John Shultz 00:00

Okay. All right, it's John Schultz with the Oly Indie Music Project on February 20, 2023 and I'm here with Eric Breding from Bly’s Jinx, Simple Ritual, Aggressor, Dead Porn Stars, et cetera, et cetera. So tell me, where are you from? Olympia?

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Eric Breding 00:27

Absolutely. I was born in Lacey. I was born in St. Pete's, so technically Olympia, right, but I grew up in Tanglewilde.

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John Shultz 00:35

The new one, or the old St Pete's?

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Eric Breding 00:37

There's more than one?

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John Shultz 00:43

The old one was here on the west side, you're younger though. I was one of the last kids born there.

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Eric Breding 00:46

Oh, all right. Okay, well, good. That means you're older than me. Yeah, I was born in... I'm not gonna tell you the year [laughs]. But yeah, born at St. Peter's hospital grew up in Tanglewilde, I'm a T-wilde boy. So out in Lacey. Yep.

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John Shultz 01:04

Cool. What brought your folks here?

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Eric Breding 01:06

Yeah, so my mom came from Everett [Washington]. My dad came from California, and my dad was kind of this slick California dude, you know, with the greasy hair and the pointed shoes. My mom fell for him right away. He was a total bad boy, and my grandparents on my mom's side didn't approve of that very much. They went to [North] Thurston [high school] and then they ran off together and did the Army thing and had me. There's a joke, I have a tattoo on the back of my neck, and when I got my first tattoo, my grandma raised me, my grandma wouldn't let me get any tattoos or anything and I went and got this tattoo on the back of my neck that said, Made in the USA. and she said, “You're so dumb”, I was trying to show it to her, you know, I was trying to make her, and she said, “You're an idiot. You were made in Germany, you weren't made in the USA” [laughs] Yeah, I was conceived in Germany, but I was born over here. And then they broke up. Not to be too personal, but my dad got incarcerated and so I came to live with my grandma in Olympia at about the third grade. I'd lived off and on with my grandma in Tanglewilde you know, just when they dropped me off, my parents were partying a bit and stuff like that... I shouldn't say my mom so much, but my dad. Yeah, so I'd hang out with my grandma a bit, but then I full-time lived with her. My mom had to work a lot. You know what I mean? So my grandma kind of raised us and we had a house with 12 people in one little house and it was fun. Yeah, for sure. Like, a million dogs and cats and yeah, so Lacey. I was a Lacey boy for sure. But of course, you know, Lacey... don't want to say that. There's a big difference. But come on, we're right next to each other. What we used to like to say is, you know, we're from the craphole. I went to Timberline [High School]. I loved Timberline for a while. I guess I didn't really like high school too much. Yeah, that's kind of how I started music.

John Shultz 03:43

When was that? How old were you when you started that?

Eric Breding 03:46

I had this paper route, and I got I was thinking about this, you could never do this with kids nowadays. But I had my paper route in the third grade. You know, imagine letting a nine year old or eight year old run around in the morning at 4:30 or 5 o'clock in the morning. You know, it was different times, but I had a paper route and I well my grandma took me to see Van Halen in 1982 Diver Down [tour], and I was 10 years old and that changed my life. When I saw David Lee Roth jump over the drums and do his whole assless pants thing and all that, we'll talk about the sexuality of it later [laughs] it just changed my life. I just couldn't believe the spectacle of it all and I just started emulating the vocalists. So I would ride around on my bike and then eventually I got a little Honda Spree scooter and I would just sing through my Walkman. Remember the days of the tape Walkman? You'd run through tons of headphones because they'd crack in and out, but I would just sing. I had a buddy named Adam who always knew when to wake up in the morning for school because he could hear me singing. So I would just sing and sing and sing. Then I got a job at Safeway, I worked as a helper clerk and then I worked my way up and I worked in seafood. I come home smelling like fish every day. But every day there'd be this helper clerk named Joe Bean, who would come out the doors, the seafood, you know, sat right near the door he would go back to get the stock, right? And he'd run in and out.

John Shultz

How old are you at this time?

Eric Breding

So now I'm 15. I got the job about a half year before I turned 16. That was when you could still work at 15. Right? And he was coming in and out. He was a year older than me. So he was '90, I was '91, as far as graduating, and he was a rock guy, and we just started talking about rock and roll. He was a guitar player. And I was a little like, not starstruck, but envious of him because I'd seen him in a talent show at Timberline, you know we had these talent shows and he came out and just was ripping all these solos. And I thought he was like the best but now I realize he was just doing these hammer-ons. [laughs] But I thought it was so cool and those were the guitar days. So we start talking rock and roll and he asked me if I could sing, out of nowhere. He just asked me “Can you sing?” And I was like, “yeah”, he's like, “well, come down and jam, I got a drummer and his name was Donovan Gibbs, R.I.P.... he passed away aways back, another kid, another guy named Jansen Fallon, who became a good buddy of mine, we went down to the valley. I'll never forget this, to a guy named Tyler's house, we went down to this trailer, and we practiced in this little teeny trailer. I had this teeny little guitar amp. I didn't even know what vocals were, and this mic with a nail in the middle of it, this little teeny microphone.

John Shultz

What was the nail for?

Eric Breding

I think it was to hold the top of it on, somebody had driven a nail through the diaphragm of the microphone and then I was plugged right, I mean, literally like this little Peavey 10 inch speaker guitar amp. I wonder why I couldn't hear myself. We played, I'll never forget, we played, total Lacey right, we played Love On The Rocks by Poison and we played Born to be Wild, The Cult version, right? And then he's like, “Hey, man, you want to be in a band?” and so we started a band. We called ourselves Bad News [laughs] and it was horrible. No, we were called Point Blank and then we became Bad News for like a day and then I had this idea because I was into early Alice In Chains, this was like late 80s and I'd went and seen this Alice In Chains show, they'd opened for Vain. So I thought a cool name would be Des Resents. I'll never forget that. So we did that for a little while. And then we eventually became Bly’s Jinx. Then we all moved from Timberline to the alternative school because we were partying too much and doing what we were doing. And then we just started getting shows and and going for it and should I keep going?

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John Shultz 08:59

Well what most people probably know you from is Simple Ritual at this point. When did Simple start? I mean, Joe Bean was in Simple.

