There's no easy way to explain the Screaming Trees. The don't sound much like a Seattle band, whatever that is. They do actually write songs, songs that will stick in your brain hours after you've heard them. Perhaps days or more. They have one of the best vocalists (Mark Lanegan), and one of the best guitar players (Gary Lee Conner) in the trade today; they're an amazing live band. And, they've been sadly ignored in an idiotic attempt to pretend that grunge is metal. Which it isn't, really. The Rocket handed long-time fan, musician and producer Steve Fisk a tape deck, a credit card, the unlisted phone number of Gary Lee and Van Conner (who plays bass) and two blank tapes. They met in an obscure bar and talked for two hours. What follows isn't an altogether traditional interview, but it does go a long way toward explaining the mysteries and wonders of Ellensburg's most useful export. New dummer Barrett Martin had the flu; lead singer Mark Lanegan was sidelined by, well, something. Oh, they have a new record coming out, their second on a major label. If that matters.

Steve: It's worth telling all the people who are coming on board the Screaming Trees saga that, during the four records we did together, no one ever used the word "grunge." Not as a positive adjective, not as a negative adjective.

Lee: That is exactly right. Why are we on Sub Pop's The Grunge Years? I always considered us to be a trashy pop garage band.

Steve: Actually, it was a video store, but...

Lee: (laughs) The thing is, if we'd had the same kind of production values we have now, we would have been more like a rock-pop band. But it just so happened that we were recording on an eight-track and the guitar sounded like crap.

Steve: The bass sounded like shit, yeah. The studio didn't have two good equalizers.

Lee: Which sometimes is what makes bands great. Those old Thirteenth Floor Elevators albums are the worst sounding piece of garbage you ever heard in your life, but they're the best records ever made, Bull of the Woods and Easter Everywhere.

Van: Everything is so totally different now. We're completely different now. I was like 18 when we started. Now I'm 25.

Lee: It's been our whole life since we got out of high school.

Van: I graduated from high school and, instead of going to college, I joined a fucking rock band. Now it's my job, but still, it's the weirdest job of all time.

Steve: Isn't that kind of the fun of it? I mean, it's hell, but that's one of the interesting parts. You're not doing a 40-hour week thing.

Lee: I always wondered what happened. We decided that we were going to record some of my songs, or something, and suddenly now here it is seven years later and we're in this insane... what happened?

Van: We intended to have a band, but we never intenend to make a record. I remember Lee said for Other Worlds, "Oh, I talked to this guy Steve Fisk, and he said that we could come down and record at the studio." And I got mad at him. I was like, "What do you mean, we can't just go into a studio and record!"

Steve: Only Elvis can do that.

Van: I didn't understand. I thought you had to be signed to some label or something.

Lee: I pulled that article out of Spin magazine by Geza X, "How to Make Your Own Record." And we did. That article started our career. It's insane but it's true. I remember that day clearly, but I don't remember anything else between then and now.

Steve: This new record sounds really rough and weird. It sounds much less polished than the last one. The drums are really splatty and overdriven and shit. I like it.

Van: Yeah, I like it, too.

Steve: It's funny because there are all the components of Screaming Trees songs going on – and I like the last record – but Uncle Anesthesia had this sheen and this space, and that's gone. This record's like a big ploddy gray thing, and you can hear it and it sounds like a big eight-track. And Lanegan sounds really good. I can never tell what hits are anyway, but I thought that there were four or five really strong songs. And I hear "Tales of Brave Ulysses" again. (laughter) There's like two new things you guys have now. You're doing this kind of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" rhythm...

Van: Yeah.

Steve: That's in two or three songs, and then "Heart of Gold" is kind of in three or four songs.

Lee: We've really been getting into Neil Young a lot. I'd never really listened to a lot of his albums until a couple years ago.

Van: I think one of the main things is that we're actually friends again. After Uncle Anesthesia everything was really tense. I think when Mark [Pickerel, now drumming in Truly] left it shook everything up. It was a yuppie kind of thing. "We looked at ourselves and everthing in our lives and what it meant."

Lee: It was terrible. When Pickerel left after Uncle Anesthesia we'd have these weird things, like two people would be mad at one. When Pickerel was gone, the new guys – [Sean] Hollister, Dan [Peters] and now Barrett [Martin] –

Van: They can't take sides, because they're the new guys. They don't have any seniority.

Steve: But they can act as a mirror and reflect the evil.

Van: That's true. Barrett is pretty evil already, just from being in the band this long. But he was in Skin Yard, and that's pretty evil right there.

Steve: You wrote more songs on this record, right?

Van: Yeah. lyrics and music, both.

Lee: It was weird because we did a lot of them together. You know how the old process was. I would write the song and give it to Lanegan and he would write the lyrics. These…Mark would actually come to my house and sit there. I'd be playing the guitar, and he's say, "That sounds really cool, why don't we word on that?"

Van: In the same room for hours and hours every day.

