Chris Sutton

Interviewed by Markly Morrison

At TC Media in Olympia, WA

March 4, 2025

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Markly Morrison

For the Olympia Music History Project, I'm Markly Morrison. I'm here with Chris Sutton at TC Media Studios in Olympia, Washington. Today is March 4th, 2025, a little after 11 AM. Chris, thank you so much for driving all the way up here to do this.

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Chris Sutton

It wasn't really a problem. I drive up here a lot. Olympia's never far away from my heart, or my space. My mom's up here, I have a lot of friends up here. I just kinda need to be here every couple of months, so it's no problem at all. Thank you for having me. 

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Markly Morrison

Do you think you could summarize your relationship to Olympia and its music scene? 

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Chris Sutton

I grew up here. I was one of the few people that I know that actually grew up here. I moved here when I was five, my parents came from California. So the Olympia music scene for me was learning how to play music, getting into music, and growing with the city. I mean, as long as I've been going to shows- I started going to shows when I was 11 or 12 and continue to go to shows now-  it fed every aspect of my life as far as artistic concerns or spiritual concerns or anything like that. So my connection is really deep. It goes beyond… a lot of people- musicians I know- were kind of moving through town or showed up here after their halcyon or teenage days. They kind of showed up here and left, or they were here for a short period of time. I just rode with the Northwest my entire life. So it's hard to quantify my connection with Olympia because it just runs so deep in the way I think. This town made me who I am.

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[00:01:53] 

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Markly Morrison

The scene itself aside, for you personally, when did you first start getting an inkling that you were a musician? 

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Chris Sutton

Wow, as far as I can remember, I've loved music. But there's a couple of things- like, big memories were watching MTV when I was a real little kid. In my family, the TV was on pretty much constantly. Our house woke up around six or seven in the morning too. I think it probably turned off around midnight, after the Tonight Show… my parents were the first people on top of cable. So we had MTV really, really early. And even though it was expensive, they really wanted it. And so our days were sort of centered around it. There was always kind of video shows around dinner time. I mean, I just remember Van Halen and things like that, and just kind of being really tied into videos, watching music videos all the time. I didn't get an instrument until I was in middle school. But… when I was early, I had a tennis racket that I just wore down because I was pretending that I was playing guitar. So those are my first early memories of thinking music was for me, for sure. 

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Markly Morrison

What was the instrument you picked up in middle school? 

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Chris Sutton

In sixth grade, there was a program at my elementary school that was teaching you band instruments. And the most interesting one was trombone. So the first instrument I ever learned was trombone, as far as reading notes or music. Then once I discovered guitar, or that I could get a guitar, it was all over. My mom managed a fabric store, and so I had a choice when I was in 8th grade to either go on a camping trip with my friends or work at her store for a whole week and save up and buy a bass guitar- because they didn't want to buy me one and have me not be into it. So I chose the fabric store and I worked all week. I got $220 after working for a whole week. 

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Markly Morrison

What year is that?

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Chris Sutton

I was in 8th grade, so it would have been like ‘89. 

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Markly Morrison

That's good money for a week's work. 

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Chris Sutton

Oh my god, yeah. But I worked like every day. I worked like 6 days that week because they were doing inventory, so I was just working as much as I could. I got the money. Cash, no wallet- a roll of money, and I walked from my house which was by Panorama City. Which is… in Lacey, Washington, kind of by St. Martin's area right off of Sleater-Kinney [Road]. And I walked from there all the way to Music 6000, which at the time was closer to Nisqually Middle School, way deeper in Lacey. There was a bass there that was 219. A Red Tanara bass. No case, no strap, no nothing. Yeah. And they sold it to me without tax, because they were like, “Oh, this kid is cool.” Gave them all of my money. They gave me a dollar back. I walked all the way home with it, and I slept with it for, I don't know, probably a few months, just learning how to play. First thing I did was play like every note. I probably disappeared for an entire year. So that was the first time I bought an instrument and really got into it. And that was more because I knew I had a friend that played drums and then I had another friend that was a year younger that played guitar, and it was me sort of desperately seeing that window and trying to find a way to jump in. So that's kind of how it started, me playing with people.

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Markly Morrison

Did you ever get your hands on a bass before you decided that was what you were gonna buy? 

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Chris Sutton

No. So, me and my friend- before we were able to get a guitar at all, we would go to this really kind of cheapo music store that was in South Sound Mall. It was where PetsMart is. It was by that part of the strip, and they sold these guitars- Charvels and Ibanezes, and super cheesy guitars. And we would just go in there and play them. A big memory is my friend had learned “One” by Metallica, like the intro, and he would do that on every guitar. And then I would see people- I'd watch all these bands play with whammy bars, so there's guitars with whammy bars and tortoiseshell kind of designs. And we would just play without knowing what we were doing. I remember at the time thinking that I wasn't ready, but then when I got this opportunity to play with some friends in a band, I just kind of jumped in it. That was my moment. So when I finally got a bass, it was so huge. It was like a piece of technology. It was something that I wasn't worthy of, kind of. I was worshipping all these bands on MTV and sort of picturing myself or daydreaming that I could be- going back to Eddie Van Halen, those videos are just the grandest idea of what a rock star is. Like, if you remember Panama and all those videos, it was just… everything was so huge. So it didn't seem within reach. Respect, Eddie Van Halen. I'm not gonna do that. It seemed like that would be out of touch. So I never thought beyond that. But once I got it, it was a tight grip from there. It was like, my uncle sent me a neck strap or I got this little Gorilla fuzzy bass amp, And it's sort of just a slight development from there.

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Markly Morrison

At what point did you start your first garage band/group of friends, where you gave it a name?

[00:07:28] 

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Chris Sutton

When I talk about the development of me as a musician, it kind of revolves around the International Pop Underground Festival. I was kind of jamming with friends or whatever and playing music, but all of the music that was coming into my mind was MTV. I loved glam rock like Warrant, Poison, all of those bands- I was into it. And I got the magazines and stuff, and I was sold on the MTV kind of space- the grand space that they offered for your mind. And then, one weekend I was jamming with my friend Dan. We were kind of getting virtuosic. We would get Bass Player magazine and stuff, tapping, and getting into weird bands like Mr. Big and virtuoso bands and things like that. Metallica. We were in that zone. So we would sit together in his garage and we would just try to do weird stuff, like play fast and do weird things and spread out. And we were totally just in that mode. And I remember we actually got to the point where the only really good music is thrash metal like Slayer and Exodus and stuff. We'd watch Headbangers Ball and stuff like that. We were jamming at his house all the time, which was probably fun for his parents, for us to be rocking out. So, one weekend in the paper there was an ad for the International Pop Underground Festival, and his mom had read it and was like, “Oh, I know a way to get a nice date night with the husband. We'll take our music obsessed kids to this festival.” We didn't know anything about it. We hadn't heard about it. She didn't know anything about it. She just knew it was downtown and it was two days of music. “Oh, these kids like music. We'll send them down there.” And that pretty much just fucked us up. Seriously, we walked down, and when we went down there, we were fans of Bon Jovi and Poison and all these bands, and when we left, like, all of it was bullshit. Literally. So, the first thing I remember seeing- I walked into the Capitol Theater and Thee Headcoats were playing.

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Markly Morrison

Oh, God. 

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Chris Sutton

And I'd never seen anything- I didn't know what Garage Rock was. Broken amps, antique stuff, they were wearing Sherlock Holmes stuff or whatever. We were just like, “What is going on?” And there was this band we used to see it play shows called Splat. They were like a metal band, and they were local, and the drummer went to my high school. He did drugs, he had sex first, and whatever, he was like the Spicoli kind of figure. 

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Markly Morrison

He's the rebel. 