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Eric Breding 09:08

Yeah. So basically Bly’s Jinx was just Simple but Donovan, the drummer, was taken off or something. And we saw this guy Bogney, we went played the show with Mischievous Violence who eventually became Splat and the guys in Aggressor. So in a nutshell Bly’s Jinx became Simple Ritual, but we needed a new drummer and we saw this guy Bogney. We went out and played this party opening for what eventually became Aggressor, and they were called Mischievous Violence so Slotnick went to do Splat and Terry Treznor went to do Aggressor. But before that they were Mischievous Violence and Wayne Blue, who's a bass player was playing with Bogney in a band, I think they were called Rock Bottom. We played this old shed and I remember it being awesome, a bunch of people moshing in there and we were not heavy, we’re not heavy at all and they were so heavy. We didn't fit in. But we did our thing, and we just loved this drummer so we chased him down. One time we were out at, remember Super Saturday? We were out at Super Saturday, and we saw him walking along and we both approached him said, “Hey, man, we want you to be our drummer” and he said “no”. And we bugged him for weeks and weeks and weeks and finally he said “Yes,” so Bogney joined in and we did Bly’s Jinx for years, for a couple of years, through high school. The thing was with us was we were into funk music we were all about like, this is before the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers were popular. We were into like, “Uplift Mofo Party Plan” and, you know, “Freaky Stylee” and all this stuff. Oh, let me go back. Tom Burns, the bass player for Simple Ritual, he was in Mischievous Violence, and I played baseball with him. So we ended up getting rid of Jansen and Tom Burns joined and we did this Bly’s Jinx for a while. And what happened was, what created the Simple Ritual sound, was we couldn't get any shows because we weren't heavy enough. These were the days of Death Squad and Attica and you know, then you had the punk side with The Melvins and all that and but we couldn't get a show because we were too cheesy, you know, too light, like funky rock. So we started, we literally, we consciously said, we're gonna write heavier riffs so we can get on these shows. So we started writing heavier stuff, so we'd be doing this funk jam and then right in the middle we’d do like this [makes heavy guitar riff sound] you know what I mean? So we could just get on these shows and then Bly’s Jinx broke up. I don't know why, but we just decided to break up. I wanted to go heavier and they wanted to stay kind of poppy. So they kept doing their thing. I was approached by Terry Treznor and Eric Carlson of Aggressor because their bass player had left and went to go to school. So Pat, the singer for Aggressor moved over to bass. And they asked me if I'd like to do vocals, and at that time Aggressor was the absolute shit. You know, I mean, they were so good. And I was honored to go play with those guys. They were just like kind of lightyears beyond my experience. They had been doing Death Squad shows and playing in Seattle, like the OK Hotel, open for Forced Entry. You know, all that stuff. So I jumped on it and Eric Pugh from Death Squad hopped on it and we played a bunch of cool shows, we opened for Forced Entry, and all of a sudden now I'm playing these cool shows. But it wasn't me. It was like Forbidden and Sacred Reich kind of stuff, you know what I mean? And I just wasn't digging it and so I started going, I was hanging out with my friends who were the old Bly’s Jinx guys, but then going and playing with Aggressor. And one day we're jammin’, I'm jammin’ with Bly’s Jinx in Bogney's house and we go to walk outside and all the guys from Aggressor are standing in the living room. They look at me and they're like, “Well, you basically are cheating on us. So we're firing you” and I was like, “Well, it's cool because I want to do this” and then that's when we started Simple Ritual. And we just decided to be a straight up... We decided to go all the way funk-wise and just be a funk band. We got that name from a girl, she dropped this list in our apartment, we were all kind of living in the same area. She had this list, her name was Amber and she had this list of everything she'd done with different guys in our group. She like she dated this guy, and I won't get into exploitive, you know what I mean? But she really was detailed. And she and I we.... have no idea to this day, but she'd written like “I kissed this dude.... I did this with this dude” And we called it “Amber's list of Simple Rituals.” And I went, “that's the name. Drop the 's' and you have Simple Ritual. So that's where Simple Ritual came from.

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John Shultz

What year was that?

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Eric Breding

So that would have been like 92. Bly’s Jinx got to open for Tad. And we were part of that whole riot thing. Remember Moshers Mayhem? So a dude named Mark, and Willie Baker, they had this show called Moshers Mayhem on TCTV. And it was a pretty popular thing. It was really cool. And it fueled the scene, at least our scene, because we weren't part of that, you know, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, K [records] thing. We weren't part of that. We were just kind of a separate thing. And, they kind of fueled that and we were playing a show and there was a fight and the cops came in at the North Shore Surf Club, which was like Dave Grohl's first show, and we played there with Breece Nelson. We were actually the last band to play there because we were playing while this riot went down and they said “stop playing” and then we played another song and the whole place got ripped apart. And so that was our final show, except for the Tad show we played at the Capitol Theater. But then we, you know, then I went with Aggressor for a while and, and then we came back and did the Simple thing. So that would have been like... I'm really bad with dates. I think it was like '92 because it was right around when [Nirvana's] Nevermind came out. Or like after Nevermind, I remember to Breece having a tape of Nevermind before Nevermind was even out like he got it from somebody. And we were listening to it '91 or '92? I believe I'm not sure, I think it was 91 it came out.

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John Shultz 16:22

Well, when you Simple started, I want to say you played with Bull Sweet [?] as early as '91.

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Eric Breding 16:26

I think so. Yeah. We played with them a lot with Dave.

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John Shultz 16:37

My Dave. There are a lot of Daves. I've got at least four or five fliers with you guys on them.

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Eric Breding 16:42

Right. So I think it was '91

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John Shultz 16:45

What was it like being a funk band in early 90s? When you had the punk thing you got you know, Fitz of Depression type of situations. And then you got grunge going up north and then the K records, riot grrrl thing’s starting to happen. I mean, where did a band like Simple Ritual fit in?

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Eric Breding 17:05

We didn't, we didn't at all. We used to joke back then that we just needed to get out of here. You know, but the truth is we were pulling huge, huge big crowds and we were we worked really, really hard. So we focused on Seattle. There were bands up there like the Supersonic Soul Pimps and down in Portland there was Sweaty Nipples, Hungry Young Poets, all these bands that we felt that if we could just get in with them, we'd be okay. Of course, back then you don't know what the punk scene is going to become. I mean, obviously, it's become this iconic time for everybody. We were right in the thick of it. And self admittedly, we were very misogynistic and, you know, we're coming off the 80s and we were horny young kids. So we were singing about sex and the lifestyle. We were living this... we were living. We were really good friends with the Rhino Humpers and so we were singing about partying and girls and living it up. And it was all about, we were the party band and, you know, Kathleen and the riot grrls are doing their thing. And Fitz is doing their thing now. So the punk bands, they kind of shunned us. In fact, and Kathleen was right, you know, I've always went back and said this, she was ahead of her time. They painted this at the North Shore Surf Club outside on the wall, they painted this, and broke our heart, they painted this big mural that I think it was either Simple Ritual or Bly’s Jinx, one of the two but it had a, like the Ghostbuster sign where it crossed us out. It said, “sexist fucks”, you know what I mean? So it said, like, “Simple Ritual: sexist fucks”, right? They had this big cross through and everybody signed it and so they really did not like us. And at one point, Jason from Hell Trout was yelling at us and we came out of the club one time and Kathleen was in the top of the window yelling at us, “you sexist pigs!” and dadadadada. Kathleen [Hanna] of Bikini Kill. And of course, we're kids so we're like, “Fuck you!”, you know what I mean? And, you know, looking back on it, she was so right. You know, I don't have that attitude towards women. That changed after a few years. But we just weren't part of that ideology. And we were kind of powered by y’know, our lower regions at that point [laughs] So we focused on Seattle. But I have to say in regards to the punk, besides the Karp guys that were really cool, we played a couple times with them, but Mikey from Fitz was the coolest dude in the world, we talked and we hung out, and he was always so nice to me. And I'll never forget-this is a good story-one time… in the old days, we didn't have cell phones and all that, I had to go by my grandma's house. I was living on my own by now in a band house. And I went by because we didn't have a phone so I went by my grandma's house, and that was the band's message phone. And there was a phone message on there from Mikey she said “somebody called named Mikey from a band about depression”. I'll never forget, and so I called him and he didn't call me back. And then one day I'm walking out of Ralph's [Thriftway grocery store] and he's like, “Hey, man” and I'm like, “Hey, dude”, and we start talking and he goes, “I want you to open the show for us”. And I'm like,” we can't open for you. man. Like we'll get killed and the show had Nubbin on it, you know, and if think like Pod was on it, or you know what Ryan Van Bargen's band was on it, and he's a cool guy, too. We played with him a lot, too. Yeah, he didn't judge music at all. And we were growing up and becoming more conscious of what we were doing. And he insisted on us doing this show, and I'll never forget, he said “there's only one letter difference, you know, between punk and funk”. And I was like, “fuck, that's cool”. So we ended up playing with Fitz many times, you know, and we'd get on the stage and there'd be like Mikey and three other people in before it was packed, right? They'd all go outside and smoke cigarettes while we played [laughs]. But like Mikey from Fitz was always so super inclusive. And in regards to the punk scene, so there were people who loved on us for sure. But we were definitely not part of that scene. We focused on Seattle and we focused on Tacoma. And we played places like The Color Box and The Off Ramp. And we'd go down to Portland and play down there. And then we would throw our own shows in Olympia. And there was a separate scene from you know, oddly, Dave that was in Nirvana, drummer and then he was in Hell Trout. He was the drummer. He played guitar in a band called Sucker Punch. And there was another band called Mumble Yak and the three of us would set up our own shows, and we kind of created our own scene away from that punk scene. We pulled monster, you know, we sold out The Armory a couple times. And we had some great, wonderful times, they were great times. And we all lived in a house. We all live in a house on Yew Street. And, um and then Brian from The Dirty Birds lived with us. And Benoni lived with us and and we just, you know, Benoni was our light guy before he was in The Dirty Birds. He would he would sit behind the drums and do our lights, and we'd get in the van and go and play constantly. So it was good times.

