Kenny Ward: I am recording. VHS backup and recording over here. Who are you?

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Jon Brogger:  My name is Jon Brogger. I grew up here in Tumwater, Washington in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and I live in Olympia to this very day.

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Kenny Ward:How about you?

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Justin McKaughan: I'm Justin McKaughan. I’m kind of like Courtney Love- “I used to live in Olympia,” ‘cause I’m up in Tumwater now, but I was in Olympia for a long ass time from like, 1997 all the way up until like, last June. But actually, I take that back. I was in Tumwater. But it's like North Tumwater. And, yeah, I just been rockin and rollin. Doing a lot of stuff. But I used to put out a lot of cassette releases back in the day. It was dope.

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Kenny Ward:   Yeah, they kind of blur together, the end of Tumwater and Olympia. So how was the Tumwater scene in the 90s?

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John Brogger: Well, there wasn't a big Tumwater scene in the 90s. You know, I went to Tumwater High School, class of 91. So, in my class, and around my class, we had the guys from Karp and Unwound... growing up, they were doing some stuff, obviously. But there really wasn't anything else going on in Tumwater as far as music scene goes. There were some metal bands like... I'm not even sure that they were from Tumwater proper, they might have been from Little Rock or even from Olympia or something. But there was some metal shows and things that happened back in the day, but nothing that you would connect to a larger, broader music scene. It was really Olympia that had the K records scene, and the Kill Rock Stars stuff came along a little later.

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Kenny Ward:  Ah yeah, was there venues in Tumwater?

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John Brogger:  The shows that took place in Tumwater were- there was a place called Trail’s End that was like a horse ranch, like where you could go and ride horses, and I guess stable your horses. They had a little bar there. And I remember going to at least one like thrash metal show there. But it wasn't like there were shows there all the time or anything like that. And then there were a couple of houses that would have shows. But I mean, it was like in your parents living room with furniture, and carpet and everything. It wasn't like a cool punk basement or anything like that. It was like- mom and dad are in the kitchen, waiting for the show to get done, low ceilings. It felt a little awkward. It wasn't until a lot of us Tumwater kids started going to downtown Olympia and going to shows in some of the venues that that were around in downtown Olympia at the time that we started to become part of a larger community.

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Kenny Ward:  So you grew up here, you both came here. You're just here from- you lived here when- you didn't find it, right? Did you find Olympia or...

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John Brogger:  No, my parents moved from Kettle Falls, which is a place in eastern Washington, to Olympia when I was a little kid. And then we bought a house in Tumwater when I was in kindergarten, so I lived in Tumwater all through high school. Olympia was the big city for us. There was nobody around in Tumwater back then. You could walk down Capitol Boulevard and there'd be less than a dozen cars and no people. And there wasn't a lot of businesses or anything. A lot of it was just undeveloped property, so there'd be just like scotch broom fields, everywhere. Like where- you know, if you go to Tumwater now and you see McDonald's, and Dairy Queen, like by Peter G. Schmidt [Elementary School] and all that stuff, that was just emptiness. I mean, I used to walk from my house to Peter G. Schmidt school when I was in kindergarten, and I would just walk through a huge field of scotch broom, and then just walk back through that field to go home. Nobody was here. And then there was some communities outside of Tumwater that were really smaller in some ways and more rural and spread out.  So I just kind of got thrown in. You know, that's just what it was like back then.

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Kenny Ward: How did you find that music scene?

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John Brogger:  Well, like I kind of stumbled across it. A lot of us- you know, I was interested in music at a young age, and we had MTV and watched a lot of MTV. And my parents would let me buy a cassette every so often and I would get like a Weird Al Yankovic or the Police, or something like that. Run DMC, I remember getting the Run DMC tape, and that was a really big deal. And then, as I got into my early teen years, I started to really get into some of the metal stuff that I was hearing. And I loved like the hair metal scene, like Def Leppard, Guns and Roses, Metallica, and Judas Priest... these were bands that were really big with the older kids at Tumwater [High School] in the class that was just above me, full of stoner metal dudes. They were into Maiden, Slayer, really heavy shit. Well, Dokken, not as much. I liked Dokken but I was kind of light. [laughs] And then there was a record store in Tumwater called Freeway Records and Tapes, and that was right across the street from KFC. They specialized in metal and rap and punk, so I would go there and they had promo cassettes that they would sell used, and they were like a dollar each or whatever. So I would just grab dozens of these things, and take them home. And you know, not everything was good, but I ended up hearing a lot that I liked too. So eventually, you know, I'm listening to all this metal. And I'm going to arena metal shows. So I'm going to see this Monsters of Rock Festival in Tacoma, or maybe it was Seattle, I can't remember. And I started to make friends with kids at school who were interested in this kind of rock music or whatever and then eventually started to get kind of clued into some of the local bands that were mostly older people at the time. And started to listen to things like the Melvins from Montesano and Nirvana, who at the time was living in Olympia. Mudhoney from Seattle. And so I started to become aware of these bands, and I’d had aspirations of playing music too. So it was all kind of through the lens of like, “I want to know how to do this.” Those bands made it seem like something not only attainable, but very different than what the mainstream music industry was presenting as normal. Because when you think of something like Whitesnake, and you think that's what you have to do to be a musician, it's kind of daunting, because there's a lot going on there- fog, leather pants, hairspray, sequins, you know, Floyd Rose guitars with whammy, huge solos. I didn't know what I was doing. And so, I had a bass guitar. And I was like, “why doesn’t it sound like Whitesnake?” [laugh] So hearing bands like The Melvins started to kind of broaden my horizons a little bit, I started to realize that like, “Oh, this is how real people make music.” And it's not necessarily a product that's being pushed down some kind of a pipeline. It's an organic thing that comes up from a community of people. And it's sort of representative of the environment that you're in, rather than trying to emulate something that was kind of alien.  Although, there's alien characteristics to those bands, but whatever. The point is, it was like “this can be done at just about any skill level with the right tools and the right understanding of how to how to proceed,” and it was eye opening. And Olympia had already had a music scene that had been going on for a while. So bands like Beat Happening and a ton of bands from back then. I guess [in the] late 80s some of those bands were still kind of kicking around. I remember Hell Trout was big, Fitz of Depression seemed like they had just kind of gotten started. Bikini Kill was around, but I think they were pretty new, and Some Velvet Sidewalk. So as a high schooler I walked into this scene of going to shows. And it'd be like if somebody just time warped you to a music festival in at some unknown time and location that were full of bands that were fully formed and in their full power, but you'd never heard of any of them before. And you had no- so if I went to a show, there'd be five bands playing. I wouldn't have heard any of them, and they were all fucking incredible. So it gave me the sense of, “oh, God, this is what my city is like,” this is just Olympia, and it was just right under my nose this whole time, and I didn't know. Then the crazy thing was, it was all kind of gone fairly quickly. Within eight years or something, it seemed to have completely dissipated. Anyways, it turned out it was a moment in time. And it was life changing when it happened, and it just changed the way I look at the world, permanently.

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Kenny Ward: How did you find the music scene? Did you did you two find it together when you were in school, or did you meet through the scene?

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Justin McKaughan: I met Jon at Evergreen, I actually didn't move to Olympia until like 1997. ‘Cause I lived in sac [Sacramento] until I was 12, then wound up in Tacoma- now it's Lakewood, but it was unincorporated Pierce County. And, yeah, we had a record store that had rap and rock called Penny Lane Records on Bridgeport. I'd walk over there and that's kind of how I found out about some of the bands like Fitz of Depression, Nirvana. I remember, my grandma and mom would buy me all these Christian rock CDs like Petra and Stryper and those things suck so much.

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John Brogger:  Stryper was okay.

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Justin McKaughan:  -they were okay. But still, I would go over there and be like, oh, man, I'll trade you these, like Christian rock CDs for some Nirvana, and it was tight, man, just getting into it. And my first understanding of Olympia was Madonna filming Body of Evidence here. I think it was like 1992. And I didn't have a driver's license at the time, but I really wanted to come to Olympia to try to see Madonna. [laughing]

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John Brogger: It's as good of a reason as any to come to Olympia- You might see Madonna.

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Justin McKaughan: I know. And so I missed seeing Madonna back then in the early ‘90s. The first time I actually went to Olympia was to try to get Volkswagen parts and come to this record store downtown called Positively Fourth Street. They had a cat in there, I forget- the dude was kind of spaced out.

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John Brogger:  Wyn, W-Y-N and Dan I believe were the workers. And then Becca I don't know her last name, she worked there for a long time.

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Justin McKaughan:  It was cool. Like, that's where I’d find really good records and stuff. And so I’d come down here, get Volkswagen parts, get records. But I really didn't think much of Olympia because all the bands that were dope from Olympia, I would just catch them up in Seattle. And then I started going to Evergreen in ‘97. At first I was living in Shelton, but I was going to school and I had a cassette label called Krazed Up Records. I was just putting out tapes on the regular, just trying to drop albums and sell stuff. And I think, like Jon was telling a little earlier, that eight year time span where things started to fade out- yeah, it was fading when I moved to town, but there was still robust stuff happening. Like, there was shows at the [Capitol Theater] Backstage, Midnight Sun, and I was just super stoked to be able to do shows. People were all about putting on live events. And then I met Arrington from Old Time Relijun and he was way down with what I was doing, putting out tapes and stuff. And he was like, “You should check out K records, man, they'll let you make photocopies at their record label.” I'm like, oh, tight, so I could get some free copies for my cassette J-cards. Then I found out that people were  trying to get signed by K like crazy and they would send all their cassette demos, and no one ever listened to them. So there would be these boxes of cassette demos, and they'd be like, “Yo, you can have these and repurpose them.” So I’d just recycle them, I'd go to Evergreen and use their demagnetizers and speed duplicators, and just was hooking it up. So there was already this culture in Olympia at Evergreen in the late 90s Where you could do all of your own production in-house, using all the gear that the Evergreen State College had through Media Loan. So I kind of got hip to that, because I wasn't taking the media classes or independent studies where it's like, “I'm gonna make an album for 16 credits.” It was more like “I'm doing this Irish program, but when I'm done doing my work for Irish stuff, I'm gonna go check out the four track. I'm gonna go do this and make music with people.” So it was a really cool community, but it was also kind of jaded too. I could tell people were really kind of stuck in their lanes. And I kind of felt like the scene at the time people were like, “you are this type of person.” So I was just like, whatever, fuck that shit. I'm just gonna do me and just do shows and stuff. And then I met- not LeBron James, King James [Maeda] from Morgan and the Organ Donors over at Rainy Day Records. He was in a band I think they were called- not Altered Beast, that’s a video game.

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John Brogger:  That’s a great video game.

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Justin McKaughan:  15:37  

[laughing, unintelligible] yeah, James. James is total OG man.

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John Brogger:  What band was that?

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, man, it had Jeremy, this guy... Fuck, man, I haven't seen him in forever. But I met him through- I don't want to talk about that dude. And this guy Tom, who was super rad too, and some guy that moved to Bellingham, that, I don't know- it'll come to me, but I remember doing a show at the Arrowspace with them and they were really down with just doing your own stuff. And there was that supportive environment of people, like the DIY scene- put out your own stuff. So that really resonated with me. And I was like, “okay, cool, I want to live here in Olympia.” So I was homeless for a bit, living in my van, just couch hopping, and then finally landed a place over in North Tumwater there on North Street- and meeting a lot of people from Tumwater and then Olympia that were in the scene, making music and just thriving and having fun. I also hooked up with some people from Kill Rock Stars, and they had the same thing going where people were like sending a ton of demos, and they were like, “get these tapes out of here, man.” So I would show up over at Kill Rock Stars, they were above where Danger Room is back then, like in ‘98. I would just like go pick up cassettes there, pick up the cassettes from K, demagnetize them, and it was pretty fluid. People were sending cassettes to those labels to try to get signed forever, and at the end of the day, they already knew who they were going to pick. So I saw that and didn't really have ambitions to be on Kill Rock Stars or K records because I was like, “I got my own label.” I'm selling like my cassettes for like $1 or two. But that's money going in my pocket so that I could go to Old School Pizza, I could go get some food, I could go buy cigarettes, or whatever I was fucking with back then. So yeah, I stuck around town and loved the music scene and just enjoyed it- helped putting bands out, helping people that wanted to record and just break down barriers to put out music. So I think there was this mentality that people would move to town thinking like, “I'm gonna have this indie rock band, I'm gonna get signed by K or Kill Rock Stars, I'm gonna go to Evergreen.” [laughing]

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John Brogger: Yeah, the idea that you'd get signed by K or Kill Rock Stars. And then that would that would lead to you being successful, was something that I think might have been kind of misunderstood by some people for a while. Because I don't think that's-  you would have had wider distribution and certainly you would have had resources available to you by signing with those labels. But it wasn't like you were signing with Arista or something like- you weren't going to be Whitesnake, that shouldn't have been the goal. In some ways I think maybe there was a little bit of lost vision around that time, because it had peaked… what happened in Olympia during that era was very specific, and had to do with certain things happening- certain bands, certain people who were doing things. It wasn't a universal experience that anybody could access, and I think that that might have caused some hard feelings later on in the scene when it was like, “well, this didn't happen for my band, it must be because I'm not cool enough.” And instead, it's like, well, it doesn't happen for most bands. And there's just no way to plan for it or make sure that it's going to happen to you. I mean, there were people back then- very, very, specific people- who were driven and had vision and worked really, really hard at what they did. And they were also in the right place at the right time. And they also had help from people who could help them with very specific things at that time. So much of it was a roulette. It's just a wonder that it happened at all, really. But I was thinking about the record store thing. A big thing was, this is pre internet. So no streaming, no downloads, no sharing music via email or blog post. You wish you had $10 in your pocket, you could buy one record. Or you could buy a 10 inch and a seven inch, you might be able to buy three seven inches. And you would go to one of the record stores in Olympia, or if you were lucky enough to be traveling, you would find one somewhere else. You would go through those bins and you had to rely on your understanding of cover art aesthetic labels and the type of music that they put out, you had to have an understanding of regional music scenes and what a band from Chicago might sound like versus a band from Tucson versus a band from Seattle versus a band from Colorado. You had to find a record store, of course, that sold those kinds of things. All of that would factor into like your record purchase, and then you would buy it and you'd go home and listen to it. And you'd be like, “Oh, that's good.” Or you'd be like, “Oh, I don't really dig that.” And so, record buying back then was much more of a deliberate choice of like, I'm gonna spend my money. I mean, it was also less expensive. So you could- I can remember buying a record or two a week, back then. And it was just like, you know, I had a good instinct for it. And I was picking up good ones, but there was just a million bands out there and a lot of them did one thing and never did anything else. But it was crazy to see bands that I saw form in Olympia all of a sudden start ending up in record stores and be like, “Oh, shit, that's that dude I went to high school with a band, and now that you know, they've got a record.”