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Chris Sutton

Oh, totally. And he was totally cool, and you could go to his house and he didn't have parents, you could drink beer, so he was that kind of guy. But he was the drummer of this band, Splat, who were really good. They were a really good band. They were at the show… all gathered in front of the stage, in front of Billy Childish, and they were heckling him. “Oh, Sherlock Holmes bullshit, whatever,’  throwing cans at him or whatever. And Billy Childish just dressed them down- called them losers, they looked like women, their music is stupid, blah, blah, blah. They were giving it back, and they were much smarter and they had a microphone so they were just tearing them a new one, then they just proceeded to jump into this crazy garage punk music that we had never heard before. And that was the moment- literally, that was the second where we were like, we're into punk anymore. Everything we thought was [cool was] totally dumb. This is what it's all about. And then following that, we saw Nation of Ulysses the same night. We saw Fugazi the next day. We had to get taken down the next day. And we just became obsessed. And we took it in these two different ways- so that was sort of also the end of our band, too, because we had seen all this stuff, and we had absorbed all of it, and we went in different directions. So he went into this steampunk place. Top hats and, weird- he started wearing makeup and all this other stuff and really got into this character, and he just started drifting off into this life. He dropped out of school- I think he did, and he moved away. And then I took it this whole other way where I was like, “Oh, I can do anything now, literally, and if you do anything, that's cool. The point is doing anything.” Because we saw- at the same festival, some people cited the idea of Riot Grrrl kind of fusing out from this- It was kind of like an open mic. It was late, after everything. And I think one of the members from the Softies, Rose Melberg, performed that night. And I think even Allison Wolfe was there, and Nikki McClure was there, I'm pretty sure. And seeing that happen in a space where there's no amps, there's no set up, there's no weird lights, nobody was dressing weird or dressing up for it. It was these people with this clear, incendiary message about being unique, and filled with this punk belief.  And it was just so infectious, and that's purely Olympia. When I think about the stuff that happened after Yoyo a Go Go, the Transfused, all the stuff that happened after- it's purely Olympia, and that's what sort of makes me kind of proud of being from this place. And I've told Calvin this, who had a really heavy hand in setting it up- he was surprised when I told him, because we're really good friends, but he didn't know that the reason why I even knew him or I was even into music, really- was because of this idea he had. 

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Markly Morrison

Because he put that ad in the newspaper.

Chris Sutton

Yeah, totally, which was a thing you could do. We're a small town. It's Olympia, of course, you're going to put in the newspaper. And we weren't reading the newspaper, but Dan's mom was, and was like, “Go down to this thing.” And it was this whole complete world. It's even hard to describe the shift that happened- seeing The Headcoats and then coming back home and being like, “What the fuck did we just see? Okay, we need to find this stuff. And this stuff.” And we were going to Positively Fourth Street when it was down there, bugging them all the time. And that's when the seven inches happened, and hitchhiking to shows happened, after that. And it wasn't just music. Art and the philosophy of how to make art really just started at that moment.

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Markly Morrison

Alright, first time you got on a flyer? 

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Chris Sutton

There was a club called The Uncola, which was the back of what is now that burrito place downtown, across the street from King Solomon's. 

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Markly Morrison

Quality Burrito. QB,  R.I.P.

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Chris Sutton

So Quality Burrito used to be this storefront… it was a guy's name, like Maceo or Max’s, and it was one of those places like… you know that scene in Pinocchio where all the kids turned into donkeys? It was kind of like that. It wasn't a bar, but it was a place you could go and you could buy candy and they had tea and stuff. It was semi-head-shoppy if I remember correctly, but I remember you didn't have to be 21 to be in there. In the back of that was this place called the Uncola, and I think the first person I met there was Michelle Noel, who was one of the people who started setting up shows there. So all the kids that would go to the Uncola would hang out in this place out front, get lollipops and stuff, and we would go check it out. And that was an all ages venue, and it would have shows day and night. That's when we first started seeing shows there. And then I started playing in this band called Green Noise. It was a band I started in high school, and we put together a bunch of songs. I think the main angle was we were really into the Cure, so a lot of the songs were kind of like that. But we were also into Primus and stuff, so there was a little kind of funk element introduced to this Cure kind of mindset. It was a very patched together band. But we were like, “We have a couple songs,” we heard from somebody that there was a venue downtown, and then somebody was like “There's a meeting, come to the meeting.” I think her name was Ronna Era, she was in this band called Treehouse, and we were friends with her sister. Treehouse were part of this collective, and then through that, we went to this meeting, and it was the same sort of thing. We walk into this meeting and it's all these people we've never seen before. We were probably like 14 or 15, and just people talking about punks and collectives and all these people were in there. I remember it smelling like patchouli. And I remember it was insulated with cheese puff bags. Somebody had raided a warehouse and insulated the ceiling. So the first show I played had Green Noise, and they put us on a bill with Jawbreaker. And I think that was the first time I ever played.

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[00:16:51] Markly Morrison

I have this replica of an old Green Noise flyer. 

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[00:16:52] Chris Sutton

[Laughing] Yeah, totally, totally. At The Uncola, too, there it is, that’s the place. And Diplomatic Immunity, yeah, we were friends with those guys for sure. We just frequented there all the time, and it was just so fun to play, and the bug was instantly set. I saw Dead Moon there, and then it was one of those places where we would just go if something was going on like Crash Worship or something crazy. They'd have really confrontational bands in there and stuff. And the alley just became covered in graffiti. And then the influence- and I don't know if this is totally a direct influence, but the Capitol Theater backstage shows… I feel it was because the Uncola kind of faded away, I feel like the Backstage was set up as a replacement for that, with that same vibe.

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Markly Morrison

That makes sense. I wonder if that's the origin of the graffiti wall in that alley.

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Chris Sutton

I mean, I would have to say. Because I mean, as soon as the shows were really going- there was kind of a golden maybe year where a lot of bands were playing, and that's when all of the graffiti started up back there, and the owner of Capitol Theater didn't seem to mind that much.  But that enclave- if you see it, if you go to that place- the back of Quality Burrito, Capitol Theater- it’s like this nice little courtyard, so there’s a space that I remember hanging, drinking beers [out of] paper bags and stuff like that. So it's just that type of place. But all punk, and all weirdos. And it was just super inspiring. These are my people. 

[00:18:43] 

Markly Morrison

So did this culture cross over into high school at all? Did you find friends in the downtown punk scene that you would see at your school? Where did you go to school?

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Chris Sutton

North Thurston High School. So there was a band called the Noses that was a North Thurston band, but they weren't really punk. They were more into The Who and Britpop, but we looked up to them. They were a couple of years older than us… and C Average is great. Jon Merithew was in that band, and he went on to do C Average, which was awesome- but, a lot of the people that I knew besides my direct band members were people that went to Olympia High School… The people my age that came out of that scene, that I would leave the show with, that were my same age- they all tended to go to Olympia High School. I tried to go because all my friends went there, but it was too far from my house. There was no way I would have done it. But All my friends were there. 

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[00:19:41] Markly Morrison

What was the bridge from Green Noise to you joining Engine 54?

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[00:19:44] Chris Sutton

It was pretty direct… So Engine 54 came from this collective called Acme Ska Corps. And, that was a ska band that was definitely in the Operation Ivy kind of vein, like a little more punky. 

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Markly Morrison

Like American ska-punk.

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Chris Sutton

Sure, but really really kind of aggressive. And they were- like, I think there was a skateboard company called Acme skateboards that they were trying to start at the same time, and there was a band that was associated with the skateboard. And so we knew ‘em, like when we would go downtown to Sylvester Park, they were like the skaters. You'd see them at parties, they'd kind of be the party starters. They were like a couple years older than us. Out of that came Engine 54, where these people were like,”Oh, we actually want to play ska for real,” and it kind of developed into that. It came from this party, chaotic atmosphere. Ten members in the band. All the shows were insane, you know... to the sort of thing where they wanted to be a little more mature. And I think just because we were hanging out with those skaters, those same people, somebody saw me play bass probably at a show, like the Uncola or whatever, and was like, ”Oh, we need a bass player.” And I'm sure race probably played into it, having a black bass player is probably good if you're starting a ska band. I'm sure they had that in mind. But I did love ska music and reggae. And that was sort of the first band that [I was part of that] a lot of people were coming to see them play. And the energy of the shows were- like a show where everybody was dancing. We’d have 300 people dancing. So that was pretty cool. But the thing about Engine 54… there was only one show that we played outside of town while I was in the band. I think we played another show in Tacoma, but we didn't tour as much as we played. We played a lot, I was with ‘em for a couple of years, but we never really played out of town. It was mostly just in town shows, but I think there were so many people and… it was a very chaotic atmosphere. It was hard to take it on the road, to take it somewhere. 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah. Plus, probably, you're going to need multiple vehicles, maybe a trailer too..