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John Shultz 23:45

Yeah... Because you guys were different than everything else happening in Olympia at the time, do you think that's why you drew bigger crowds? Like Scott Freeman, from Engine 54, being a ska band.

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Eric Breding

I love Scott.

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John Shultz

Yeah, great guy. It's kind of you know, guys our age, I grew up a punk. Right? People a little bit younger than us, maybe not. So they're looking for something a little different. Do you think maybe that's why [they liked it because] it's just different than all the screaming girl bands and the punk bands and all that maybe they just wanted something different. I mean, do you think that maybe why you started drawing some crowds?

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Eric Breding 24:28

I think so, I think that we drew big crowds because we weren't so counterculture as punk rock then, and it's not like it is now where punk rock is not punk rock. Now they think that like Blink 182 is punk rock, you know? But back then, it was like Fugazi and stuff like that. So I think that we catered to like, you know, mainstream culture a little more, so automatically, you're gonna get bigger crowds. You know what I mean? I'll never forget this- so, Aggressor keeps going and Terry Tresner comes to one of our shows one time, and we had one thing in common with Kathleen Hanna. So Kathleen would say, out of all out of all the differences, we had one commonality. Now it was for completely two different fucking reasons, this commonality, but it was the truth. She would say at the beginning of her shows, “all the men in the back, all the girls come up front”, that's a pretty popular thing that she would do. Well, girls would automatically come up front for us, because we were a funk band, and it was sexy times. And these were empowered women too, that were showing their confidence and their stuff, and we empowered them through our music. And so Terry was like, “man, we want to be you”, I'm like, “Well, you know, girls don't want to see like [vocalizes heavy guitar sounds] you know what I mean? So, he'd be like, “there's literally like rows and rows and rows of girls, and the guys come because all the girls are there”. So it got to be this thing, where we kind of had, we didn't sound like them. But we had this Bon Jovi-esque kind of thing going on where guys knew that girls would be at the show, so they would come to the show too you know? Skid Row, right? So it's funny, because, you know, girls weren't there, you know, to lash out, but they were still upfront too, but it was a different way of empowerment, in my opinion. You know what I mean? And it was, we were, very sexual. We really wanted to take that Prince vibe and bring it forward. And there was a budding funk scene. I mean, it just was very- like I said, Supersonic Soul Pimps was a huge deal to us. And my buddy, Jeff Holheisel, who moved up to Seattle, he was in Splat and he was in a band out now that's still pretty popular that he was in, I can't remember. He was living up in Seattle, they moved up to Seattle and they couldn't play a show one night at The Color Box. We were still playing like Thursdays, trying to get Fridays. Back then you had to play Monday to get a Wednesday, to get a Friday, you know? They couldn't play because something happened to one of their members and he said, “Hey, man, come up and play the show”. Well, we played that show and from then on, everything changed. The Soul Pimps totally dug us and so we got to play all these really great shows after that. It's kind of who you know, right? And then The [Rhino] Humpers and us, we were playing constantly together. They were from Tacoma and they kind of had the same ideology as us: “let's get drunk and fuck,” you know what I mean? I think they influenced us a lot. I know they influenced us a lot, because they made us realize, just throw those hard riffs away, and be yourself. They wanted you to dance all night. What really changed our sound was, we were writing... we'd finished one record, and we were writing the next record. And we had got a new jam pad, and Joe comes to practice, and he starts playing. And we're like, “what's going on with your distortion pedal?” He had plugged right in. He had no distortion pedal, he just had a wah pedal. He was like “I'm not gonna play with distortion anymore.” And we were like, “What? What are you talking about? You're not going to play with distortion anymore?”

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John Shultz 28:34

This is the second Simple album?

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Eric Breding 28:37

Yeah, he threw the distortion pedal away and so it created this bass-dominant, rhythm section-dominant music with where the guitar is more [vocalizes funky guitar sound] right? It's very sporadic, and then big, bigger melody driven chords, which I didn't realize at the time, but opened me up as a singer to do all this really cool stuff. That's kind of where I got my chops. I was raised on Earth, Wind and Fire and Confunkshun and the Commodores and stuff, so I just went back to that. There was a period of time, where we would play these funk shows and then after we got done, we would go to a house party, and we put on like “Rock the Boat,” you know, and all these old funk, disco tunes, and there were certain medicines involved, powders involved and we would just dance the night away. You know what I mean? And those are some of the best memories of my life, the 90s to me were funk shows and house parties. Then we quickly realized we went and played we start playing frat shows and we started realizing that's where it's at. We would go up to the U dub [University of Washington] and a frat would hire us and the frat would put you in the basement and they invite all these sororities, so there's tons of girls, and people would pay, and there'd be these people walking around with like half gallons of vodka or whatever and they just dump it in [your mouth], you know, and that's where I knocked my tooth out- from the crowd hitting the microphone, it knocked my teeth out. They paid us, they fed us. We all got… you know, trying not to be too... but we all ended up with a woman. We just loved it. So we started going to frats and doing those big party shows and we would double up, we play the club at 10 [o'clock] and then we'd play the frat, or we played the club at 9 and we played the frat at like 11 into the night. We realized if we could play three to four hours, we could get paid and not even have an opening band. And we just got kind of known for that. Like we would show up with a PA, lights, a horn section, the whole thing and just funk you all night long.And of course, that was a really popular time for Funkadelic right with the resurgence of George Clinton, and even that movie was out. Remember that movie with Jeremy Piven, PCU? And so that was kind of driving that culture. And we just kind of were in the right place at the right time and we hopped on that. And then the raves put us out of business. Yeah, by the late 90s raves kind of shut that down for us.

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John Shultz 31:35

So who was it? Was Joe Bean on guitar? You, Tommy Burns on bass, Ryan,

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Eric Breding 31:42

Ryan Mongia {sp?] or Bogney. Well, at first name was Mark Bogney and then he changed his name to Ryan Mongia. We all called him Raghead. He eventually, it's funny because Brian Sparhawk didn't even realize for years that he was in Simple Ritual. He was just, we called it Hellbelly [laughs] and he was a different guitar player. He's like, “Wait a second. I'm in Simple Ritual. God dammit. We hated you guys.”

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John Shultz 32:08

Who else was in Simple?