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Kenny Ward:  What were those bands?

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John Brogger:  The bands that I went to high school with were Unwound and Karp. And you know, Unwound are my age, and they were a little ahead of Karp in terms of- they’d had a year or so to practice and start playing shows, and I think in some ways, they showed the ropes to the guys in Karp a little bit. So by the time we were graduation age, Unwound had already been kind of playing shows around. They might have been on tour or something at that point. And Karp was just kind of forming. And they were a little younger, so by the time they graduated, they were Karp. That's what was going on in Tumwater. I think that's pretty much literally it, as far as Tumwater goes.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, when I started going to Evergreen- I was telling Jon the other day- it's like myself and Khaela [Khaela Maricich] from the Blow, Phil [Phil Elverum] from the Microphones, and Anna Oxygen- or Anna Huff- we all started at Evergreen around the same time. And we're all doing our own thing, just mixing it up. I remember like Phantom City Records and Dumpster Values, it was right around the corner here by Mixx 96.1- “soft rock for the Great Northwest,” gotta give a shout out. But yeah, that was the spot where you would find out about other bands and make connections. The Arrowspace was upstairs. So there was always all-ages shows just popping off. And yeah, it was still happening, but I just think by the time Jon and I met, what was that, like 1999, Evergreen and stuff, we were in this Media Works program. And the scene, it just seemed like it was really starting to fade. Like, there was a Yoyo Festival but it was nothing like the other Yoyo festivals of yesteryear’s, or the International Pop [Underground] Festival they had in like ‘91. I started connecting with the film society around that time, and come to find out that they had attempted to make a documentary called “Don't Try This at Home” or something that they lost all the audio masters. I have a conspiracy theory on who stole them someone was pissed,  they had some drama, you know. Some of that bullshit just fucks up shit for historical stuff. So, you know, that said, that shit’s long gone. I don't think it's going to ever come back. [to BROGGER] Kind of like that Hysteria digital shit we were talking about the other day- it's just not going to come back.

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John Brogger:  Some albums can't be remastered.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah. So yeah, like in 2000 I’d say, after I graduated, I started doing stuff at the film ranch- Film Society and started getting a little pulse to some of this. Like, what has been documented in this Olympia scene, what are people doing and what's the like- you know, kind of just like what you guys are doing right now! But thinking back, in 2000- Because I mean, I was selfishly trying to put out a Kurt Cobain sitcom about his life here in the late 80s.

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John Brogger:  I remember that, it was gonna be good.

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Justin McKaughan:  It was gonna be really fucking good! And this guy, Rob Keith, he and Paul Pearson, they helped write the pilot, we were at Thekla. And that’s where Scott from Karp used to work back in the day, And just trying to see like, “how are you guys gonna document this stuff?” Because there was a lot of rich footage and content. This is pre-YouTube, and people  [were] making mix videos and stuff. And the person who was the most prolific that was doing that shit was Sean Roxx. When he was doing hard rocks, and jocks rocks and stuff like that.

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John Brogger:  Yeah, those are- that's Roxx with two x's, I believe.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, he had C Average on, that was probably one of the best episodes when he brought C Average on. [laughing]

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John Brogger:  Shawn Roxx, you know, he was kind of a character, in the type of character you'd meet that was from like a rural Northwestern town- I don’t know.

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Justin McKaughan:  He worked at that Tumwater 7-Eleven.

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John Brogger:  Wasn’t he a Littlerock guy? Or Scott Lake or something?

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Justin McKaughan:  26:00  

Butt- or Butte, Montana. [laughing] I had to say that.

...he moved to town.

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John Brogger:  Well, at any rate, he was the type of character you'd meet. Like, there's 25% sports, 25% metal, 25% attitude, 25%  high cholesterol. Maybe some cars stuff was in there, y’know, like working on a car. I don't know. I don't know the guy. That's just the vibe I got and, you know, giant mullet. Oakleys, neon pink. The tank top.

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Justin McKaughan:  His C Average video is all like hockey fights. [all laughing]

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John Brogger:  Yeah. You know, I mean, this is a guy doing his thing. But I mean, I guarantee we all watched this shit at 2am on Friday nights, there's nothing else to do. So, everybody here, you know- Calvin probably sat around watching Roxx Jocks at some point, right? You know, everybody did.

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Justin McKaughan: I kind of feel he might have been a luddite and not even had TV.

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John Brogger:  Maybe not, maybe not. Maybe when he was around a TV.

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Justin McKaughan:  Because I remember in 2014, we tried to make an audio book with him, me and Ian Vanek. That was a wild experience. It was like the only collaboration I ever did with Calvin Johnson, We tried to make an interactive children's book. And I remember loaning him my iPad, because he did not really use that technology and had been out for like four years at the time. And wow, that was- yeah, I will decline to give all of the details, but that was really eye opening.

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John Brogger: To give you some perspective on what the culture was, and kind of the climate at Tumwater High School in that 1989-1990 era that kind of fostered this punk rock energy. And so just to say a few words about that, the big takeaway is that in 1989-1990, in Tumwater, Washington, there was not hardly anybody there. It was extremely rural. It was not particularly upper class, but not particularly lower class, kind of like a healthy middle class bunch of families that lived in little neighborhoods around the Tumwater area. It was mostly white, fairly religious, but not terribly so. Kind of rednecky and kind of racist, and kind of homophobic and kind of desolate. And so a bunch of kids that went to Tumwater Middle School and Tumwater High School, you know, we didn't- we weren't comfortable around that stuff. We weren't comfortable around jocks who were racist and homophobic. We weren't comfortable around religious people. And it was alienating and it felt bad and some kids didn't make it out because they started taking hard drugs or fell victim to their depression and made bad choices. But it led to this sense of urgency about what are you going to do to push back against this stuff. So the Tumwater vibe was a rebellious act against this sort of fucked up culture that that we found ourselves in, in Tumwater at that time. And then the Olympia music scene happened to be there to help support that and had similar values. But, Tumwater I mean Karp was an acronym for Kill All Redneck Pricks, you know? Which, that'll tell you that when they thought of making a band- “let's make a band, what should we call it?” The name they landed on was this anti redneck thing. And even though it didn't really get associated with that later, that tells you something about the motivation for being in a band and for making the kind of music that that was made then, which is noisy, angry, violent punk rock music. It was also very beautiful, but it was “fuck you” music and it was meant to to be hard for people who are racist, homophobic pricks to listen to, and it was basically a big middle finger to those those people. And God bless them for it. And then it turns out that in that city adjacent to Tumwater, there was infrastructure that was there thanks to people like Calvin and Pat and Slim and those guys that kind of had structure in place to intake these types of artists and allow them to make their statement, to a wider audience and much louder. The IPU happened- I forget what year, was it ‘91? So the IPU happened when I graduated high school. That was the year I graduated, which means that the guys in Karp, and the guys in Unwound were my age or younger. So that was a major event. I thought it happened every summer in Olympia when I first went to the IPU. I was like, “Oh, this must be what happens in downtown Olympia during the summer.” And then it was like, oh, shit, it was one time only and it barely happened, and it would never happen again.

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Kenny Ward:  What's the IPU?

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John Brogger:  International Pop Underground Festival. And that was something that I think mainly Calvin put on...I could be wrong, I'm sure there was other people involved. It brought bands from Olympia, Northwest, California, some bands from around the country like Nation of Ulysses and Fugazi, I think Fugazi might have played. And then bands from outside of the country played, thanks to Calvin's strong network, he could pull in all these people. Like, I think Huggy Bear might have played. I saw as much of it as I could, and I still didn't see all the bands I wanted to see.

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Justin McKaughan: I think that was the year Kill Rock Stars formed, or released that compilation or something?

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John Brogger: Yeah, it could- I think so, they were pressing the compilation record upstairs in the Capitol Theater while the festival was happening, with the bands that were at the festival. That's the first Kill Rock Stars comp, not the Yoyo comp, but the actual first Kill Rock Stars record, period, which was I believe was this kind of compilation record- which happened to have Nirvana on it. Then when Nirvana blew up in short order, you know, people were looking at Kill Rock Stars because they had that loose Nirvana song on it. And all of those bands now are then associated with this sort of nascent grunge rock phenomenon,that- we all know what happened there. But it was just this cultural moment, the zeitgeist that happened, that when you were inside of it, you didn't understand how much of a bubble it was, and how temporary it was. It was just like, oh, this is- everything's gonna be perfect from now on, because all the bands that we love are going to be huge. And music’s going to change and we're never going to go back to listening to Whitesnake. God, I love Whitesnake.

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Justin McKaughan:  I love Whitesnake.

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John Brogger:  As an aside, I have no problem with Whitesnake. But we thought this was how it was going to be going forward. And I'm sure there were people at a time that were more cynical than me, but I was a kid and that's what I thought was gonna happen. I thought that the Melvins were going to be playing SNL. I thought that, you know- it was just a matter of time before Beck was hanging around.

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Justin McKaughan: And homie from Beastie Boys, Ad Rock.

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John Brogger:  Beastie Boys were hanging around in Olympia! I was just like, this is happening. This is it. I was like, This is it. This is how music really works. And some of that's true, but a lot of it wasn't.

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Kenny Ward: He was already on TV at that time, right? Ad Rock?

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John Brogger:  Yeah! No, they were. You can find out more about this in their books or something. But Ad Rock was dating Kathleen [Kathleen Hanna] or something at the time. And so yeah, there were sightings of Beastie Boys in Olympia. I remember somebody said- this is all I remember- is somebody said, “Dude, did you know that Ad Rock is in Olympia?” And I was like, “No.” And they said, “Yeah, he's been hanging around Thekla, and he has a giant afro.”

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Justin McKaughan:  I remember hearing when Patrick Swayze lived in Olympia.

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John Brogger: Yep.

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Justin McKaughan:  I just remember being at the gas station over there on the corner of State, looking for Patrick Swayze, looking for Ad Rock...

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John Brogger:  Patrick Swayze could have done “She’s Like The Wind” at Thekla or something, or The Arrowspace.

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, yeah.  I mean, Patrick Swayze could have got signed by K, man. That's totally within the realm of possibility...

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John Brogger:  There was a Madonna cover bands thing happening when Madonna was in town, with the effort to try to get her to come see it. And to get Madonna to come to go downtown to the bar. I don't think it happened, but that was cool. And then there's a lot of house shows and stuff too, venues everywhere. These things kind of dried up, right?All these things happen for a moment in time. And then they kind of went away. You could go any night of the week- when I was in high school, I worked at KFC in Tumwater. And I would get off work and go downtown, and the Surf Club was open. And every weekend at the Surf Club, there were- a show... probably a Thursday and Friday and Saturday show at the Surf Club. And it would be like Nirvana one night, Mudhoney the next weekend, L7, Greg Sage from the Wipers played. And I thought- like the Melvins. Tad-I remember just thinking, every weekend, I'm gonna go see all these great bands. A year later, I don't think it was even happening. But I took it for granted. I just assumed that's how it was.

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Kenny Ward: Where was the North Shore?

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John Brogger:  North Shore was on Fifth Avenue, between  Capitol and Washington,

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Justin McKaughan: Is it where the old Thekla was?

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John Brogger: It is where the old Thekla was, it predates that. But it doesn't even look like that now, it's more like a strip mall type thing- like you like you walk in and there's a bunch of different storefronts. I think they have like artisanal chocolates.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, I paid like five bucks for like this small piece of chocolate there.

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Kenny Ward:  It used to just be all opened up?