Lee: There's two songs on the record I didn't have anything to do with. "Dollar Bill" and "Julie Paradise". Van and Mark wrote those together.

Steve: Yeah, "Dollar Bill" is great. I like that.

Van: A lot of those songs just came from messing around on guitar and Mark singing something, then all three of us would start working on it. "Butterfly" had an old riff. That was the only old thing.

Steve: I noticed that Lanegan's voice, when it's by itself, there's hardly any doubling going on.

Van: Yeah, there's only one song that's doubled.

Lee: This is the best singing he's ever done.

Steve: Yeah, and all the fans who traditionally write stupid reviews of Screaming Trees records, complaining that they buried the voice, well, I don't think you guys have buried the voice ever.

Lee: I always thought his voice was just cranked.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, Love Battery have quiet voices and it makes sense.

Van: I always wanted to hear Love Battery's voice louder, though. I always wonder what it would sound like.

Steve: You should come to my house some time, there's two songs of the stuff that I did with them. We spent a whole evening with them getting louder and quieter.

Van: Did Ron like them quiet, though?

Steve: Yeah. Treepeople, it's the same thing. They was to sit it right in the back and pit a little bit of reverb on it and then the band can get louder and quieter and louder and quieter but the vocal stays the same. It's a trick. Where'd you record?

Van: Baby Monsters, in New york. Don Fleming produced it. And John Arnello engineered it. He's a great engineer.

Lee: These guys had all this old Fender and Marshall amps, totally vintage amps, and I didn't even use my Peavy amp.

Steve: The sound's very nice, blown up and very, very soft. There's a lot of ambience, it's thrashier. This record sounds like it was live, even though there's a lot of fixing, whereas Uncle Anesthesia was much more of a producer kind of record.

Van: We left the fuck-ups and stuff in this time, as opposed to trying to be perfect, because Don wasn't much of a perfectionist. Since he was from the same place we are, he could see that there's a kind of coolness factor in fuck-ups.

Lee: It's cool 'cause he sings and plays guitar and writes songs in a grungy rock band.

Steve: He's also a pretty good folk singer.

Van: At least he's a total freak.

Lee: So he could totally relate to us.

Steve: I hear he smokes likes ten times as much pot as I do. You were the new kids on the block when fIREHOSE and Meat Puppets were established. Theye signed to majors and got fucked really bad.

Van: I think they paved the way. Hüsker Dü got screwed first. They had the whole industry behind them, but at the time there were only 100,000 record buyers out there...

Lee: After this first wave of bands got signed, I think the labels started realizing that, gee, we don't have to give each of these bands a half-million dollars, when they can do a record for $100,000 or less.

Van: But now there's so much crap that goes into it.

Lee: You used to call Greg Ginn [at SST] and tell him you're going to make a record.

Van: And make it. The hardest part was coming up with the cover. And when you came up with that, you sent it to them. Then you called your booking agent, they put you on a tour, you toured, went to Europe, came home and that's it. We started working on these songs about a year ago. Dan was going to be our drummer…

Steve: Right.

Van: And then Mudhoney decided to be a real band again.

Steve: Oh, I heard the demos you guys did with him are really good. That was a neat version of the band; the last time I saw you guys live he was playing the drums.

Lee: He was a lot of fun to play with.

Van: Fast. We got Barrett, our new drummer, and worked on all the songs for a long time. We used to go in, as you know, and practice once, or practice the song while we were recording it. But this time we really practiced, got ready, and then recorded.Then after that, there's all this press stuff, and all these other people have to do things. Everything takes about a year, from beginning to when the record comes out. The only reason it took a year before was because the record company was so bogged down and so small.

Steve: When you sign their contract, it means you've put all these people to work for you. And then, all of a sudden, people who would never even give a fuck about your music, or even go out to a club to see you, they have to like your record. Someone has to present it to them.

Van: It's their job.

Steve: No, I'm talking about John Q. Nobody in White Center who doesn't have a reason to do anything, let alone turn on the radio, and then all the sudden somebody at Geffen has to figure out how to get that guy to like the Screaming Trees. Talk about inventing a process, you know? The Screaming Trees were totally healthy witout that guy. But now you need him.

Van: What's that new town in Tennessee?

Steve: The mall town?

Van: They have rows and rows of country music theatres, and they're only like $7 a ticket. Those guys don't have to tour anymore because everybody just comes to them.

Lee: Wow, what a concept. Do you think we could do that here?

Steve: Set it up in North Seattle, a grunge mall. You could have video games, a big skateboarding ramp, and probably-

Lee: All these 14, 15 year old kids would be wearing flannel and, man, that's an amazing concept.

Steve: Maybe there could be rehearsal spaces in the back, and everything opens up at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. People get off school, come in, it's the grunge mall. All the A&R guys could come down with their check-list, see who they want to sign.

Lee: It'd sure make it a lot easier than touring and having to go to clubs.

Steve: Um, what do you think about Courtney's baby?