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Eric Breding 32:10

That was it. Well, we had a guitar player come in and out, but I can't remember his name. But one day, we just fired him. He got his finger cut off, so that's why we fired him. We had a rotating cast. Oh, no, you're talking about our our percussionist. It was a five piece. So for many years, it was it was our five piece we had a we had a brother that grew up in Tanglewilde with us, and he moved to Georgia. And then he came back- we called him Georgia- and we were like, “man, we're gonna put you behind the bongos.” And then the drummer for Sucker Punch, Jason Lyons, he came in played with us for a while on percussion and then him and Ryan would swap spots. Then we had a rotating horn section. We had a girl named Rosa from Evergreen that was in the punk scene, and came out and played with us. And then a guy named Mike from Vancouver, and they made this rippin'... and I remember for years we had-I think his name was Chris-just this incredible sax player. So we started putting all the [former] guitar solos into saxophone. That's when we did Audio Voyeurism. And we came out with this, horned album out, with tons of horns and percussion and, and it did really, really well. We put out tons of demos. So we put out one demo with Bly’s Jinx. Then we put out a demo called Handful of Rain with five or six songs on it. These are tapes. And then we put out a demo called Something, Bees and Antifreeze... I can't remember. And that was a that was a five song EP. And then we did our first CD, and this is when CDs weren't even out. And I remember people going “Oh, my God, you have a CD!” And that one was called Backwash. And then we had started on the funk trail then, but we were still using a bit of distortion. And then we did Audio Voyeurism and Audio Voyeurism was a big production thing. That came out in '96 or '97. That album took us a year to do and I remember everybody but Joe really being mad at me because I kind of headed up that thing. I worked with a guy named Gary Shaw from Blackpool, England. And remember in the old days, we used to do like 8 to 16 tracks. If you could go to like London Bridge, it was Triad back then, you know, “24 tracks, oh my god! You don't have to, like, bus down the drums.” Well, this guy comes out with the first MIDI non-tape thing. It was these things called Roland VS880s, and they had virtual tracks. We bought two of them, so we had a total of 64 tracks. We couldn't believe it. So we'd lose tracks. You know what I mean? Because it was so new then. So I could put shakers in, I could put horns, and I could double the vocals, I could do all this stuff. And so we we made this record that I'm, to this day, super proud of.  I think it stands the test of time. I think it's one of the best records I've ever made, for sure. It did good, and we'd been playing those songs for a year before the record came out. We went into a studio with a guy named Jim Porter to do that record, and we recorded over the course of like, a month, and we were mixing it and we hated it. We didn't like it at all. And one night, it was like two in the morning and Joe looked at me and goes, “Man, all of this sucks” and we had shows coming out and I think we'd gotten a little bit of money from like, a so called independent label and I can't remember where we got the money. But they wanted this record from you know, there, and we went to them and said, “We're gonna throw the whole thing away, go back in the studio, rewrite the songs and record it again” and I remember that was a big deal. Like, the people were pissed, you know? And then that's when we went and we did it. And thank god we did, because that record ended up good. Really good.

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John Shultz 37:03

When did Simple breakup?

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Eric Breding 37:05

So, and I can talk about this, because, you know, Joe was really upfront with this, too. It's not like we're innocent. We were all doing drugs, pretty heavy. I was going up, and most people were going down, you know, we weren't into like, the meth and stuff, but we were into the party drugs, like ecstasy and the coke and all that. And he was a drinker and him and Bogney were drinkers, and man, could they drink, and it got to be where there was this super tension on stage where Joe would be so drunk he couldn't play. I'm not busting them out right now, he would say this, right? If he were sitting right here. And I was hyper hypertension, because I was always so loaded on coke, you know what I mean? Which in the beginning was cool, like this kind of brother fighting on stage, but then it got to be... at one point, he ran across the stage, hit me with his guitar and took out his stack in the middle of a show. There was another time where he fell off the stage, and I jumped on him and started punching him. It was pretty nuts and it got to be where he knew we needed to get sober. And I just wanted to tour. My whole thing was tour, tour, tour, tour, tour. And all the K [records] bands are touring, you know, like Fitz [of Depression] would be out touring. And Unwound would be out touring. And all these bands are touring and I'm like, we can't depend on K or Kill Rock Stars or that scene. They had an infrastructure built for touring, right? We had to create our own thing, we had to tour on our own, so it was way more difficult. We couldn't just jump on an independent and tour, we had to build it. So it was hard. And I just wanted to tour, tour, tour, tour, tour. And I thought the only way we're going to be able to tour is if we got rid of Joe. And Joe is just our complete sound, the backbone of the band. So we tried to move on without Joe and that was very, very short lived. I mean, I think Bogney quit and we got the drummer from Mumble Yak for about a half a year, and we kept trying to go and then Joe ended up quitting and moving to Seattle and just getting out of Olympia, getting out of the scene. Praise god, because he got sober and he's been sober ever since then, like the late 90s. So we broke up in about... he's in a great band called The Nines, a cover band, I fuck with him because he's a wedding singer, [laughter] but I think we called it quits in '98.

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John Shultz 39:47

I think I was still writing for Axis at that point. I didn't realize...

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Eric Breding 39:4

I remember Axis moved into our house.

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John Shultz 40:29

Actually, no… well, did Holly live with you on the house on the hill there? Dave Lichtenberg was in there, [Johnny] Machine was there?

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Eric Breding 40:38

Yep, yeah… oh, Johnny machine, yeah.

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John Shultz 40:39

[I hurt] my arm and got stitches at that house. 

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Eric Breding 40:42

That house was a madhouse, and I was the first one to rent that house and turn it into a band house. And I remember the guy said, “You can do anything you want, just don't grow pot. 

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John Shultz 40:51

Yeah, the portrait thing fell off once. It was ugly, dude. Y’know, I’d fucking crash on the couch and I'd hear Dave Lichtenberg in his room, like three in the fucking morning, playing “South of Heaven.” 

‍

Eric Breding: Yeah, crazy. But I think Axis probably might have ended about the same time. Right? You know what I mean? Which- as you said, y’know… drugs. 

‍

Eric Breding 41:20

Yeah, use-boost on drugs. You know, it was a big thing in the 90s. 

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John Shultz 41:25

Yeah, a couple of fucking people were on meth and fucking coke. 

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Eric Breding 41:29

The 90s, man… it's what we did. Baggy [Ryan Von Bargen] joined Lichtenberg’s band. So Baggy went on to do the Fitz with Johnny machine. Yeah, it was a you know, it was the 90s. That was Aaron Pierce, right?

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John Shultz 41:39

Yeah. Ryan joined the Fitz to have an interview with them in another magazine here somewhere. 

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Eric Breding 41:52

And Bob Hogg had The Mattress. Remember The Mattress? 

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John Shultz 42:01

…and I remember Matt Skinner…  made the Lacey sucks T shirts. Remember that? 

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Eric Breding 42:05

Yeah. Yes, we do. We remember that very well.

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John Shultz 

 And he owned the porn stores, right? In Centralia?

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Eric Breding

Oh, yeah, I think he went on and did porn stuff… it was crazy. I mean, it was the best.  You know, you look back at it, and I don't regret anything. Anyways, it was an absolute blast. And then we went on. So that's when we went on to do DPS. Dead Porn Stars. I was in a really dark place. And I was coming to terms with like, abuse as a child. And I was at the height of my drug use. And so I got into the Florida metal scene, which was not popular at the time, but it was Nine Inch Nails and Manson and, and Skinny Puppy and Download and cEvin Key and all that stuff. And I'm going to like the catwalk in Seattle. And at this point, I'm exploring my sexuality. You know, I'm bisexual. And I had hit it then, big time. And nobody knew of it in Olympia, but I'd found a group of people in… do remember The Stranger? The Stranger was a was a magazine where, you know, alternative lifestyles could meet and talk to each other and stuff like that. So I went up to this club called Neighbors- that's, I think, still a gay club. I went up there and met some friends and I quickly went from this funk thing to this dark like, goth catwalk kind of pleather kind of thing. And all of a sudden, instead of wearing bright, beautiful clothes, my hair was purple and dark, and I'm wearing eyeliner and all that stuff. And I met a girl who was like my… We were like Sid and Nancy, you know what I mean? And we hung out for years-Shannon Austin, the mother of my first two children-and we just started partying hard. And I wanted to do a really heavy, heavy, heavy, what I called “kill your mom band.” I wanted to push the envelope off the table. And so I talked to Tommy Burns and I said, “Let's make a band.” And I had the name of the band before I had any songs. I was looking through, like The Rocket or The Stranger, one of the like an Access mag or a Menu mag like you were talking about. And there was a story on all the people who had died who were porn stars, and it said “dead porn stars” across it, and I was like, "That's the name of my band.” And so I started a band called Dead Porn Stars. And Mike Peterson fom the Harbor, who was in the Seahawks drum corps, and he was in a band called Moth and another band called Jed, and just a phenomenal drummer. This guy shows up to try out, we've tried out like four or five drummers, and this guy shows up with a snare, a hi-hat and a bass drum. That's it. 