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John Brogger:  Yeah, it used to be one big live room, and then a bar area with pool tables. Pretty small bar, really great venue, because they’d have like a pretty big room and the stage was high up enough to where you could get a good view pretty much wherever. The first show that I saw there was Nirvana. And I remember working at KFC and my friend called me and said, “Nirvana is playing downtown at the Surf Club at nine, do you want to go?” And I said, “Well, I'm off at 10.” And he was like, “well, maybe it won't start till then” or whatever. Anyways, I ended up going down there  after work. And of course, like in Olympia fashion, the show hadn't even started yet. But I remember the big thing about that show was that- so I had been to a ton of huge rock shows, like big arena rock shows, like Def Leppard and stuff. So I'm waiting for Nirvana to play and their gear’s on stage, and there's some dudes like setting the settings and getting the guitars ready and everything. And I'm like, kind of like, “Okay, looks like they're getting set up.” And then the guys that were like tinkering with the gear just picked up the instruments and started playing and they were in Nirvana. And I was like, “Oh, they set their own equipment up, because you can just set your equipment up. You don't have to have a guy doing it.”

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Justin McKaughan:  That’s what Joe Preston was doing the other night, for Thrones. [all laughing]

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John Brogger: Yeah, I mean, it was that kind of stuff seems a little- but it changed how I think of music. And it changed how I think of what you can do. Like, I love Unwound, and I love Bikini Kill, and I'm happy that they've reunited, and I'm happy that  they're starting to get the accolades and the recognition and respect that they deserve for what they've done, which is tremendous. But because of the way music works now, and because of our age, and because of the way that legacy acts are approached and how they're managed... There is a sense of- I was telling Justin [McKaughan] this, when we saw Unwound last Friday- there's a little bit of the violence missing from the way that they perform now. Because y’know, everybody's more grown up and you don't want to knock your amp over. You don't want to stab your guitar through the drumset, or like, get hernia or throw your back out or something. I mean, it's not a joke, it's a real thing. Like, I had to take ibuprofen, just for being in the crowd at the Unwound show. So I get it, but at the same time, it's a stark difference from how it used to be back in the day. I mean, you just had shit go off, and it was nuts and it was unhinged, and raw and feral, you know.

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Justin McKaughan: Like a walking fire code violation.

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John Brogger: I mean, I've been yeah, there's basement shows I went to where sometimes I think about it, and I go, “man, I don't think I would let my kid go to a basement show where there's one exit.” There's a staircase going up and there's like, 150 people packed into this place. I don't think I'd let my kid go to that.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, there was a lot of shows like that, where it's just like-

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John Brogger:  If something goes wrong. You're screwed.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, like after Joey Casio died and all that shit. That was fucking scary, man. Now I'm  super spooked. I remember doing a show in LA  in 2016 in this warehouse, and I was like, fuck, man. If a fire pops, I'm gonna have to jump three floors, that was real...

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John Brogger:  Well, don't you kind of associate the Olympia independent music from that era with the sound of bad electrics, like, bad electrical?

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, for sure.

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John Brogger:  There is sort of a hum to the amps that seems like the ground [inaudible] work. You know, it kind of seems like shit’s like maybe not connected quite right. Or like, it's too many Power Strips.

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Justin McKaughan:  It’s not grounded.

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John Brogger:  Yeah, the ground’s not right. So everything…[imitates sound of humming amp] always kind of sounds like somebody's gonna get shocked.

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Justin McKaughan:  That happened to me at the Voyeur, so many shows that like- get up to the microphone, next thing you know, I'm getting shocked.

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John Brogger:  I got shocked. I got shocked at the Yes Yes. Bad actually, it really hurt. And I was like, “God damn,” and I couldn't sing into the mic, because I couldn't get close enough. Like, my brain wouldn't let me touch it or get anywhere near it.

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Kenny Ward:  Did you have projects back then too?

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John Brogger:  I've always kind of dabbled in it. Nothing super focused. I was in a band in high school and we practiced a lot but we only played a couple shows. We were called Young Sunday. We actually got... the ratio of practice to live shows was completely off. We practiced like a professional band. We were practicing for hours, like three times a week. We'd have like a three and a half hour practice, and then we'd play one show a year. And then we broke up after a while- you know, we were actually together for a few years. And then I didn't play music until I was out of college.

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Kenny Ward:  So you were documenting a lot back then though, right?.

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John Brogger:  Well, yeah. So I had- for whatever reason, I don't even really know why I had the urge to do this or what spawned it- but we would rent like VHS cameras and later I purchased a video eight camera, and take that to shows I think because we couldn't- there was no YouTube and there was no internet, like the whole idea being that, well, I really liked this band. And if I can video the show, I can watch it later. And that was really the impetus for it. So I used to take a camera to shows going back to high school. I think I the first show that I shot was Giant Henry show, which was Unwound’s band before Sara [Sara Lund] joined. But also before they kind of got more serious about it or whatever. So I shot Steel Pole Bathtub and Giant Henry. And then eventually I bought a camera, and I used to lug it around. And I remember- it's so funny, I remember trying to keep track of the tapes and labeling them. But every tape was labeled like “1-A”, you know, and then I even remember thinking, “someday you're gonna forget what's on this tape. And it's gonna be really confusing to you to try to piece it together.” And then I was like, “Aw, I'll figure it out.” Well, here I am, you know, 20 years later, and it's like, fuck, I can't remember what's on this tape at all or which show’s which. So I have a bunch of random stuff. But yeah, shooting a show, back then. Now, everybody has their cell phone out. And it's no big deal. And people also approach me a lot for footage. They're like, “do you have this band, do you have this band” and I usually don't, because I only probably shot 20 concerts. And so the chances of your band being in there are slim. But nobody wanted me to have a camera at these shows. Like I got mean looks from the band, I got mean looks from the audience. And you kind of felt like you're just holding this giant thing that nobody wanted you in the room with. And you were kind of trying to get close to the band so you could have a good video, and you didn't want to like irritate anybody, and you're worried the venue is going to come tell you you can't have a camera in here. So it came with some stress. And like a lot of times I’d leave my camera at home if I felt like the show might be hard to be inconspicuous, or if it seemed like the band would get mad. Or if it seemed like a type of crowd where they would get mad. Then I felt the hate a few times for sure. But the only reason that those bands can go watch good YouTube footage of themselves is because I did that, you know?

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, the hate is real, man, because I remember when I moved to town, trying to film stuff because I had a- I think it was just a big ass VHS camcorder, it’s like ‘97-’98... and just trying to hook that up at the Midnight Sun, people would be like, “no, no,” like, they didn't want us because…

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John Brogger: Did you use a tripod?

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, I used a tripod. Yeah.

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John Brogger: So if you used a tripod, it was worse, because they thought you were- I mean I dunno, what’d they think you were gonna do? Like a three-camera teleplay?

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Justin McKaughan: I had no clue, I was-

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John Brogger: Just to keep the fuckin’ thing stable!

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, they didn't read Walt Whitman. Whitman, man. And that's the thing, they were judgmental and not curious. And it was a trip man cuz- like my dad got a video camera in ‘83 and was like way techie and stuff like that. And so I grew up in the 80s with access to a video camera. And when my parents got divorced, I actually got the video camera. And in the early 90s, it was us just making our own bootleg New Jack City videos, or, calling Pizza Time and like filming them go to our neighbor's house- shit like that, you know, good stuff. [laughing] But, you know, you form a band, and we'd like start filming your shows, and that was like a way we could  inform ourselves like, “oh, what did that sound like?” you know, “oh, we should do this.” And not to put on public access, but just for our own- like, just being able to become better musicians. And when you'd set that up back in like ‘97-’98, people would trip. So I was like, noted, okay, don't bust out the video camera. So I really didn't get a lot of footage. And then I think I was tripping on acid once and just was like, “fuck this shit, I want to do whatever” and just started. And then, Evergreen had these mini DV cameras when we were in media works that we could check out, so I was just like, “oh, this is super stealth and you can kind of hide it and people don't know. And so I just started filming with that on the down low, not with a tripod or telling anybody.

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John Brogger: Yeah, with a longer battery life. And I mean, there was just less gear to take with you. You know?

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah. And then like I got this idea like “Oh, I'm gonna shoot film. I'm gonna shoot 16 millimeter” and then I graduated, but I was working at Evergreen doing groundskeeping. I couldn't afford to process the film or whatever. So I started volunteering at the Film Society, and then they would pay for processing and stuff. And just going through the process of making this 10 minute movie with my friend Ben Niles. And I was like, “oh, man, screw this film stuff, I'm gonna be just using video” and TCTV had video stuff that could check out, so did Evergreen. And it was easy access, just trying to get other people hip to those tools. And I think in the  early 2000s, people in Olympia were a little bit more down to make a music video or try to integrate other media besides- like, everything has to be on a vinyl record, everything must go through Slim or Calvin, you shall not pass unless you do this method, which I just thought was kind of restrictive and hampered creativity, when there was only one way of actually thriving in this town, when in reality it was multifaceted.

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John Brogger: Back in the back in the 90s and stuff too- what you said connected to something for me, which is- we were in a technological kind of valley, in the sense that we- you know, even though what Calvin was doing, and Slim,what they were doing was very- they were providing a great service, and an access point for for bands. And I don't want to imply that they were gatekeeping in any way, but just by nature, they're not going to put out every record by every band that comes their way. If you didn't have a mixing board, or a recording studio, or a way to mass produce your music, it probably wasn't going to happen for you locally, you know. It wasn't like you could just do it, you still had to have mixing boards, reel to reel, something to record your shit and put it out. I mean, when I was growing up, we would record on boom boxes, we would just use the internal boombox mic, and try to find a place in the room where if, you know, recorded with live drums and stuff that it wouldn't just sound awful. And it always sounded really bad. And that that was as good as we could do, and really, as good as a lot of people could do. So I think that might have led to a little bit of hurt feelings later or feelings of kind of like, “oh, well, this doesn't work for everybody because not everybody is allowed to access this stuff.” And some of that's just true, because it's just practical. There was nobody who was just like, open hours recording studio for anybody that wants to come in and record for two hours and then we'll give you a platter at the end of it. Like, there just wasn't anything like that. There wasn't really anything like that anywhere. So now, in the cusp of the turn of the century, you started to have  portable mini disc, you started to have digital multi tracking or digital sequencing, things started to come into play that allowed- that opened it up for anybody, right? And now you're in a situation where anybody can record anything. And it kind of loses some of the- you know, everybody has- like, I was talking to somebody the other day, and it was just like, “Oh, you got something on Spotify. I got something on Spotify. Everybody's got something on Spotify.” And, shit! If MTV worked that way, it would have been a whole different thing, right? Because I mean, it would have been like, “oh, yeah, check out my video on MTV later,” you know? So yeah, I mean, we we were at the mercy of the technology that was available to us at the time.

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Kenny Ward: Can you tell me about your TCTV show? From my time?

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John Brogger: I didn't have one.

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Kenny Ward:  [to Justin:] Oh, you had the TCTV show?

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Justin McKaughan:  Well, I had a TCTV show called Tangent that I put out. Jon was on Tangent with Chris [Altenburg].

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John Brogger:  Oh, is that what that was?

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Justin McKaughan:  We filmed it in my basement and we'd have bands come play, and it was pretty tight. I had to check out this huge case from TCTV that had a mixer that I would take into my basement and hook up with a multi camera setup. And we brought bands, like I think we had Romanteek, I know Joey Casio was on it, Los Quatro. I think we had probably like six different bands play on the show. And it was awesome, I just love doing that stuff, and also Dance O Dance was around and I used to help out Justin Wright with Dance O Dance. And then when I stopped making Tangent I started making another that was similar called the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but it only lasted one episode. And then Justin moved to Grays Harbor County and needed somebody that lived in Thurston County to run Dance o Dance. So I kind of held down Dance O Dance for a little while, until I passed it off to my brother, who then took it in the other direction. And then some of the people that were in the production of Dance O Dance took it away from my brother. But it went on for a while, and jump ahead to like 2010- My wife and I were trying to do something that was similar to Tangent, but just more about local bands in the scene, and it was called Oly Rocks, and we put that out for a year. And it was fun, just trying to get bands. And I remember I got a lot of I got footage from The Gossip when they played at the Capitol theater, I think it was like in 2010. And just trying to think about what things were in that moment of time and the Olympia scene, and trying to make something because I had all the tools of production at that time. I had my own laptop that could process video, I owned all of the gear, I didn't have to go to Evergreen or Thurston Community Television for the stuff... but kind of like what you were saying about  seeing these bands that, back in the day, there was like this violence or this energy that was in it. And I think the energy that production of what I was doing then, even having all of the tools, it might look slick, it didn't have that same energy. And even with the bands that I put on there, for me, I was like, “okay, the gold was the stuff that I had filmed with my video eight camera or VHS camera, mini DV tapes, from like ‘99 all the way until like 2005. When I started I went and lived under a rock for a while and I really stopped doing production stuff because I was putting out a lot of records. I put out records under Mac Dawg for like, gosh, how long was that? About eight years or something, and then just rebranded as Freedom Feather. I was in this band called Acid with Cindy Wonderful from Scream Club and the people from Friends Forever and Greta [Greta Jane Peterson] from Romanteek. And the whole vibe of our band was to try to get acid, because it was a dry spell of LSD in town and stuff. We thought  if we had a band that, like, that was our mission- Guess what? It didn't work![laughter] Actually, I played a Juggalo houseparty on the west side, like a decade later, and someone gave me bunk acid at the show and it was so wack but- [laughter] yeah, I was just like, dude, man, someone just dosed me and I didn't really expect it, and then come to find out it’s bunk so it was like a nothing burger. But yeah, I thought- well, I forgot where I was going- oh, yeah, with TCTV. So I had a big love for public access television. And I knew that Olympia had that in their community. And that stuff that was on back in the day was cool, because before I moved to Olympia, I was living in Kent with my mom and we had Seattle Public Access King County Public Access.  Y’know, there’s this guy that like- “who killed Kurt Cobain?” and he would always go harass people, like at the Pain In the Grass shows and stuff in Seattle. And he had these glasses... It was a trip, man. He pissed a lot of people off. But I remember watching that and it was like bong hit championships, like people would come in and take bong hits over the air. And I was just like, there's a lot you can do. But yeah, so when I came to Olympia and saw that Thurston Community Television and all this stuff, I was just like, mesmerized. So yeah, I think my relationship with TCTV kind of transitioned into my role as an educator and helping out with getting students connected with public access television and whatnot. So it looks different, how I access and utilize them nowadays, than I did back in the day.

