Podcast Episode 24 – Mark Lanegan & Screaming Trees: 1998-99

Mark Lanegan, 1998
Photo: Charles Peterson

Welcome to Don't Call It Nothing, the podcast dedicated to the lost history of '90s roots, rap, and rock 'n' roll. That also happens to be the name of my book. What a coincidence! This is Lance Uehara Davis and today we’re gonna finish our four-part deep dive of the Screaming Trees and Mark Lanegan in the 1990s. However, before we do that, I have kind of a big announcement. This is the final episode of Don’t Call It Nothing.

Between the 900-page book, the 25-30 hours of the podcast, the 100-song Spotify playlists I created for each year of the decade, and the 150-video YouTube playlists I also created for each year of the decade, I’ve said what I needed to say about the 1990s. I see Don’t Call It Nothing like an art installation that other people are gonna have to unpeel and unpack long after I’m gone. Certainly, long after I’m done here. And I’m pretty fucking proud of myself because I know that if I didn’t take the time to pay respect to all this music, no one would have. And I seriously doubt anyone else will—at least like this—but I hope I’m wrong.

Beyond their function as reference tools, the book and podcast have changed my life. Because of both I got hired as a music editor and film editor by HubPage. They’re an aggregator of multiple websites featuring user-generated content. In normal human terms (laughs), I edit and curate a bunch of blogs. A lot of the writing is substandard and they’re mostly writing about music I mostly can’t stand. And I fucking love it. Because it’s not about me. I love helping writers become better writers and the freedom to punch up articles with videos and images I get to create. And because I also get to write for my sites, the podcast has become superfluous. In fact, because work uses all my creative juice, I frankly don’t have much left in the tank for the pod and that’s not fair to you guys.

So here we are. Thank you to all my family members for supporting this nutty idea of a book and podcast. It’s been as rewarding a project as I’ve ever undertaken and you guys have made me feel a little less alone out here in the deep surf. Love you all. So what do you say? Let’s bring this ship into port.

Screaming Trees - “Last Words”

From Last Words: The Final Recordings, that’s the Screaming Trees with “Last Words,” the last track on their last kinda sorta album. It came out in 2011 with zero fanfare and it consists of tracks recorded between 1998-99. It’s hard to categorize this as a proper album because it sounds like a demo. And it sounds like that because that’s what it was. The strangest thing about Last Words—the release, not the song—is that Lee Conner might play more piano and clavinet on it than guitar. How is that even possible??? That said, there are exceptions. “Revelator” and “Black Rose Way” are guitar jams. So is “Last Words.” And this time I mean the song, not the quasi-album. We get fist fulls of Lee Conner guitar shred, Barrett Martin kills it on drums, and I love the vocal melody and how the backup vocals frame Lanegan’s voice. It sounds like the Screaming Trees.

As last songs go, “Last Words” might not be up there with The Beatles’ “The End” and The Replacements’ “The Last.” But, I’ll give the band credit for having the self-awareness to place this track last. And the lyrics are good.

"When my last words
Speak the truth and I know I'm letting go
Take away your sorrow when I leave"

Hard not to think of the passing of Mark Lanegan this past February when hearing those lines. And it was his death that facilitated the last great act of the Screaming Trees. I started outlining this four-part series within days of Lanegan’s death. And in my head I heard “Last Words” as the triumphant close out, the band riding off into the sunset on the back of that anthem.

And then, on March 19th, Lee posted two lost tracks from 1994 to YouTube: “Hearts and Diamonds” and another simply listed as “Piano Song.” I guess Lanegan found them on a hard drive while rummaging through a closet and “Piano Song” broke him … in a good way. If you knew nothing about the Screaming Trees before reading Mark’s 2020 book, Sing Backwards And Weep, you probably didn’t leave with the best impression of the band. And we can be real here. Lanegan was kind of a dick about it.

Which is why when he heard the “Piano Song” about 6-7 months ago, he broke down crying. After disparaging the band as little more than hired guns, hearing the natural harmony between he and Lee cracked his bullshit façade. In the book, h  e was smart enough to keep the facts more or less straight, but this is one of the best songwriters of his generation. You think he’s gonna have a problem controlling tone, narrative, and our impression of the Trees? The problem is we all have ears. He can dismiss or downplay the contribution of Gary Lee Conner all he wants, the music is the fucking music, dude. Ball don’t lie.

Once again, though, here’s where context matters. If Lanegan hears the “Piano Song” while writing Sing Backwards And Weep, I argue that it doesn’t even get mentioned in the book. I think it would have had little impact. But, he heard it late last year, after COVID-19 nearly killed him. By his own account, Lanegan thought he was smarter than a virus and science and that arrogance led to a lengthy hospitalization in which he slipped in an out of a coma, lost his hearing, and went through a spell where he couldn’t walk.

For a guy who’d cracked his skull on rock bottom several times as a youngish drug addict, Mark’s middle-aged immune system took a direct hit that it never fully recovered from. And it was in this period of absolute vulnerability that Lanegan heard “Piano Song.” He was too weak to put up a tough guy front, so the song hit him right in the heart. He heard what we’ve all been hearing for 35 some odd years. That these knuckleheads from the middle of nowhere Washington State conjured up magic with big ass guitars and songs about life and death and those songs took them around the world. And no, they didn’t become Pearl Jam. Maybe they fucked that up. But, they were lucky enough to find each other, a bunch of misfit musicians that created a little magic for a little while. That’s something, too.

Screaming Trees - “Piano Song”

That’s the Screaming Trees with a recently-ish unearthed demo from 1994. Simply titled “Piano Song,” I will not lie, I cried my grungey little eyes out the first time I heard it. Beautiful tune. So, the Trees cut those demos in ’98-’99, they played a handful of shows in 2000, and while both efforts were designed to gauge label interest, there was none. So, in mid-2000, after 16 years and thousands of road miles, the Screaming Trees called it quits.

The transition year, though, is really 1998. That’s the year Mark Lanegan got clean for the first time, married singer Wendy Rae Fowler, and released Scraps At Midnight, a flawed, slightly hesitant record, but one that pops you in the feels on a few occasions.

Mark Lanegan - “Stay”

That’s Mark Lanegan with “Stay,” the third track from 1998’s Scraps At Midnight. This sounds like a guy who’s fallen in love, but who’s also self-aware enough to write of himself:

“Something has badly gone wrong with me
Living's not hard, it's just not easy”

Boy, ain’t that the truth. Lanegan subsequently dismissed this album and it’s probably his weakest of the decade. But, that three-song block in the middle of the album—“Stay,” “Last One In The World,” and “Bell Black Ocean”—is pretty awesome. You might not think folk pop is in the Mark Lanegan wheelhouse, but dig that Mike Johnson guitar lead cutting through the final minute of “Stay.” So good.

For Lanegan, transitioning from solo albums being seen as Screaming Trees side projects to solo albums now being his main thing, transitioning from paralyzing addiction to new-found sobriety, transitioning from single to married, and even transitioning in terms of the kinds of songs he was writing, Scraps represents the end of one era and the start of another. So, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the album’s most emotional moment is a new kind of Lanegan song written about an old relationship.

Mark Lanegan – “Last One In The World”

In his 2017 book, I Am the Wolf: Lyrics and Writings, Mark confessed that "Last One In The World" was not written about Kurt Cobain, as some speculated, but "for my friend Layne Staley, who was still living at the time. I loved them both as family: Kurt was like a little brother, Layne like a twin." “Last One In The World” is a drop dead gorgeous pop song, the kind of song Lanegan hadn’t really written before, like lovely little chamber pop snow globes.

Little did I know that a year after releasing Scraps, he’d drop an entire album’s worth of snow globes spanning multiple genres: folk, blues, country, gospel, punk rock, and late night R&B. 1999’s I’ll Take Care Of You may be all covers, but it’s a modern masterpiece of interpretive genius. It’s as good as any of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings albums and I’ll stand on the back deck of Rick Rubin’s tastefully modern Malibu retreat and say that. Seriously Rick, if you need a guy to look after the place, I’m your guy. I’ll bring the Funyons …

Mark Lanegan – “I'll Take Care Of You”

Mark Lanegan with the title track to his 1999 covers album. That Lanegan can nail a Bobby “Blue” Bland classic is no small feat. We’re talking about one of the great R&B singers from the late ‘50s through the ’80s!. Marvelous vocal control. Could go from velvet croon to gospel howl at the drop of a hat and hit every note along the way.

And Lanegan totally makes “I’ll Take Care Of You” his. It’s also kind of a Screaming Trees reunion with Van Conner on bass, Mark Pickerel killing it on drums, laying back on the beat just perfectly, and Barrett Martin playing those wonderfully understated vibes. But, Steve Berlin is the song’s MVP. He reproduces Teddy Reynolds’ original Hammond organ riff on flute and it sounds fucking amazing. I mean, it’s Steve Berlin. Blaster, Lobo, of course he brings his A game. Martin Feveyear, who produced, engineered, and mixed the record, puts some reverb on the flute and seamlessly integrates it into the arrangement. So awesome. “Lanegan: Late Night Interpreter of Classic R&B.”

Or,maybe you want a pure, old school murder ballad. Aaaand done.

Mark Lanegan – “Little Sadie”

Mark Lanegan with the traditional folk tune, “Little Sadie.” Love the minimal arrangement. All you have is Mark’s voice, Mark Hoyt (Huge Spacebird) on hammer-on folk guitar, and Mike Johnson on judicious electric guitar lead. That’s it. And unlike “I’ll Take Care Of You,” this doesn’t sound reverby at all. Very dry, like a good room is supposed to sound, and appropriate for the tone of the song.

Clarence Ashley was the first to record “Little Sadie,” way back in 1928, but I have no doubt these verses were floating in the air for decades before that. Hell, Woody Guthrie recorded a version of this song called "Bad Lee Brown (Cocaine Blues)," which I always assumed was a completely different song, but of course there’s deceptive crossover. This is what makes early folk, blues, and country music so interesting.

Speaking of which, on March 10, Barrett Martin posted a wonderful story to his Facebook page entitled, “The Classroom In The Back Of The Bus.” In it he writes about how the back of the Screaming Trees tour bus was where he learned about the history of rock, blues, country, and folk music. I’m sure a lot of other music, as well. Martin was classically trained. He could sight read jazz arrangements. There’s a reason he was the one playing vibes, upright bass, and drums on this album and could’ve played marimba or piano had he been asked.

Instead of shacking up in hotel rooms, the Trees drove overnight between shows. This meant hours and hours of road time where Barrett was able to dig into the American and European underground rock scenes, as well as all this roots music that he missed while he was learning how to become a professional, employable musician.

At the end of the post, Martin writes:

“There are three songs that I distinctly remember Mark loving enough to sing along with in their entirety. One was “He Stopped Loving Her Today” by the legendary country artist, George Jones. This is one of the greatest songs ever written, and it’s sung by one of the greatest singers of all-time, in any genre.