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Chris Sutton

Totally. And everybody in multiple periods of their life- like somebody was married, somebody had a kid, and it was like people in their 20s. So the people that were really kinda keeping the band going were these skaters that had gotten too old to be hanging out with teenagers. So they're like, “How do we keep this vibe going? ‘Cause we're not skating anymore, and everybody's getting younger. How do we make it real?” And when you get in a band like that, or any sort of band, everybody has a different idea of “Where are we going?” I've seen so many bands break up because all the members have a different idea of what the band is, and this was a classic example of that. For some people, it was a business venture. Some people were completely non musical but just kind of wanted to be part of something. But it was a little bit of this aging thing- like we were aging out of the scene and we were trying to stay relevant. But that was the thing- I think it was just somebody seeing me play, asking me to play. I think there definitely was some tension because as much as they say they weren't stealing me from my other band, they were totally stealing me from my other band. And Green Noise went on to become the Ryderwoods. When I was still in the band, the last year I was in, they became the Ryderwoods… they became the Narrows after I had left. I started playing in Engine 54 all the time. practicing with them, and then they got a new bass player… and that's the direction they went in with Narrows… they made some great records. 

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Markly Morrison

So, Ryderwoods, like the town? 

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Chris Sutton

Yeah, we were driving from Portland up to Olympia, and Justin McIntyre, the singer of the band, was obsessed with the Vader/Ryderwood sign. And so he was like, “We should call our band the Ryderwoods” ‘cause we were Star Wars fans. So we were like, “Oh, Vader, cool.” And then we're like, “Oh, Ryderwoods should be our band name.” So that's how that came about.

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, Vader's maybe like low-hanging fruit. 

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Chris Sutton

Oh, totally. We were like, “Oh, Vader, that'd be cool, to live in Vader.” Probably not, but… [laughing] 

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Markly Morrison

I've always been very curious about that place, too

Chris Sutton

I've driven through it, it's just like a small northwest town, it's cool. It's like Shelton, kind of like Yelm, kind of Mossy Rock kind of level of town. 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, it's a cool place to get a flat tire. So you said you left Engine 54 before they did go on and play out a bit- like some festivals [or something], later on.

[00:24:48] 

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Chris Sutton

Totally.  So Dub Narcotic happened while I was in Engine 54- Dub Narcotic Sound System. It was a couple of years, but it was like one of those things where, like I said, we weren't playing out of town. We were playing great shows. But what Dub Narcotic Sound System offered, which was just like dream making, was like the ability to record a lot, be on a record- which was just king goal in my mind. Like, being on a vinyl record was amazing. And I knew about K [Records], but K was kind of a different scene than the Engine 54 type of stuff. So moving back into that sort of atmosphere, it goes back to the International Pop Underground stuff- like garage punk, rock and roll, twee, outsider folk- and just looking at music in a different way. So there's a story- the crossover… Engine 54 recorded at Calvin's house. So he used to record everything at his house in the basement. And Engine 54, all 9-10 of us, showed up at his house. I went into his house- and I don't know if you've been to Calvin's house, but- the record room. So he has all types of records, but he had more reggae and ska records than any of us combined. And y’know, everybody thought they were a purist- like we were these kind of “ologists" about ska and reggae, second and third wave, all this stuff. But just a fraction of his collection was a collection of reggae and ska that was deeper than any of ours. And we hung out at his house--we had a song called Skinhead Train. The song was about traditional skinheads--like, not racist skinheads, but it was sort this thing... 

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Markly Morrison

The “working class movement.”

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Chris Sutton

Yeah, we had a couple of “traddy skins” in our group, but it was one of those things we always had to contend with, because generally when people think about “skinhead,” they think about the racist skinhead or the American X skinhead or whatever. And so it's kind of a battle of these people- the sweetest people by the way- who were constantly fighting. Like, they'd have the attire, the hair or whatever. But it'd be sort of tied in with this other idea that people had. So we had a song called Skinhead Train and at the last minute, half of the band didn't want to record the song and the other half of the band was like “We have to record the song!” So it became this big fight. Not a fist fight that I know of, I don't know, I wasn't out there- but there was a big fight outside of Calvin's house in the front yard [about] whether or not we were gonna record the song. And so I was inside, because I was transfixed by this amazing record room, just wanting to listen to everything and look at it. And Calvin was so generous with talking about the records that he had. It was just me and him, and he was just talking about “So how long have you been playing with these guys?” Like they're yelling at each other outside. “Oh, like a year or so” or whatever. He’s like, “Okay…” He didn't really say anything. And he was showing me ESG records and things like that. And the takeaway from that session, or hanging out with him, was that I had pigeonholed myself. Even through the glam metal, like I was telling you about, all this sort of stuff, I kind of picked an ethos. That's what you do, you buy into whatever the genre is. You're into the Cure. You wear the black lipstick and whatever… that was the first time that I [realized]  “Oh, you know what punk is?” Punk is being open to everything, Punk is processing everything. Everything has a magic. And people playing together, putting vibrations together… I’m going off on a tangent, but this philosophy kind of ties into this moment that I'm talking about- I always feel that any group of people who want to make a sound, can make at least one good song. And I'm not saying every group of people can make a good song. I'm not saying that. Every group of people who want to make a song, seriously- at least one of them will be good. I'm convinced of it. Going back to that moment, being in that record room, it was like, you have to like everything. Everything has something to offer you, whatever type of music it is. And these records are statements from these individuals, artistic expressions from these individuals- these little pockets of society, these little communities. So seeing that- somebody who was not worried about what type of music it was, trying to hear it all- that was so inspirational to me. I kept playing with Engine 54, but that was kind of the… I was like, “Oh wow, we can't just stay in one lane, there's so many lanes, and it's so beautiful and there's so much life and there's so much world, and there's so many people that have something to say, that has to be interesting if you care about it. [After] that hangout, I kept playing with Engine 54 and Brian Weber, the guitar player for Dub Narcotic Sound System, he was sort of the bridge. He was friends with people in Engine 54, and he did to them what Engine 54 did to my old band- was basically steal me. Like, “Oh, I have a chance to go in that record room again, and talk about music with you guys? And  maybe we'll go on tour and maybe we'll record…” And recording happened, probably within a month. I think we Recorded a single and that was just everything that I wanted. So that was the next chapter- being in that band. And we toured a lot. We went to a lot of places. One of the great things I appreciate about that band too, that I haven't experienced in any other band since, was Calvin's willingness to play off the beaten path. It's a weird church, and there's 15 kids that have a place to play, and we're going to go do that. We're going to go to the San Juan Islands, we're not going to play the bar downtown, we're going to play…

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Markly Morrison

The Grange Hall…

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Chris Sutton

Sure, exactly. And playing places like Billings, and places that. Like, I'd be in other bands that were afraid to go. We were like, “No, let's go to these weird places!” And I feel like just being on that type of tour also opened my eyes to how the world- like there’s these people all over. Today it’s so politically charged… I think people that only follow the media see the right and left, like the colors themselves, but these people- somebody who voted not how I feel- they like Strawberries and they like barbecues, and other stuff. So there's ways to sort of connect. Everybody's a human being. I always think politics are just a product of our experiences. And we can't control how some people experienced life. If they grew up in Oklahoma City and like X, Y, and Z, we're not gonna be able to change that, it's just who they are. It doesn't make 'em a bad person. 

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Markly Morrison

So… first tour with Dub Narcotic? 

