MORE OF A POP RECORD
THAN WE THOUGHT, SAY THE SCREAMING TREES
by Vinnie Penn
Circus, November 1996
The Screaming Trees first broke big during the Seattle scene, yet they shouldn't be tied down to the grunge stigma. As the saying goes, don't judge a book by its cover. So, a band shouldn't be judged by where they come from. True, their 1992 Sweet Oblivion resounded with the barrage of heavy riffs and hooks that propelled Nirvana and Pearl Jam to covet pedestals of alternative rock before them. But the Trees have always flavoured their sound with 60's-styled flourishes and Eastern instrumentation, distinguishing themselves from the primal, angry grunge of their peers.
The foursome's fine-tuned musicianship has never been more evident than on Dust, their third full-length LP (Epic). From the relentless beat of "Make My Mind" to the Indian-cum-Southern Baptist influences in "Gospel Plow" to the radio-friendly singles "All I Know" and "Sworn And Broken", Screaming Trees have recorded an album that can't be explained away by their mere geography.
"Over the course of the two or three years that we were writing the songs for Dust, we kept thinking of different directions that the record could go. When it came down to going into the studio and picking ten songs to do, it just wound up being a little more of a pop record than we thought," said Screaming Trees guitarist Gary Lee Conner as he gently plucks his six-string in the background.
A new release by the Screaming Trees was once considered a miracle to the entire music industry. The quartet, originating in Ellensburg, Washington, had a history of fistfights and personal conflicts which threatened to split the unit. A childhood friend told Rolling Stone that every member quit and rejoined the band "at least once." However, the brothers Conner don't have the same hostility towards each other like the Gallagher brothers of Oasis, whose volatile relationship has been well-publicized.
"We were never really the fistfighting kind of brothers. It was more like cerebral fighting with us," Gary Lee says.
Gary Lee and his brother Van collaborate on the Trees' music, and provide a solid foundation for the Trees' live repertoire. The 300-pound Gary Lee Conner pumps on his chords with a seemingly-endless stream of vigor as he rides back and forth across the stage. At the end of one concert in Canada during the June 1993 "Alternative Nations" tour (playing along with Soul Asylum and Spin Doctors), Gary Lee jumped into the moshing crowd. He couldn't get back-stage because, according to lyricist/vocalist Mark Lanegan, "security wouldn't believe he was in the band. They'd try to haul him off and throw him out of the venue."
Pop is a good word to describe some of the stuff on Dust, but while the "Sworn And Broken" is a rock ballad at its finest, there are intricacies laced into this record that elevate the entire release to a much higher ground.
"In the old days we used to do songs like this all the time, the closest to this being our first SST album (1987's Even If And Especially When)," Lee Conner said.
Gary Lee Conner, Van Conner (bass), Lanegan (vocals), and Barrett Martin (drums), came together initially as a cover band ten years ago. Lee did four-string duty at first and Van played whatever was around. The quartet originally "jammed for fun" in each other's bedrooms. A Spin article loosely entitled "How To Make Your Own Record" got the rock band rolling, and they subsequently met up with producer Steve Fisk, who helmed their first three releases (starting with 1986's Clairvoyance on the Velvetone label).
And Conner is not kidding when he speaks of the band's selectivity toward material for their records. Dust is their first LP since 1992's Sweet Oblivion, with an entire other record cut in the spring of 1994. The only track rescued from the sessions, "Dying Days", was re-recorded for Dust. The other nine tunes were freshly penned for the new album.
In the meantime, side projects seemed to be the order of the day. Lanegan released his second solo album, Whiskey For The Holy Ghost, in January 1994, while Martin got together with Pearl Jam's Mike McCready and Alice In Chains' Layne Stanley [sic] to form the supergroup Mad Season. Their Columbia record Above was a surprising success in 1995, going gold shortly after its release.
"It's weird the way [Mad Season] does their records," Conner explains. "They record all the music and then bring Layne in and he does his vocals over it. To me, that's a weird way to do it. I'm so used to writing songs as a song and not just music that you later put something on. But, that's the way they did the last record and it turned out really well. It can work. I know Alice In Chains does stuff that way, too. It's a way to do it, it's just different from the way we do it."
If you're hanging on to Conner's usage of the word "last" before record in regard to Mad Season's debut, your hopes are up justifiably. "I know they've recorded some basic tracks [for a follow-up to Above] already," Conner informs.
Conner himself did a bit of solo work. Brother Van is in the middle of assembling product for his outside project, Valice [sic]. But Lee Conner can't seem to sink his teeth into the whole solo scenario.
"I did a record with Purple Outside [Mystery Lane in 1990]," Conner recalls. "So, that was a hell of a long time ago. I'm thinking I'll do another one of those in ten years or so. I sort of like to concentrate on the Trees, I guess. The thing with me is, anything I write I'm going to give the Trees first crack at it. I've got so many millions of songs that I've done that I can choose from if I do want to do something myself. I've probably got 30-40 songs I would like to do some day myself that the Trees have passed on."
As for how the Trees' songs come together, Conner said that "usually I write stuff and give it to Mark and he takes it from there and turns it into whatever. The way it is with our band is, sometimes we'll write a whole song and then it might not be the way... well, you get the other guys' input on it and it turns out completely different. But, you know, it's definitely a group effort. It wouldn't be the same without the whole band."
Dust is a record where the artists involved haven't settled in any way. Produced this time around by George Drakoulias – who has worked with Black Crowes and Tom Petty – Dust finds the Trees dusting their hard-edged sounds with more melody and moody instrumentation. One peek at the sleeve credits and it's easy to see how this happened, Drakoulias as producer notwithstanding.
"We had Benmont Tench in the studio, which was great," Conner says. Tench is a pianist extraordinaire and a highly in-demand studio musician, not to mention a member in good standing of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers. He plays mellotron, organ, piano, and even electric piano throughout Dust. "And George [Drakoulias] had done stuff with Benmont before, like on Tom Petty stuff and a Jayhawks' album, so he knew how to get what he wanted from him. [Benmont] is an amazing keyboard player."
Dust opens with Tench's mellotron rushing into "Halo Of Ashes", and his lush keyboard intros on songs like "Look At You" and the record's second single, "Sworn And Broken", are brilliant, to say the least.
"The video for 'Sworn And Broken' is really cool," Conner says, "for a change. Our last video was one of those hastily done ones. We made it so that 'Sworn And Broken' got released just as we hit the road with Oasis."
Yup. The Screaming Trees is the opening act for the English chart-toppers for a slew of dates throughout the fall. The Trees have embarked on many a curious stage bill over the years, from 1993's MTV "Alternative Nations" road trip to this summer's stint on Lollapalooza. But, good has come out of each and every coupling, most memorably when the four guys with a humble cover band beginning in their hometown of Ellensburg, Washington got to play alongside one of their greatest musical role models and influences: The Ramones.
"It was awesome," Conner says of the event. "There was a lot of cool stuff. The Ramones were one of the coolest things [obviously, since Van Conner notes in the Screaming Trees bio that "playing with the Ramones is a childhood dream come true"]. It was only, like, 22 shows, though; it wasn't very long."
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