Another was “Reason To Believe” by Tim Hardin, a rather obscure, but brilliant songwriter from the 1960s.

The third song was “Shanty Man’s Life” by Dave Van Ronk, a classic American folk song that is extremely haunting in its original recording. I remember Mark singing along to all of those songs, from top to bottom, perfectly. So if you’d all do yourselves a favor, please listen to those three songs on your music devices and imagine Mark singing along. Because I heard him do it, and it was magical. A true artist knows gold when he or she hears it.
—Barrett Martin on Facebook, March 10, 1992

Mark Lanegan – “Shanty Man's Life
Brussels, Belgium
May 6, 2010

From his badass 1999 album, I’ll Take Care Of You, that’s Mark Lanegan paying tribute to Dave Van Ronk with “Shanty Man’s Life.” I’d like to read the first paragraph of my entry on this album from my book. I think it summarizes the appeal of I’ll Take Care Of You specifically, but it could serve as a stand-in for the Lanegan catalog. It reads:

“I don’t know if this is the greatest covers album in the rock era, but no covers album does more with less. If you’ve ever spent time in the desert, you begin to appreciate how the desert tolerates no extravagance. It sustains precisely the correct amount of life and no more. I’ll Take Care Of You is a desert blues masterpiece. We get 11 tracks in just under 34 minutes. There’s no wasted space, no gratuitous solos. The arrangements are elegantly stark, sit inside a lot of open space, and Lanegan’s rich baritone hovers over the arrangements like a dense morning fog.”
—Lance Davis, Don’t Call It Nothing: The Lost History of Roots, Rap & Rock ‘n’ Roll, p. 812

I mean, is there anything in there that’s not true? The album is a treasure trove of obscurities across multiple genres and Lanegan distills all of them into his righteous version of the blues. Lanegan covers “Carry Home” by his friend Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club, who passed away three years before these sessions. “Creeping Coastline Of Lights” was written by another punk from the ‘80s LA scene, Falling James from Leaving Trains.

But, those are musicians you’d expect Mark to cover. It’s that he also tackles a country ballad like Buck Owens’ “Together Again” or a soul ballad like Eddie Floyd’s “Consider Me” or, as we heard, the title track and there’s no dropoff. Lanegan makes all of these songs his. So, with that I’d like to finish with the album’s most impressive on paper performance. Mark Lanegan singing gospel? Yes please.

Mark Lanegan – “On Jesus’ Program”
Cherry Bar, Melbourne, Australia
July 31, 2011

“When this life is over, I’m going home.”

O.V. Wright wrote that in 1965 when he was singing with the Sunset Travelers and hearing Mark Lanegan sing those words is powerful stuff, man. Mike Johnson does a good job replicating the original lead guitar part in the right channel, while strumming electric rhythm guitar center-left in the mix to essentially replicate the organ part in the original. I love how the drums are mixed in O.V.’s version, all up in your face, but Mark Boquist and Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden do a fine job in support. Honestly, Lanegan’s vocal is so good, everyone else’s job was basically keep it simple and let him do the heavy lifting. Just get out of his way.

Outro

That Lanegan is singing about going home feels like a good time to end. Friends, if you want a free book about ‘90s roots, rap, and rock ‘n’ roll, go to dontcallitnothing.squarespace.com/book and a PDF download will be available there for free. There’s also a Book button in the nav bar. FYI, I’m continuing to make minor edits, so a fifth version should be uploaded to the website by July 1, 2022. That’s probably gonna be the last edit I make.

This is where I’d usually shill about becoming a member of the podcast, but since it’s ending I just wanna give a shout-out to the die hards who made it all the way to the end.

• Jeff Olmsted

• John "Ducktaper" Smith

• Laura Levy

• Anne Warth

• Bill Struven

• Lauren Zieffler

• R.J. Simensen

• Shayne Deal

Y’all are the fucking best. I love you guys. Thank you for the support. It means the world to me.

Thanks for joining me on this journey through the Screaming Trees and Mark Lanegan catalogs. I’ve had a lot of fun paying actual respect to the 1990s because it ain’t gonna happen otherwise. And with that, I leave you with the show’s theme song in full. Which means one final thank you is in order, to the great Mike Nicolai for allowing me to use his song, “Trying To Get It Right.” You can visit him at Love Wheel Records in Austin and if you do, tell him LD sent ya.

See y’all on the other side.

Smith/McKay All Day

Pat McKay (L) and Jimmy Smith aka Smith/McKay All Day aka SMAD

This won’t be a space where I do much new album reviewing, but I’m gonna make an exception for Smith/McKay All Day’s debut album, On The Smile Side. The Smith in SMad is Jimmy Smith, bassist/songwriter/co-founder of The Gourds, who I discussed in Episode 10 of Don’t Call It Nothing. I cannot tell an accurate version of the ‘90s without The Gourds beebling, blitzing, and bean bowling. And in thinking about Jimmy Smith, I’m reminded of something Tom Waits once said to Keith Richards. I believe it was during the recording of "That Feel" for Bone Machine. In telling Richards what he wanted, Waits said to imagine a film projector playing an old movie. "You know how sometimes with an old, dusty film, a hair will get on the lens, wiggle around on-screen, and your eye is drawn to it? Keith, I want you to be that hair."

Well, that hair has been Jimmy Smith's whole goddamn raison d'etre since he was a baby Coyote. And now he's joined forces with Pat McKay, a country blues conjurer and the loneliest black man in Montana. Jimmy sings about being the eggs in your meatloaf, Pat's lived it. You can hear that combo of pain and joyous struggle in "Help," part chain gang protest, part Plastic Ono Band juju eyeball. “Esteline” hits the sweet spot of lived experience and country lament and it might be the album’s high point in terms of the SMad vocal harmonies. I love how the mandolin and harmonica each play around with the melody in unique ways.

Smith/McKay All Day - “Esteline”

But, you come to a Jimmy Smith project for dartboard basslines and Smile Side does not disappoint. “Touch Twice” and “She’s A Girl” are great examples of bippity bop, kinda “Miss You,” kinda Madness bass wiggle. Smith’s bass in “Off Gassing” elegantly pulls against acoustic guitar strum, and the resonance of the instrument sounds like a standup. My favorite bass playing on the album, though, is during the verses and guitar solo of “Rough Patch.” In a callback to “Mr. Betty,” we get a swaggering riff straight outta the late ‘60s Wyman playbook, as Mr. Jimmy, also on drums and cowbell, drags the beat to puts some funk in the pocket. Meanwhile, multiple acoustic guitars are set off in each channel, variously strumming hard on the beat and playing Stonesy licks. Nice vocal arrangement, too, as Smith’s lead vocals hit dead center, a second Smith sings low backup in the right channel, and McKay howls backups in the left.

The notion of struggle rears its head again in the chorus when Smith sings:

"Nobody cares about your rough patch
Nobody's buying from your small batch
And when you order something strange
Off the menu ... will they despise you?
Off the menu ... yeah, they will find you
Off the menu ... it will beguile you
Off the menu ... it will define you"

In a world where your worth is measured in likes and views, it's fair to ask if anyone gives a shit about your small batch. By its very nature, non-conformity doesn't sell. But, from my perspective this is a feature, not a bug. As a fellow purveyor of off-menu exploration, On The Smile Side scratches a specific roots rock weirdo itch and I'm grateful. It's the George Strait cassette on the floorboard screaming, "Play me."

Smith/McKay All Day - “Rough Patch”

Podcast Episode 23 – Mark Lanegan & Screaming Trees: 1994-96

L-R: J Mascis, Mark Lanegan, and Mike Johnson
MTV Studios, March 13, 1994

Welcome to Don't Call It Nothing, the podcast dedicated to the lost history of '90s roots, rap, and rock 'n' roll, and now officially based upon the book of the same name. This is Lance Uehara Davis and we’re in the middle of a Mark Lanegan and Screaming Trees retrospective. I was hoping to get this episode out a couple days ago, so let’s dive on in. When we last left them, the Screaming Trees had just released Sweet Oblivion into the wild and were touring … and touring … and touring. They got stuck opening for Alice In Chains in the last two months of ‘92 and spent the summer of ’93 opening for the Spin Doctors (gross) and Soul Asylum. To be fair, they also headlined a fair number of dates in between those tours and after. The Trees were road warriors, but they were kinda always heading INTO the wind. There was way too much drinking going on in the band. As a recovering alcoholic, I say that without judgment. I get it. Meanwhile, Mark Lanegan was knee-deep in a heroin habit, which really meant that if crack was the only thing available, he was basing the fuck outta some crack. When there was no crawdad, we ate sand.

This was the context for the follow-up to Sweet Oblivion, which was far more theoretical in 1993 than tangible reality. The group made a perfunctory effort at recording with Don Fleming again, but there was no juice. In the book, Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, Lanegan told author Mark Yarm,

“Everyone wanted to put out the record to capitalize on Sweet Oblivion. The timing was certainly right, but the music wasn’t, and I just thought, ‘You know what? This is not good.’ And it wasn’t good because of me. I didn’t come to the party. I did not involve myself. I went through the motions, but I didn’t invest any of myself into it. I just didn’t have the strength. After all the touring, and because of some other personal problems, I didn’t have anything to give to it. I was empty. I tried, but the end result was: It sucked.”
—Mark Lanegan to Mark Yarm, Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, 2011, p. 521

So, as the band headed into 1994, Lee Conner was writing a ton of songs, but he’d be the first to tell you that most of them weren’t very good. Where the band went into the Sweet Oblivion sessions with momentum and a common vision, the Trees in ’94 were heading in four different directions. That said, they pulled it together enough to produce one, maybe two bona fide jams, but this is my favorite: “Paperback Bible.”

Screaming Trees – “Paperback Bible” (1994 Rough Mix)

That’s the Screaming Trees with “Paperback Bible,” a fun, Aerosmith-type blues jam recorded in 1994. A cleaned up version with new vocals appeared on 2005’s Ocean Of Confusion comp, but I prefer this rough mix with Lanegan’s original vocals. According to Lee, he and Van wrote this in ‘93 after seeing Lanegan roll a joint using a rice paper bible page. Of course that happened. “Watchpocket Blues” is another pretty good outtake from this period and that, too, is on Ocean Of Confusion. On the Screaming Trees Facebook page, Lee Conner recently posted a long-forgotten piano ballad from ’94, but I’m gonna save that for next time.

Instead, let’s talk about Mark Lanegan. In 1994, he released his second solo album, Whiskey For The Holy Ghost, and you’d be forgiven if you thought, “Well, the Trees were flailing, but at least Lanegan got his shit together to put out a record.” Mmmm … not really. In fact, Whiskey was about four years in the making. From the moment he released The Winding Sheet in 1990, Lanegan had been stockpiling songs and recording when he had the chance. Of course, between constant touring and a crippling heroin addiction, it’s kind of a miracle the album sounds as good as it does.