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Chris Sutton

First tour with Dub Narcotic was with The Make-Up, I think. And, the thing about The Make-Up, too, is that they were sort of as rockstar-y as you can get without being an MTV, without the sort of excess. And they were super cool too, and the suits and all that other stuff. That was a great tour we did, it was a West Coast tour. I think we played the last night of the Jabberjaw in Los Angeles, which was a pretty eventful night. And I keep on hearing that Bikini Kill may have been there, but I only remember the Make-Up. It might have been a couple of nights kind of thing and like we were on one night. And then it was like, all the way down to Arizona and back.. Then the first U.S. tour, really, was after that. It was like a month and a half… going to DC and seeing all those people, having dinner with Ian McKaye, like having him tell me stuff, or tell me about how punk is or whatever was pretty interesting, super valuable. I mean… I'm going to bring up Calvin a lot, especially in the time period we're talking about, because I really do believe what he gave and what he created, to me, is incalculable. Because it’s Olympia, because it was small, and because it wasn't documented in this very scientific way, you really just had to be there. When I tell people about what I've seen and what I've done, it just sounds mystical and mythical, and it really kind of stems from this idea. He really put a brand on it, even more than Kill Rock Stars. It’s still there, it still is important, but I feel like that's an offshoot. It's like the Beatles and the Stones were like this- And so Kill Rock Stars was the Stones. There's a ground floor, and then, the Stones were just like, “Let's just make this cool. Let's make it a little dangerous.” I always feel like that's sort of how the timeline goes. I think as time goes on, I feel like not enough people bring him up. Beat Happening will keep him in musical history- there's enough important people that care about Beat Happening and stuff to keep his name kind of historically… It's just so major… I mean he set up a lot. But all the stuff that came off of his idea is just so massive, and I think people don't really see that. You know when K moved to that huge warehouse, that two-story area, you could go in there every day and there was creativity happening, like blowing up. Like, I just read this musician that got interviewed… it was a band from England, and they're probably half my age. And, they were like, “You know what a good record is? It's the Glow Part 2 [by The Microphones]. This is a great record! It is. And I remember, it brought me back to memories of [when] I would go there on random days and they would be recording it, and it was always something weird. Khaela [Maricich] walking around with two microphones, or bouncing a ball in the corner, or playing with sounds and hearing those parts- and then when you hear the finished sort of symphony that happens. What I saw was somewhere in there, but there's so many layers, and there's so much creativity and craziness. And the Glow Part 2- I keep running into that over and over again. Like, when historians or famous musicians are talking about great sounding records, it shows up on a lot of lists of the best records from the century. And that's totally Olympia to me, that piece of Olympia… And [something like that is] not going to get made in a lot of other places… there's not the resources, or even the vision. The layout of the CD- the sideways painting of the elephant blowing fire! And the way the voices- like if you put headphones on you hear the town, and even Anacortes is in there, so all of Phil [Elverum]'s experience is in there, in that record. There's artists that spend years and years putting out tons and tons of records to say the same thing, and Phil did it in one expression..  When I see that and all these noise artists and twee artists and stuff that sort of branched off from that idea, I just think about the influence Olympia has. Or the festival thing, YoYo A Go Go, stuff like that- curating a festival that's a couple of days… tens and tens of bands that are on multiple different types of tips, but it's all punk. I feel like those sort of things gave the world the idea that it was possible, for an uneducated observer that comes to Olympia. It's a town on the water, and actually, there's a lot of corporate entities, realty and stuff like that. But there's this vibe that fostered these people- I don't want to call them all low income, and I don't really want to say it's Evergreen. It's influenced by Evergreen, but it's not totally Evergreen. It's still outside of that. 

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Markly Morrison

Evergreen's here for  a reason.

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Chris Sutton

Yeah, exactly. I don't know. It's hard to quantify what's the chicken and what's the egg. But even things that happened within the town- when I was in Engine 54 there was a Star Wars festival at the Capitol Theater. It was Engine 54 and Karp, and I forget who else contributed. 

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Markly Morrison

So those two on the same bill? That's pretty wild!

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Chris Sutton

Totally. But it was like seven bands, and each band picked a song from the soundtrack to Star Wars, and they performed it, and the whole town showed up. It was full… of course Karp did the Imperial Death March, which was amazing, and I feel like we did the main theme, in a ska way. So that sort of thing and the Transfused and things like that… only this town could have created this amazing thing, and it might not make it outside of the town. Like, you had to be there. When I talked to other musicians all the time about where they come from, they didn't have that. It was always sort of a struggle. And if you were in tune with what was going on here, there was so much to give. Now, the flip side… I've met a lot of people who have moved to Olympia, and did not have a good time, because they couldn't find the code, whatever it is. And as much as I don't want to say it, it was a clique, to be perfectly honest. And not everybody was able to get in. You had to sort of meet these kind of personal requirements. I don't know what it was, but there were the people that got in, and the people that didn't. On the other side of that is a band like The Gossip. The Gossip were cool the minute they showed up, literally. These kids from Arkansas showed up, and they were immediately the coolest band in town. So it just really sort of depended. And like, when I talk to people about Olympia- even my partner, who's from Portland, which is really funny, she's old school Portland too. She's like My Own Private Idaho era Portland, she grew up there, and we saw the same bands and all the same music, but she had that kind of a Portland lens, and there was always a rivalry between Portland and Olympia- who influenced who? People from Portland, it's “Oh, they took the Wipers thing and everything from us.” [There’s] a documentary, I think it's called Unknown Passage- that might be the Dead Moon one, but there's another one that's strictly about Portland. And when you look at those bands that came out in ‘79 and ‘80, it's very Olympia. It's very like “We're wearing whatever.” It's very pre-grunge, like everything's thrift store, but like the guy playing guitar has a pointy Charvel and he's wearing a tank top. And then the girl is dressed like a librarian… that band kind of was able to exist. So there's always this sort of thing like, who came first, or whatever. And so she had a bias against Olympia, and slowly over the years she's sort of found it's pretty cool up here. 

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Markly Morrison

I guess we can coexist, it’s fine!

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Chris Sutton

And she did like Beat Happening, she was a fan of the band. But there was always a stigma around being here in Olympia and the people that were, like, “allowed” in the scene- or even the word “scene,” which is sort of cringy to even say. But I think a lot of people, especially people that were a little younger like me, were always sort of deciding if we were In that role, because there was like the D.C. stuff, the Riot Grrrl stuff, the original K stuff, Calvin and Lois [Maffeo]. The old school K kind of thing… you had to be there. It's like this Deliverance thing where everybody went through this heavy period. It's funny too because that period was so intense- like the beginning of the Riot Grrrl era, and interpersonal relationships and the people involved were so intense and amazing that they're really tight-lipped about what actually happened. So, younger people like me and James Maeda and people like that who are just like a year younger were always like these nerds. ““Hey, what happened there? When did that come out? When did he play?” They were always very tight-lipped. It's like Deliverance. “We don't need to talk about that.” Which also, to me, makes it amazing. Because really, everything's so hyper documented, And even bands before the Beatles are hyper documented. But to have amazing moments in history that are only hearsay, that are really personally anecdotal- and it has to be that way, because there wasn't really a story in there [with somebody] writing it all down. I think that's interesting as well. I'm a big fan of mystery. Especially that time period, late 90s, early aughts, it gets pretty mysterious. 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, you never know you're living some really cool story, while you're living it.

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Chris Sutton

Right- well, I mean, do you have to be a certain type of person to think that? “I’m living history!” [laughing] That's kind of a different type of person. 

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Markly Morrison

I have moments of that. 

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Chris Sutton

Yeah. I'm living in history. I mean, being at IPU- I definitely felt “Oh, wow, this is really crazy.” Oh my god, I mean, I think part of me was like, “Oh, this must be happening everywhere.” I think I even went to Lollapalooza that same summer, like the first Lollapalooza was a couple months later. And even that wasn't as diverse as what I saw… Lollapalooza was like freaky. I was a big Fishbone fan, and you know seeing like all these different bands playing, or Jane's Addiction… But like Thee Headcoats and Beat Happening and Witchy Poo and all these bands like that aren't even… like people wouldn't even say they were playing music, and they're setting up and there's like a schedule and they're playing one after another and they each have band members… like “These are real bands, but they're doing something that’'s not available to me, until now. And now I need it.” Pretty special to just wander into that. I mean this isn't the time period but I think there was a slight, little bit of that in Portland after I moved to Portland in 07. I moved there at the same time as a Philly contingent, a Louisiana contingent, and I feel like there was some LA kids and stuff too. There was a bunch of Boston people. But we sort of converged at the same time, and that was a cool moment. I mean, it's not as cool as what we're talking about. But I was lucky enough to sort of be part of another [music community]. And I really did feel part of that. Like in Olympia, I always felt “I'm just around these amazing people. I'm just so lucky to be here.” Then, in Portland, I was sort of more a part of it. That's just such a great feeling- to realize community, and to be able to express yourselves, and have a stage to express yourself. Then there's other people with these good ideas, too. It's just so cool, and not everybody gets the experience, so I just try to relish it.