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John Shultz

 No toms, right? 

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Eric Breding

No, toms, no anything. And we're like, oh, God, I don't even want to go through with this. You know what I mean? I almost just told him to leave. And he gets on there and just kills it. We were like, “holy shit!” And so he became the drummer. Then we got Terry Tresner back from Aggressor, I asked him to do it. And we started writing songs. And we did the first record with Jason [who] produced it from MumbleYak, and we did the first record in ‘99. It was called Abra Cadaver. Tommy Burns was on bass and, and we played with a different crowd. Heavy, heavy shows. But we were more of a noise band, rather than a “crunch crunch crunch.” Man, we made a lot of orchestrated noise. We just made a bunch of orchestrated noise, you know, but there was still tons of melody in that band. I still have people come up to me and go “that was the best thing you've ever done.” 

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John Shultz

Did you play around Olympia?

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Eric Breding

 Yeah, we played in Olympia a lot. But we did a lot of these festivals. Do you remember Dave Khan?(sp?) He was a local promoter guy. He used to work with Metal Church a lot, and he loved us. So he would put us on all these kind of cool shows. And then, we played a lot of shitty shows. But we had some great, great shows. Then we took a break because I got pancreatitis-really bad for my lifestyle, you know. And I was cutting myself real bad. I didn't realize I was so bipolar. You know what I mean? And cut myself on stage. And then we had a part of the show where, where-now this is really hardcore-I'd have everybody spit on me. And so I'm bleeding and people are spitting on me, right? So I got sepsis really bad. And then I ended up in the hospital for 30 days and almost kicked the bucket. And when I was in there, I wrote a bunch of songs and did kind of a lighter record for a band called Mojo Filter. And then I very quickly realized I wanted to go back to DPS. So then we did another record. And we got rid of Terry Dresner and he was having some issues. And we got Jason Celestine from Cypress and from Mom’s Rocket, and Randy Keller… Randy Keller didn't work out, so we got Tommy back. Then we did a whole ‘nother stint with DPS. And that's when we made “Three Pumps and a Quiver.” (laughing) That was the name of that record, “Three Pumps and a Quiver.” So at that point, I'd went back to making fun of the misogyny. So now I was mad at everybody. And I wanted to push it in their face, like shove shit in their face. You know, I was just trying to deal with it, you know? Yeah, that's, that's where Dead Pon Stars came from. So we did that, I think up till about 2002.

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John Shultz 48:42

Yeah, that's where this indie project ends is 2002. Yep. But that's cool. You're still playing now, I mean, you're one of the most prolific motherfuckers out there, man. 

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Eric Breding

Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Christ. I really appreciate it. 

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John Shultz

Yeah. What do you what are you seeing? I mean, you were around and you saw the bad stuff. And you saw the 90s. What do you think of the music scene in Olympia now, bands and stuff? What do you think? Can you see it? Is it coming back a little bit?

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Eric Breding 49:14

I think so in a weird and I think it's because it's a backlash from being, like decentralized because of the internet. As much as there were gatekeepers in the old days… you had to get a label or you couldn't even record a high quality record unless you had money to go to a good studio. So as soon as you put your record out and people go, it's a demo, you know… There was either major label records- and no offense, but the ethos of punk rock matched their music, right? So it was very DIY and they didn't really care about the fidelity of it. In fact, a lot of times the worse the better. Right. So You know, they'd make these, you know, not necessarily the most- pleasing to punk rock, because it's, you know, audio that way. But our music, you know, we needed more production. And so it didn't come across well, you know, back then. And so nowadays, I think it's beautiful that we have these studios, and we can do what we want, and we have the freedom to do it. But I think that that's taken away from the community, right? Because… the only way to reach out was to do shows, and the way to get shows was to call another band and dadadadadadadada. And I think that I saw a real break in that camaraderie of a scene once we started getting into the internet. And a lot of people will say the scene is thriving. Well, that's because they didn't see the scene in the 90s. In the 90s, you could go to a show any night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you could go to a show and, and you'd go to shows, and that's where everybody was, because that's what everybody did. So it wasn't one show on a Friday, every two months… as much as I love the future, and where everything’s going, the scene took a hit. And now I think you're having a come back around. Because now I'm noticing other bands out there, and I'm talking to people, and there's this feeling of people wanting to be in touch with each other and create together, rather than sit in a room and create alone. That's why you have all these solo artists, right? Because they're just sitting in front of their Logic Pro, and they're creating on their own. And now I think that collaboration-at least in rock and roll- is starting to get back in a room and get with people, you know what I mean? So I never stopped, I won't ever stop. You got through your periods of time, like COVID was pretty hard on people, you know, but, Hellbelly kind of saved me as far as music goes. And when I tried out for Hellbelly and Sparhawk said-he didn't tell me this, but he said “right when you started singing, I knew you were the one.”  You know what I mean? And, at that point, I was kind of disappointed. I was really tired of trying to push and find good musicians. And I had been the one pushing, organizing, putting the band together, finding the jam pad, writing the songs. And I think I was just diluted. Know the feeling? I would think I was diluted. And then along comes Sparhawk, who's going to be a leader, who's going to write the songs, who's going to do all the hard work. And then on top of that is going to tell me how to sing. And I've never had that happen. He's like, if you're going to be in this band, you're going to sing my melodies. I remember one time I was singing, and I'm going “oh” in between. He's like, “Why the fuck are you doing that?” I'm like, “What do you mean?” He goes, “stop oohing and howling, and sing the song.” So that's stuck with me, because I realized I do that all the time. So he shaped that, you know, even my solo record, I did and all that he shaped those vocals. But I mean, I think the scene is having a resurgence. I'm seeing it personally. Me too, you know, me too. I'm definitely seeing a resurgence, and I think what's happening is I see a lot of bands. It's not just old guys. I see younger bands. And then I see a lot of young kids with older guys in bands. Like you guys like you guys [Chance of Ghosts], and like us [Hellbelly], I've got a drummer who's 29 and he's in a band with a guy who's 50 and he doesn't care. He just wants to play rock and roll. 

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John Shultz 54:09

I think that's cool. Well, the cool things I think that came out of that scene is that the old guys like us…  I mean, you know, two of my members are 29, you know, and Dave’s 55, I'm 52. 

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Eric Breding

There you go. 

‍

John Shultz

Like that's kind of a weird thing, but no, it's not really.  I mean, you were just saying your drummer is 29, right? It's pretty cool that that everybody can get on, that guys so young groove on the same music as guys our age, which is kind of interesting…I don’t know if it's happening everywhere now, but it's a kind of cool thing that’s happening here in this area.

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Eric Breding 54:47

I'm feeling it. We have to watch our Al Bundy stories around the young kids. Because we’ll be

standing there and at first he was like, like looking at us like “you know who, and you did what?!” You know, but then after a while he's like, “okay, guys, you’re saying the same story now. We know.” (laughing)  But you know, rock and roll… when people say rock and roll is dead, it's not.  It's not at all…   I call it organic music. Of course, we take influences and use them. I just re-write Beatles songs, you know. But finding a sound on a computer and then basing the whole song on that- I'm not putting it down. It's just a different thing. And I think that a lot of younger kids are getting away from that and going “wait a second, if I delve into an instrument rather than sounds, I'm gonna get a different experience.” You know what I mean? And then in order to do that, they have to find people to play with. And I think that there's a lot of us older guys out here going “hey, we're still doing it and we're good at it.” Y’know, Sparhawk… he's gonna be 57, and he said it the other day. And I just look up to him so much, because he's just still going. Or, you know, guys like Randy Linder, who are just still out there rockin’. 

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John Shultz 56:20

I remember Sparhawk’s first band, Fallout. I was a freshman in high school.