Mark Lanegan – “Borracho”
5th Ave Theater, Seattle
July 28, 1995
Opening for Johnny Cash

The second track on Whiskey For The Holy Ghost, “Borracho” is dystopian chamber folk featuring Dan Peters on drums and Mike Johnson on bass and lead guitar, including a bitchin divebomb solo from 2:36-3:33. In fact, I hear a few different guitars, so I suspect Lanegan is strumming one and Johnson’s playing the others. This actually speaks to the fun fact about Whiskey For The Holy Ghost. And that is, I don’t think it’s a solo record. I think it’s a Mark Lanegan/Mike Johnson duet record and it’s about time we put some respect on Johnson’s name. He produced these sessions, arranged the material, and plays on every song. Not just that, he arranged these songs around four different drummers: Peters, Tad Doyle (Tad), J Mascis, and Mark Pickerel. Lanegan obviously deserves credit for the elite songs and vocals, but Johnson was the glue guy who made the record sound cohesive.

As for Lanegan’s lyrics, how about this powerhouse?

“Here comes the devil prowl around
One whiskey for every ghost
And I'm sorry for what I've done
'Cause it's me who knows what it cost
It breaks and it breeds and it tears you apart
It bites and it bleeds
And this desert turns to ocean over me”

Fuckin Mark Lanegan.

Mark Lanegan – “Judas Touch”

Mark Lanegan - vocals
Mike Johnson - acoustic guitar
Tad Doyle - snare

The late, impossibly great Mark Lanegan with “Judas Touch.” Come on, how great is that? You have Johnson fingerpicking acoustic guitar, Tad Doyle brushing a snare, and Lanegan’s voice laying in a bed of judicious reverb. That’s it. In and out in 1:37. Jam fucking econo. And when you hear that arrangement, is it markedly different from what Rick Rubin did with Johnny Cash for American Recordings? That record, by the way, came out only three months after Whiskey and it’s my understanding that Mark sent songs to Cash’s people for possible inclusion, it just didn’t work out. Too bad because the world needed Cash covering Lanegan way more than it needed Cash covering Loudon Wainwright.

For example, I’m gonna play “Pendulum,” probably my favorite song on Whiskey For The Holy Ghost. Just imagine these lyrics being sung by Johnny.

Mark Lanegan – “Pendulum”

That’s Mark Lanegan with “Pendulum,” featuring longtime collaborator Mike Johnson on acoustic and electric guitar, Jack Endino on bass, and former Tree Mark Pickerel on drums. I love that line, “Tears cold dark eyes upon.” That’s how poetry is supposed to work.

On March 13, 1994, Lanegan visited MTV Studios to promote Whiskey and he brought a couple friends to back him up. Mike Johnson is playing (I believe) a sweet Gretsch as J Mascis strums an acoustic.

Mark Lanegan, J Mascis & Mike Johnson – “House A Home”
MTV Studios
March 13, 1994

In reviewing my positioning of Whiskey For The Holy Ghost within the 1994 multiverse, I inadvertently had the album way too low. It’s very good, great in moments, but shy of that next tier. In the next iteration of my book I’ll have it slotted just behind behind Vic Chesnutt's Drunk and just before Beck's Stereopathetic Soulmanure, but in a more global sense, in the neighborhood of Meat Puppets’ Too High To Die and Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. That feels like where Whiskey should live.

So, as we turn the corner into 1995, the Trees weren’t screaming, so much as idling. They recorded a little bit, but let’s focus on a couple different collaborations. Mad Season was a side project of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, AND Screaming Trees as it featured guitarist Mike McCready, singer Layne Staley, and drummer Barrett Martin. Bassist John Baker Saunders rounded out the quartet. I’ll be honest, the band doesn’t do much for me and that’s accounting for Lanegan’s two guest vocals. I was only gonna mention this album in passing, until I heard the bonus cuts on the 2013 Above reissue.

Amidst the hoopla of a live show and a DVD were three songs featuring Lanegan lead vocals and lyrics: “Locomotive,” “Black Book Of Fear,” and “Slip Away.” I was seriously tempted by “Locomotive” because it’s punishingly psychedelic, Martin providing a deep rolling pocket as McCready goes on a full wah wah bender. However, my choice came down to “Black Book” and “Slip Away,” both power ballads in the “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” family of anthem. I opted for “Black Book,” not because it’s better, but I feel like “Slip Away” is leading up to McCready’s guitar hero extravaganza, whereas “Black Book” is more minimalist and arranged around Mark’s vocal, which is why we’re all here, am I right?

Mad Season – “Black Book Of Fear”

It’s hard to go wrong with any Mark Lanegan song where the Devil makes an appearance. However, this track is here because of:

"This is a room where a crime scene’s staged
The burnt black book of fear tore out a page
This is a house where a crime scene’s staged"

That’s pure Lanegan. And how about some love for Barrett Martin? Dude was the secret weapon of Mad Season, credited with drums, percussion, standup bass, cello, marimba, and vibes. He plays drums and bells on “Black Book,” but I’m pretty sure he’s also the one playing keyboard in that ELP section right before McCready’s guitar solo.

There’s another 1995 collab worth discussing and that’s Mike Watt’s first solo album, Ball-Hog Or Tugboat, which features a rotating cast of indie rock all-stars, including Mark Lanegan and Lee Conner. Let’s start with Lanegan.

Mike Watt – “Max And Wells”

Mark Lanegan on lead vocals, Mike Watt on bass, J Mascis and Todd Rigione from Liquid Jesus on guitar, and Brock Avery from Wayne Kramer’s band on drums. If you’re like me, you’re wondering, “How the hell did the Liquid Jesus guy get this gig?” Haha. Anyway, “Max And Wells” is a deep cut in the Watt catalog. It’s a fIREHOSE song written by Watt, but sung by Ed Crawford, and you originally could only find it on A Matter Of Degrees, a 1991 soundtrack that also includes Uncle Tupelo, Alex Chilton, Grant Hart’s post-Hüskers band, Nova Mob, and eight years before David Fincher used it to close out Fight Club, the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?”

“Max And Wells” is a strange song in that it’s mostly skronky punk rock and the lyrics are spoken as much as sung. That’s kind of a classic Watt thing. But, towards the end of the song, at 2:14, is a beautiful bridge melody when Lanegan sings, “If it's a kite kit that you wanna fly/Then it'll be a kite that I'll fly.” The interesting part is that the original recording doesn’t really sound like that. Check this out.

fIREHOSE – “Max And Wells”

I’m curious if Lanegan heard the melody and brought it out OR Watt had misgivings about the recording and used Lanegan’s voice to correct the arrangement. Because the Lanegan version is substantially better than the fIREHOSE version and I like the fIREHOSE version.

The other Tree-related track on Ball-Hog is when Watt uses Eddie Vedder to remind us that the 1970s actually sucked, so maybe us Gen Xers shouldn’t spend so much time cupping saggy, old boomer balls.

Mike Watt – “Against The ‘70s”

Ed Ved - lead vocals, rhythm guitar
Lee Conner - supernova lead guitar
Watt - bass, vocals
Dave Grohl - drums
Krist Novoselic - farfisa
Carla Bozulich - backing vocals

That’s Mike Watt doing the “Helter Skelter” false fade with “Against The ‘70s” and check out this band. Eddie Vedder sings lead and I’ll get to that in a bit. That supernova lead guitar? Oh, just Lee Conner. Watt’s obviously on bass and his partner in the pocket is Dave Grohl, at a point when the Foo Fighters were barely a thing. Add his former bandmate, Krist Novoselic, on farfisa and the great Carla Bozulich of Geraldine Fibbers on backing vocals. That’s a gotdang powerhouse lineup and the only thing that would’ve made it better is if Vedder was replaced by Lanegan. In fact, in the multiverse in which I produce Ball-Hog, I’m assigning Vedder to “Max” explicitly so Lanegan can sing “Against The ‘70s.” Good Lord, that might've been the best song of the '90s. Two Trees, two Nirvanas, a Geraldine Fibber AND Watt??? Singing that shit? Mmmm.

So, while I'm not crazy about Vedder up front, if he has to be the delivery system for these brilliantly scathing lyrics, so be it.

"The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70's
It's not reality
Just someone else’s sentimentality

I wanna deep dive on one line in the song because it’s not necessarily obvious. When Vedder sings, “Stadium minds with stadium lies gotta make you laugh,” that’s a reference to the massive stadium rock shows of the 1970s. Watt has often referred to these shows as being like Nuremberg rallies, itself a reference to how the Nazis used rallies to maintain conformity and allegiance. In a 2014 interview with the blog, Steel For Brains, Watt explains that first-wave punk was as much social protest, as it was musical.

“I found out so much from these people in the scene because they were actually deeply committed to music and literature and movies. The problem was socially, they didn’t fit in so well, and especially that arena rock dynamic, where you’re just a little speck in a big sports arena. It’s kind of like a Nuremberg rally, whereas in a club you’re getting down to more individuals.”
—Mike Watt to Steel for Brains, Drove Up From Pedro: A Conversation With Mike Watt, August 13, 2014

That completely matches my reality. I’ll never forget seeing the Stones on the Steel Wheels tour in 1989. They were so far away, it may as well have been the cast of Night Court. It sucked. I felt then (and now) that people weren’t engaging with the music, so much as basking in the glow of celebrity. “THAT’S MICK JAGGER. HE’S FAMOUS.” I’d seen Mudhoney and the Flaming Lips at the Burro Room earlier in ’89 and even though I had no idea what I was seeing because I was such a newbie to punk and punk shows, I instinctively knew that my presence there mattered. My presence at the Stones was immaterial. The Stones were (and are) a corporate concern. They need attendance in the aggregate. The individual doesn’t matter. This is the secret lie of pop music, of mainstream music. It doesn’t take any effort. You’re rewarded simply for showing up.

Mudhoney and the Lips were playing the Burro Room for a reason. These were bands who needed money to gas up the van and floors to crash on. They needed you to attend their shows and if you wanted to actually speak to Mark Arm or Wayne Coyne or Dan Peters, you could do this crazy thing called walk up to them and talk to them. You ain’t fucking talking to Mick and Keef. You’re talking to their handlers’ handler. So, why is the Nuremberg rally compelling and, as Watt put it, “getting down to more individuals” is outlier behavior?

So many of my Gen X peers have turned into echo boomers, constantly in that ‘50s/‘60s/’70s headspace, prioritizing that culture, obsessing over its meaningless particulars, and I know because I was one of them! Nostalgia for someone else’s nostalgia is an act of self-negation. It’s you gaslighting yourself. And you’re doing it because Gen Xers have been gaslit, from day one, to deny the value of their own experiences. Or, the corollary to that, they’ve been devalued by gatekeeping garbage vendors.

For example, when Black Flag, Minutemen, Minor Threat, Meat Puppets, X, all these bands, hit the road in the early ‘80s, playing all-ages shows at YMCAs, VFWs, the Oddfellows Hall, and various backyards, who do you think dominated the audience? Who do think was the fuel for those bands? The boomers nodding their heads in the back? Fuck no. It was the Gen X teenagers at the front of the fucking stage. And yet, when boomers tell the story of punk, those Gen X teenagers are either violent hooligans OR written out of the story altogether.