‍

[00:47:10] 

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Markly Morrison

We haven't talked about COCO at all, what was the origin of that? 

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Chris Sutton

So one day I was at Dub Narcotic practice. The first time I was hanging out with Calvin on the Engine 54 day, he played me an ESG record. He played me “Come Away,” and I was like, “Oh, that's pretty cool. That's really weird.” It was sort of layered on top of these- like we probably listened to a hundred records that day and we were just skipping through all the stuff he wanted to show me. And then one day after practice, we heard the green, yellow and blue record- like the original EP. Calvin had a copy of that and played it, and I was obsessed because there was only bass and drums and it was like the coolest thing I'd heard, especially the second side. The first side has “Moody” on it, but the second side is live- it's three live songs, and it's so simple. You can't even hear the percussion. It's just bass and drums and singing. And Olivia and I were living together at the time. We were always huge hip hop fans. And when we heard- there's a sample from the song “UFO” by ESG. It's one of the more sampled songs of all time, and “UFO” was on this record. And so when I heard it, I was like, “Oh shit, I have to tape it!” So I borrowed a blank cassette and I put it in there and I taped the whole EP right there. I brought it home and I was like “Check this out,” and we put it on and I think that was the only thing in our car for weeks and weeks. And we were like, “There just needs to be a band like this. There's no bands like this, we gotta do this.” So she learned how to play bass. She was already a great singer but she wanted to learn bass and sing at the same time, and I wanted to learn drums because I was only playing bass at the time. We lived in a house with a practice space and we started playing- not thinking that we were going to play, but this is when we were living at- there was a show house called The Witch House, that's by the old Rib Eye [restaurant]. We lived in a house on the other side that also has a name that I'm not remembering right now… But we lived there, and we were practicing there, and Heather Dunn was like, “There's a show at The Witch House. Do you guys want to open up for it?” And we were like, “Well, we're not really a band.” And they were like, “Oh, yeah, you could be a band right now.” “We don't have a name.” And she was like, “Oh, C. O.C.O., Chris and Olivia from the City of Olympia… it literally just happened, like we got done practicing, we heard about the show, and then we were playing it. I feel like Calvin was there, Heather was there, a bunch of people were there. Then from there we were playing shows and I think we recorded within the year after that. So it was very organic and it just happened super fast. It was like simple as that- There's a show. Let's play. We're playing now. We're called this. 

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Markly Morrison

There it is. That's cool. So the name was gifted?

Chris Sutton

Yeah, that's a Heather Dunn special. it was right off the top of the dump. Like it was instant. ”We don't have a name,” “You're called this.” “Okay.” 

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Markly Morrison

Great. That's great. You've got three albums. Did [C.O.C.O.] dissolve intentionally?

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Chris Sutton

No. Honestly, we just played recently, so it's actually not dissolved. 

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Markly Morrison

You just haven't put out a record in a little while. 

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Chris Sutton

Yeah, I think just life stuff happened. I moved to Portland in ‘07, I was in Spider and the Webs, and we started playing a lot around that time. We put out three records, and we did a tour. So… thinking about it now and processing, this is probably this is probably where it started. But we had a really disastrous tour. It was also one of the better tours we went on, but a lot of bad stuff happened. We had borrowed a truck, and then the truck got rear ended. There was a lot of complicated things that happened. We missed a show because we got pulled over… it was the White Stripes, Sleater-Kinney and us. That was the tour. So the shows were great, and the camaraderie was awesome, but all the stuff outside of it was sort of falling apart- or not falling apart, just like bad experiences. So it was such a rough kind of tour. Olivia hadn't toured as much as I had. I couldn't stay off the road, I'm just a grinder. I'm just a lifer. So sleeping on floors, and like we're not sleeping, and stuff like that. Weird situations. I thought I was in a place where I could thrive. We had to drive to get to the tour, so we had to play dates to get to the tour, which was in the Midwest, and then we played some shows on the East Coast and came all the way back. And then, the shows outside of the tour that we were trying to get to, [some] shows fell through. We showed up in Missoula for a show we set up, and the guy didn't set up the show at all, and so we had to keep going. Stuff like that. But I don't know if that was the straw that broke the camel's back, because we toured with Blondie after that, and that was a really exciting tour. We toured for a couple of weeks and then we did some European stuff. So, especially around the end there, we did some pretty cool stuff. But I think by the third record- I mean, we were a couple out of high school, and so there's a lot of that sort of stuff too, like getting to around the 23-24 year old range where we're outgrowing each other personally. We're still best friends, but at the same time I think, like just life things. We were doing other stuff, and I think it sort of just faded. We went from playing every couple of months to playing once a year, and then last summer we played here in town. We played three shows, and it was like, “Oh, wow, that was cool.” But it was something we just hadn't thought about, because now we have kids, and there's all this other stuff that has sort of made it different. But that was like a slow burn. 

[00:53:30] 

Markly Morrison

I was reading the little essay booklet that came out with the Chris Sutton retrospective cassette.

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Chris Sutton

Oh yeah, [released by] Antiquated Future.

Markly Morrison

Yeah, you kind of got into a little bit about when you sort of came into your own as a songwriter and composer of your own material. I'm remembering the lead-into that.

Chris Sutton

Yeah, totally. So, the last Dub Narcotic tour was a van accident. I got in a van accident with Dub Narcotic. I was driving, and we were on tour. It happened in Montana. I mean, It was terrible for everybody, obviously. Everybody got pretty banged up. Calvin got the worst of it though, for sure. But what happened to me is I broke my jaw on the steering wheel. And so I had my jaw wired shut and I couldn't work or anything. I was just kind of recovering for months. It was also during the winter time, so it was this really weird, kind of depressing period where I'm not eating solids and I’m just like, “Hey, get out of my house.” And people are visiting from time to time, and James- one of my best friends, James Maeda- he really pressed the idea of me learning how to play guitar, taking this opportunity of me sitting around to learn how to play guitar. And right after that he instituted these hootenannies at his house. He would do these hootenannies, I wanna say it was every weekend. But he got really into this idea of this Woody Guthrie kind of like Bob Dylan “Don't Look Back” idea, creating a performance wherever you are, like going to a party and just starting to play guitar and all of a sudden songs are playing. You ever seen that movie Heartworn Highways? So there's a scene where everybody is sitting around a table, and there's whiskey bottles everywhere, and people are just playing songs. He was obsessed with that idea. We watched Heartworn Highways like all the time, so he wanted to recreate that idea. He was like, “Oh, you should take this opportunity to learn. You have good taste in music. You should learn how to play guitar.” And that's really was what it was. I mean, I thought of myself as just “Oh, I'm a bass player, and I play bass, and I want to get good at bass, and I'm really good at playing bass,” et cetera. But that moved me into learning how to play guitar, learning chords, and putting words and songs together. And Hornet Leg came completely out of that. That Hornet Leg record on K was just a collection of the songs that I wrote when my face was broken, just trying to learn and get into it. And I really enjoyed it. And then it kind of became like a thing for a few years. 

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Markly Morrison

Cool. I just think that's a cool story… and since, you’ve- moving out of the period of focus here- but you've just been terrifically prolific.