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Kenny Ward:  What did you do with all your tapes?

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John Brogger:  I have them. I still have them. We've made various attempts to transfer them over the years and it's just something that we just haven't really dedicated enough time to. And… we’ve had some trouble getting the right technology to do it correctly. And we've done a few of them now.

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Justin McKaughan:  Like the Built to Spill and Halo Benders shows.

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John Brogger:  Yeah, we have a Built to Spill/Halo Benders show that got transferred and looks pretty good. That's on YouTube. There's also- I kind of don't know what I'm gonna do with it, I'm reluctant to put it on YouTube, like in its entirety, just because… I'd like to be a little more deliberate with how I use the footage- which isn't to say that I want to have control over it or sell it or anything like that. It's just like, I just want to think about what I do with it as opposed to just throwing it on YouTube where it will sit in a giant universe of similar material. So 20 years ago, nobody cared about it. Now, people care about it, and I Think about what it will be like 20 years from now, to have that stuff. So, you know, sometimes you just want to save the best for last and be like, Yeah, you know, let's- you know, maybe there'll be a time where I'm like, Hey, I'm going to put this out, or I'm going to give this to a band, or revisit it in some way. But also, some of it's just my own disorganized sort of approach to it, and finding time and everything. I also just- spoiler alert- there's not... I don't have everything, you know. A lot of the bands I recorded were from out of town, because that was the purpose of recording it, was that this isn't a band I'm going to see all the time. So I don't have a lot of local bands, because I saw them constantly. So I never thought to tape them. Also a big part of what would make me tape a band versus not tape a band was, you know, sometimes I just wanted to go to the show, and jump around, and not deal with the kind of weird hostile vibes of being the guy with the camera. And then other times, I was like, fuck it, I'm going to take the camera, and for better for worse, I'm going to try to get footage, and then my battery would die or I'd run out of tape. I mean, it wasn't like it is now where you just have a phone. Like, I remember trying to shoot. Roger Nusic- remember Roger Nusic? And I turn my camera on, dude’s in a gold lame like thong or something, playing a Ziggy Stardust cover, with a gold cape and a headset mic. And he's kicking and doing karate. And my camera lasted like 20 seconds and died. And so I have 20 seconds of really great Roger Nusic footage. And I had to make weird choices too. I remember I shot the Treepeople reunion- not the reunion, but like- so Doug left the Treepeople and the Treepeople kind of kept going without him. And I loved the Treepeople. They were like my favorite band, and still one of my favorite bands. So they played at Evergreen and I was like “I'm taking my camera, I'm gonna catch this. I can't wait.” And I was disappointed by the show because Doug wasn't there and it just didn't sound the same. And they got another guy who was playing Doug's songs, and it just felt really bad. And so eventually I needed the tape space for something and I just taped over it, because I probably didn't have the money to buy new tape. And I also was kind of like, “you know, I didn't think that show was very good.” So you know, it kind of feels- to talk about it now, God, I was reckless! Like, I didn't realize I was potentially responsible for storing this stuff for future reference. I just literally thought of it as a way to watch the show again later. That being said, I have some great footage. I have Unwound at the Evergreen library, where I had a real good vantage point near the front of the stage, off to one side, and I haven't watched that footage in years and years and years but I remember it being really cool and certainly the band was firing on all cylinders at that time. I have Fugazi live at the Capitol theater when they were doing a score for a film. And then so I have this short film with Fugazi playing music behind the screen, then the screen goes up and they did a set. So I have that, I haven't watched it since, and I remember being good. And I have like the full Breeders set from OFS playing at Capitol Theater, which I couldn't even find that show in their- what is that website? Setlist FM... they don't even have that show listed because I was trying to figure out when it happened, and they don't.-it's just nowhere, like a lost show. I have one of the very first Built to Spill shows at Capitol theater. Chris Altenburg wrote a article about it because there's some debate about when it happened. And when the Halo Benders played there when nobody really even knew who they were and... I caught some really cool moments. I have Steel Pole Bathtub at the Surf Club, but it looks like shit because it's shot on VHS in 1990. So it looks like- it looks like bad security camera footage or something... It's really, really hard to watch. And I'm sure the tapes themselves are in varying- I've always kept them in a known location. And I've always kept them in room temperature environment in a case... but time happens and you always have to trust windows- I don't have the stuff to transfer this stuff in my house. So I've always had people who have done it for me. And with varying degrees of quality- like, Justin, the ones you did are pretty good. But we had some issues with sound syncing.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, I think it was off by like a second. We just had to take it into Final Cut...

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John Brogger:  Yeah, so we had to move it around. Another friend of mine actually transferred ‘em, but then there were errors on the transfers where the screen would black out periodically. So I was like, Oops, that didn't work. And so I still need to transfer them in a professional manner. You know, like, high def, or whatever you can do with old footage like that. Yeah, and then I have mostly stuff that's been documented already, but I have a bunch of KAOS studio recordings of bands back then, and some demos and things like that. I don't think I have any live audio-only bootlegs because I didn't really record that way. I always shot video, and then sometimes I would bounce the audio to cassette and listen to it. Like a Grateful Dead bootleg or something. You know.

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Kenny Ward: So all that stuff’s mostly sittin’ in tapes still?

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John Brogger: Yeah, because I stopped doing it before any digital technology existed. Like, it literally didn't exist.

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Justin McKaughan: I put most of my stuff up on YouTube. I want to say like in between ‘08 and 2010. Oonce I found out about YouTube in like late 2006 I was like, “Whoa!” And the first thing I wanted to do was put this videotape of me beating the Atari game ET. So like, my childhood, I never could beat the ET Atari game. That didn't make sense. So in 2001, I had this breakthrough, where I figured out how to do it. And so I hooked up my Atari to my VHS deck and recorded it and that was the first thing I wanted to put on YouTube! [laughter] I mean, that's where my mind went. So then I started being like, “Oh, I could put this show up. I could put that show up.” And so I just started going gangbusters. And then I had a kid and that just kind of that put the brakes on a lot of transcoding production stuff. And then my kid gets a little bit older, like two years old, and I have another kid and then just really I was like, ‘ahh, this is going to have to happen another time.” I did put up a full show. And this is like, I kind of understand where you're, Jon... You have to wonder about what happens when you put a full show up. I filmed the last Whip concert, the band The Whip with Joe Preston, and Jared and Scott from KARP, over at the Lucky Seven house.

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John Brogger:  That's the only footage that exists of that. Not the band, but that show. It's the best. It's probably the best footage of The Whip that's available to see.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, so I threw that up on YouTube and then they made some KARP documentary and I never was contacted or hit up and they took my footage from YouTube and put it in that, and I was just like-

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John Brogger:  They just used it without asking?

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, they just used it without asking. So yeah, it's kind of messed up. So you know, that just kind of made me feel a little weird. But you know, at the same time-

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John Brogger:  At least they didn't just delete it off the internet. That happened- I shot Kanye West footage and put it on YouTube and deleted it off my phone because I was like “well, it lives on my YouTube channel now” and then they just deleted it, and it's just gone forever. So yeah, word to the wise.

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Justin McKaughan:  That sucks, man. Yeah, and then Neil Hamburger messed up my YouTube account for a while to where I couldn't monetize stuff because like I put some Neil Hamburger footage on YouTube and I guess his people were just like, “we're gonna screw up your YouTube channel” so I was in YouTube jail for a while.

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John Brogger:  [chuckling] “His people.” Neil Hamburger’s “people?” The Hamburglers?

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Justin McKaughan:  Neil Hamburger’s people, they put me in YouTube jail and it took me a while to get out of YouTube jail. And then once I got-

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John Brogger:  [Laughing] I wonder how large a staff his legal team is?

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Justin McKaughan:  I don't know, man. But it definitely impacted like what I was able to do on YouTube, so I just kind of lost trust in YouTube. I actually liked Google video before YouTube got it, because you could just put whatever up on there. I wasn't ever trying to make money off YouTube. I was just trying to put content out there for free. I did that with all of my music too- I got to a point in like ‘06-’07 where I was like, fuck it. Everything I put out on cassette releases, I'm just putting on archive.org and people can just have it for free.

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John Brogger:  Didn't you- Justin, you rescued a bunch of footage from Yoyo, didn't you?

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, yeah. So back to that. I was on the board of the film society from like 2001 to 2004 or 5, something like that, and I rejoined again for another short spell. And in the Film Ranch, there was a bunch of stuff that was abandoned from the Yoyo stuff because they were trying to make this documentary. And Pat contracted with this crew from LA to do the documentary while I was volunteering at OFS

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John Brogger:  And, they're from LA. So they have to be really good.

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Justin McKaughan:  I know. They were really good, man. But I felt like super white trash back in the day and stuff, like just being poor and not having a lot of access to stuff. And so I was like, whatevs, man. So I was finding stuff that was just abandoned from this production that they tried to do in house, and in that stash of stuff I found this videotape of like- VHS copy of like-

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John Brogger:  Yeah, so just a side note- So during the Yoyo Festival in ‘94, I think- ‘94 Right?

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Justin McKaughan:  The footage I got? That was from ‘01, I think.

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John Brogger:  But the footage of the first year was ‘94.

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Justin McKaughan:  The first one was 94. Then they did it in ‘97, ‘99 and 2001. That was the one where they brought the LA film crew.

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John Brogger:  Okay, in 2004, I believe that's the one there were people with like- Yoyo had given everybody 16 millimeter cameras, these little like- you know, no audio just video film cameras, like portable ones. And like they gave them to a bunch of people and so there's people all over the festival running around with these little handheld cameras. I've never seen any of that footage.

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Justin McKaughan:  I’ve seen some of it, it wound up in this kind of highlights reel footage with Lois or Nikki McClure talking over it. It's okay. It's only like, out of all that footage, I think there was only like five minutes of stuff they wanted. I mean, that's being generous.

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John Brogger:  You just got to wonder what happened to it. Because I know there were just reels and reels and reels shot.

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Justin McKaughan:  Well, they had all this cp 16- So cp 16 was a 16 millimeter camera that you could sync audio with. And there was analog stuff that you could sync with. But people were hipped to using DAT instead of the- I think it's the Nagra audio thing. So that's where I think I know who took the DAT and got rid of them because he had a lot of animosity towards Pat. And I think it was mutual with Pat and the other person. So the downside is, all this stuff got lost. So I remember watching all these rad interviews and they're all from like 1997, this is killer. I mean, honestly, I could just dub over it. Or I bet you there's technology nowadays, where you can just like kind of get the audio and do like a deep fake of it. Or Fuck man, I would have just like, some bullshit, just overdubbed it but I wasn't like thinking that at the time, I was just like, this sucks. Because these DATs, like whatever happened to these DATs, that's what is messing this up. So when they went with that LA film crew to capture all the Yoyo stuff in 2001. They got killer footage, like Elliott Smith and all this stuff. But I think they were trying to get international distribution. They were going a different level of what they were trying to do with the footage, versus just throwing it on YouTube or just, you know, working with some of the labels. And they didn't actually show it until like 2010 or 2011 at the Capitol Theater at the film festival?

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John Brogger:Is that the one that we went to? [I think it was] later than that...

Justin McKaughan:...I think it was like 2014 or so. James [Maeda] stood up- they did a q&a after they showed it. And he just stood up and just was like- what was it, was it Bratmobile? He went on, he just like laid it down about-

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John Brogger:  One piece of context is that this so they're doing this documentary about the Yoyo Festival, and it really wasn't anything other than some kind of like not great footage of the band the Makeup playing, and they’re from DC. They're a great band. But this wasn't even really a good Makeup documentary. It was just sorta kinda shitty. And you could tell that they really wanted to have something like a documentary, you know, and it just wasn't working! There wasn't enough there to call it a documentary. And James- they asked for audience feedback, that was sort of the point of the thing- and James let them know. Justin, you can you can pick it back up, but James spoke truth to power that night.