Carla Bozulich, the badass singing backup to Vedder on “Against The ‘70s,” has a great quote that I put in the book. She said:

“Punk rock never caught on because radio couldn’t deal with the anti-establishment part. They took it personally and never gave punk any airplay. And now, basically, it has turned into generation after generation ignoring the underground.”
—Carla Bozulich to Arts Weekly, July 30, 1997

And who the fuck do you think was running radio and MTV in the 1990s, the establishment? A bunch of boomer dirtbags who stood to make millions by saturating the market with ‘60s/’70s legacy acts. They had no incentive to nurture the best bands of the decade – all of the bands I talk about here on Don’t Call It Nothing – because nurturing takes work and patience and developing relationships with promoters, booking agents, writers, producers, and the musicians themselves. I’m not saying, “Sign a contract and send ‘em out on tour.” I’m saying nurturing, old school A&R. But see, record labels are not — and have never been — in the music business. They’re in the profit business. They’re in the shareholder business. Shareholders want predictable profits and I’m here to tell you friends there is nothing more predictable than the nostalgia economy.

So, it was one thing for bands like the Screaming Trees to have to compete against their peers for airplay, ticket sales, and record sales. That’s kinda how it’s supposed to work. As I said in my aMiniature episode, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t care for Alice In Chains, but if their success and friendship motivated Lanegan and Lee Conner and the rest of the Trees to write better songs, then I’m all for Alice In Chains. The problem is that the Trees and Alice In Chains weren’t just competing with each other and other Gen X bands. They were also directly competing with the bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s, all of whom were reissuing their back catalogs throughout the ‘90s.

This rarely gets discussed, but there was a real world impact to ‘60s nostalgia. All that shit kicked in around 1986-87, when I was a junior-senior in high school. But, it was also right when CDs were becoming adopted. So, even though the 1990s saw an astonishing flowering of creativity in Gen X roots and rock ‘n’ roll, because it happened simultaneous with the flourishing of classic rock as both a radio format and market competitor, the mid-to-late ‘90s was the worst era for good, new rock ‘n’ roll bands since rock ‘n’ roll became a thing in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. The rock industry didn’t collapse a few years later because of illegal downloads or because kids wanted to be rappers and DJs instead of rock stars. Or, those were secondary issues. The rock industry collapsed because the rich idiot boomers in charge of rock segmented and cannibalized rock music for short-term profit instead nurturing the best music for long-term profit and general cultural health. BORING!

Part of my mission with this podcast is to have Gen Xers take pride in this subculture we nurtured. We were raised to self-deprecate and make jokes about everything because nothing supposedly mattered. Well, we’re grown-ass adults now. It’s ok to take stuff seriously. It’s ok to pat ourselves on the back a little bit, don’t go nuts, for creating and advocating for great music that existed on the margins of the mainstream. And it wasn’t just about the music. It was that the music was the by-product of healthy micro-scenes all over the country where individual Gen Xers – men, women, gay, straight – carved out our own spaces amidst a flurry of tedious and heavily marketed shareholder rock and classic rock. It’s ok to celebrate the best music of the decade, even if and especially when it wasn’t as popular as it was allowed to be. As Mark Lanegan sings, “All I know, should’ve been, could’ve been ours.”

Screaming Trees - “All I Know”
2 Meter Sessions, Dutch TV
November 16, 1996

From November 16, 1996, that’s the Screaming Trees – with a young Josh Homme* on rhythm guitar doing “All I Know” for 2 Meter Sessions, a Dutch music TV program that I believe is still going strong. That song gives you big riffs, thick drums, Lee throws down a badass solo, and he and Lanegan – the whole band, really – share a funny moment about two minutes in when Lee gets tangled up in his headphones and then wrestles them to the ground off-camera because when the camera cuts back to him he’s smiling like, “Did what I had to do, man. Stupid headphones.”

* Apologies to Josh, whose last name I inexplicably pronounced “hom” like “Tom” instead of Homme like “Tommy." I'm a dumbass. Sorry.

The only downside to that video is watching a disintegrated Lanegan. He’s not in great shape, his voice is ok, but he can’t hit the upper part of his register. And if you find any 1996-97 tour footage, you’re gonna see much of the same. This is what makes Dust, the Screaming Trees’ final proper album released in the summer of ‘96, kind of a miracle. Lanegan was self-immolating and taking the band down with him. And he knew it. It’s in the chorus of “Witness”:

“I could take you down with me
Show you lonely, lonely, lonely”

Screaming Trees – “Witness”

That’s the Screaming Trees with “Witness,” one of my favorite tracks on Dust, and one that totally anticipates the Gutter Twins because doesn’t that sound like the Afghan Whigs??? Maybe it’s just me. It sounds like the Trees divided by the Whigs. The song has commercial appeal, but not in a lame way, and I love that it showcases everybody in the band. Lanegan’s in fine voice, Van’s the melodic anchor on bass, and though Lee and Barrett are mostly restrained, they kick up some dust at the two-minute mark and shortly after the three-minute mark.

Songs like “Witness,” “All I Know,” and “Dying Days” are total classic rock jams and precisely the kinds of songs that afford me the luxury of ignoring actual classic rock. And to that end, it’s derelict of me that I haven’t yet mentioned producer George Drakoulias. Much as he did with The Jayhawks, Drakoulias wasn’t there to impose his stern vision of what the band should sound like. His genius was coaxing out what was already there. So, we get the classic rock Trees because that’s right in George’s wheelhouse. But, we also get the Trees experimenting with sitar rock evocative of Soundgarden (“Halo Of Ashes” and “Dime Western”). When I say those are two of my least favorite songs on Dust, I’m not saying I hate them. In fact, I respect the process of trying to incorporate new sounds into the band’s palette. My point is that Drakoulias was the kind of producer who could take a band down those two divergent paths and get the desired results.

But, GD was more than just a rock guy. There’s a moment on Dust where what the Trees need is a producer comfortable with country. Well, dude worked with the Jayhawks, so not an issue. And if you’re a Trees fan, you might be thinking, “Country song? What country song?” I’m talking about “Look At You,” which ends up being a psych pop masterpiece. But, that’s not how the song starts. It starts out like a Jim Reeves song. Here, lemme show you. And don’t worry, I’m gonna play this track in its entirety later, but I wanna do a compare and contrast so you know where I’m coming from.

When I hear the start of “Look At You” …

Screaming Trees – Look At You (first :45)

OK, let’s stop once the drums kick in because everyone knows you gotta mute the drums for the Nashville Sound. But, when I listen to how that opening stretch is arranged, this is what my brain hears:

Jim Reeves – He’ll Have To Go (first :45)

Jim Reeves - “He'll Have To Go”

You get a LOT more rootsy than Gentleman Jim Reeves, but “He’ll Have To Go” is country as hell. And Lanegan finds a space in that aesthetic that doesn’t just work, he makes it his own. Granted, it’s only 45 seconds and then the rock band kicks in. But, that appreciation for roots music is there and it manifested most assuredly on 1999’s I’ll Take Care Of You. But, Lanegan had already ventured into country music. On July 27, 1995, Lanegan entered Bad Animals studio in Seattle with a few friends to record Willie Nelson’s “She’s Not For You.”

Mark Lanegan – “She’s Not For You”

That’s Mark Lanegan on vocals, Mike Johnson on guitar, David Krueger on fiddle, Barrett Martin on standup bass, and our old friend Dan Peters on drums doing Willie Nelson’s “She’s Not For You.” The comp from which that track comes, Twisted Willie, was released in 1996, a few months before Dust, and it’s ok. Like pretty much every comp from that era, save a couple, there’s a few highlights, some pretty goods, and some stinkers. I love the Reverend Horton Heat’s take on “Hello Walls” and L7 doing “Three Days” (with a Waylon Jennings cameo) is sneaky awesome. But, Lanegan is the only one who can meet the serious material on its own terms.

Though most famous on 1973’s Shotgun Willie LP, “She’s Not For You” was originally a Chet Atkins-produced single from 1965. What’s interesting about the Lanegan arrangement is that it forgoes the steel sound that hovered over both Nelson recordings. Instead, David Krueger’s mournful fiddle plays that role and it totally works. Also, it’s a subtle decision, but Lanegan doesn’t even come in until 1:06, so the opening third of the song is a shuffling instrumental or, it’s almost like they began with the solo. Again, it totally works because Martin and Peters don’t do anything fancy. They just swing a light pocket and let the song breathe. That Lanegan’s vocal more than matches Nelson’s vocal should go without say.

What we have, then, is another example of roots music finding its way into rock ‘n’ roll. Gen Xers have been taught since the ‘90s that alt.country was this thing over here and indie rock and alternative rock were completely different things way over there. This is what happens when your own history and your own music is disrespected and devalued. The genius of the best Gen X musicians was that they instinctively understood roots and rock ‘n’ roll were the same thing. There was no over here and way over there. There was only here. The Screaming Trees understood this. Mark Lanegan DEFINITELY understood this. Which is why “Look At You” is a rousing rock anthem wrapped around a delicate country ballad. Learn it, know it, live it.

Screaming Trees – “Look At You”

I’m gonna close out today’s show with one final song, but before I do that I just wanna remind y’all, if you want a free book about ‘90s roots, rap, and rock ‘n’ roll, go to dontcallitnothing.squarespace.com/book and a PDF download will be available there for free. There’s also a Book button in the nav bar. So, while you’re there, check out the website, past episodes, and sign up for the podcast at the $5 or $20/month levels. Just hit the “Buy Me a Coffee” button at the top of the page or “Support” button at the bottom. Also, if you’re so inclined you can do the tip jar thing at PayPal and Venmo at dontcallitnothing@gmail.com. And if you know a Screaming Trees fan or Mark Lanegan fan who might enjoy this podcast, please share.

OK, so I wanna finish today’s podcast with arguably the greatest song the Trees ever did and it should’ve made them multimillionaires. “Look At You” is brilliant. “Traveler” is brilliant and that might actually feature Lanegan’s best vocal. But, “Sworn And Broken” is a fucking swooning masterpiece. It’s their “Hey Jude.” Benmont Tench’s Wurlitzer solo comes out of nowhere and God bless him for it. Lee Conner’s guitar tone is 100% jam and once again Lanegan demonstrates why he was probably the greatest rock singer of his era. Thanks for joining me on this journey through the Screaming Trees and Mark Lanegan discographies. Next episode will be the fourth and final installment. Talk to you next time.

Screaming Trees – “Sworn And Broken”

Screaming Trees, “Paperback Bible”

Lee Conner posted this hidden gem to his YouTube page late last year. If you know this song, it’s from the Ocean Of Confusion comp. But, there’s a little more to the story.