‍

Chris Sutton

Yeah, and it's all about loving music, it really is, like philosophically. And it's something that I learned from this town and that period of time- if you have an idea- and I've done it to a fault almost, as far as “Let's write a song right now. Let's form a band right now. Let's record right now… let's just do it.” And my partner was in this all girl punk band. They were really great. And they kind of connected on their love of the Gories. The Gories are this amazing band, and if you know anything about them, it's sort of built on amateurism. Like this blues rock that's built- and so is Billy Childish, who's another one of our heroes. And so, she would show up to practice with this idea, and the other girls were just like, “Oh, we have to practice this song ten times. The song doesn't have enough chords, I don't like the way my voice sounds.” They were always sort of nitpicking on how they sounded or whatever they did. And it was like, “Man, how could you be a fan of these bands and do that?” What I learned from those bands, including Beat Happening- what you do is really create a moment. If you love music and if you love to play, like, I’ll say it again, music- You can make a sound that is worthy., Like, I'm a fan of punk. I'm a fan of amateurism. But the music that I like, you could feel the love within it, whether it's an acoustic guitar in a cave, or even like techno or something. That expression can be found in there. It's all about being open, and that's just what I learned. I think that's the most important thing, and I can't think of another ideology or a way to think about art that makes more sense to me. This Philosophy and these things that I learned from this town benefited me. Like, even the job I have now- the idea of doing stuff for free, or just creating something because you just like it- even if nobody else is going to hear it… that idea is really foreign to people, even people that are like creating content. It's like creating something for yourself is a really hard thing for people to wrap their minds around. And if somebody is able to have that passion without needing these excesses around it, you don't need some sort of feedback for it or recognition- you just need to make it happen. And the best music is when I see something that's just unflinching and pure. To me, how could you not enjoy it? That's what art is. Even impressionism or Picasso or whatever- great artists through history- you see the expression in the lines, and you see that this person is looking at the world differently than everybody else is. I mean, it leads people into trouble. There's a lot of artists that have questionable paths or whatever. And that's a completely different podcast, separating the art from the artist, which I often have to do in art. But I really believe it's part of that. We're all tuning forks. And that's another thing like I tell everybody too, is that the music is in the air, the vibrations are in the air. And we're particular tuning forks, like our minds and our bodies… everybody always has these problems with Morrissey. But, the Smiths' music is separate from the way Morrissey lives his life. So that's a major example of whatever, but that's what I believe. And those are things that I learned in Olympia, and it was just in my face all the time.

‍

[00:59:50]

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Markly Morrison

Do you think the natural environment had anything to do with what was coming out of you and your peers?

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Chris Sutton

Yeah, I mean we were in the woods a lot. I think the vibe in Evergreen is very free, and that's been that way as long as I've been [around]. Super Saturday was like a major event every year when I was a kid. So I've been going out since I was like eight years old.

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Markly Morrison

And you've never attended Evergreen? 

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Chris Sutton

I never went to Evergreen. 

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Markly Morrison

It has been a part of your life, though. 

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Chris Sutton

Oh, completely, yeah, just the people there... I mean, I played a lot of shows there. It's where the weed dealers were, like all the fun was out there. And if it was like a crazy party or some weird psychedelics in town, it showed up there first, so I always ended up gravitating out there. Another sort of side thing is that my stepdad was a driver for Intercity Transit and his main route was the Evergreen bus from downtown out there, and I would just hang out with him while he was working. And so much time was spent being at Evergreen’s KAOS radio station. I had a radio show on there, or I was with somebody who had a radio show there. Somebody had a radio show and I'd be on there with them. It was like something at two in the morning, we're playing weird jazz… my friend Josh Johnson, who went to Evergreen for film. It was like three in the morning, we were playing free jazz and stuff and whatever. And then when Shannon Wiberg had her show out there, I went and spun records with her- and performed, actually. She had a show where people played. But yeah, I should have probably gone to Evergreen. But I just spent so much time out there socially… What I was gonna say about the environs is that the woods are a barrier between Evergreen and the outside world. When you get up there you're on an island. You take that bus out there, you get on that campus, these people are completely separate.  You'll see people at Evergreen that will never be even in downtown Olympia. They just stay up there. So it was like a completely different world. And I feel like the downtown part of it is that all of the important places are within walking distance. It's such a small sort of square area of active downtown. For you to count how many people that were contributing to what was going on, I don't know. 50 or 60 people were kind of contributing on a daily basis to whatever the scene was, and to have a city or a town that is just like a few blocks in diameter with the record store, the coffee shops, the bagel shops, whatever- I think that contributes too. Nobody has to go far to get to somewhere else. Friends that I know that have bands in New York City- oh my gosh, they have to get a practice space and the practice space is in the Bronx, but you live in Brooklyn and your drummer lives on Long Island. 

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Markly Morrison

It's all day to get to practice. 

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Chris Sutton

Sure. Totally. And you gotta pay for it and then you gotta lug stuff around, and it's so hard to be in a band in New York or a metropolitan place. And it was so easy to be in a band here. Meet somebody at the Martin [apartment building]. “I have two sticks.” “I have a guitar. We're a band now.” It was that simple. And that's so exciting, to wake up in the morning and form a band. And by the end of the day, you recorded four songs in a new band. That's amazing. People don't even have the confidence to do that… I’m on TikTok a lot. I love TikTok, and a huge vertical of TikTok is like these amazing musicians that are in their rooms, showing off their talent. But when you see interviews with them, it's “Oh, why aren’t you in a band?” “Oh, I've never been in a band.” That means they have to play with somebody and like, mesh with a good drummer. And you see them, like that person shreds, they should be in a band. The band part is actually pretty foreign, and it's actually separate even from your ability, the band part. 

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Markly Morrison

And it's getting harder and harder to do too. Like even now in Olympia, it’s not so easy to come by a practice space these days. 

‍

Chris Sutton

Yeah, for sure, but I think also in Olympia that part of it is being able to play in your house. The other thing about living in places like San Francisco or Seattle is you live in an apartment, so you can't have band practice next to people. I don't know about anymore- I haven't lived here in a long time, but especially in the late 90s or whatever, people could get in a house with four other people, and there might be a basement there, and if you just kind of think about it and communicate, that could be your practice space. I mean, that's the only way I knew a practice space could exist for me, is if somebody had a house and a room, because I can't pay for a space. I only had a car like maybe 60 percent of the time. When I actually had a car I could just drive anywhere. So a lot of things had to sort of fall in place, but those things were easy to fall in place when everything's on top of each other and everybody has cheap housing and you just grab a burrito and just go up to practice and just hang out.

‍

[01:05:59]

‍

Markly Morrison

What were your favorite hangout spots when you were living here? 

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Chris Sutton

When I first started hanging out downtown, there was a dollar theater that I have very fond memories of. And it's where the State Theater [now operated by Harlequin Productions]

So, that was a place if you had a dollar, you could see a movie. And that was massive. And so that dollar theater is two doors down from King Solomon's Reef, which stayed open 24 hours when I was a kid. So when I was a teenager, we would go downtown. For some reason, the Capitol Campus was a place you could just hang out and play guitar, and nobody really hung out there. The Capitol Campus was the area directly in front of the Capitol Building Square, like trees and weird air conditioner tubes or whatever. So for some reason because there wasn't a lot of people there, and it was public, that was a place where we could go, and we'd bring guitars there and hang out. And then there would be times where we'd go down to King Solomon's, because it was always open, and you could always afford a piece of pie, or a cup of coffee. And so we would do that, and if we needed to go to a movie or do something, you’d go to the dollar theater, and that was like no man's land. They didn't care if you brought in food or whatever you needed to. So that was a cool place I liked to hang, and Positively 4th Street [records].  I'm sure we bugged them all the time. 

‍

Markly Morrison

Who was your dealer at Positively 4th Street? 

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Chris Sutton

I remember Becca Bolo selling me a lot of records.

‍

Markly Morrison

On recommendation? 

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Chris Sutton

I mean, she kind of took a liking to us because we were so young, and we were these silly little, punky kids that just showed up all of a sudden, and we're asking about 7 inches- Mudhoney 7 inches and weird stuff like that. And, we'd ask her stuff, but I think she just thought we were just really funny. And so, I can't even remember the conversations we had about Seven Seconds or something like that. But yeah, she would always take time out to kind of bug us or make fun of us. We enjoyed that. She's somebody I've known for a long time, and I would say is an influence. Just being a friend of music, talking about her experiences and showing me different bands and stuff. I have to give a deep shout out to Michelle Noel as well ‘cause I worked with her at Rainy Day. I worked at Rainy Day for a long time. And she was just like… as far as punk music and rock, that was like completely encyclopedic. And her role in the beginning of Riot Grrrl too- Like how community starts, how to implement it, what it means. She was such a major force too. Like influencing me- like, the way I thought things should be done. That was another one. She's a really big one.

‍

Markly Morrison 

Nice. Were you at Rainy Day when it was on the west side?

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Chris Sutton

Actually, I stopped working there right before they moved downtown. So I never worked at the downtown store, but I was up on the west side pretty much until they moved. 

‍

Markly Morrison

Did find yourself doing the same kind of thing? Young kids come in, you're trying to give them your two cents on their stack?

