I need to say.

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Denise Crowe 

I think one of the things that's been present leading up to this time together, you know, Olympia was my dad's hometown. He was class 58, Olympia High School. The same year that the Fleetwoods were number one on the charts. The mythos of that time, and Olympia, of music becoming nationally known from that era, and music being vibrant in Olympia as a center of that culture, you know, from his era. That was just always something I was aware of as part of the feeling of the place of Olympia. Even though I guess it was considered more mainstream, it was also rock and roll at the time, and, you know, its own kind of revolutionary force.

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Bret Lunsford  

Yeah, that's interesting to think.  It ties together back to that whole early Northwest scene where it had its own music culture, and it wasn't that people didn't want to go to Hollywood or New York. I'm sure they did eventually, but it was self-sustaining. And there was an economic power to it. 

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Mariella Luz  

And regional for a long time.

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Denise Crowe  

Yeah.

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Bret Lunsford  

I guess I reflect on the years that I was in Olympia, compared to the post 1990 after International Pop Underground, and the world's discovery of Northwest music. From that point on, it kind of had it leveled off as like, you know. The ‘80s in Olympia, we’re not really imagining that it would become careers.

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Denise Crowe  

Yeah, at all. At all. It was really of and for each other, in the moment.

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Bret Lunsford  1:14:14

And I think it's great that the takeoff then leveled off into a long flight that's still ongoing. And people can find ways to live their art and live from it. You know, that's wow, dream come true. So I applaud that. It was not my experience of the culture that wasn't really a forefront goal. I think there were visionaries. You know, I think Bruce and Calvin both were visionaries as to what the potential could be. Calvin, I mean, Beat Happening would have, he was the driving force that we got to be or I feel like I got to be along for the ride.  He was forming this network that he then dubbed the International Pop Underground.  They were doing the Sub Pop experiment and bringing in these different bands and artists from different regions around the country, then forming those relationships… you know, it just, again, it's like little steps along the way, formed into something that then, by the time Nirvana was growing out of the Olympia scene, there was all the world was watching then.

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Mariella Luz  

Yeah, pretty awesome. And also hard to wrap your head around. Well, do you guys have anything else that you'd like to add? Or sort of …?

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Bret Lunsford  

I feel like I've been able to talk through a lot of it. And to my experience, I know that there's so much more that was happening, especially after I moved out of Olympia, that that could be talked about, but I don't have enough perspective on it. I would, you know, freely if somebody brought up something. I would look to comment. I'm happy that to think about, say, Phil Elverum, who I knew as a, as a kid growing up in Anacortes, who started doing his recording projects at the Business where I had kind of developed my own Anacortes experimental venue/business that he then decided to move to Olympia and beyond.  But you know, that there was something for him there in the Dub Narcotic Studio, in Yo Yo and K and all the things that were happening there.  That it just could continue its creative expansion into all the things that became and is still becoming. So I feel joy to think about the way that it has sustained itself and those principles.

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Mariella Luz  

Really quick for the record, do you want to tell us what, what the Business is?

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Bret Lunsford  1:18:13

Sure, when I was a teenager in Anacortes, one of the few places you can go to experience weird things was this place… it was a storefront called the Business, located at 1717 Commercial right next to a lumberyard and convenience store. When I went there, they had used books, they had used pianos, they had stained glass, they had bird seed, and they had photographs on the wall and they had a dark room and a bunch of cameras. Like man, this is some countercultural dry goods store that I just, I go there, I buy books or I tried to buy books. And oftentimes, Glen the owner Glen Desjardins runs, his name is spelled so some would normally be pronounced “day-jar- dan”, but he was from Eastern Kentucky, and it was pronounced Desjardins- he'd often give me the book that I want,  it might be On The Road, you know, Kerouac’s On the Road or, or whatever I was picking up as a teenager. And he'd say, “for future consideration” he’d just give it to me. And then little did I know he was baiting me into coming back to this  store and working there. Initially, I was working in the darkroom, completing a contract and independent contract at Evergreen where I was working on family history, researching family history through oral histories and photography. And then he offered, I was walking, I moved back to Anacortes and I was walking by the store one day to actually see about getting a job at the local newspaper. I was a college graduate at that point. And he said, “Well, why don't you start a newspaper here.” At the end, I started working in the Business, quickly realized that [there was] no way we could afford to start a newspaper from the Business. But I still kept on there and brought music in, started doing shows there. That's where old and young gathered, we put in a coffee shop, started having art shows there, and music shows.  Lots of great shows there. And kind of continuing that cross pollination between Anacortes and Olympia, and really valued all of the fun and enriching events that we get to host and watch and participate in.

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Denise Crowe  

I think that's one of the things and when you say we were rewarded for continuing to be part of, you know, extending the culture of Olympia. Sometimes I marvel at how many people had informative experiences in Olympia, who were friends and acquaintances, and in some cases, family like Khaela [Maricich from the Blow].  How many people who were nurtured in that culture at some point, have gone on to do amazing art, to be performers of renown. And sometimes it's just a little mind bending, to be like, oh, yeah, all of the famous people that had primary experiences in that culture and in that place. And that's exciting to me- the way in which that culture has shaped our larger culture.

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Bret Lunsford  1:22:39

Yeah. I think about the Sub Pop cassettes, and what they meant, the gathering and the curating, and then the distribution of those.  How then they became seeds.  Then all of Calvin's cassette revolution that he declared, and its impact. The people who got the newsletter from wherever they lived, and that was like something that sustained them, if they felt isolated. I was involved in that and feeling inspired by it. It was through the music connections as Denise was saying, becomes a network and you “Oh, you remember the person who played that show?”  Well, they contacted you 10 years later, because they're doing this and they want to talk to you about …, you know? It really is an extended community. That's still vital. And there's an understanding like the community is because you have this history and you understand, or want to try to understand, what other people we're going to be offering to it.  I was recently involved in, because Hugh Holden introduced me to this book about this guy named Harry Smith. I realized that this guy who grew up a couple of blocks from my mom's house in Anacortes, in the ‘30s and ‘40s would go on to create his own mixtape called the Anthology of American Folk Music that is credited with seeding the folk revival that, you know, led to Bob Dylan and everybody else, tuning into these 78s that he collected.  That's something that I tried to explore in a book that I wrote called Sounding for Harry Smith, which is “what causes a person to want to figure out?” Well, you know, collect a bunch of 78s and then put them on to a collection and have that distributed you know, was it nature or nurture that created Harry Smith?  And that same question gets applied to Olympia.

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