interview by Daz, 2001
DAZ: What do you recall of the ‘Buzz Factory’ recording sessions,and what was your impression of the band at this relatively early stage?
JACK: I wasn’t really ‘close’ to the band early on. I didn’t even meet them until we did ‘Buzz Factory’. I do remember the ‘Buzz Factory’ sessions pretty well though. The two brothers kept getting into fights with each other and would be rolling worund the floor of the studio. I would have to rush out and move the mics out of the way. Other than that, things went fine, we made the record in just 5 or 6 days, I think. Later, I did those 2 songs, “Days” and “Change Has Come” for a Sub Pop e.p. theni worked on Mark’s first two solo albums. I heard he just got married and moved to the State of North Carolina… but that might just be a strange rumor. Van is almost finished with a new album for his band, Valis. I still think ‘Buzz Factory’ is a great album; “Subtle Poison” is my favorite song from that record, though possibly ‘Invisible Lantern’ has a larger percentage of good songs.
DAZ: Can you remember when and where you first saw Screaming Trees? What were your first impressions?
Steve Fisk: I first saw them when I recorded the ‘Other Worlds’ record. They set up “live” facing the control room, and they put on a show/vibe type thing when they tracked, as if rocking out was the only way they played. They didn’t know how to sit around with headphones and look cool. I was really impressed. I thought they were already a great band, so did my partner, Sam Albright (the actual person with some bread that had built this incredible studio in the middle of nowhere). I had just moved to the town and this was my second or third session. I set up the mics. The way Sam worked really made the ‘Other Worlds’ sound.
Sam wanted a label for the studio and knew I’d had some small success with Mr. Brown records, an early 80’s independent I helped run. He wanted to do a record when we saw them in the studio for the first time, but I think it took a week for the offer to materialize. Both Sam and I had been recording The Entropics, an Amherst, MA duo that had recently moved to Seattle. We liked both groups but they were totally apples and oranges. The Entropics were Amy Denio’s first group out here, and were set up similarly to Skeleton Crew with two players jamming minimal jerky beats with kicks and hiatus played with their feet while they ran through Zappa-esque math rock figures on duelling tenor saxes. Pretty amazing to watch, really.
DAZ: Tell us a bit about Velvetone, both the label and the studio. Who else recorded there; who else were you producing at the time?
STEVE: I ran the label with help from Sam, Diane, Tony, Mary and others who worked in the adjacent business. This is a very long story, but Sam also ran a factory that made this mat cutting widget that his dad had invented and marketed. That was the first floor; the studio was upstairs; one room and a channel mixer that really sucked. The plan was to put better gear in the studio when it got going, but that never happened. The studio tanked after five years with all the original gear and little else. We had six mics, most of which were shure sm57’s or sm58’s. No vintage nothing. The engineer before me had left on bad terms and had taken all the expensive mics and reverbs! Meanwhile, the actual construction: wood, glass, toilets and kitchen were totally fancy and expensive and over-built, which made breaking even a no-go, kept the hourly rate high and set up a smouldering feud between Sam and his dad, who had thrown down for the posh facility and then got weird about it.
Beat Happening recorded two LP’s there, Girl Trouble did two LPs as well. Others included P.S.O’Neil, King Crab, Moral Crux, Tree House, Some Velvet Sidewalk, Dangermouse, The Plug Uglies and Pat Malley’s Big Idea. Calvin Johnson had lived in Ellensburg before and brought most of the traffic from Olympia with him. Velvetone put out two more LP’s by P.S.O’Neil and one from Moral Crux.
DAZ: Can you tell us a bit about ‘Clairvoyance’? Had the material already been written? How much direction did you give them? Any idea how many were made?
STEVE: ‘Clairvoyance’ was already written. I think Mark tried a few different ways of phrasing on the last track [also called, “Clairvoyance”]. I engineered and mixed, which is why it sounds so New Wave. I stopped making that sound right after that record! that expensive reverb I mentioned also disappeared right after ‘Clairvoyance’ too. I remember lobbying for including “The Turning” from ‘Other Worlds’. I think I ‘guided’ the production but the band was really involved, as though nobody produced it. Maybe I had a bit to do with horsing together “Strange Out Here”, that was definitely a studio track! There were 2500 pressed. It was only on vinyl. Anything else you might have seen was bootlegged.