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Justin McKaughan:  I think it’s James’ story to tell, actually. All I remember is what James said. And  the thing was, is that if they would have had James, or like, if Pat would have worked with James back then- because James was in town, he was doing shit. And he had that pulse, that connection. And it was just so disconnected to what it was. And then, you have all these people from Olympia that were all there. And it's just an outside lens of what was actually happening versus the lived experience of everybody. I think that was the huge disconnect. And no offense, like the people from LA they were nice people- I hung out with them and talked with them, and good folks, but it was just like-

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John Brogger:  They didn't have the product that they wanted to say they had. And the thing about what James captured was, it wasn't so much that their film wasn't good enough, it was that it was offensively bad. And it was offensive because- and James put it very well and kind of said what we were all feeling, and didn't even know we were feeling- I remember feeling really uncomfortable watching this thing. I remember being really disappointed and really kind of almost angry about it. And then James kind of articulating that and saying this is basically like, you know, you have the nerve to try to put this garbage out and say that it's representative of our community. And it's just a fail. And like, I remember telling them too, just because you want this to happen doesn't mean that it should. And maybe you don't have a movie.

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Justin McKaughan:But there was something! Stefan Simikich actually released something called Nine Weeks towards the beginning of 2000, where he was capturing like, kind of like this documentary, like lived experience of what was going on in the Olympia music scene- I think Justin Trosper is in there too- where he was just like interviewing all these people that were in town. He was partnering with Kanako [Kanako Wynkoop] at the time. When she was doing Dumpster Values, he was running Arrowspace, and I felt like he captured a lot of stuff. And he was like humble in like how he made it and so that, I feel like, is a real tiny piece, like we had something that was a tiny piece of that.

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John Brogger:  What happened to that?

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Justin McKaughan:  I mean, it's still out there. I remember  he sold enough videotapes to pay for his like, Sony... I forget what it was. It was the high quality-

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John Brogger:  Sony Walkman?

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Justin McKaughan:  No, it was a mini DV camera that was super-

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John Brogger:  Sony Bravia?

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Justin McKaughan:  It wasn't Bravia, man. I know that Canon XL1 was-  it was like, the thing that was competing with Canon XL. I know it was way out of my price range, but Stephan, he hustled man, and they sold enough VHS tapes to actually pay back and that inspired me. I was like, “Oh, dude, Stefan, you're slaying it man.”

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John Brogger:  Is that on YouTube or something?

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Justin McKaughan:  I don't know, but I could text him. [laughing]

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John Brogger:  I don't think I've ever seen that, that's crazy.

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, it's good. I'll dig it up out of my tubs.

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Kenny Ward: Can you talk about some of your music projects? I was listening to the Markly [Morrison] and Cindy Wonderful interview- and maybe talk about that house, too, that you lived in.

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Justin McKaughan: Oh, with Cindy? Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's where we filmed Tangent. I forget what they branded the house at the time. But yeah, so I met Cindy Wonderful through Zach over who ran Phantom City Records. And I think he moved across-

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John Brogger:  Zach Carlson.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, Zach Carlson, he was an interesting character, but he was totally supportive of all the stuff I was doing musically. Like he let me sell my records- not records, I never had a record, I had only had cassettes, and eventually CDs. But he was all cool. And he would hook me up with different acts that he thought were like, similar to the vibe of what I was going at the time, which was just like, hey, we're just like, super trashy, doing fun stuff. And we might trip out on psychedelics and stuff. And he introduced me to Friends Forever, and Rainbow Sugar, which was the group Cindy Wonderful was in at the time.

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John Brogger:  And they're from Colorado?

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, they're from Colorado. And so Friends Forever, they used to play outta their Volkswagen bus, light fireworks and stuff. And Rainbows Sugar, they would tour with them. So we did a show at the Arrowspace. And then we went back to our house and just partied hard and had a connection. And so I stayed connected with Cindy. And we did shows back and forth here.  They had this venue called Monkey Mania in Denver that we’d do shows at and whatnot. And in 2002, Cindy and Amy from Rainbow Sugar wanted to move out to Olympia, they were tired of Colorado. And so they moved into our house and it was me, Greta Jane from Romanteek and Duck Hugger. We were all just living at this house behind the Pit Stop on Boulevard. Cindy branded it the world's smallest venue, it was like this little crawlspace that her bedroom had access to where you could get in and it was like three feet high maybe, like at the peak. And we’d do shows, and Cindy had a [TV] show called Wunderground that was already in production when she was in Colorado. So when she came out we just kind of hooked her up with TCTV, and it was around the time I was doing a lot of video production with the Film Society and Thurston Community Television. So Cindy, she met Sarah and they started this group called Scream Club. And at that time, I was still putting out Mac Dawg albums. I was like doing shows. My band music that I was doing with my brother, we kind of like stopped doing shows. So I was just trying to help other people with production. And one of the groups I was producing was Lords of Lightspeed and they became Wolves in the Throne Room eventually. And so I met Aaron and Nathan Weaver when I first moved to town, and they're cool people, I love them. And just the experience I had with recording them, I had a half inch reel to reel machine that I got. And they were recording with Ed Varga over at Yoyo studios who had like the digital top of the line stuff. But the digital mix when it went to vinyl turned out sounding like shit. And the one that I recorded with Joshua Plague, and all of them in my basement on the reel to reel, was the one recording-it was like an EP- that actually sounded good. And it was really dope. And I wanted to join Wolves in the Throne Room because I was playing keyboards, we were friends. But they had this other guy that like, you know, was riding them to be keyboard. So I'm just like, whatever, I got my plate full. I'm doing a bunch of other stuff, and just, you know, supported them and their mission to make that super satanic metal stuff, which I dig, man. So yeah, I was trying to lean more into the production and helping others. So I would help Scream Club and other bands- like, you know, offer advice, consultation. I got looped in to book all the concerts at Le Voyeur. And so I was the concert booker there for about three years. And we brought a lot of crazy acts through town. And so this was like the Olympia scene, like what it was in the 90s in the early 2000s. There was still stuff happening. It just was different. And the Voyeur kind of took the place of like, where there used to be a lot of house party shows and stuff like that. That's what was happening in the back of the Voyeur. So, yeah, I was really working with just connecting to that. And Cindy and I, we had that band Acid. And, gosh, we would like take our clothes off at shows and just like do chants and my friend Lars who was in the band, he had this gas station that he worked at and sold rocks- like not not like drug rocks, but actual like Amethyst and shit like that- across from the Tumwater Safeway. And Greta was making a movie called SOTI-sexy on the inside. It was the story of her. And I remember we filmed a lot of stuff at that gas station. And then, you know, Acid, the band, we recorded there. And I just kept putting out tapes and just trying to rock it. So yeah, I was doing that. And around 2003-2004, I know Scream Club was like blowing up. I did choreography for them, and helped out just doing dance moves. I was part of the stress free dance team and went on tour with them for a bit. It was fun, but once I started working as a school teacher full time, I had to kind of dip out of a lot of the stuff I was doing because I thought like, hey, if people knew what I actually do for fun, I wouldn't have a job. So I kind of went radio silent for a while. But then I was doing Cool Guys, with Jon and a bunch of other folks. And we were just like a party band. It wasn't controversial or anything, we were just like- [to Jon] you guys had already written the songs and the music. And that was like 2005 I think. So I think I joined you guys in about 2005. So that was what I was doing. And then a lot of the music stuff like Cindy and Scream Club, they were they were still going strong. I know Romanteek, they were going strong. I think they got Ira [Ira Coyne] in the band and a bunch of other things. And they even went on tour with Japanther, which is kind of funny because Ian in that band, we've been making music since like 2015. And when he quit that band, he wanted to become a school teacher so he was volunteering with me. And we didn't know each other, but we knew all the same people from town- like he left town when I moved to town. So yeah, we just kind of vibed, and so I've been writing songs with him with his band... since 2015.

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Kenny Ward: What was the title of that house on Boulevard?

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, was it- Gosh, man, I forget... I Know the world's tiniest venue is what we called it, the Pit stop house maybe? There might have been some other names that it had. I just know we always had parties there and stuff.

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Kenny Ward: How about the origins of Mac Dawg?

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, that was my first Mac Dawg album came out, it was 1995. I didn't even live in Olympia. I was just trying to make music and I had a friend who had a four track and he had one of those Roland TR-707 drum machines, and we're just like, hey, we're going to make an album and it's going to be all about like the Kinsey scale of like sexual rating and stuff like that. We did a cover of Def Leppard’s “Woman” and “Hysteria” on it, so that was two Def Leppard covers on it. ...Was just selling tapes, I sold tapes for a while, and then my band Music with my brother, we just kind of like put the energy into that, and came out with my second Mac Dawg album right around the time I moved to Olympia. And then I just started releasing Mac Dawg album, after Mac Dawg album, usually every three months. And got to the point to where I was just like getting those tapes from K and Kill Rock Stars recycling them selling them. And just it was like this onward cycle of just like sell tapes, sell tapes, sell tapes, and I would go to concerts, I would rap for quarters, try to make money and hustle and just sell merch. And eventually it was like I'd have a backpack and I just have tapes. And I would like trade stuff. You know, it's like, Oh, you want to trade me a joint for a tape. Cool. That's awesome. Or hey, food for tape or money for tape. So that went on for a while and evergreen-

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John Brogger: That's real hippie shit.

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Justin McKaughan: It was super hippie shit, man. And like, I was kind of oblivious of the hippie stuff because I associated hippies with like “trustafarians,” and like just seeing like, Phish concerts and be like, Wow, these people are hippies, but they're driving like a brand new Honda passport.

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John Brogger: They traded tapes for it, bro. [laughing] I'll trade you tape for that Tesla.

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, man. Yeah, I have hippie stories, man. [laughing] But so yeah, I remember like, by the time I was like, Okay, I sold like my 1000th cassette. And then I was like, Okay, now I sell 2000 albums, or I wanna do this. So I just kept building and building on that. And then I started meeting people in town, or in the scene that were making music. And there was this guy named Mark. And he did stuff for K records, art design stuff, sweet dude. And he was a very talented drummer. And we came out with Mac Dawg’s Discount World. And Zach Carlson helped me out, and it was over at the bus stop house across from Ralph's, where we recorded it at. A pretty sweet venue. And that's where like I would see like the people from like Gene DEFCON, or all those people in Tight Bros from Way Back When, they were all kind of just kicking it at that spot. And I really liked putting out those records. And I felt like, Okay, this is going in a good direction. I just didn't see Mac Dawg as like a project that was going to be putting more eggs in the basket than the band Music I was in with my brother because I wind up playing a lot of the Mac Dawg songs that were “okay,” with that band. But it was like, me and my brother being in a band, it was only going to last so long. It wasn't like Oasis or anything like that, where we were like totally hating on each other. We just kind of had a different vision. Like he really wanted to sound a lot more like a jam band. And I started getting to like, I just want to make songs that are like two, three minutes long. Just bangers, knock ‘em out. And so by the time the end of 1999-2000 came around, I'd already put out like, it was like my 14th album. I had a zine called Then I Woke Up where I was like writing about the 90s and just putting out stuff after stuff. And then I formed a band called Human Jukebox with my friend Scott. And we've been making stuff for like, gosh, I think 1999 was our first show where we had a big box we'd set up and request people throw change in, and we'd play songs. And that went on for a long time. I mean, shit, we played a show last October over at China's [Star] art venue. I forget what it's called.

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Kenny Ward: CatMa!

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, yeah, we played over a CatMa. And you know, we still try to rock it and do requests and have fun and fuck it up. But it's just like, Yeah, I just was still trying to get these Mac Dawg albums out. I remember I put out an album called the Seattle Police Department Sells Meth after I got arrested, and it's got my mug shot on it and stuff like that.  I kind of find it funny because I was on the Olympia school board the last few years and I had to resign because I moved. And the lady that took over people were like hating on her because like, Oh, “she’s got a record” or whatever. It's like Fuck, man, I released an album my mug shot on it and no one ever fucking tripped about that shit. And you know, I get it, like people are racist and shit. That sucks. But, like just trying to put out stuff, I was like getting to the point where it's like, okay, I'm kind of like letting it all out. And I didn't think I would do anything other than just be wild and crazy. And then as I graduated from Evergreen, I didn't know what I was going to do career wise, so I was still putting out Mac Dawg albums. I had one called Hotel Arcata, California that came out in late 2000 that Stephan Simikich, the guy I was talking about who the did the nine weeks documentary, he helped me out with the production. And it kind of opened my eyes to like the future because he had like a G4 tower. We went from taking everything on four track into- I forget what it was- Digital Performer 3, at the time, and just recording and stuff. And then that kind of opened my eyes to be like, Oh, this is what production looks like, because Jon and I were in this program called Media Works. And our professor that was supposed to show us how to do [Adobe] Premiere and all the digital production just had a baby and bounced out. So I had to have other people teach me how to use the shit. So that's kind of how I learned Photoshop, Premiere, all of that stuff- was people like Stephan and people like Chris Brummel- like Scott's brother like, or Matt Cekosh, these people around town. They're just like, Yo, I'm gonna show you how to do this stuff. And I never got that from K, you know, I never recorded at Dub Narcotic studio. I saw it, I saw people recording there. But the people that did bring me in and be like, Hey, I'm gonna teach you how to do that. That's why I like what I do now as an educator, like giving back to people and help people be able to do things so they can make music and create. So I made- I think, was it April 2001? I released a Mac Dawg album that was on aluminum foil, and I used the community press to print onto the aluminum foil for the physical material. And I think that was probably one of my better albums. People really liked it. I was gelling with that. And then I decided I was gonna make an album called Chinese Democracy because Guns and Roses was gonna come out with this album called Chinese Democracy. Napster was having all of the songs that Axl Rose was doing at the time. And I was just like, fuck it. I'm gonna release an album called Chinese Democracy. So I released Chinese Democracy in 2002. When did the real Chinese Democracy come out, was it like ‘08 or something with the Dr. Pepper thing?