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Chris Sutton

For sure. So it's funny- so at Rainy Day, like that movie High Fidelity? I always tried to avoid that type of record store clerking. That stereotype has been around… but the whole thing is that it's real. It's like you go to a different record store, those people are actually like that. So I tried to avoid it. Like, really of support people's direction. The great thing about working in a record store and seeing teenagers come in is that you see their journey start. I always say this- when I was working at Rainy Day, I sold at least one Bikini Kill record a month, and it was always that person's first Bikini Kill record. And when you saw it in their eyes…” You're going out, you're starting the journey. Here it is.” Somebody’s speaking to you right now… and that was a band- and other bands were like this too, but that one in particular- you could see it was a big deal for them to buy it. You could see the energy like when they walked out of the store with it. You know, some records are like “That record's pretty unique.” Their records- I mean, I wouldn't even pick one. It was always a different one that people got. But, that was sort of a band that was, like, you’d see lives being changed and the record wasn't even on yet. Just them holding it in their hands changed their lives. So, it was pretty fun to see that.

And I was such an encourager. I mean, there's some bad music. I always say “there's no bad music.” There is. But, at the same time, it goes back to my expression thing- where they're from, what their experience is, how they grew up. They're informed by this idea, and this is how they're expressing it. I always try to appreciate that, especially with guitar bands, Because, some bands are just like, you press a button. But with a guitar band, they have to pick it up. They have to put it together. They have to record it. So that takes a spiritual effort to put together. And if they're well meaning, I think almost all the time they're going to have one good idea.  

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Markly Morrison

There's going to be beauty in there. 

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Chris Sutton: But on the flip- so I moved down to Portland and I worked at Jackpot Records a few years ago, and that was completely different. So the teenagers, the way kids or anybody absorbs media now is all digitally. It's all Spotify or whatever. What would happen there is that a kid would come in and be like, “Oh, hey man, yeah, I really Nirvana, but is there like any other bands?” I'd be like, oh yeah, the Wipers, he wasn't Wipers. “Okay, cool.” And then like they would come in two days later and be like, “So what next?” I was like, “Wait- so you listened to all the Wipers?” “Yeah. I listened to all the Wipers records on Spotify, are there any other bands like that?” So the cycle is much shorter. Whereas when I was a kid, the cycle was like- for a specific example, when In Utero came out, all of my friends skipped school. 

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Markly Morrison

That's a Nirvana album, for the listeners. 

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Chris Sutton

Totally. When that cassette came out, all of my friends skipped school. So it was like six or seven of us, and we went to Camelot Records, and we each bought a cassette. And then, all of us, the whole day played our copy of the cassette in its entirety. And that was our celebration of it. We hung out, had a barbecue or something, and then that tape was my life for the next month

until a Dinosaur Jr record or something like that would follow. Then the cycle got a little bit shorter at Rainy Day… a month would pass before they're like “What's next?” And now it's like days. And I've talked about that… Even like genre. “Oh, you should listen grunge.” Okay. Listen to grunge like the next day. “So what else is there? I heard all the grunge.” So the cycle is so short, and they're listening to parts of songs and stuff like that. Like starting a band right now, I don’t even know what that [entails]. Like, starting a band for real. Bands still get formed, people my age or older or younger. Bands still get formed. But as far as “Oh, I'm going to start a band in a DIY way. I'm going to set up tours and plan, make a logo and make our records and write these songs…” Like, how do people do that in the cycle which is always kind of asking for more, there's so much material. So, I gotta know

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, the landscape is a little different these days.

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Chris Sutton

And vast! And I think there's another thing I'm noticing where the more you get separated from a certain time period- which I'm so glad that this project is happening to because I feel like this is something that could be lost in the ether if somebody doesn’t pay attention to it.

But I feel as time goes on, certain bands become kind of like myths or just names or data points. Something I pound on all the time, and I'm a champion for this band, is the band Karp.

I am a champion for that band. Anybody that talks about rock music or metal or whatever, I'm just like, “Have you heard Karp?” And they're just like, “I don't know.” Oh my god, you gotta listen to Karp! That's another example of a band where they really- I mean, they're from Tumwater, but you hear their life experience in their music. One of the great things about Karp is at the time, when Karp were really blowing up, it wasn't cool to listen to metal. And I remember, they would be like, “Oh, you should listen to Judas Priest and Kiss” and stuff like that. And they presented it in this really punk way that had a sense of humor to it. And the music was undeniable. Their shows were completely undeniable. One of the things I always said too, because all these documentaries about all these bands were coming out, I was like, “Somebody has to make a documentary about Karp, and that's going to be it, and everybody's going to think they're the greatest band ever.” And then it happened, and then there was a buzz, but it didn't catch on. I thought- even like a band like Mastodon, Queens of the Stone Age- I feel like there's these connectors to what Karp was doing. Nobody was playing hard, heavy music like that and appreciating it and not making fun of it. The fact that even Sun Amps were throwaway amps, until around the time when they showed. And when Sleep kind of came up, because I think Sleep has sort of become like the sort of doom rock bar that's set, and I think those guys kind of know each other. But, that was always one band that I'm always like, “Don't forget this band.” And more and more I'm just like, what? “I never heard of that band. What does that mean? 

Karp? What is that?” They're really good. It’s another thing that's purely Olympia. I don't think it could have happened anywhere else. And it's a situation where the influence, from my vantage point, is vast. And I see it's really happening, and nobody's picking up on it. I watch all the YouTube guitar people talk about it- there's all these sort of interview shows now where they interview rock legends or guitar players and stuff, and they're never mentioning Karp.

And even with Big Business, Big Business was a thing. Jared was in the Melvins, they weren't low profile. I think Coady [Willis] is in High on Fire right now, they weren't a low profile band. The people in it, like Jared and, people know about Chris- but I feel like that band somehow got lost where Big Business and whatever else they were doing didn't.

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[01:18:07] 

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, it's really powerful stuff though. I mean, it holds up. So I appreciate that gospel going out there.

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Chris Sutton

Oh yeah, man. I mean, Suplex has gotta be in my top 10 favorite records of all time. When I heard it, it spoke to me in such a way. And the pictures on the back and the cover and- everything just spoke to me. And the songs themselves. I mean, the song “Pie” is just so great, “Meet Me at Lakefair”- I mean I'm from Lacey, so I had that connection, so it's a band that was purely me. So I understand like people that weren't from here, “It must be some Olympia thing.”

Oh no, it's so much bigger than that. And I feel like on the flip side of that, Unwound is sort of getting that kind of retrospective kind of respect.  

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Markly Morrison

Yeah, they're kind of getting a second life. 

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Chris Sutton

Sure. And even on a commercial level, those beautiful reissues notwithstanding, and their reunion show was sort of like a testament to that. I mean, there was like obsessive- I don't want to say throngs, because it wasn't like millions of people- but the people that showed up were very appreciative of them performing again. Because it was a band that is hearsay… like the people that are being influenced now, tt's like me talking about like The Creation or something like that, or like the Velvet Underground. Velvet Underground would probably be a better example of a band like [that]. Man, what the fuck was that like to see? I would have loved to be at a Velvet Underground show. Especially hearing the bootleg tapes, I'm like, oh man, I would have loved to be there. It would have been so cool. But it's a myth. It's just an idea. And that's what Karp is. Man, if you were just at those shows, you would just know. But, aside from that, it's a sort of a silly name with a weird record cover and songs about Lacey. I say we need more of that. 

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Markly Morrison

I completely agree. I completely agree. So if you had to do Olympia all over again, would you? Would you do anything differently?

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Chris Sutton

Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally… I don't know if I've said this yet, but I lucked into it. Like I said, it's all about my friend's mom reading the newspaper. It really hinges on that. I feel like I would have been like a jock rocker or something. I probably would've played music, but I would've played music with this different thing in mind. Like I was into Victor Wooten and I was trying to be like Bass Player Magazine guys…

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Markly Morrison

Like Yngnwie Malsteen? [actually a guitar player]

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Chris Sutton

Oh yeah, totally. Exactly. Or like Les Claypool would've been like the punkiest thing I would've been into, or like Flea. I was kind of into that style of playing. But for me to buy into the whole everything that went down here, and be involved with it, and believe in it- it really just hits on that moment. It really does. If I didn't go [to the International Pop Underground Convention], honestly, I would have been like “Oh, yeah, we should play… Mötley Crüe is the pinnacle, or 311,”  or something like that, that's as far as you can get.