”Paperback Bible” was recorded in the winter of 1993-94 in Seattle as part of the unfinished and scrapped Don Fleming/John Angello produced follow-up to Sweet Oblivion. The version of this song that appears on the Ocean Of Confusion album has a vocal that Mark Lanegan recorded in 2005, shortly before the release of that compilation. It was also mixed and mastered at that time. This version is a rough mix done during the original sessions. Besides the vocal, there may be a few other slight differences, such as lyrics and percussion, but I think the instrumental tracks are the same as originally laid down. Van and I wrote this song in 1993 about Lanegan rolling a joint from a rice paper bible page while on the tours for Sweet Oblivion.”
—Lee Conner, November 12, 2021

Oh, Sweet Oblivion Feels Alright

Screaming Trees circa 1993
L-R: Barrett Martin, Lee Conner, Mark Lanegan, Van Conner

Podcast Episode 22 – Mark Lanegan & Screaming Trees: 1990-93

Mark Lanegan and Kurt Cobain in 1992 wearing wedding dresses, as one does

“If he sang about pain you believed it and if he sang about love you believed it.”
– Dave Grohl on Mark Lanegan

Welcome to Don't Call It Nothing, the podcast dedicated to the lost history of '90s roots, rap, and rock 'n' roll, and now officially based on the book of the same name. This is Lance Uehara Davis and when we last left them, the Screaming Trees were exiting the 1980s like a bullet wound. Three albums on SST and a double 7” on Sub Pop established the band as modern avatars of psychedelic rock. There was just one problem. As 1990 began, they had no label. That changed in late spring when they signed to Epic, but the label wasn’t exactly an acid rock think tank.

In Spin's “Oral History Of Screaming Trees’ ‘Nearly Lost You’”, bassist Van Conner says, “When we first signed, they didn’t know what to do with us. We were in the Epic Records heavy metal department. We were on a compilation called something like Blazing Metal with bands like Winger." [laughs] "She's Only 17." “Yard Trip #7.” It’s math metal, guys. It’s gonna be huge! So, while Epic was poking the Screaming Trees with a stick, trying to figure out what their new toy did, the individual Trees worked on their own projects. In fact, 1990 was a weirdly productive year FOR the Trees, just not AS the Trees.

Obviously, Mark Lanegan’s solo debut, The Winding Sheet, was the most significant of the 1990 releases, but I wanna start with the Conners. I remember it being late spring/early summer of 1990 when KCSC received a package from New Alliance Records. The label was started by D Boon, Mike Watt, and Martin Tamburovich when they were all still in The Reactionaries or had just switched over to calling themselves the Minutemen, at which point Martin dropped out of the band, but still helped run New Alliance. After D’s death, Watt and Tamburovich sold the label to SST and Greg Ginn turned it into an experimental subsidiary. Anyway, I cracked open this mysterious package and inside were four albums:

• Jack Brewer Band (singer/lyricist from Saccharine Trust) - Rockin' Ethereal

• Taste Test #1 – A double vinyl compilation of live performances from Loyola Marymount’s radio station, KXLU. Most of the tracks were recorded 1986-87, but the two D Boon tracks were recorded in ’83 and ’84, respectively. We get a couple fIREHOSE songs, brilliant spoken word from Watts poet, Wanda Coleman, and Screaming Trees covering Cream’s “Tales Of Brave Ulysses.”

• Purple Outside – Mystery Lane

• Solomon Grundy – S/T

Those last two albums are relevant to our story because Purple Outside was Lee Conner’s side project and Solomon Grundy was Van Conner’s side band. Both records are … pretty good. Mystery Lane is a proper homage to psychedelia, but Lee isn’t the strongest singer and his voice is way up in the mix singing LOTS of words. This may have been youthful arrogance. Lee is a way better singer now, in his 50s, than he was in his 20s, not because he can hit more notes, but because he has the artistic maturity to know where his voice needs to sit inside of an arrangement. That said, Mystery Lane also has moments where you’re reminded, “Oh yeah, this motherscratcher’s in the Screaming Trees, isn’t he?”

Purple Outside – “Combination Of The 3”

Mmm … Raw Power all up in this piece. That’s Lee Conner on bass, vocals, and battlefield lead guitar and little brother Patrick on drums. The song is “Combination Of The 3” from Purple Outside’s Mystery Lane.

There’s nothing quite that intense on Solomon Grundy’s self-titled debut, but they sound a lot more fun.

Solomon Grundy – “Out There”

That’s Solomon Grundy with Van Conner on lead vocals and rhythm guitar. In retrospect, maaaaybe we should’ve seen the Dinosaur Jr hookup coming. That song is totally Dinosaur III, from the opening riff, to those distinctive Mascis drum fills, to the way Lee McCullough’s lead guitar leaps out of the arrangement, going heavy on the tremolo bar. The other influence I hear in the band is Grant Hart, not just in the drumming, but also in some of the songwriting. Those prodigious influences noted, this is very much a first record. A little samey after awhile, it probably would’ve been a perfect EP. Incidentally, those drums fills are courtesy of Sean Hollister, who’d briefly join the Trees after Mark Pickerel quit the band later in 1990, roughly around the same time Van left to tour with Dino Jr. the first time.

Wanna hear something weird? The name of that Solomon Grundy song is “Out There.” It’s the album’s leadoff track. And while that doesn’t seem to be a particularly distinctive title, three years later Dinosaur Jr released the album Where You Been. Its leadoff track? “Out There.”

Speaking of Pickerel, once he laid down his drum parts for Uncle Anesthesia in late ’90, he bounced, the only member of the Screaming Trees to ever leave the band. I get it. It’s not that they’d been a struggling band for five long years, with a lot of time in close proximity, sharing strong opinions, and with increasingly higher (and more stressful) professional stakes. It’s that these guys had known each other since they were kids, so you know how it is. Sometimes you just need a new environment, new influences, new ideas to consider.

So, Pickerel formed a new band called Truly. It initially featured himself on drums, Chris Quinn on bass, and Robert Roth on vocals and guitar. Then they recruited Hiro Yamamoto into the band – that’s Soundgarden’s original bassist – so Quinn switched to guitar. For me, it’s mostly generic psychedelia and what came to be called grunge. “Married In The Playground” is the one song that jumped out to me for having a pop sensibility, almost a Joe Jackson vibe.

Truly – “Married In The Playground”

That’s “Married In The Playground” from Truly’s 1991 debut, the Heart And Lungs EP. This was Mark Pickerel’s group following his departure from the Trees in the fall of ‘90.

Which brings us to Mark Lanegan. He, too, used 1990 as a springboard into a future without the band. And lo, it was very good.

Mark Lanegan – “Woe”

From his 1990 solo debut, The Winding Sheet, that’s the late Mark Lanegan with “Woe.” That’s W-O-E, not W-O-A-H, like Keanu Reeves found a chicken nugget in his pocket. Anyhoo, I wanna do something a little different. Since all the songs from this point forward are in my book, Don’t Call It Nothing: The Lost History of ‘90s Roots, Rap & Rock ‘n’ Roll – available for free at dontcallitnothing.squarespace.com – I’m gonna read my reviews from the book. I’ll also discuss their placement relative to each year’s Top 10 or 20 to see if it should be higher, lower, or is about right. And of course, I’ll insert music along the way. Let’s start with The Winding Sheet.

Recorded when the future of the Screaming Trees was very much in doubt, lead singer Mark Lanegan dialed down the psychedelia in favor of dark, stripped-down folk blues. While technically Lanegan’s solo debut, I’d argue that it’s actually a duo record. Mike Johnson, not-yet-bassist of Dinosaur Jr., co-produced The Winding Sheet, co-wrote 2/3rds of the songs, and played electric and acoustic guitar throughout. Jack Endino was the other producer and he also played bass, while Mark Pickerel from the Trees sat in on drums. Steve Fisk added moody organ and piano to four tracks and Justin Williams added violin to two, bowing the instrument so low so that it sounded more like a cello. Lanegan’s wounded baritone sings about self-doubt, paranoia, loneliness, shame, and of course addiction. Something he knew all too well. Parts of the album are so raw that some songs, like “Undertow” and “Woe,” almost sound like suicide notes and “Juarez” is like the accidental soundtrack to an overdose.

The Winding Sheet originally began life in 1989 as a side project for Lanegan, Pickerel, and two other Seattle musicians: Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic from Nirvana. Calling themselves The Jury, they demoed four Leadbelly covers and one of those ended up on this album, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” It obviously became world famous in the hands of Nirvana a few years later, but the template was laid down here, with Novoselic on bass, Cobain on electric guitar, and Lanegan on raging, haunted vocals. Kurt’s version of the song owes everything to the Screaming Tree. You can’t blame him for wanting to steal from the best.

Mark Lanegan – “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”

Listen to the wonderfully tortured and yet surprisingly subtle “Ugly Sunday.” The lyrics are pure Seattle (“I’m drunk half blind and it’s an ugly Sunday morning/The wind arrives with the clouds refusing to break/Apart ... like me”), and the spacious arrangement was clearly a template for Cobain and Co. Arpeggiated guitars create an ominous air, but give a wide berth to the vocals. Pickerel’s drums build tension throughout by adding little fills and rolls. In the final :40, as Lanegan croons up high, Mike Johnson’s scratchy, “Venus In Furs” electric guitar takes us to the fade out.

Dave Grohl subsequently admitted that the album was a huge influence on him personally, as well as on Nirvana preparing for that acoustic performance.

“Kurt looked up to Lanegan, and his first solo record, The Winding Sheet, is one of the best albums of all time. That was the soundtrack to my first six months in Olympia [Washington]. I listened to it every day – when the sun wouldn’t come up, when it went down too early, and when it was cold and raining. I was lonely. I’d listen to that record for reasons. It was a huge influence on our Unplugged thing.”
—Dave Grohl to Austin Scaggs, Rolling Stone, July 14, 2005

That’s the end of the Grohl quote and my review of Winding Sheet in my book. I think that’s a pretty good summation of the album. After Lanegan died, Grohl had another fantastic quote. He said of Mark, “If he sang about pain you believed it and if he sang about love you believed it.” Aside from the fact that pain and love are usually the same thing [chuckles], Grohl nails it. We’ve heard pain songs in “Woe” and “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” How about some love? I wanna play the second verse of “Wild Flowers” because the words kill me and then the first appearance of the Lanegan falsetto revives me and then kills me again. This is what we call in show business, “a pantydropper.”

Mark Lanegan – “Wild Flowers”

How good is that? Mark Lanegan and his falsetto with the second verse of “Wild Flowers.” “You could have taken me anywhere/You just take it away.” That’s the good shit, right there.

I wanna play the final song on the album in its entirety because it speaks to Dave Grohl’s quote about Lanegan having such commitment and capital fucking A Authenticity in everything he did, be it pain-centric or love-centric. Also, listen to the backup vocals. Grohl straight-up lifted those for his Unplugged backups, which was smart! OK, here’s Mark Lanegan with “I Love You Little Girl.”