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John Brogger: I don't remember but it did eventually come out. It took a while.

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, so I think like after that, I just kind of like stopped doing a lot of the Mac Dawg stuff. I didn't really do- the last Mac Dawg show I did was at the Brotherhood in 2016 for Experimental Music Fest. So I just liked making that music, but then I got to a point where it's like, you know what? That was cool. I had fun doing it. I'm putting it all for free on Archive. If people like it, cool. If people ask me to do a show I’ll entertain the thought, and I know I can get my friends together to rally to put on a show if I need to. But other than that, that's kind of where it's at.

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Kenny Ward: Your brother's Pizza T, right?

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah!

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Kenny Ward: Yeah, I knew him, I was playing with him, like in 2002 when I was starting up, too.

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Justin McKaughan:  Was that Z-Kamp, or A-Kamp?

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Kenny Ward: He played at the Eagles Hall. My band was opening for Z-Kamp.

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, sweet. Man, yeah, I was on and off in Z-Kamp from like ‘06 I think to ‘08, like I’ll still drop tracks. My brother is in town this weekend. Actually, man. Yeah, I was supposed to text him after we're done here and shit. Surprisingly, yeah.

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Kenny Ward: Lookin’ at the list. It says childhood influences, musical projects. But like the venues... what were the big venues in the ‘90s that you remember?

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John Brogger: So there was like, I guess you could call them like tiers of venues... there was like the professional venues, and then there was like the kind of more Fly-By-Night commercial spaces. And then there was like the house shows and like, unorthodox venues. And so like, in ‘89-’90, you had the North Shore. Surf Club, which was like  a bar that had shows, you know, a really normal type of venue. Capitol Theater had shows. You had this place called the Reko Muse, which was kind of an art space. I think it was on Columbia. That was not a bar. I think it was an all age space. And they had shows at the Grange Hall on- is it Boulevard or or is it Henderson? It's a Starbucks now. Yes, Henderson. Henderson and Yelm highway where there is now Starbucks, there used to be a Grange Hall. And at that Grange Hall, you had some really big shows- like I think Fugazi played at that Grange Hall. And that was like literally just a dilapidated building. I mean, it was a moss covered roof and like, smelled like kind of wet wood. When you went in, again, leaning to this concept of Olympia music sounding like the power isn't quite right- Like, like the ground isn't- like there's a little bit of chance of electrical shock and all the vibe of it. The thing about Olympia though, is that venues would kind of come and go I mean, I feel like now Olympia has like kind of these like same four venues all the time. But back then it was like, you might have a place like the North Shore and then the North Shore would close and it would become something else for a while and then it would become something else for a while. And so you know, there were some venues that would pop up that weren't around very long, like the Uncola was the was the space, which- remember where Last Word Books used to be on fourth, and then they had their alley that faced the back of the Capitol theater? So the back of Last Word Books opened up into a big space. And that was the Uncola. And that didn't last very long. The Arrowspace was above what is now apparently a plant store. But back in the day, it used to be Otto’s.

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Justin McKaughan:  An expensive plant store. Yeah, they are not cheap. It's not like going to Ace Hardware and buying plants.

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John Brogger: No? Okay, good to know, I was thinking about buying plants on my way out of here.

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Justin McKaughan: I mean, they're nice plants. But yeah, just it's gonna cost ya.

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John Brogger: Good to know. And then there was a ton of house shows. And then some of the houses like, like the Lucky Seven house, and like the Mushroom and stuff like that, like they were pretty consistent, like, you'd go to shows there like weekend after weekend kind of thing. And then other houses would kind of try it out and have a couple shows, and then either get closed down or switch owners or, you know, the renters would leave or whatever. I know, the Glass House was a spot for a minute but the Lucky Seven house was pretty consistent over that period of the early 90s. The Red House. And even when the Red House wasn't doing shows, a lot of the people that were in bigger bands at that time were living there. So it'd be a cool place to go and just meet up with people and stuff like that. Then they would also have shows at like, the Sylvester Park gazebo or Capitol Lake Park. And I remember I saw Unwound at the, like, the Transit Center. Like outside, on a stage. I don't know how these things came together, but it was just cool. You know, a lot of times, it would just be like random. I always wish there was a way, like a, you know, pre internet. So there's no way to know when shows were, who was playing. And I swear, I was so clued in. I mean, I would go to the record stores, and I would scour the streets for fliers. And I would look and be like, Okay, I'm going to that, going to that and going to that. And I’d go to a show, and I'd see people I know and talk to them and stuff. And inevitably, I would get a call. And they'd be like, hey, you know, Unwound’s playing at a transit center in half an hour. And I'm like, oh, okay, you know, and it's like, I didn't know, I had no idea. You know, later on, I started working at the downtown YMCA. And when I did, because I was occupying this space downtown for eight hours a day, and people would come through, I’d get a lot more intel. So that's how I ended up with that Whip basement show, was I think someone like Chris O'Kane was working with me and was like, “You gotta come to this Whip show after work because like, it's Jared’s new band” or something. And I was just like, okay, cool. I wouldn't have known otherwise. Really. Same with a lot of bands that played at the Voyeur or something. I would always rely on people to tell me who was like, you really got to see this band. You know, this band is really good. You gotta check them out. They're from Florida, and they're playing tonight. That kind of thing. But yeah, Olympia has never been super consistent with venues. But we've always had a handful. The city hasn't always been very supportive of that.

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Justin McKaughan: They front like they are, though.

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John Brogger: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, they're frontin’ right now, in real time. But, to be fair to the city- I mean, their priorities have probably changed. The people that make up who the city is probably really different. But in the ‘90s, like when these bands were trying to thrive and trying to survive, and these venues were trying to survive and support these bands, there were like tangible barriers that the city would put up, like noise ordinances, and generally just being kind of against what they thought of as probably a disruptive presence in the community. You couldn't find a good place to practice, so even being in a band was hard to establish a spot. Venues would constantly get shut down. And if the city had its wits about them, what they could have done was really pump money and resources into it and then use it as sort of a reputation builder. There used to be a time period in 1990 where people would talk about what city is cooler- Olympia or Portland? And, as if they were like an equal comparison. And so Olympia would often times be the cooler city in those types of discussions.

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Justin McKaughan:  And then everyone moved to Portland..

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John Brogger:  Well, at that time, Portland was real rough.

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Justin McKaughan: ...Drugstore cowboy era. [laughing]

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John Brogger: It was grimy in downtown Portland. And then Olympia ended up getting the grimy part, but it made up the entire downtown core. But it's like, Portland got its act together. In Portland, they did that great branding thing where they were like, “Keep Portland Weird.” And they made Portland's weirdness kind of an attraction, right? And Olympia did not have the vision to do that. They didn't go, “Oh, we've got two record labels that are getting international attention. We've got a band that's blowing up all over the world, and they're they're based out of Olympia, we've got, the Riot Grrrl movement coming out of Olympia. These live music festivals that are happening that are drawing people from all over the world...” Olympia didn't get on board. The city of Olympia did not get on board with that, which is a shame. And it's just bizarre to me that nobody was like, maybe the lesson learned for the city is that when cool things happen in your city, you should probably pay attention and and help foster that and support it instead of you know, running screaming from it. But to be fair, Olympia was a place back then where you went to church on Sunday.

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Justin McKaughan: It was a Sunday town- sundown town. At least that’s the vibe I kind of feel. Like, you know, looking back, like what type of town is Olympia, and just having lived in Lakewood and Sacramento and then living in Olympia, And just like this vibe of like, people that are generationally here, and the ones that get control the levers of power, the ones that have the money that's been passed down and whatnot. It's like, they're still running things behind the scenes, I feel and like you could have like this thriving art scene and people that aren't from here, like I'm a transplant. I'm not from Olympia. And I don't go back generations and generations. And just like the folks that have had power and the folks that have been harmed and left town like what that looks like and how that- would that really have supported the arts in the 90s are now and like, how can that work? I know what like the Cultural Access Program that recently passed, like the prop one, like, there's a lot of hope to really open it up to other communities and tell their stories, but I feel like Olympia has kind of iced that stuff out like systematically, just from generations that have had power of this town.

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Kenny Ward: It can you talk about the venues that you remember from when you started up like I guess it was early 2000s

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, the venues around here? The venues I like, like Jon was saying- Arrowspace was super rad, Midnight Sun... I loved playing Midnight Sun. HCC, the Housing Community Center at Evergreen that was always cool to do shows and just like playing shows at Evergreen. That was like, just knowing Nirvana played here is like- well, if Nirvana could play here then we could play in any dorm and it's fair game. Also, just like playing pop up shows wherever you want. That was something that was pretty cool. And I liked seeing people- like when the Yoyo ‘99 was going on, these guys were in this band called DJ Happy Fun. They were like, You know what? We're not on the Yoyo bill, there's no chance in hell that we're ever going to be playing Yoyo, but that doesn't mean we can't just do a pop up show and it can be right by the venue and people can come. And they did.

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John Brogger: Why would a band know that they aren't ever gonna play Yoyo?

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Justin McKaughan: Because they'd asked and they were denied. Or like, you know, you talk with Pat or you talk with some of the people that are like curating that thing, like, “Hey, I got this band or I got these friends that would be great on the bill” and they’re like “oh, it's full.” It's like “oh, there's no way we can get you in there,” and I was in the room when those conversations were happening back in the day- being like  hey, this would be a really cool act or I got these people that they're doing really great stuff, you should check them out and get them a side thing or whatnot... and it just wasn't happening. So yeah, just doing like pop ups to just do shows and like knowing that there were a lot of spaces around town that you could just like go in and somebody had like a lease up or whatever, you can just play in their spot. Some other places I'm trying to think- gosh, going back to the House of Doom, that was a place where there used to be a lot of shows, a punk rock house up off Quince going up on the east side, and yeah, I loved that place. And I remember I got video footage of like the last, last show they had there and when they like kind of tore down the place and whatnot- but I'm trying to think of some other venues too that were in Olympia proper back then. I'm gonna scan my brain. I do this thing, like a flyover, where I try to see like, hey, where was I playing shows? Where was it going down at? It was mainly like house parties, Midnight Sun, HCC, Arrowspace. Gosh, yeah, there's another one, it'll come to mind. But that's pretty much the main spot.

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John Brogger: Well, in Thekla, which had relocated to, to a larger, more unfortunate space..

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Kenny Ward: They weren't in the Vault?

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John Brogger:  So, that weird building, which I believe is a cursed space...

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Justin McKaughan:  It is.

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John Brogger:  Thekla moved there, calling itself Thekla. And then it changed to- well, it changed to the Limelight, but I don't remember if there was a name between them.

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Justin McKaughan:  It was Thekla, Limelight and then-

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John Brogger:  Was the Volcano Room in the Limelight?

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Justin McKaughan:  The Volcano Room was in Thekla.

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John Brogger:  Okay, so Volcano Room was the name of a bar inside of another bar called Thekla.

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Justin McKaughan:  It was like this back access, you could get into the Volcano Room and then when it became Limelight, I mean, they still had shows and stuff, but it was a different vibe. Then Barcode- was it Barcode?

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John Brogger:  No, Barcode was was where-

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Justin McKaughan:  the Hardbody Gym was… Where Otto’s was?

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John Brogger:  Yeah… That was a dance club.

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Justin McKaughan:  McCoy’s! That was the other venue to play at.

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John Brogger:  Oh, yeah. McCoy’s always had shows. And then

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Justin McKaughan:  Praxis, No Exit. It was like behind Pizza Time praxis. Yeah, I remember we had Gravy Train play there, I think with Scream Club, back in the day. That was wild ‘cause homie from Gravy Train was like, dude, man, that's hardcore. I'm like, Okay. This is like real live performance art, man, these people are legit.

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John Brogger: Yeah. When I hear things like that, I can see why the city might have distanced itself somewhat. [laughter] You know, they might have been like- that, I don't know if that's going to be on the walking tour. But, you know. Yeah, a lot of these venues, you know, they just kind of kept popping up. And it's because they were run by the same people but in different spaces. You know, they just kind of transformed to the venues that we have now have been that have been in Olympia for a really long time. A lot of them weren't around back then. Like there was no Brotherhood,  the Voyeur wasn't a thing.

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Justin McKaughan:  Brotherhood, like it was the Brotherhood but it was so sketchy. I thought I was gonna get jumped there, man.

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John Brogger: Yeah, the Brotherhood was an old man bar back in the day. And it was like, you’d go there, somebody's getting their ass kicked.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, it was wild man. And yeah, there was some other venues too like I remember Quality Burrito when it was over at New Moon- they had you guys play there right?Those shows there, and-

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John Brogger: Yeah, I want to say that Cool Guys played at Quality Burrito it was the first time they'd ever had live music there.  Because we could just drag the acoustics in there and play. You know, we used to go tubing down the Deschutes and then go to QB afterwards and so, you know, we were regulars there and I think they were just like, okay. Playing in the cool guys was just an extension of our tubing habits. It was like, let's make a band about how we go tubing all the time.

