Article from: The Olympian
"It seems so much more positive when the energy and the money goes back into the label and the community instead of some huge corporation that could care less who you are or where you come from."-- Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney
Stalking the stage like a panther, throwing out any number of rock-star poses, Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein looked anything but nervous when her band performed Saturday night at Ladyfest.
Yet when she woke up the morning of the concert, Brownstein said she was in a total panic.
A day earlier, Time magazine profiled Sleater-Kinney -- and Ladyfest -- in a feature that dubbed Olympia "the hippest town in the West" and reiterated the frequent music-critic claim that the trio is the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the country. Was Brownstein feeling the pressure?
Hardly.
"This was the first time it had dawned on me that my participation in Ladyfest extended beyond volunteering," Brownstein said, "and would actually involve performing in front of all of these people I had been seeing all week."
And, once she took the stage, Brownstein said it actually turned out to be a relief to perform for familiar faces.
"It's really great for me to play in my hometown in front of my friends," she said. "I don't get to do that very often."
For a band that has earned such overwhelming praise, Sleater-Kinney remain remarkably unaffected by the hoopla. The band's records typically sell around 100,000 copies -- a huge number for a markedly non-corporate label like Kill Rock Stars -- and the Time piece was only the latest in a long line of high-profile media features on the band, both here and abroad.
"The Time article is really separate from who I am and really separate from what this community is," Brownstein said with a sigh.
The attention is flattering on one level, she said, but with its 55 organizers Ladyfest was not about singling out any one person or band. To Brownstein, Olympia is about "creativity and energy dispersed among a lot of people. And that's hard, obviously, for a magazine like Time to capture."
Sleater-Kinney didn't set out to become the greatest rock band in the country. Initially, the band formed as a side project. Singer and guitarist Corin Tucker met Brownstein in 1992 when Tucker was one-half of Heavens to Betsy and Brownstein was about to kick off her own group Excuse 17.
The two begin playing together in a practice space on Sleater-Kinney Road and, joined by drummer Lora Macfarlane, they recorded their self-titled debut for Olympia's Chainsaw Records in 1995.
Following it up the next year with "Call the Doctor," the trio began attracting the glowing national praise that remains with them today. Current drummer Janet Weiss joined in time for '97's "Dig Me Out," the band's first album for Kill Rock Stars, another Olympia-based label.
Sleater-Kinney continued to record and tour. Soon enough the major labels came sniffing with checkbooks in hand. But unlike most bands in such a position, Sleater-Kinney said thanks, but no thanks.
"I think we would have imploded," Brownstein said. "It would have put a lot of pressure on our lives and our music. The concept is so foreign to us, anyway, coming of age in a community that has such a strong anti-corporate, anti-consumer culture. We didn't want to work with people doing it for the money (instead of) doing it because they love our art."
Today, Brownstein still lives in Olympia, while Tucker and Weiss reside in Portland. The success of Sleater-Kinney has not come, Brownstein said, at the expense of the band's roots.
"It's true, it was really tempting (to sign with a major) for the money and the great distribution," she said. "But it doesn't seem worth it to me to, first of all, step out of a safety zone. And also, what's the point of (leaving Kill Rock Stars)? It seems so much more positive when the energy and the money goes back into the label and the community instead of some huge corporation that could care less who you are or where you come from."
And in Olympia, Brownstein lives what she called a "totally normal" life.
"To me, Sleater-Kinney is two entities," she said. "One is me, Corin and Janet, three friends that play music. Then there's the media entity of Sleater-Kinney."
That would be the media entity that, supposedly, is the greatest rock band in the country.
"It doesn't really mean anything if someone calls our band that," Brownstein said. "What a weird label to place on us, or to place on anybody. I mean, I saw the Need the other day at Ladyfest and I thought they were the greatest rock band in the world, you know what I mean?"
Does Sleater-Kinney get too much attention?
Brownstein laughed, and agreed.
"I do hope we are a good band," she said. "But the greatest? That means we have no where else to go. And, frankly, we have a lot more places to go."
Ross Raihala covers entertainment for The Olympian and can be reached at 754-5406 or Olyross@aol.com