Mark Lanegan – “I Love You Little Girl”

I have The Winding Sheet as the 16th best album of 1990, just behind:

15. Chris Gaffney & The Cold Hard Facts – S/T

14. Bob Mould – Black Sheets Of Rain

13. Bongwater – The Power Of Pussy

12. Jawbreaker – Unfun

11. Flaming Lips – In A Priest Driven Ambulance

Portland, Oregon, February 9, 1990

Honestly, I think 16 is about right. The number is less important to me than tiers or groupings and this feels like an appropriate grouping. Those are all killer records that hit me in a similar place. That said, I’ll bump up Lanegan to 13, before Bongwater, but after Jawbreaker.

If anything, Winding Sheet at 13 speaks to the depth of 1990. I mean, it has to be a good year if In A Priest Driven Ambulance hits the ceiling at 11, right? So, here’s my Top 10 for 1990.

10. Bedlam Rovers – Frothing Green

9. A Tribe Called Quest – People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm

8. Soul Asylum – And The Horse They Rode In On

7. Ice Cube – AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted

6. Breeders – Pod

5. Dwight Yoakam – If There Was A Way

4. Public Enemy – Fear Of A Black Planet

3. Fugazi – Repeater

2. Uncle Tupelo – No Depression

1. Sonic Youth – Goo

Yep. I still like that Top 10 as is. It’s a good mix of show business and handstamps, headliners and opening acts. Sonic Youth, PE, Cube, Quest, and maybe the Breeders were all pretty commercial in 1990. Dwight Yoakam, obviously, was pretty dang popular within country circles, but that audience is so self-segregrating, I would actually be shocked if a Sonic Youth or Breeders fan IN 1990 was even passingly familiar with Dwight Yoakam. So, you got Fugazi, massive in little punk rock embassies all over America, but virtually non-existent everywhere else. Uncle Tupelo was getting buzz at CMJ in 1990, but in the real world they were invisible. Same with Bedlam Rovers.

Consider this: I referenced sixteen killer albums just in 1990. Friends, I assure you that EVERY year in the decade is equally stocked with greatness. Yeah, some years are better than others, but 1990 is not an outlier in any respect. And those are just the albums. Each year also produced a number of singles and EPs that deserve mentioning. For example, the Screaming Trees released their major label debut in the fall of 1990 as a four-song single, “Something About Today,” which included a note saying, “These songs may be on the forthcoming Epic release Uncle Anesthesia, but then again, they may not.” Well, two of em made Uncle as is, the title track made it in a more polished form, and then there was “Who Lies In Darkness,” decent, but generic, lightly Beatley psychedelia UNTIL the two-minute mark, when the Trees put on their Who capes and give us 30 seconds of cacophony a la “The Ox.” The song then goes back into the regular verse and chorus, which is where we’re gonna pick up the action because “Darkness” is all setup for the final minute.

Screaming Trees – “Who Lies In Darkness”

FYI, I’ve edited the text for “Something About Today” and it and other edits have matriculated to an updated version of the book. I probably should’ve mentioned that earlier. It’s mostly small stuff. If you go to my book tab, I actually have a list of my edits and explanations, as well as an updated PDF. Anyway, the text for “Something About Today” is as follows:

I originally had this with EPs, but because it’s only four songs I should’ve included it with Singles. Whatever the case, it’s not on Spotify, but the songs “Uncle Anesthesia” and “Ocean Of Confusion” are the versions from the album. “Who Lies In Darkness” would later appear on the Ocean Of Confusion comp, which was released in 2005. The only song that’s truly rare is the semi-acoustic “Something About Today” (aka the Numb Inversion Version). Overall, this is the Trees at close to their best. The sound is fantastic, Lanegan’s voice is typically awesome, Lee Conner’s guitar leads are savage, and the Van Conner (bass)/Mark Pickerel (drums) rhythm section rolls and tumbles.

Yep. Works for me. And don’t sleep on “Something About Today.” The version that made the album dials up the Beatles psychedelia, so that it’s primo, 1966 “Taxman”/”Rain” Beatles filtered through the Trees. I love how Lee plays multiple guitar parts, including guitars so phased out and compressed they sound like keyboards, at which point the band goes into a vaguely Indian modal rhythm reminiscent of The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High.”

Screaming Trees – “Something About Today”

Here’s the review of Uncle Anesthesia from my book:

Like a rich man’s Jim Morrison fronting a poor man’s Cream [laughs]. But, instead of Morrison’s cartoonish darkness or the Cream playing billions of notes but not knowing how to write a fucking song, the Trees pulled in the best elements of these reference points – and SST bands like Black Flag and Hüsker Dü – and turned them into diamonds. From the purview of 2021, the band might seem like brooding baritone genius Mark Lanegan and random backing musicians. But make no mistake, the Trees were weaponized by guitarist, bandleader, and principal song shaper, Gary Lee Connor. Lanegan was the lyricist, but Lee was the tree who made the band scream. His guitar work combined with brother Van Connor’s muscular, loping bass and drummer Mark Pickerel’s heavy, rolling bottom produced multiple fuzzy, melodic, psychedelic anthems. “Alice Said” has always been a personal fave, but other highlight tracks include “Story Of Her Fate,” “Beyond This Horizon” (with particularly fierce drumming by Pickerel), “Time For Light” (with Pickerel and Gary Lee battling for song supremacy), and “Disappearing,” which features a killer trumpet part from Jeff McGrath.

Screaming Trees – “Time For Light”

My review continued:

Uncle Anesthesia was the band’s first album on a major label, Epic. As for why they decided to sign with Epic, Lee explained in 2019:

“One of the reasons we decided to try for a major was because of the Meat Puppets getting signed and taken from SST [to London Records]. It at least looked like something that was possible, plus we had kind of reached a plateau, doing an album a year and touring a couple of times. Everything we had ever done had taken us a little higher audience-wise and that looked like a way to do that. I know that Soundgarden was signed (to A&M) with Louder Than Love but I think the label probably saw them as some kind of metal band. One of the main reasons we brought Chris Cornell in to co-produce was that we thought he had a clearer idea of what the band was about than (co-producer and engineer) Terry (Date), who had produced a lot of metal albums and if there was anything we were not, it was metal.”
–Gary Lee Connor to Daz Lawrence, Reprobate Press, April 19, 2019

Yeah, I stand by all of that and the beginning is particularly good. I don’t remember writing any of it [chuckles]. But, I want the last words on this album to go to Lee Conner, who wrote about Uncle Anesthesia, the album AND song, a couple weeks ago on the Trees’ Facebook page.

“We didn't approach making our first major label album much differently than the ones that came before it. We were just doing the same thing in a bigger studio with a few more tracks. Even though Mark had moved to Seattle by this point, I continued to give Mark tapes of songs I had written and he would choose the ones we would be working on and recording. The one exception is the title track, Uncle Anesthesia, which was a collaboratory effort preshadowing the writing style on Sweet Oblivion by a year. I had given Mark a song called Nightbird, which had much of the musical and melodic elements of the song. As a band, (we) were working on a track that Mark had written lyrics to which had something to do with a Jekyll and Hyde type character. Somehow he got the idea to put the two together, wrote new lyrics and Uncle Anesthesia (the song) was born. As far as I can tell the "wrong turn to Jahannam" lyric is a reference to the Islamic concept of hell. Then there's the lyric "sweet ass summertime." You can almost hear a laugh behind Mark's voice on that line. Maybe we should have gotten a parental warning sticker for that one...”
--Lee Conner on the Screaming Trees Facebook page, March 19, 2022

Screaming Trees
”Windows” / ”Uncle Anesthesia” (3:00) / ”Change Has Come” (7:00)
Teatro Castello, Rome, Italy
July 2, 1992

FYI: The podcast version of “Uncle” comes from Bogart’s in Long Beach, CA, November 7, 1992, a show I was at and the last time I saw the band perform.

The Screaming Trees with the title track to Uncle Anesthesia. I have the album at 18 in my 1991 overview and if you think that’s low, here’s the Top 20. Not a lot of dead weight.

20. Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Weld

19. Violent Femmes – Why Do Birds Sing?

18. Screaming Trees – Uncle Anesthesia

17. Cypress Hill – S/T

16. Eleventh Dream Day – Lived To Tell

15. Sister Double Happiness – Heart And Mind

14. Mudhoney – Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

13. Superchunk – No Pocky For Kitty

12. Fugazi – Steady Diet Of Nothing

11. Public Enemy – Apocalypse ‘91: The Enemy Strikes Black

Lee Conner filled up with the spirit

Lemme quickly address Uncle Anesthesia’s ranking. 18 might seem low if you have no context. But, when you consider how many other great albums were also released in ‘91, 16-18 feels right. So, I’m gonna bump it up to 16, to just in front of Eleventh Dream Day’s Lived To Tell. But, this is just a solid year. Here’s the Top 10.

10. Teenage Fanclub – Bandwagonesque

9. Nova Mob – Last Days Of Pompeii

8. Ice Cube – Death Certificate

7. fIREHOSE – Flyin’ The Flannel

6. Matthew Sweet – Girlfriend

5. De La Soul – De La Soul Is Dead

4. A Tribe Called Quest – The Low End Theory

3. Flat Duo Jets – Go Go Harlem Baby

2. Nirvana – Nevermind

1. Uncle Tupelo – Still Feel Gone

Good God, what a year. That list of albums is nuts. As for the Trees, their year both literally and metaphorically hit a nasty patch of ice. Lee explains in a post that I believe was also on the Trees Facebook page. He says:

This was the tour for Uncle Anesthesia with Dan Peters on drums. Das Damen opened a large number of the shows, as well as some other bands along the way. The tour started well. For the first time we had an equipment van and another minivan for the band. Several days in, however, an accident wiped out our equipment van on icy roads in Wyoming with Mark Lanegan in it and two of our road guys, Jimmy Shoaf and Jim Vincent. Amazingly, even though the van was totaled, no one was seriously hurt. The wreck shook everyone up, but after regrouping in Chicago after a few canceled shows we started up again. The shows all had good crowds and things kept going, but the psychological toll of the wreck was showing in the larger amount of drinking and debauchery that was occurring. By the time we got to Florida everyone had had it and the remaining shows were canceled and we went home. After a few months, we started working on a new record that would become Sweet Oblivion.
--Lee Conner on the Screaming Trees Facebook page, March 19, 2022

L-R: Barrett Martin, Lee Conner, Mark Lanegan, Van Conner

So, the Uncle Anesthesia tour crashed and burned in late May and the band essentially ground to a halt until drummer Barrett Martin joined the band in December. The Sweet Oblivion sessions convened in New York in March, but between December and March the band rehearsed their ass off. If you wanna know the secret sauce to the album’s thunderous sound, it was practice.