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Justin McKaughan: Totally. But I think there was a lot of other places that could have been venues. But you're saying the city, they were hardcore trying to shut shit down. And we tried to do like a pop up show or- I remember when they'd have Mayday shows and stuff. It's like yeah, they were tripping, they were on high alert. I think they got militarized a little too early in the game, and it kind of fucked up shit.

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Kenny Ward: Because that was- it’s like the Romanteek recording studio spot behind Pizza Time? Is that that the venue with Gravy Train?

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, that's the thing. That place was dope. It was Praxis, it was called No Exit, it had a few different names. We’d do like secret cafes there because I remember Greta and Matt, they were like “We're gonna do all these different secret cafes” and I remember doing a few there. I loved that spot. It was really cool. I miss it. And I miss Pizza Time too, like I used to loved Pizza Time.

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John Brogger:  Pizza Time’s still here, dreams come true.

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Justin McKaughan:  I know, but it's just not the same, man. I don't know.

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John Brogger:  Stomach's not the same. That's their slogan. Your stomach will never be the same.

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Justin McKaughan:  Man, Old School does shows nowadays too. Or like they'll do Artswalk. I think that's kind of cool. I think there's more opportunities for shows, but I just don't see as many bands that, like, where back in the day- I mean, I'm glad Unwound’s back in the game. I'd like to see them just be like “Hey, fuck it, we could do The Whip too,” because you’ve got two out of three of the members there.  Or other ways to bring bands back- like we were saying, I watched that Post Malone/Nirvana show and dude, it's great. Like Post Malone can join Nirvana and play over the Capitol theater. I mean, I would love that man.

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John Brogger:  I want the city to to fund reopening the Surf Club and then getting Nirvana to play with Post Malone instead of Kurt-

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Justin McKaughan:  And the Vern statue...

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John Brogger:  And we want a statue of Vern Rumsey, definitely. Probably right next to city hall, but also out front of Capitol Theater would be cool.

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, Vern didn't get a proper send off like Mikey Dees from Fitz did because like he died during COVID. And Mikey died right before the whole COVID stuff, so he kind of got more of a proper send off. And you just think of, like, people that pass and, you know, this community- how we can recognize their history and what they brought to this community. I mean, Vern... He was such a sweetheart and just like, you know, bless his soul… I never saw him be mean to people.

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John Brogger: No, Vern was never mean, always was a total nice guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And very talented and very important character. Vern, also- the way I understand is, at least early on- you know, he would he would be a great connector of people and, and help people connect with resources. Like touring information, gear, and just sort of helping all that DIY effort to get people's bands up and running. You know, he was “the guy” for many, many people. I think in later years, he kind of lost that a little bit. But he just had a lot of goodwill. I would love to see the city, just sort of... I mean, they don't have to make amends. But I just think the city should not repeat their failures, you know, like, they make some tangible changes that that recognize the hard work and the influence and the successes of some of these people, and how it made the city a better place.

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Kenny Ward: When they doing ArtsWalk back then, or did that start later?

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John Brogger:  Yeah, ArtsWalk was going on, and I think procession was too.

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Kenny Ward:  It wasn't so band oriented back then, maybe?

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John Brogger:  No, it was some old Boomer hippie shit, frankly. And you know, there was that great Lakefair parade where K records participated. Do you remember that? Were you there?

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Justin McKaughan: No, I heard about it.

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John Brogger:  It was around one of the Yoyos and K records had like a…

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Justin McKaughan:  Float?

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John Brogger:  No, it wasn't a float. It was weird. It was like everybody was a bunch of, like, hipster dudes. Yeah, it was like a flash mob with a bunch of hipsters, carrying like burnt out TVs and just looking surly and kind of edgy and very different from the rest of the parade. And, you know, it was a culture jamming moment where like, the very act of it was sort of disruptive. But also pointing out- artistically pointing out- that this was this wasn't a normal, you know... at least my take on it is that a lot of what Olympia bands did and the way that we approached art back then was to shine a light on what it was... shatter the illusion that was all around us, basically. Right? So, a little bit, there was a prank element to it. Like, let me do this, but do it in public. When the Melvins played at Capitol Lake, I can't help but wonder what the fuck people thought when they were driving by or walking by. They saw a band where, you know, they're very striking looking. They're very noisy. And just a crowd of freaks, standing out in the open air watching them. It's like, Kill all Redneck Pricks. It's like, the idea being that we're gonna make some fucking noise. And it's gonna shatter that illusion that's around you, your family values, your traditional American white family values are going to be destroyed through feedback and through noise and through being gay or being a woman, and screaming into a microphone. And you know, there's so much value in that for a young kid like I was at the time… yeah, we had a lot to scream about. We had a lot on our fucking minds. It was a rebellious act. It felt cathartic. And some of that's just missing now. I don't think- the stakes aren't as high.

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Justin McKaughan:  The authenticity.

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John Brogger:  Stakes just aren't as high. You don't have- It doesn't mean as much because anybody can do it. And it doesn't mean as much because many of the people that made the music back then just probably don't feel that way as strongly anymore. They don't have that angst or that anxiety. Everybody's gotten older and mellowed.

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Justin McKaughan: It’s like, I know when to say when, I'm not gonna do the same stuff I did back in the day, because I'm human, man, I want to live. But at the time, I didn't even fucking care. I was just like, hey, this sounds awesome. That sounds like a great idea. Let's take it on stage.

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Kenny Ward: All right. Did you play at the- or, you didn't play at the festivals, you were on the outskirts of them, right? Did you play at any of those?

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Justin McKaughan: I did play at, like, these side things. Like at the 2001 Yoyo, I think it was- I played... it was something that I think Arrington was putting on, or there was some other folks that were in Duck Hugger. They had created kind of a festival within a festival, I played at that. And in ‘99 we kind of did a pop up during Yoyo because like I was saying- my friends, our bands- we asked, tried, there was no way that we were going to be able- you know, by asking and trying to go through the way that you think you did. So I did that. I'm trying to think, like Ladyfest- I did not play Ladyfest, but I helped get Rainbow Sugar the gig there at Ladyfest. And I remember just kind of helping them out and whatnot. Time magazine was here, that was really trippy, when Lady fest happened and just how much like international press came to town and whatnot, and elevated the Gossip. And they weren't even from town, they kind of like came and saw an opportunity. They were really good by the way, too. But just how they were able to kind of get into this scene and use those mechanisms that could distribute them internationally- and then Ladyfest, that just kind of helped them out and got them to this whole whole new world where I think… like Beth Ditto is like probably on E entertainment network now or something like that.

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John Brogger: She's acting in a like in a TV series or something.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, I'm trying to think of the other festival stuff too. Like I remember Super Saturday. I never played Super Saturday but I’d rap for quarters at Super Saturday and make a bunch of money. Gosh, what else was happening though- was Homo A Gogo. I was dancing with Scream Club when they did Homo-A-Gogo. That was pretty cool, I dug that. Trying to think of any other stuff... I remember being on the board of the Film Society and doing Film Ranch. I was part of the Olympia Film Festival for years, just kind of helping curate, get stuff. Gosh, I probably don't want to finish with that one because that one didn’t sound good. Let me think of another one that was good. Like when they brought David Cross for the Steven Seagal thing, remember that? Where David Cross and the other dude, Bob Odenkirk, I think- they talked over a Steven Seagal movie.

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John Brogger:  Was it Under Siege?

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Justin McKaughan:  I think it was Under Siege. Or maybe not. I forget, I'd have to look back. But, trying to think of any other festival stuff besides those... But no, I really wasn't involved. I was more just doing other stuff in the background and selling tapes. Like, I could sell a grip of tapes. Like, I remember in ‘99 at the Yoyo festival, I had these stickers that said “I support local artists” and “I don't support local artists.” And whenever somebody would be like, “I'm not buying your tape,” I would give them a free “I don't support local artists” sticker. And they'd get their butt hurt and stuff [laughing] like hey, dude, I'm trying to live in your values, bro. Here you go. Here's a free sticker. And yeah, just trying to be silly about it. But it was an opportunity to make a lot of money. And I felt like whenever there was a festival, I was like, Damn, I'm gonna bring a lot of tapes down here, I'm going to sell a bunch of stuff- with the hopes of like getting enough money to maybe get a new bass amp or get something... Like, my aspirations were really low-level. I wasn't like, Oh, I'm going to become the next this or that. It's like, I might be able to actually get a new keyboard. Maybe if I'm lucky.

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Kenny Ward: What was your tape dub setup? Because I saw at K records, they just had a bunch of these kind of like home dupers, just like, in a chain. Did you have a machine?

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Justin McKaughan: My grandma gave me a machine around 1996. It was the speed duplicator machine. She had a tape ministry where she would bootleg other Christian albums and give them out to people. And then my cousin Manny, he made- he was trying to make his own gangster rap stuff and he was bootlegging like Master P like remember, he was making dubs of unbounded videos and selling them on the street. And my grandma was like “here, you can have the tape duplicator.” So I was using it but I had to get really good at demagnetizing tapes because sometimes I would use the tape duplicator and it didn't have the erase function. So it’d record my albums while I didn't you know, get rid of the Whitesnake or Skid Row or whatever album I was like recording over because I used to go to this place called Second Time Around store up in Seattle. And they would just sell me bulk tapes. And a lot of them were like 80s metal- and I love it, you know, don't get me wrong, but I was trying to like use the cheapest stuff that I could to be able to make those tapes. And so I would use the CB radio magnet that was on top of the car. And that was like the best thing to erase everything off the tape. So I would run the magnet over the tapes. And then I would have like a stash of stuff that I knew was okay. And then Capital Communication- CCI [CCI Solutions] in Tumwater, they had the hookup for tapes and stuff like that.

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John Brogger:  Yeah, I was just going to talk about CCI because I remember having this sort of moment where I was like, Oh, the churches are doing all this stuff. They have- Churches, like think about what a church does for the most part. A church has a PA, a live venue and recording venue…

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Justin McKaughan: And duplicators.

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John Brogger:  Like, it dawned on me at a certain point that like, oh, like if you go to one of these, like Christian based technology/audio visual distributors, that's where it all happens. Churches had it all.

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, yeah. Like I remember, I was probably like 10 years old when I walked by the room at my church where they were doing all the duplicating. I was like, that's what it looks like. ‘Cause that was around the time I saw Weird Al for the first time. And I was like, oh, I want to make my own parody album. I remember telling my brother about it. And then he wanted to find it, and I recorded like one or two parody Debbie Gibson songs, and I buried the cassette in the ground because I didn't want him to find it. So I was really embarrassed. I thought it kind of sucked. And then I remember he was trying to find it and stuff. But I was like, oh, that's how you make like mass copies of it. So like jump ahead like a decade or something, and my grandma's tape duplicator started not working, or like the quality was really shitty. And it was it was already shitty to begin with. So imagine it getting even shittier. So then I get to Evergreen. And I'm like, Whoa, they have multiple speed duplicators and nobody was tripping on me using them. So I was like, okay, so I'd have my CB magnet just like come in with all the tapes pre erased. And then I'd be like, okay, these tapes and I could be able to eyeball like, this is a 30 Minute tape. This is a 45 Minute tape, this is a 60 Minute tape. Now it's separate and be like, okay, Mac Dawg 2 is gonna fit on this one, Mac Dawg 6 is gonna fit on this one. And so I kind of knew what was going to happen with how long they would be. So then I would just make like- I would be there for hours over in the library at Evergreen just like making a bunch of tapes. And I would get about 100 to 150 and then go over to K and use the copy machine. And then this guy, Mr. Mike, that worked at K in the office, he worked at the Association of Washington School Principals. And he was the guy that made all their copies and stuff. So he would take me down in the basement and make mass copies of my J cards. And when I came out with the Do You Love Me Britney Spears album, I remember he was like “do you want them in red, green, blue, like all these different colors?” Like every color of the fucking rainbow man, hook it up. So yeah, he would just like run all this stuff off. So I started hooking up- like I had enough copies to get me through like a year, but I had to get tapes and whatnot. So that's where I would just use like K, Kill Rock Stars and go to Second Time Around. Or CCI- my friend Trish was working at CCI, and she would be like, “Hey, I got like 100 tapes or something like that. And I'd go over [imitates car screeching sound] and get them and just like start hooking it up. Those were way better quality than erasing the other ones. And then I remember evergreen got CD recording technology like that you could access in the library around like 1999. And so I started making my CDs. So I would burn CDs while I was doing tape duplication, just kinda running their whole media area, and no one no one ever was tripping. No one like was like, You need to get out of here. I mean, there are people in media loan that were haters, that were just like, “oooh, you're not sound program, why are you using this stuff?” I'm like, because you let everyone else use it. So you know, I don't care if you're going to you know, trip on me or whatever, I'm just still going to check it out. I'm still going to do what I'm gonna do. And I'm going to drop it back off, and it's all good. So, yeah, I just I just had to ignore the noise and just realize that it's like, I'm going to do what I'm gonna do. And I'm having fun, I'm able to put stuff out and I just kept doing that until it got to a point where technology- like say around 2002- I realized like mp3s, Napster, Limewire- all this way that you can get music, trade music and build websites. Like, that's when I started learning website development. I'm like, you can just like put all your music online for free, people can access it, and if they really like it, they'll come to your shows and buy your merch. And I was just like using the thermofax machine to make my own T shirts and stuff like that. And I was like, really the money’ selling merch at shows. It's like the music, they can just get it however they want, people are gonna make mix CDs or whatever. Like the iPod [and] the first mp3 players are coming out. So it just kind of changed my mind to think it's not about making an album. You can still make albums, but at the end of the day, you gotta be able to play live. You got to have merch, you gotta like be able to connect with your audience. So it kind of shifted my thing of like, I have to sell albums to make money. And at that time, I had been like substitute teaching, I was making enough money to where I didn't have to sell music to kind of subsidize, like, you know, eating or other shit.