DAZ: What was your connection with Greg Ginn? SST was not a local label in terms of Ellensburg – how did you think they fit into their roster?
STEVE: This is more small world stuff. Ray Farrell, who managed Pell Mell when we were living in San Francisco, had gone to work for SST and helped Screaming Trees find some gigs in L.A. early on.
Pickerel had given Ginn a cassette version of ‘Other Worlds’ on one of the last Black Flag tours. Once ‘Clairvoyance’ came out, it seemed like Velvetone was too far away from the world to help the band get to their next step. I booked their first tour. Nobody would return my phone calls, especially from L.A. It seemed to them like a band from the middle of nowhere would have to suck or would have nothing unique to offer. That was the situation in the ‘80’s. Greg liked the band. We had lots of looong talks, mostly about music.
At the time I can’t say how they fit in their roster, SST was a very diverse and adventurous label.
DAZ: How would you describe the Trees live performance at this early stage?
STEVE: It was wild. Lee was his own version of Pete Townsend. He spent much of the time falling without really landing. I’m still not sure he pulled off some of the moves I thought I saw. It was chaos. They sped up all their songs. It was really intense. It was fun.
DAZ: You said that the Trees were as good as or better than their peers. What set them apart/made them different?
STEVE: The Trees didn’t sound like a Seattle band. They didn’t do the ‘small chorus/big verse’ thing. Lee hardly doubled anything up in the studio. Most ‘grunge’ involved piled up doubling and tripling of rhythm parts.
They didn’t have any peers in Ellensburg, so they evolved alone in a redneck town, which was pretty depressing and brutal at times. They weren’t careerists. They all had a big record collection and that was about it. Cable didn’t come to Ellensburg until they were in high school. There were two lame movie theatres. They were really stuck with each other. It was like a family.
DAZ: I was interested to hear you say you’d learned a lot from the band. Could you give us a couple of examples?
STEVE: It’s really cool when I get to work on more than one record with a band. You really develop a lexicon between yourself and the musicians. Things go quick/quicker. You get to be more creative and less logical. Lee presented me with kinds of guitar sounds that were problematic, too many to recount specifics, although we got really good at it.
DAZ: Over the albums you produced, and indeed played on, was their much improvisation in the studio?
STEVE: All my keyboard parts were made up on the spot. The songs were worked out. There were jams but little ended up on record.
DAZ: What memories do you have of the work you did with Mark Lanegan as a solo artist?
STEVE: The overdubs on ‘Winding Sheet’ were pretty straightforward. He had me do the kind of things I did on the Trees’ records. “Juarez” was an afterthought, when the overdubs were done. Everything went really quick. Mark was really cool to work with. I had fun for the most part.
DAZ: Did you follow everyone else’s careers after they left your fold?
STEVE: Yes, I have followed their respective careers. I’m really proud to have helped those guys get started. I think they’ve all done good work on their own.
DAZ: Were you disappointed not to have produced them for even longer than you did?
STEVE: Yes, I was bummed out not to be recording them any more but they were stuck with me for years. I was the only guy for literally hundreds of miles. Not working with me was part of them becoming part of the non-Ellensburg world. They needed to get out. I grew up in L.A. and was in Po Dunk nowhere by choice. They hated it there. The Screaming Trees were world class. It was hard for them to be on TV and then run into small town red necks – “So, you’re a reel big star now, huh,” attitude.
DAZ: You must have been as frustrated as anybody by their reception from the mainstream?
STEVE: Yeah, I’m bummed they weren’t received better by the mainstream 90’s media machine, but that’s got more to do with how real they were/are as people. Other “bands” really wanted all that hype.
DAZ: “Screaming Trees could have been the new…”
STEVE: They could have been the next Who, except the Who had a shitty singer, whereas Mark Lanegan is a world-class talent.
DAZ: I take it you’re well and keeping busy
STEVE: I’m doing great. I have a modest home studio. I have a modest home. I work with lots of great musicians. I’m supposed to play on Pickerel’s next record. Lanegan and I have talked about working together. You’ve not asked me about Lofi Allstars! They’re a bunch of silly morons. I liked the remix they did for “us” [Pigeonhed’s “Battleflag”]. We never told them they could steal the track and travel round the world pretending it was their “single”. That was something Skint, Sony and Sub Pop negotiated. The Lo-Fi’s even tried to sue us for the publishing! What kind of crack do English hippies smoke any way?
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