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Eric Breding 56:24

Okay, so it was a long fucking time ago. Are you ready for this? I'm gonna tell you the story then. So, Fallout, was with a guy named John Hinkle, he's passed. And my uncle Hal, who went with me to the first concert-my grandma's direct kid-they were in tons of bands together. I grew up sitting next to the drums and then playing in my grandma's living room with John Hinkle. So when Brian played with them at that Lakefair gig. I was a little kid watching him.  Isn’t that crazy?

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John Shultz 57:07

Yep, that's when I saw it. Frank Seberger, (sp?) I think, played guitar.

‍

Eric Breding 57:11

Yeah, I remember Brian saying he was amazing. That was in the days of like, Culprit and I was a kid, I mean I was young, like fourth or fifth grade. Juggernaut and… Rail. 

‍

John Shultz 57:32

Were Black Happy a local band?

‍

Eric Breding 57:34

We got to play with Black Happy, and Black Happy was a huge influence on Simple. So Black Happy was later, yeah, but... I think they were from Idaho… or somewhere over there. And I have no idea why they didn't become absolutely 100% huge. I didn't know they played over here all the time. But I remember we spent a year just trying to get a show with Black Happy. I think we it was one bil,l and it was us, Mumble Yak, Black Happy and the Presidents of the United States of America. And we played a bunch of shows with them. And then all of a sudden they just- [singing] “She’s Lump, she’s Lump,” you know, and we were like, holy shit. You know how the fuck did that shit pop? Because they were singing about kitties and dune buggies and shit. And we're like, what the fuck is this band? You know? But I think everybody was so sick of like, “daddy hated me, daddy didn't love me,” that they wanted a break from it. You know, because that was in the height of like-

‍

John Shultz 58:41

There was a little darkness and in the mid 90s.

‍

Eric Breding 58:46

Oh, yeah. You know, Eddie Vedder was doing the whole “daddy didn't love me” and I was a Mother Love Bone guy, I was an Andy Wood guy. And that's another thing, is- Andy Wood, back in the days we I stole my mom's car and we'd go up to Legends nightclub, in Tacoma on Fawcett. And we'd watch bands like Shock a Mama (sp?), which became Sweet Water. And then Talk's Cheap, which is Lesley from who I think was in Pretty Boy Floyd for a while and, and Sedated Souls, you know, and Love Bone… there might not have been a grunge scene if Andy would have lived, you know what I mean? I mean, I think he would have maybe taken Seattle to a different arena, a different place. With his absence, there was room for that punk thing. Now, the thing I was gonna mention, was that like, [Jon] Merrithew and the Noses. I forgot to mention him, but what a sweet guy. That guy was the sweetest, nicest, most supportive dude in the world… we played with The Noses a bunch of times, but I'll never forget one time- and this is like when he's playing in C Average and they had just done The Who thing, you know. And I was standing over by King Solomon's Reef or something, and he just was so engaging. He comes up to me and he goes, you know, “hey, what’ve you been up to?” And I go “I'm doing this band called Dead Porn Stars.” And he's like, “really?” And I go “Yeah, I got some of it on me.” And he goes, “Well, come on, let's get in the car.” I can't remember if it was my car his car, but we sat and he listened to the whole fucking record, dude. And you wouldn't, you know… it was really a brutal record, and he listened to the whole thing, like very intently. And that, that that kind of changed my whole vision of him. It made me realize that, man, this this guy is just all about the music. You know what I mean? Yeah, that was another guy that [was] kind of on the punk scene, but not really. I don't know where he was really. He's kind of just Merrithew you know, he does his own deal.

John Shultz 1:01:20

[The] Noses were kind of unique… did you find that a lot in the in the 90s? You mentioned Jon, you mentioned Mikey being kind of supportive and inclusive. Was there a lot of bands and whatnot that weren't?

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Eric Breding 1:01:48

There were lots that really fucking hated us. And I mean the K bands did not like us, and if you really think back on it, I just realized this. If you think about like, KARP,  The Noses or C Average or Fitz? Or Danno from Nubbin- If you think about these guys that were kind of really the leaders, you know. The ones that were doing really well, I mean, not unlike I know, the Bratmobiles and Bikini Kills, The Unwounds, were out there. I'm not saying they hated us, they probably didn’t even know about the band. Kathleen [Hanna] probably didn't remember who the fuck we are. But the leaders were super more inclusive of that scene. They really, I think that it was the “tagalongers.” Because there was a lot of bands on those labels. I mean, I used to joke- and people are gonna get so fucking pissed at me if I say this, but I'm gonna say it- they’d be like, “I'm gonna be a guitar player on Monday, they buy a fucking guitar on Tuesday, and they buy an amp on Wednesday, and then they're doing a show on Saturday, right? (laughing) So, I get that, and it's totally cool. But we were very, like, “tune your fucking guitars,” you know what I mean? And we didn't get a lot of it. So rightfully [they hated us] but we hated them right back. We gave it to ‘em right back. And I think we were butthurt because we just didn't understand the politics behind it. We didn't get it. We were like, “how are they getting all this these tours and dadadadada” that we didn't even realize there was this kind of division, and they were really doing a DIY thing. And we were trying to get signed to a label. You know what I mean?

‍

John Shultz 1:03:47

I think that was kind of a thing. Like, I talked to Jon [Merithew] while back. And when he was growing up-him and Kelly and then later Tim from The Noses- they were like, you know, Jon was listening to Led Zeppelin and The Who and Rush and wanting to play like that. Whereas, like you were just saying, “I'm gonna be a guitarist that weekend.” You're playing a show, right? Which is a cool idea. It was like, it was kind of two schools of thought. Especially, I think, in the early 90s… the 80s had all the virtuosos, Randy Rhodes, fucking guys like that, Yngwie Malmsteens and bullshit. They could play their shit really well. Then you had the other side, you know? Joey Shithead and from D.O.A., those kinds of bands. Just grunge it up and fucking who cares if i t was in tune, fuck it.

‍

Eric Breding 1:04:48

You're totally right, that was the two different you know ethos right? And I think they thought we were butt-rockish and old, and I think we thought they sucked, you know what I mean? And so there was a clear division. Then I think the people that won, like Merithew, who kind of applied his his knowledge and talent to C Average… I like to say that every time I've seen C Average, Merithew is like standing on a cliff. And he plays like he's falling off the cliff. He's out there. He's really pushing it, but he never falls. And I just think that's incredible. You know, I love players who do that. Pete Townsend, you know…

‍

John Shultz 1:05:37

Yeah. Without the training or the knowledge.

‍

Eric Breding 1:05:43

Just couldn't do it. I remember, we skated to see Hell Trout one time, and I think Nirvana was opening and we were like, “man, they suck.” We just came from two different sides of the pond. But now looking back on it, they're totally- I love so many bands from that era. I came back to just love punk rock, but I was fuckin anti punk rock when I was in the 90s. Yeah.

‍

John Shultz 1:06:14

Maybe that's why we didn't like each other.

‍

Eric Breding 1:06:17

Probably. You know, there was a division. And you know, everybody called us Simple Pimple. You know what I mean?

‍

John Shultz 1:06:28

Well, I mean, I liked everything. I mean, I kind of gave everything a chance. Of course, I'm a little what people call a music Nazi. Because I'm pretty vocal about what's bad and what's good whether- at least what I think anyway. But I remember seeing Fitz Of Depression open for Nirvana. And Fitz destroyed ‘em. Fitz absolutely destroyed am. I told Ryan that. I'm like, “no, you guys killed ‘em.” Who knows what happened, why they got big and Fitz didn’t get bigger. Who knows, you know, but yeah, they destroyed ‘em, and I saw a lot of bands. Like I went to some show, I can't remember where it was. Arrowspace, maybe- I don't remember. But like Unwound headlined, and like, Bangs…  maybe The Bangs weren't there, but like Two Ton Boa, and Bunny Foot Charm- I fuckin’ Loved them. The Need, they were just weird avant garde punk rock stuff that I didn’t understand at the time to see the show.  I'm like, “Oh, fuck yeah, that's cool.” Admittedly, I didn't like Unwound. I might be the one that guy in town that’s really never gotten them.