Earlier this month, Barrett reflected on those sessions and I highly recommend you subscribe to his Facebook newsletter. I’m certainly not gonna quote his whole post, but this little snippet gets to the heart of it. Martin writes:

“We usually got the basic track within the first 3-4 takes because we were so well-rehearsed. Sometimes it was even the 2nd take that had the magic we wanted. We’d often keep a take even if there was a slight mistake in it. A great basic track, even with a slight mistake or flaw, always has more life and character than a technically perfect performance with no soul. That’s because a great song represents life itself, full of mistakes and flaws and soul. And as every Screaming Trees fan knows, the Trees were all about the soul. That became our benchmark – does the song have soul or not?”
--Barrett Martin on Facebook, March 6, 2022

You tell me.

Screaming Trees - “Dollar Bill” (acoustic)
Radiohuset, Stockholm, Sweden
August 2, 1993

From Don’t Call It Nothing: The Lost History of ‘90s Roots, Rap & Rock ‘n’ Roll – page 304 if you’re keeping track at home – here’s my review of Sweet Oblivion, with songs mixed in along the way.

This is the band that should have all of Pearl Jam’s stupid money. The Trees got lumped in with grunge, but Sweet Oblivion is psychedelic rock, the full realization of the indulgent bluster of the late 1960s. For many people, the only thing they know about this band is singer Mark Lanegan and his wounded hellfire croon. “Dollar Bill” and “Troubled Times” are highlights, but his singing throughout is on point. Lanegan was also responsible for the album’s lyrics, which more or less came together after an extended writing/drinking session.

“We never knew what Lanegan was going to do with songs. Sometimes he’d come with ideas and sometimes he’d do things in the spur of the moment. At one point, half of the songs didn’t have lyrics or even titles. He disappeared for three days and when he came back he was hungover after being on a binge. Not only did he have all the lyrics, he sang everything, too. I don’t know how he did that – whether it was an epiphany or he had it planned all along.”
–Lee Conner to James Hickie, Kerrang!, May 29, 2020

However, if you think the Screaming Trees were Mark Lanegan and backing band, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. The Conner boys, Van on bass and Gary Lee on guitar, were ESSENTIAL to the Trees. Van wrote the band’s biggest hit (“Nearly Lost You”) and his wiggly, thunderous bass anchors these tracks. Meanwhile, Lee Conner remains one of the great unheralded guitarists and song arrangers of the era. Dude would get so filled up with the spirit that he’d roll around on stage, unleashing an unholy thunderstorm from his battered, beautiful guitar. And as much as I loved the Trees with Mark Pickerel, there’s no denying that new drummer Barrett Martin was an even better fit. His snare pop, rolling fills, and heavy right foot gave these songs the sturdy backbone they needed. From the first song on the album (“Shadow Of The Season”) you can hear the difference, but his drumming on “The Secret Kind” is monstrous.

Screaming Trees – “The Secret Kind”

FYI: The podcast version of “Secret Kind” comes from that same Bogart’s show in Long Beach, CA, November 7, 1992.

“(Sweet Oblivion) was the first time we actually rehearsed very much. And Mark actually came to rehearsals and sang. He hardly ever did that before or after this album. Barrett had a great place for us to rehearse so we spent a lot of time learning the songs for once. ‘Winter Song’ was the only one we didn’t do much because it was a last minute addition.”
–Lee Conner to Daz Lawrence, Reprobate Press, April 19, 2019

The band’s secret sauce was, as mundane as it sounds, songwriting. Not just Lanegan’s lyrics, which are tonally perfect for the music, but the actual arrangements. Unlike so many of the classic psychedelic acts that get all the credit for being innovators (Jefferson Airplane, the Dead, Cream, even The Who), the Trees wrote songs with melody and guitar solos, but they mostly jammed econo. The longest track on Sweet Oblivion is 5:20 (“Troubled Times”), but three songs could’ve been released as old school AM radio singles: “The Secret Kind” (3:08), “More Or Less” (3:11), and “Butterfly” (3:22). There’s no chaff on Sweet Oblivion. The worst song on the record is still good and every verse, chorus, bridge, guitar lead, breakdown, and drum fill has a purpose.

Producer Don Fleming deserves a decent share of credit in this regard. Given his recent work with Sonic Youth (Goo), Dinosaur Jr (original version of “The Wagon”), Teenage Fanclub (Bandwagonesque), Hole (Pretty On The Inside), and Dim Stars (Dim Stars), Fleming was a guy who was more than comfortable with big rock sounds, but always in the service of the song. One addition he makes – and I’m not sure who the musician is – but there’s a driving, Nicky Hopkins-esque piano slightly buried in the mix of “Butterfly” and it’s the perfect addition to the song.

Screaming Trees – “Butterfly”

That’s the Screaming Trees with “Butterfly” from Sweet Oblivion, my #2 album of 1992, only trailing the Beasties’ Check Your Head. I’m good with that placement, although I feel like I should elaborate on the idea of Barrett Martin being a better fit with the Trees. I think Pickerel was the drummer the band needed until Martin became the drummer the band needed. There’s kind of a Mike Heidorn/Ken Coomer thing going on here. Heidorn was Uncle Tupelo’s original drummer and, like Mark Pickerel, went to high school with his bandmates long before they were in a band. I think there’s something akin to brother harmonies when untrained musicians growing up together learn to play together. They develop a unique vocabulary that can’t help but come out in their music. This is probably more obvious in Heidorn’s schizoid, stop/start drumming with early Tupelo than Pickerel’s frenzied drumming with the Trees, but neither was a classically heavy drummer. Heidorn was technically replaced by Bill Belzer, but from a recording standpoint the next man in line for Tupelo was Ken Coomer. What did Tweedy say? “With Mike, I was playing and singing and hoping that I was playing somewhere near where the bass drum was. With Coomer there was no doubt where the bass drum was: it was right up my fucking ass” [laughs] (Wilco: Learning How to Live, p. 73).

Martin brought a similar ass-adjacent kick drum, as we heard on “The Secret Kind.” It’s fair to say that when the Conners started rehearsing with Barrett, first at The Foundry in Seattle and then at Martin’s loft, his massive presence behind the kit opened up their songwriting. Martin could hit all the fills, but then had deep pocket, Bonham-esque heavocity. It’s like the Conners and Lanegan were painters and had new colors available to them. I’d say there’s a similar dynamic in early-to-mid ‘90s Flaming Lips where Nathan Roberts was fine, but Steven Drozd’s cement bunker drums really allowed Wayne Coyne the freedom to experiment and develop as a songwriter because he knew whatever came into his Willy Wonka head was going to come out the other side sounding thunderous.

So, by September 1992, the drum seat was settled, the Screaming Trees released Sweet Oblivion into the wild, and fate in the form of the Singles soundtrack, which included “Nearly Lost You” as its lead single, smiled upon the band. This should’ve been the coming-out party for the Trees – and in a pure transactional sense, I suppose it was – but the music business is run by men with long memories. And if you cut your previous tour short because you were too drunk to perform and subsequently appear on David Letterman with the lead singer sporting a black eye and the drummer’s arm in a sling, well, that’s how you end up opening for Alice In Chains and then the fucking Spin Doctors.

That Spin Doctors tour was actually the MTV Alternative Nation Tour and what makes it so painful in retrospect is not just the dumb branding, but that the Trees were opening for the Spin Doctors who were opening for Soul Asylum. Now, Soul Asylum headlining made sense for multiple reasons. They’d been at it since 1981, were as good as any live band from 1986-91, and were riding the dual waves of Clinton fairy dust and a milk carton video. BUT THE SPIN DOCTORS??? To have the Trees opening for those chuckledicks is beyond insulting. Imagine getting only 35-40 minutes of face-melting acid rock, but 50 minutes of—

Spin Doctors - “Little Miss Can't Be Wrong”

Sigh. I’m not saying I’d develop a heroin habit, but I’d damn sure be drunk all the damn time. And that is what happened, but rather than belabor the dumb rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle nonsense, I wanna go out on a more righteous note.

Outro

In fact, I’m gonna close out today’s show with one final song, so before I do that I just wanna remind y’all, if you want a free book about ‘90s roots, rap, and rock ‘n’ roll, go to dontcallitnothing.squarespace.com/book and a PDF download will be available there for free. There’s also a Book button in the nav bar. While you’re there, check out the website, past episodes, and sign up for the podcast at the $5 or $20/month levels. Just hit the “Buy Me a Coffee” button at the top of the page or “Support” at the bottom. Also, if you are so inclined you can kick me a few bucks in a tip jar kinda way at PayPal and Venmo dontcallitnothing@gmail.com. Thanks for joining me on this journey through the Screaming Trees and Mark Lanegan discographies. Next time will be Part 3 and I’m guessing we go through to Dust, leaving post-Dust to the end of the decade as Part 4. If you know a Screaming Trees fan who might enjoy this podcast, please share.

In the meantime, let’s close out Part 2 by visiting 1993. That year, The Walkabouts (from Seattle) released Satisfied Mind, a solid covers record that was maybe more folk than country, but in a Neil Young kinda way. Excellent renditions of Nick Cave (“Loom Of The Land”) and Gene Clark (“Polly”), Ivan Kral and his guitar do Patti Smith ("Free Money"), but the showstopper is Charlie Rich's “Feel Like Going Home.” It's an 8-minute song, which I normally find suspect. But when Lanegan comes in at 2:19 at "Cloudy skies are closing in," it hits like a bag of hammers. I'm not gonna say something crazy like it's better than the Charlie original. But, it's THIS close because Mark Lanegan put everyone on his back and carried them there. Massive performance. I love how Glenn Slater swoops in on Hammond to set up Lanegan. Also, Terri Moeller's drumming on this track is excellent. I love how she drags the beat waaay back in the pocket. All right guys, enjoy. I’ll talk to you next time with more from Mark Lanegan and the Screaming Trees.

The Walkabouts (w/Mark Lanegan) – “Feel Like Going Home”

Remember When Nirvana Opened for the Screaming Trees???

Portland, Oregon, 1990

Autographed Anesthesia

Uncle Anesthesia signed by the Trees. Please note Dan Peters’ signature in the middle of the cover. Pretty sure I got this signed after the Burro Room show with Redd Kross.

House is Dark and Everybody’s Happy

Rick McGinnis with a great photo of Mark Lanegan, eyes closed, cracking up, Conner boys chillin, and Dan Peters in that six month-ish window when he was drumming for the Trees (Uncle Anesthesia tour, early 1991).
L-R: Lee Conner, Dan Peters, Van Conner, Mark Lanegan

Podcast Episode 21 – Early Lanegan: Young Trees

L-R: Mark Lanegan, Mark Pickerel, Van Conner & Lee Conner

Welcome to Don't Call It Nothing, the podcast dedicated to the lost history of '90s roots, rap, and rock 'n' roll, and now officially based on the book of the same name. This is Lance Davis of the Uehara Clan and today we’re doing some pre-history due to the recent passing of Mark Lanegan. He was a Screaming Tree, a Gutter Twin, a solo artist, a surprisingly versatile duet partner, a surprisingly sensitive songwriter, and possessor of an otherworldly voice that sounded like a 100-year-old blues singer got stuck inside a surly poet rocker from rural Washington. That Lanegan made it to 57 is kind of a minor miracle. There were long stretches of the ‘90s when his name getting called in Dead Rock Star Bingo felt inevitable, almost cliché. Much respect to him for not only surviving, but thriving for as long as he did. Think about it. Dude had a 35-year career and he never went through a lame commercial phase or went emo or did anything but be Mark fucking Lanegan.