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Kenny Ward: We got all this stuff, look at the bigger list of stuff too...

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, what else we got?

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Kenny Ward:  It’s national- local and national politics. That's one of the questions here. It says what do you remember about the national and local politics of the 1980s? And 90s? Explore local ordinances...

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Justin McKaughan:  Oh, shit…

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Kenny Ward:  It’s getting kinda technical? [laughing] I don't know. Do you remember the government codes of the ‘90s, or...?

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John Brogger:  I think the city had some ordinances in place that were oppressive to artists that were trying to do live performance, especially if they were noisy or late at night. There was also rules about gathering in places and, I mean, just kind of regular city type ordinances that aren't necessarily uncommon, but maybe they could have been more relaxed or loose with it. The national politics and things that were impacting the local music scene had to do with being anti war in a country that was at war and, and being pro woman, you know, or pro feminism at a time when when there was an anti woman attitude or homophobic attitudes, so there was a lot of social trends that were much- I mean, it's we're in an awkward time now, to talk about this, because I think, if you had asked me this question, 10 years ago, I'd have a different take on it a little bit. But at the time, in the ‘90s, in Olympia, it felt like we were rejecting war, we were rejecting racism, we were rejecting sexism, we were rejecting homophobia, we were rejecting corporate culture, and mainstream corporate influence over our art and our way of expressing ourselves. And I really do think that in some ways, it was the birth of modern liberalism. The reason why Nirvana or somebody that like resonated so strongly across so many different audiences, is because it was a universal vibe. A lot of people related to it. And Kurt was very much outspoken about being a feminist and being anti racist and things like that. So that message- people were ready to receive that message.

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Justin McKaughan: But like, Krist Novoselic is kind of a libertarian in a way...

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John Brogger:  I mean, I don't know if he is, I don't know. [sighs] I feel like the poor guy’s out there with a microphone talking into it. And eventually you say something stupid, or say something that doesn't make sense.

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Justin McKaughan:  I love Krist Novoselic.

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John Brogger:  Yeah, he's tall.

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Justin McKaughan:  He lives out in Naselle or whatever…

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John Brogger:  Yeah, I mean, what a weird life he's led. I mean, who knows?

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah, he’s like a refugee.

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John Brogger:  I mean, whenever I hear somebody say something, I'm always just like- I don't know, how would I feel in that situation? Like, oh, I'm seven feet tall. I was in a huge band. I live in the middle of the woods. [big laugh] You know? Like, so unrelatable to me! So I don't think very many Olympia bands were overly political- certainly not on the level of some of the Hardcore scene in DC or California. Or something like that, where you had political lyrics specifically addressing politicians or legislation, you know. But there was- what was that concert that took place in- I think it was Portland, that had to do with... an anti abortion proposition or something like that, I forget the name of it. But at Evergreen, there was a show that Nirvana played, that was like an anti Gulf War show and Krist Novoselic gave this speech about being anti war, before Nirvana’s set. So I think it kind of was there, there was an activist spirit, even though most of the lyrical content- if you listen to a lot of bands from back then, maybe setting aside Bikini Kill or somebody that had a very thoughtful concept behind some of the lyrics- a lot of it just had to do with general alienation, or universal things like love, or emotional content. But all of that was leveraged against this fucked up stuff that was going on in the rest of the country. That's why something like the Red Hot Chili Peppers couldn't have happened here. Because it was just dumb, and kind of meaningless in many ways couldn't have survived, here. It was too lame.

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, I mean, I remember doing those Bands against Bush shows we did in like ‘03. I think Tobi Vail was helping out with it, there were some other folks from town, just trying to get people energized about it. It was hard, man! In ‘03, there was the war [the War on Terror] happening. And people were politically active, but it just wasn't like- like you were saying, like in DC you have these people who are just like [makes frantic, rabid vocal sound] Y’know, politics, politics, politics politics!! And that wasn't really something I felt like Olympia was doing. I mean, you had Crimethinc or whatever, sort of like anarcho punk stuff. But I don't know how much that was organic from coming through town, or just floating through town temporarily.

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John Brogger: I think it was an influence, but it just didn't translate to Olympia having that same approach for the most part, at least not to my recollection. I can't think of any examples of a of a band from Olympia back in the day that was super political.

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Justin McKaughan:  I didn't see bands at the WTO from Olympia when that was happening, because Evergreen, they were really like-

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John Brogger:  Rage Against the Machine played?

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Justin McKaughan:  I don't know. I would like to think that Rage Against the Machine played there, but I just don't think that really happened.

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John Brogger:  Probably didn't right?

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Justin McKaughan: No, it didn't happen. Because they didn't get paid.

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John Brogger:  They would have lost their Monster Energy sponsorship or something.

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Justin McKaughan:  Yeah. Something totally would have tanked that. But yeah, the politics. I remember when Al Gore was running for president, he came to Garfield Elementary, and people were protesting and freaking out, and they were tripping on him. And he was just like, the standard bearer to be the Democratic Party. And there was a lot of people here that were down with Ralph Nader. And I remember hanging out at TCTV, and all these people were jazzed about like, “Ralph Nader this, Ralph Nader that” and I remember walking into the Democratic Party headquarters over there by Old School Pizzeria, used to be across the street from the Safeway that closed down downtown. And I walked in there and the folks, like those people I went to Evergreen with knew I was helping out with stuff on the Ralph Nader campaign. And they threatened me, they yelled at me, and they were so abusive, and rude. And I was just like, Whoa, is this the Democratic Party of Olympia? And actually, I did not associate myself with that party for a long time because I just got bad vibes and I didn't see them networking with bands and the community of musicians. And just like thinking about the politics, that seemed really politically apathetic here. But I mean, I do kind of remember what you were saying, Jon, about the Riot Grrrl movement and feminism, and Rush Limbaugh and his whole nasty depiction of  the “feminazi” and all this stuff. And it was like Olympia was like the antithesis to that shit. He was pushing on the right wing. And [we’d be] just be like, No fuck that. We're, you know, like Bikini Kill and like all of the zines and that Riot Grrrl movement was really just kind of like a fuck you to that shit that was mainstream, that really led to the shit that was happening in the last decade, politically. I think it was like trying to give a heads up, or was ahead of its time. Just being like “nah, man, this is where it's at- just treat people with respect and give women the right to be themselves.”

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John Brogger: Kathleen Hannah came to my high school. I think she's a couple years older than me and I was probably a senior or close to it, because I remember being aware of her, but I didn't know her or anything. But she came to my high school to talk to our class about- I think in a general sense kind of feminist values, but she shared some very personal stories of traumatic experiences that she'd had as a woman. And, you know, it impacted me quite a bit. I mean, some of it was just solidified things that I was already feeling at the time about how fucked up this male dominated culture was, and how oppressive it was. And, you know, I was learning, I was starting to realize that these things were out there. But some of it, some of the ammunition, it was just revolutionary, because- like, I don't know, if she knew this, or I'm not even sure how this happened, how this whole thing was orchestrated- but some of the people that were in that room listening to her were these dudes who were either already there, or they were going to become these fucking shitheads that would have been causing these problems out there in the world. And I don't necessarily think she went in there and changed all their minds, and everything's perfect now. But I remember just thinking, you're speaking to people who are who you're talking about, that are going to cause some of the problems that you're talking about. And if they can hear this and get anything out of it, that was revolutionary to me. And it just changed my understanding of male-female roles and power dynamics. And for a kid growing up in Tumwater who could have easily just been a dumb redneck idiot, it helps to have people kind of lift me up out of that stuff. My family was very good at teaching me good values, and my grandmother in particular, so I didn't grow up racist or sexist or anything like that. But some of those things are kind of implicit, that you get them from being where you're at. You're influenced by your culture around you. And so growing up there, I think I could have fallen into some of those traps. And certainly, I knew people that had fallen into it. And even though they were nice people, they had these viewpoints that were really pretty fucked up and honestly, not really true to who they were as people, but they didn't know how else to think about things. And so it was a huge eye opener, to have somebody bring those kinds of values to us and present them in a way that was like, Oh, shit, you're right. This isn't right, the way that we're living out here. And some of these people that lived out in Little Rock and Tumwater, at the time, I was like, this isn't right. It kind of solidified a feeling like I have to separate myself from this, and this isn't where I want to be, and these aren't the people I want to associate with. So it did a lot to foster a community spirit of like, hey, there's a better way forward So I guess the long answer to the question is, it wasn't so much political as it was just anti authoritarian, anti authoritarian, rebellious revolutionary, rejecting this mainstream culture, which which we saw as very fundamentally problematic, you know, dogmatic. All the bad words you can think of.

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, one just quick note, one thing- the difference between callout culture and call in culture, or like calling someone in versus calling out.  There would be times where I felt like there was kind of a call out culture with some of the bands. But then, there were people that were awesome that would call you into the conversation to be like, “Hey, this is actually not cool” instead of put you on blast from the stage. You know? Like, I recognize people that actually took the time to have conversations with me when I was a young musician and stuff. That really helped me be better as a human, so mad shout outs to those folks.

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Kenny Ward: All right, well, we got most of the stuff on this list. Um, yeah. Is there any anything you didn't say that you want to say?

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Justin McKaughan: We talked about the Vern [Vern Rumsey] statue... oh, gosh, the good question. Rest in peace, Kurt Cobain. Forever.

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John Brogger: I just want to reinforce the idea that- y’know, I'm speaking from the perspective of a kid from 1990 in Tumwater. You're gonna talk to all these people in this project that have different perspectives, because they were older, or more involved or had more tangible impact or influence in the situation. But I just want to reinforce that growing up during that time, and being from Tumwater, in that time- having this music scene happen around me, and having access to it was transformative in a way that has informed my entire adult life. The values and some of the influences and things that I developed and encountered back then, they’re core values of mine. And it's just amazing to me, that as random as it is that I was able to encounter it and experience it- because even though I really do think that time is sort of done, I think that that period of time is sort of over- there's still echoes of it. But you know, it's not coming back, it was its own thing at the time. But man, it, it was it was just like, life changing, and spiritually life changing. More so than any religious experience that had ever been tried out on me. I got what I needed from from from that scene back then. And most of the people I know that grew up in it have the same feeling. It's like a superpower in a way or something, it's like we have this ability to- we kind of have an understanding of the world that's a little bit different. Looking at it through that experience of growing up here in that time period. And that looks like  being able to bring that anti-authoritarian revolutionary attitude to things that we do now in our lives. Like raise our kids, work in in public jobs where we serve our communities, teach. Where we influence by being members of boards and councils. Where we write policy. These people who like were in bands, that wrote zines, that ran venues, that sold their tapes out in front of shows- these are the people now that are bringing those values to much bigger systems that are much more powerful systems. And it's amazing to me that that's how it's played out. And it should never be forgotten. It's like a secret society in some ways. And the fact that this is happening and that there is a grant-funded effort to learn more about this period or whatever- it's encouraging, because it's something that could have just been completely forgotten. And for many years, it was. You know, Unwound wasn't even on the internet in like 2006?

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Justin McKaughan: Yep, not even online.

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John Brogger: You couldn’t Google ‘em. They didn't even have a Wikipedia.

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Justin McKaughan: Yeah, it's it's a trip, man, I guess I'm really glad I stuck it out in town didn't leave town when I graduated. I mean, I feel like the experience after I graduated evergreen in 2000 kind of helped inform me to make that choice to have kids and have a family and just be in the community here. I go back to- like, when I first moved to town, I met Aaron and Nathan Weaver. They were in a band called Hoodwinks at the time, and I remember kicking it with them. And their mom was like a school teacher. And they were like, good folks from town. And like, I was like, Wow, man, that's really cool. You and your bro could have this experience in town and whatnot. And it's like, my brother and I, we had a pretty traumatic childhood, how we kind of wound up here in Washington. And then in Olympia, I just thought about like, well, what would it be like if this was the hometown. And I remember at 2020, with all the Black Lives Matter stuff, and Bruce Springsteen’s song “My Hometown,” like driving my son through downtown and just all that shit, and I'm just like, this is not my hometown, this is your hometown. And I'm so glad that I did decide to stick it out and raise a family here and give back to the community. And I'm really hopeful that this project fields- to kind of have that living history documentation, like state archives- and just hear all of their stories. And I don't know if there's others in on this note, there's this book called Lexicon Devil and it's the story of the Germs. And it takes all of these different stories of people that were around Darby Crash at the time, and [it’s] kind of built this whole story and it puts you there in that moment in time. And I guess my hope is this project turns out to be kind of like that Lexicon Devil book.

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Kenny Ward:  All right. Thank you.

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