‍

Eric Breding 1:07:42

I don't get them.

‍

John Shultz 1:07:44

But yeah, there's some good stuff. I mean it’s different and weird. And you know, I think that might be the thing-and you might have spoken about before that with Simple. There was a crossover in the early 90s, because we did come out of the 80s which is just a bunch of fucking L.A. strip, right-middle band.

‍

Eric Breding 1:08:06

It really was.

‍

John Shultz 1:08:09

And you know, grunge destroyed that. Thank god. 

‍

Eric Breding 1:08:10

Absolutely. And go and we had no, like- we look back on it now, but we had no idea it was going to do that. We had no idea we were in the heart of it. You know what I mean? 

‍

John Shultz 1:08:20

I guess that’s something different. I mean, kind of like Scotty said with Engine 54. I mean, you know, in Olympia, you might have been the only funk band around. They were the only ska  band, right? 

‍

Eric Breding 1:08:35

They were. Actually, I remember Freeman came out- we used to practice in storage sheds back then. I think Freeman went to Timberline. Yeah. And he came out and like, you know, we loved The Cult. We were into The Cult big time. And he comes out, he's like playing “I Wanna Be Sedated” and shit. And then we heard he was playing drums. We’re like, “what, you're playing drums?” And then a buddy of mine’s brother was in that band, and I can't remember his name. But boy did they take off! They did good. I mean, we'd open the Rocket. And they'd have a spread every other month. And I thought they did great and had nothing but love for them. But like, what happened to us, is, you know, we play, and we play and we play and we play and then we come out of our shed, and Keith Baker and Jerry Ziggler would be standing there dropping off a bag for us. And fucking, you know, we looked up to Jerry and Keith and those guys, and we'd go “what do you think?” And they’d go, “yeah, you still suck.” That's the way it was back then. So then we'd go back in and then maybe next time, [in] six months, [they’d] go: “You’re getting better.” You know what I mean? That's what we were going through, this this kind of thing where we were trying to learn our chops, you know, and trying to, you know, and then at one point we said, Okay, fuck it, we're not going to cater to them, we're going to do our own thing and take the talent that we've done and do it. And that's when we started getting respect. You know what I mean? That's when those metal bands came back around. And we're like, now we want to open for you, like not desk water and, but a lot of those, they were done by them, but a lot of those metal bands came back around and were like, “Hey, can we play on the same [bill],”you know what I mean? So I’d like to say At Mikey’s funeral so many people came up to me… even Davies, you know what I mean? Jimmy [Davies]? Like, he fucking hated me. And I never knew why… But now I know why. I'm like a bad rash. I never fucking go away. You know, I was supposed to go away years ago, and I never go away. And I think finally, he's just like, “Fuck, I gotta deal with this rash.” So now every time he sees me he gives me a fat hug, and I say hi to him, and we get in a conversation. And I love the guy, you know, I mean, he's a great guy. He's been nothing but sweet to me, you know, but back then there was these fucking rules. And he was in Cardiac Arrest… no, Date Rape.. Yeah, Cardiac Arrest was Randall… That’s another thing that we don't talk about, is y'all had a punk scene that Randall was fucking handling out there with 4 Barrel Carb and all that shit. And we went out and played a show one time and with Splat and and I think Cardiac Arrest was on it. And because Miranda and I are best friends you know, we still talk about how he's like, “You fuckin’ Mother Love Bone motherfuckers walked into the bathroom.” And then if you asked me, we're like, “you fuckin’ Dead Kennedys motherfuckers walked in.” [laughing]  And we almost got in a squab right there- just because of music, just because of… identity politics. We had the identity of rock and roll back then, you know. And now we're making synth-pop/Prince-wave songs together. You know, it's just fucking beautiful.

‍

John Shultz 1:12:21

That’s a thing too… this project’s about Olympia.There's so many other outlying...  y’know, we'll call Lacey, Tumwater and shit Olympia. But Yelm has a bunch of young kids just living and breathing Bad Religion.

‍

Eric Breding 1:12:47

Yeah, exactly. I remember them. 

‍

John Shultz 1:12:51

…and Randall, by the way, Randall Schultz [4 Barrel Carb], he's my cousin. 4 Barrel Carb destroyed.

‍

Eric Breding

They were killer…

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JOHN SCHULTZ

The opened for Johnny Machine at Hannah’s, and I got a picture of that. And after that, Johnny said, “Yeah, you’ll never open for us again,” because-

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Eric Breding They didn’t want to follow him. . Right.

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John Shultz

Yeah, it was insane. They opened for 4 Barrel Carb after that, they were buddies.They were good, they were out there in the goddamn sticks in fucking Yelm, honing it up. 

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Eric Breding 1:13:23

They were jammin’... they were good. When I was doing DPS, Tommy and Ryan went on to do Too Boo Ku, and that was a fucking great band. So that was 4 Barrel Carb and Simple meshed into this super heavy punk rock, almost like Clutch, but old Clutch, not “funky Clutch.” But yeah, there was really a lot going on.

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John Shultz 1:13:55

What I wanted to focus on [for] this project mostly [are] all the bands that kind of got lost in the fray of the 90s. Everybody thinks about the K bands and the Bikini Kills and all that. But you know, Simple Ritual, Engine 54, Dirty Birds, some of these outlying bands... There's so much else going on than what the national picture was.

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Eric Breding 1:14:32

And that's awesome, because when you asked about doing it, I was just super humbled because, honestly, by Olympia, we never really were represented. You know, “It's the water” and all that stuff… we weren't represented… always fucking fighting. tooth and nail, just to be represented by Olympia. 

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John Shultz 1:14:55

And Jimmy Davies, he says the same thing…  “I don't understand why.”  [I said,] “because there was more going on, you guys were really important to the scene, and nobody really knows!” And they were the house band at the East Side Club. So those guys probably, more than anybody else, were super important to the scene. And they were a different sound as well… correct me if I'm wrong, but there was bands that sounded the same. I mean, a lot of the K bands, just to be honest, they kind of had the same vibe. I don’t know if that was Calvin's choice or just what happened? I mean, Dirty Birds were a garage rock band.

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Eric Breding 1:15:45

Like the Sonics meets… them! And with this dirty saxophone behind it that was just beautiful, and I love the drummer, Mike… sweet guy. And a great drummer. And Swayze… I didn't get to talk to him much. I think he worked at Moon [Moon Music, a former studio in Olympia]. I think they borrowed an Echoplex from me once because they were working on a Modest Mouse record, and I had an Echoplex. I think [Brian] Bononi ran up and got it from me. That guy was a great engineer, and had the ability to make… their records were great, I thought. And then they did Resident Kings, with Bononi and Sparhawk. And Mike Esparza, you know, “Chief,” that's another guy.  And... Jerry [Ziegler], you wouldn't catch a K band playing with Jerry, but Mikey [Dees] didn't give a fuck. And everybody wants to talk about [Brian] Sparhawk in regards to punk rock, but I know Sparhawk. Sparhawk’s a metalhead, and was a metalhead before any of that shit. And he told me flat out-because we've spent many nights on the road together-he's told me all the stories. I know what happened to Fitz and why they got dropped and all that. I know what happened. One of the biggest things he said to me is it took a while for them to embrace him. And, you know, there's this legendary story where Sparhawk thought that Kurt had stolen a guitar and went over there and like, pushed Dave Grohl out of the fucking way because that's the fucking guitar. You can see it at the end of the hall or something. And he goes down to the end of the hall and Kurt's like, “You fucking butt rock metalhead motherfucker get out of our house” and all this shit. And Sparhawk, you know being him, goes “Get the fuck out of my way!” and fucking goes back there. And he said [if] there was a cigarette burn on the back of the guitar… they stole it. And he grabs the guitar and he says, “See, there's a cigarette-” and there wasn't. [laughing] So then he goes to work, you know, and he's out with Candlebox after Fitz and L7, theching fo ‘em, and he gets a job with the Foo’s [Foo Fighters] and he's up for a promotion with the Foo’s and he doesn't get it. And he says, “I swear it's because I fucking pushed Dave across the fucking room.” But you know, that's the thing about Mikey right? You know, I don't think Mikey really saw those. Mikey will stand up and say “I love KISS.” KISS is one of my favorite bands in the

world. 