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Markly Morrison

Or Linkin Park, or something like that?

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Chris Sutton

Sure, yeah. I would have just seen it a different way. Edgy, sure, but a little virtuosic. And not that I don't like virtuosity, but it sort of comes with- and I hate to use the word “pure” as well, because pure is such a loaded word. It's like, what is pure? But I do feel like an honest expression, no matter your ability, translates. It will translate to somebody. Who cares? 

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Markly Morrison 

Is there anything that you'd like to talk about speaking to our [1980-2002] scope? I'd also like to catch up on what you've been up to since you left Olympia, in this century. 

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Chris Sutton 

Sure. I mean, as far as what I'd say, I mean, like everything I kind of said earlier, I mean I don't know if I can go deeper… 

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Markly Morrison

You can say it all again if you'd like.

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Chris Sutton

Olympia is the spiritual makeup of what I do. Even the way I raise my kid, the way I do art, the way I approach my current job- everything is tinged in the lessons that I learned here, like from K and Kill Rock Stars and Punk In My Vitamins and all that type of stuff. It's really just about being open. And that's what this place taught me: there's magic everywhere. And if you're open to it, you're gonna get it. And for me, it was addictive. I was looking for that magic everywhere. Or you're trying to create it. Like, anybody who I've ever dated, if it lasted, if there's any merit to any partner that I have, they probably were in a band with me or played music with me, or I made them play music, or whatever. So, that had to be part of you to be part of my world as well. I mean, since I moved from Olympia, Hornet Leg kind of kept going, we kept playing and touring from Portland. And then I became the touring bass player for The Gossip, who I mentioned earlier, and that was pretty much about eight or nine years of constant touring and touring over the world. And that's a different podcast as well because that gave me a completely different worldview. I kind of expanded on my worldview- touring at that level- because that wasn't DIY at all. I mean, that was buses. 

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Markly Morrison

DIY roots. 

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Chris Sutton

DIY roots. And it kind of goes back to what the basis of our conversation is, what attracted people to the Gossip and what people fed off of the Gossip- the freeness that they had, and the sort of approach to punk and music that they had when they showed up. They didn't need Olympia to have that, but Olympia sort of gave them the tools to have the confidence to do it, and put it on wax, and put it out there in the world. And from there, people were like, “Oh, this band's amazing…” then they have hit records in Europe. I mean, paparazzi, limos, all of that stuff. That was that MTV legitimate sort of space that I had pictured at five years old. “Oh, this is what it is.” People everywhere, meeting crazy people like Kate Moss or something- that stuff was happening all the time. And so, in a retrospective kind of way- especially when I think about it now, like with my daughter's seven right now- I've worked at Spotify as a podcast producer and it's a really great fun job. It's nourishing, but I feel like, because I was able to do all the things that I do, there's an incredible amount of satisfaction to my life that I know other people that are artistically minded didn't have, or be able to have a space to express and then be able to tour and see the industry on every level. I was really lucky to do that, and it wouldn't have happened in that way- nobody can tell the future, but it wouldn't have happened in that way without IPU. It really just stems from that, and it's sort of comforting to have that kind of pinpoint place to go, but it's sort of intense how fragile that bridge is. It's a sliding door- it’s so narrow- to this big world. My entire philosophy hinged down on this. If she wouldn't have gotten the paper that day, if she didn't turn to that page, or if she just didn't say anything. We would have been like [imitates guitar shredding sounds] at the garage or whatever, watching Headbanger’s Ball. It would have just kept going. That's why I always like to talk about it.  Or even talking about the bands, going to a show and seeing Unwound or Karp. If I didn't go to that show, I might not have been interested in those bands enough to go see them, or be influenced by them. So, yeah man. But, yeah, right now I’m living in Portland, I have a great partner. I have a beautiful daughter. We live in Northeast [Portland], just living post pandemic. Everything's sort of really tight. I play music every once in a while, I play music at home a lot. But as far as right now, what I'm doing is mainly recreational and a lot of my energy is sort of focused on being in the family. After all that touring, living with my dogs and my kid is so awesome. And the pandemic sucked. COVID was terrible, but it changed my priorities… now I have this kind of love pocket. And then from there, my sort of appetite for music hasn't changed at all. I still listen, constantl. My social media [activity] is constantly looking for what sounds are going out there.

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Markly Morrison

Are you still doing radio DJing? XRay FM, right?

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Chris Sutton

X Ray FM, yep. I still have a show every Thursday. And that's another thing- what I do is I pick a person, place, thing, or movement, and it becomes an hour long focus. So I'll just do songs by David Bowie, or just songs from Brazil, or just reggae songs. It's a sort of academic kind of way of parsing out my journey because there's so many influences that have happened, over and over again. To a fault, my sort of attitude of being open has led to just an interest an hour. [laughter] There's always something interesting or something cool. In a general sense… what the internet and digital media has done is it sort of created this. The playing field is open to everybody and everybody's on the same level. And what I mean by that is- like when I was a kid, if I wanted something, I had to search for it as hard as I could. Find the magazine, go to the store, whatever, read the thing, talk to the person, see the show, there was a lot of footwork. And now, everybody can be anything they want. You could be a bear, or you could be a bee, or you could be totally goth, or you could be totally glam… there's a scene for you. The development is different. I think a lot of my time now is spent philosophizing that and thinking about how different that is from me choosing the struggle- a delightful struggle. I loved searching for those things and like writing the letters and doing the things. Like I loved that part of the struggle. And I feel like the struggle contributed to how I made stuff, because I had to fight for it. It meant something a little more then. And I wonder- with recording so easy and so many sounds available- what really matters, in an artistic sense. Because everything's kind of a mix-  I go on and on about music and music philosophy, but one of the things about me is that, it's hard for me when styles mix, when disparate styles are kind of thrown together.

It's always tough. It's really tough with rap and rock. I got Rage Against The Machine, but after that it was like like Limp Bizkit and all these other bands, it was just like, “Oh, these things…” it's just hard for me. And maybe that was just a sign of age. It just wasn't marketed towards me, but-

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Markly Morrison

You'll understand when you're older.

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Chris Sutton

[Laughing] Totally. But I like my genres in their lanes and like experiencing that, then we'll experience this, so I kind of love that. And I'm a fan of genres too. Like, I like a label and an aesthetic and a mission- those things are part of the music to me. So I do think a little bit of pretentiousness is good, you know? For me, I like that, but whenever it's a jam band like Phish or Widespread Panic, like “We just do everything man…” King Gizzard is another band where it's just “Oh, we do absolutely everything.” And that's cool, but it's just hard for me to latch onto you if you're just going to do anything.

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Markly Morrison

You like something reliable. 

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Chris Sutton

Sure… there is a special thing too. I don't know if you're familiar with the Fire Engines. The Fire Engines are a Scottish band, and they're a really angular Scottish band, not noisy.

I mean, like Franz Ferdinand and stuff… like these bands kind of like legitimate bands kind of came out of there, but they're very influential. Jesus and Mary Chain, they're kind of part of that Scottish scene. But, it's a sound that it feels like it's not staying together. It's kind of falling apart. The Germs would be a band like that, where it's not a reliable band. You can't rely on them at the end of the day. I think for me, I'm sort of beholden to the pretentious part of it. I do like the presentation- like the Make-Up, they showed up and you knew exactly what they were doing and they made you feel a certain way 'cause you wanted to dress like them. I think other bands, you could dress like them. And you see that, when a band shows up in a suit, and they're all kind of skinny and good looking, it's- I hate to say it, but when the Strokes show up, you're just like, “Wow, pretty good looking band. I want to hear what they have to say.” And it turns out they're actually kind of good, so that's okay. [laughter]

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Markly Morrison

Yeah. Gotta make an impression, I guess. 

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Chris Sutton

Totally. Totally. But what comes with media, visual art, movies, stuff like that- I like the presentation and I like kind of where you're coming from. So anyway, that's my blind spot, is jam bands. So.

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[01:33:37] 

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Markly Morrison

Good to know. Thanks so much for doing this, Chris. 

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Chris Sutton 

Awesome, man. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, this is exactly what I love talking about. So, it was a pleasure. 

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Markly Morrison

Alright, let’s do it again.

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Chris Sutton: 

Yeah, totally. We'll do the next four years.

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