Lee: A girl, right?

Van: I just want to congratulate them.

Steve: Yeah, congratulations are in order.

Van: There's nothing like marital bliss and children when you're in a rock band, I'll tell you.

Steve: Yeah, they've gotta be fucked. How old's Ulysses now?

Van: He's gonna be four tomorrow, I'm going over for his birthday. It's hard to be in a band and have a kid.

Lee: There's always hope for the future.

Van: But, the whole moral thing comes into play. Society, like this fucker right there [George Bush is on the TV], want you to have "family values." People look down on you when you're an irrespoinsible guy in a rock band, and then you have a kid. It's rough.

Lee: But people look up to you for the same reason.

Steve: Yeah, a lot of people who know Ulysses think he's cool.

Van: Yeah.

Steve: Theoretically, those people are your friends.

Van: Yeah, but I don't know. It's rough.

Lee: Yeah, and then the kid goes out and becomes a hell-raiser himself.

Van: But the thing is, if you're going to have a kid, by the time you're 40, your kid's a teenager and he can buy you pot. Because you won't have any connections.

Lee: But don't you expect your kid to become like that? Unless you hate the way you are – if you're like that – when your kid got like that, why would you be shocked?

Steve: What are you going to do if Madonna gets interested in your band?

Van: I don't know. Maybe I could be Madonna's whipping boy.

Steve: For real or in her video?

Van: Video.

Steve: Well, that or you could become another force of nature like those guys who were dolphins, maybe you could be like a horse.

Van: Like a walrus. A bizarre sex scene with a walrus, in the water, with a really nice happy song.

Steve: You get your ass kissed all over the place. What, personally, is the nicest thing, the best praise you ever got out of all this?

Lee: A few times, I've had fans tell me stories about how listening to one of our albums got them through some really shitty times. Some guy, three or four years ago in Minneapolis, came up and told me, "Last summer I broke up with my girlfriend, it was a total hell, the only way I got through the whole summer was by listening to your record." It's weird that we could affect somebody's life somehow by what we're doing. (laughs) It's crazy, really, but it makes you feel good if you know that people actually listen and enjoy it, instead of plugging their ears or throwing the CD away.

Van: There's nothing worse, though, than trying to go up to somebody to give them a compliment. One time I tried to tell Greg Sage how his records meant so much to me, and I'm sure that he thinks, "What the fuck is this guy?"

Steve: No, he knows he's writing anthems. He's real from the heart. It's embarrassing to go up and tell somebody that, but…

Van: But what are you supposed to say? All you can say is, "Thanks, it's cool." If I'm drunk or something, I'll end up hanging out with that guy all night.

Steve: And then you'll become the story that he'll tell the rest of his life.

Van: How many people want you to record them?

Steve: It's terrible. I more or less took the shingle down a year ago and just told everybody to fuck off. There's band I want to work with, like Beat Happening, Witchypoo or Unwound…

Van: Purple Outside…

Steve: Yeah, Purple Outside. People I would take the time to record. I'd do just about anything to record Girl Trouble. But, no, this is the year that if I keep recording dumb rock bands I'll just be shovelling coal into this fire that I'm not particularly happy with. I don't want to help people get signed right now. I'm credibility for some assholes.

Lee: The only thing is, right now, if you wanted to, these labels need freaks like you to produce bands who don't want to go with some LA guy. You should get a manager or something. Jack [Endino] just got a manager, a couple days ago.

Steve: The point is, Jack's easy to manage. Jack represents the most commercial commodity in the music industry right now; he's the G-man.

Van: The whole Don Fleming philosophy is, they have all these new bands who are this new thing. Nobody understands how to produce it really, or knows what in the hell's going on, and there's only so many guys who can do it. So there's this big overflow guys like you, or Don Fleming or whoever can pick up and still get shitloads of money.

Lee: Fleming's making good money, man, plus Gumball just got signed to Columbia.

Van: Just becase he's hooked up to all those New York label people. That's the only reason.

Steve: I know, yeah. I mean, so, in other words, I know you guys so you guys are worthless? (laughs) You guys can't do shit for me, and you're my friends in the record industry. Fuck you. (laughter)

Lee: The Trees, we're always going to be the Trees. I think that's the proble,. (laughs)

Steve: Anyway, when you first signed…

Van: Epic signed us purely because they liked our music. They knew they weren't going to sell very many records, they knew that we were going to be the kind of band that sells more than the last record every time, but not a gib deal. And I think they were trying to get some different kinds of bands on the label.

Lee: Epic has a history of doing that. They've always had bands that they try to do something with for one or two records, and then…

Van: And when Uncle Anesthesia came out, everybody in their marketing department pretty much had a big question mark over their heads, with a little thought bubble, "Where do yo market that?" There was nothing, there was not this thing called "alternative," until the whole Nirvana thing really happened. Now, I meet all these people who work at major labels, and they're the same guys who interviewed us on college radio four years ago.

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