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John Shultz 1:19:12

I think there was a quite a division, especially in the 80s, between metal and punk. I guess maybe the older we got those lines got blurred but back in the day, there was there some fights.

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Eric Breding 1:19:31

And we both could have easily been on either side.

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John Shultz 1:19:38

I mean, everybody liked Motorhead, but I found punk on my own in sixth grade, and I had a mohawk but it was long hair because all my buddies are metal guys… it was just full of metal heads because it was the fuckin’ 80s.

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Eric Breding 1:20:01

I remember I lived next to this punk rock guy who was a skinhead, he was hardcore punk rock, he had a Sick Of It All record and all that shit, and I don't know if he was like a racist skinhead or one of those guys that's like an anti racist skinhead. But he scared me. He was older than me and he’d like push you down and shit. And he had the rolled up pants and the boots and all that. So I think that experience encapsulated why I hated punk rock for a while, you know what I mean? [laughing] Easily, if I would have grown up around punk rockers I'd have been a punk rocker.  But I grew up on on Van Halen and fucking Scorpions and shit. You know? So, you know, that's what I grew up on.

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John Shultz 1:20:53

We all did. I mean, I went and saw Motley Crue and fucking Judas Priest too, because Dead Kennedys wasn't doing stadium shows.

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Eric Breding 1:21:05

Right. Like, you talk to Blaine from the Accused. And there you got pure crossover, right? From like the Farts to the Accused. And this blurry like… they're punk rock, but they're metal. So they can play with the deepest metal bands, but then they can go play with Jello Biafra or something. 

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John Shultz 1:21:32

There was a lot of that too, with D.R.I. and Corrosion of Conformity, Cro Mags, that kind of crossover hardcore thrash. C.O.C. was really good at crossing over. Oh, yeah. You know, they really kromaggs and right. So that kind of crossover hardcore, thrash,

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Eric Breding 1:21:43

kind of, you know, God, COC was really good at crossing over. Yeah,

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John Shultz 1:21:47

What do you think was cool or unique about Olympia? I remember when I was writing for Axis-that was mid-to-late 90s-a triad in the country of the cool indie scenes like Olympia, Chapel Hill, Austin, and to some regard, Minneapolis, maybe others like that. 

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Eric Breding 1:22:31

I didn't understand at the time. I was like, “I just gotta go to fucking LA!” But I'm glad I stuck it out and stayed here. And I don't regret a fucking thing. People say, “Do you ever regret that you didn't make it?”  What are you fucking talking about? I totally made it. I made every record I ever wanted to make. And the cool thing is, is that this DIY thing that's in Olympia, it rubbed off on me. So now I look back at my career. And I go, I made tons of records. I didn't ever make a record that some bumfuck commercial guy wanted me to make. I never did. I never showed an image that I didn't want to show. I got to see my kids because I didn't tour to death. You know what I mean? And so to me, I made it. I mean, it was a perfect situation. And when I was in it, I just wanted to record a major label record. I just wanted to record one. I wanted to know what that was. And now looking back on it, we had all these studios. I was hunting for the bigger studio to capture the sound that was in my head, you get what I'm saying? And now I'm able to capture that. So I realized it wasn't that really that big a deal. So I think it's amazing that kids can capture those sounds now without having to go through a gatekeeper. But Olympia in general- the division, and obviously the Evergreen State College and the K rock thing… And then you had Lacey, that was military driven and transplants. So the garb for Olympia people was the scenester look with the rolled up pants and the shoes with the white socks… and our garb was like gas station pants with a hoodie and Adidas. And the reason that was is because we had transplants and hip hop around us, right. And we were into rap, you know, we loved Too Short and NWA and all that stuff back in the day, and we put those lyrics in our stuff. And then I think in Tumwater with KARP, you just had this kind hokey feel, like a country thing almost, like living on the land… but at the same time this heaviness where they were isolated out there. doing their own thing.

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John Shultz 1:25:16

And against all that , Kill All Redneck Pricks. I mean, the greatest name ever.

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Eric Breding 1:25:20

And that's the whole point… they wouldn't have called themselves that without living out there, you know what I mean? And then you got people like Scotty or even Merrithew, who go, “I'm here, but I'm going to do what I want to do.” And “I'm going to create a ska band” or “I'm going to create the noses or C average.” So I think that even though the punk scene- and God bless Calvin for just doing this DIY thing and just creating, or the Kill Rock Stars guy, Slim Moon- bless those guys because what they created was dichotomies, you know what I mean?, I can't speak for them… they were definitely counterculture against not us particularly, but what we stood for. Well, we were counter to them! So we were going to go make pleasant sounding music that had harmonies and major key stuff. And in response to what we thought was remedial- and I hate to put it that way, but that's what we thought at the time-  we were gonna hone our craft. And I don't think we would have done that if they wouldn't have existed, I think we would have been complacent. And that's what I think's going on now. I think we're coming out of it. But in the last five to 10 years, we have this thing, where people post all the time, “Fuck bands who sit outside and don't watch other bands, and are not part of the scene or support other bands.” That's not how it was when I grew up. When I grew up, if you sucked, we just didn't watch you. So my whole thing is: write a good song, and we'll come in the club and watch you. And now you have this echo chamber of bands getting off stages and going “You're so great, you're so great, you're so great.” No, you're not. What that does is homogenizes everybody, and it creates mediocrity, where I think Olympia was like this trifecta of all these different things happening and we're subconsciously bouncing off each other like “We're going to show you!” And I think that existed in Seattle a lot too. But Seattle had their one group, and then they became commercialized. So then everybody wants to be like that group of the Soundgarden, grunge, then attracted that.  Olympia never was that. We just said no, and we watched it happen, and most Olympia people kind of stayed away from it. I never in a million years thought that I would look back on it at 50 years old and realize that, that Olympia was exactly where I needed to be, you know, because it is fucking great. It had this bohemian feel to it, too. You know,

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John Shultz 1:28:38

Because of the college and yeah, you know, people come from the East Coast and other places, right, brought some, you know, right. Yeah,

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Eric Breding 1:28:45

I think that there was this kind of thing going on that created Olympia. And then we had to create our own shows, right? Because none of these Olympia bands could get good shows… we were kind of like, fuck it, we're just going to do it ourselves. You know, I mean, why go play Tuesday night at the Central when we could play a Friday night at the East Side? Ae beat our asses for years playing those Mondays and Wednesdays and just didn't get it. The only the only way we ever got a Friday was because a friend of ours bailed out and then all sudden, we were in the know. Right? And that's sad to me. You know, and I think that still exists. Because people say “there's five or 10 bands in Seattle.” You know, “there’s only one or two bands that play Pain in the Grass every year.” There's 5000 Fucking bands, man. Why are the same guys playing the same shows every fucking time? Well, you know, it's because it's nepotism. You know, and there's something to be learned about the K guys and the Slim Moon guys that said, “Fuck that. We're not going to play that game.” And I think that rubbed off on us a little bit…I remember at one point, we were like, “Fuck it. We've tried it. We've tried to do it. Now we're just going to create it ourselves. We're gonna get in a van. And we're gonna make shows in basements. They're cooler anyways.” You know? Yeah. You know, and I think that's we wouldn't have done that without the influence of the punk rockers right. We wouldn't have done that… I fucking appreciate you doing this… thanks for having me.

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Transcript edited for clarity by Markly Morrison

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