I met him exactly once. It was March 1991, the Trees did a quickie 10-day west coast tour with Redd Kross and the pair played the Burro Room in Chico. This tour would’ve made more sense three years earlier, when RK was touring the rockier Neurotica or three years later when they were touring the rockier Phaseshifter. It also would’ve helped had Roy McDonald been on drums. Unfortunately, in 1990, Redd Kross put out a weak, ‘70s pop pastiche called Third Eye that had a few good songs, but zero bottom end. It was so thin, like it was mixed for the mainstream adult pop market. Because of this Redd Kross should’ve opened. However, in 1991 Redd Kross had been around for 12-13 years and had a few classics under their belt. “Annette’s Got The Hits.” “Linda Blair.” Teen Babes From Monsanto. They’d earned the headlining spot and I’m almost positive they had a way higher guarantee. So, Screaming Trees played first, then Redd Kross.

Portland, Oregon, 1991

The Trees came out, no nonsense, and launched into a 45-minute set of face-melting psych rock. Uncle Anesthesia was only a few weeks old, so we got a bunch of those songs, plus cherrypicking from the back catalog. Lanegan was positioned behind the mic stand where he didn’t move for the rest of the set. You don’t need Lanegan struttin around like Anthony Kiedis when you have guitarist and middle linebacker Lee Conner, to Lanegan’s right – and three feet away from me right up front – rolling around on stage while playing divebomb guitar. In fact, one of the things that made the Screaming Trees so performatively unique is that Lee was their frontman, not Lanegan. We’re so accustomed to the lead singer being the frontman (or frontwoman) that to see an inversion of this band structure can be discomfiting, like they’re doing it wrong.

On the other side of the Burro Room stage that night, to Lanegan’s left, big little brother Van was layin the wood on bass. And he was locked into drummer – not Mark Pickerel, who quit the previous fall – but Dan Peters. This was in that weird period when Mudhoney was kinda sorta broken up and remember, Dan spent the summer of 1990 dating Nirvana, but then found out Nirvana was all heart emojis for Dave Grohl. We know how that worked out. Peters then joined the Trees for a spell and, lucky for me, this show was part of that spell. You wanna know what Dan Peters sounds like with the Trees? Here’s the band two months after I saw them, on May 16, 1991, at the Chestnut Cabaret in Philly. The song is “Something About Today,” which was on Uncle Anesthesia, but was also the title track to a 12” single released the previous fall, technically the Trees’ major label debut.

Screaming Trees (w/Dan Peters), Chestnut Cabaret, Philadelphia, May 16, 1991
”Something About Today” starts at 22:31

So, the Burro Room gets 45 minutes of that and then here comes Redd Kross in flared bellbottoms and polyester blouses, all smiles and show business, and they give us:

Lemme be clear. I’m a Redd Kross fan. I get why they were headlining. But, that version of Redd Kross was not prepared to follow a crossfire hurricane like the Screaming Trees. I think of all the mediocre rock bands that became household names in the ‘90s – Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Collective Soul, et cetera – the Trees smoked all of em. But, because the Conners were big boys, not pretty boys, and maybe because Lanegan was a little too unpredictable, the gatekeepers didn’t know what to do with the Screaming Trees. God forbid they get commercial radio airplay or MTV exposure. If it wasn’t for Singles becoming a phenomenon and the Trees smuggling in “Nearly Lost You” in its wake, they’d have little to no mainstream presence now. Thank heaven for small favors.

Oh, and I said I met Lanegan. It was nothing special. After the show, he was sitting by himself at the bar in the band room. It was kinda strange, actually. That was a massive show for Chico. The show was sold out, so there was considerable post-show chaos. And yet somehow Lanegan silo’ed himself at a single bar stool with no one around him. So, I kept it quick. I thanked him for the show and The Winding Sheet, which had been released only a few months earlier. In fact, I told him it was getting a lot of airplay on KCSC, where I was DJing and a lot of the DJs were there that night, so he was happy to hear that. Rather than stretch for a double, I was happy with the single. I left him to his gin and tonic and went to the sidewalk, where Van was holding court and selling merch out of the back of the van. That’s the way it was done back then, kids [laughs].

What I wanna do today is go backwards a few years, to when the Trees were still figuring out who they were and what they wanted to sound like. And then we’ll move forward until right before they got signed to Epic in 1990. This is the story of Mark Lanegan and the Screaming Trees in the 1980s, but it’s the story of a lot of elite bands in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Most of these bands didn’t start out great. They evolved into greatness as they built on their influences and figured out what worked. Hell, listen to the Trees’ first cassette, Other Worlds from 1985, and you’d think they were a new wave-influenced Nuggets act, maybe even paisley underground.

Lee & Lanegan from the Change Has Come single/EP

And since I can’t assume everybody knows what I mean when I say Nuggets, it’s a reference to a compilation released in 1972 and created by Lenny Kaye, then a record store nerd in New York City, and not yet Patti Smith’s guitarist. Nuggets was four LPs of classic psychedelic and garage rock singles from the mid-‘60s. Nuggets led to Pebbles, a similar series of comps in the late ‘70s, which begat Nuggets 2.0, a series of comps released by Rhino in the mid-to-late 1980s all bearing the Nuggets name. Then came CDs and you get the point. Nuggets is shorthand for two- and three-chord rock songs featuring organ and/or fuzz guitar as lead instruments.

The best garage songs open with a memorable riff like this (plays intro to The Rationals’ “I Need You”) or maybe like this (plays intro to The Music Machine’s “Double Yellow Line”) or maybe you even get the rare double intro (plays intro to Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction”). And sure, we all love a Vox or Farfisa solo, but if you’re the Screaming Trees, especially Lee Conner, you wanna hear badass guitar. So the band hears this (plays solo of The Amboy Dukes’ “Journey To The Center Of Your Mind”) and internalizes it. They hear this (plays solo to The Rationals’ “I Need You”) and internalize it. And ultimately, these influences bore fruit in the Trees in the form of “Pictures In My Mind” (plays excerpt) and “Like I Said” (plays excerpt) and “Now Your Mind Is Next To Mine” (plays excerpt).

However, like many Pacific Northwest bands of this era, the Trees also loved Black Sabbath. I mean, what’s not to like? Sledgehammer riffs, big drums, and a tone of brooding, sinister darkness. I mean, that kinda sounds like the Trees, right? So, beginning with 1986’s Clairvoyance, you start hearing this Sabbath influence play out in the Trees’ songwriting. And while they’re not yet a great band, you can hear it coming together.

The Screaming Trees with “Orange Airplane,” the leadoff track to their first proper LP, Clairvoyance. Like Other Worlds, it was released on Velvetone Records, a small label and studio in Ellensburg, Washington, where the Screaming Trees just happened to live and gave them their first opportunity to record. This is the part where we have to get in the cage with official history. Gen Xers like myself grew up being told in no uncertain terms that the ‘60s and ‘70s were the Golden Age of Rock and bands in the ‘80s and ‘90s would always be parenthetical. All the great songs had already been recorded. The Beatles happened. Hendrix happened. Hell, in 1986-87 you’d be forgiven if you thought punk had already happened, as in it was effectively dead and buried as a genre. Historians point to festivals like Woodstock as emblematic of this revolution because it demonstrated how unified the youth culture was around rock. There was no comparable youth culture in the mid-‘80s. U2 was massive, but there were like 15 U2s in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

It’s a pretty persuasive argument, especially if you hear it repeated ad nauseum. I have a counterargument. There’s no denying the best 5% of rock music from the ‘60s and ‘70s is high level material. Maybe the best ever. BUT, what if that’s the wrong way to look at it? You don’t judge the health of a country’s economy by the top 5%. They have resources and they have access. OF COURSE everything’s gonna look great from their POV. Come on. You judge the economy by how the other 95% exist in the shadow of the 5%. Always within that 95% are pockets of creativity and vitality that may not correlate economically. For instance, a successful, locally-owned restaurant in a working class neighborhood won’t produce the profit of a comparable restaurant in a wealthy neighborhood. However, the restaurant owners in the working class neighborhood know their audience. They’re serving the middle and working classes, working poor, and straight up poor because they’re their neighbors. They’re not gonna price their neighbors out of their own goddamn restaurant. That’s how you go out of business. Instead, the restaurant becomes a local institution and a P&L sheet doesn’t necessarily reflect its cultural importance.

Trees hard at work in the practice space, late 1987

Here’s a rhetorical question. If ‘60s and ‘70s youth culture was so great, how come the underground rock ‘n’ roll circuit wasn’t built until the early ‘80s when Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, and Meat Puppets roamed the country playing for a bunch of teenage Gen Xers? Anyone can sit in a field with 100,000 other dummies or attend a massive stadium show. I want the kind of revolution where bands and fans without much in the way of financial resources or mainstream access manifest their own culture out of necessity. THAT is impressive and that infrastructure building took place in the ‘80s and ‘90s in places like Ellensburg Washington. There were hundreds of Ellensburgs all over America where bands could exist in the shadows, on the margins of the mainstream. Hell, I lived in one: Chico. It didn’t take much. A local label and/or a sympathetic college radio station, a record store, maybe a club or two – although back then, shows were just as likely to take place at a YMCA or someone’s backyard. These micro-cultures were a place for bands to evolve organically. They were there to inspire other local bands and build a small, but devoted grassroots audience.

If you were a band in Ellensburg in the mid-‘80s, you’d obviously be looking to play in Seattle, but you’d probably have to play Wenatchee, Walla Walla, Yakima, Olympia, and Tacoma first. But that’s ok because you connect with the misfits in those towns and before you know it you got yourself a fanbase. And if you’re good and a little lucky, the touring not only makes you a better, tighter band, but you get noticed by larger labels. In the case of the Screaming Trees, they were good and lucky enough to get noticed by the big dog of ‘80s indie rock: SST. The label that brought you Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, and Meat Puppets. SST was a logical landing spot for the Trees, who released Even If And Especially When in 1987. This is the album where they first locked into the sound that came to define them. Nuggets, Sabbath, and Stooges-inspired acid rock.

That’s the Screaming Trees with “Straight Out To Any Place.” Having listened to this album 25-30 times in the last couple of weeks, the cover of Even If And Especially When is weirdly accurate. Drummer Mark Pickerel, spotlit front and center, is the best musician in the band and I love how producer Steve Fisk has him up in the mix. He's effectively busy, with lots of cool fills, the machine gun fills from Love’s “7 & 7 Is” incorporated into “In The Forest,” e.g. It's clear that he and Van are locked in. So, checking out the cover what is Pickerel doing but watching Van and laughing, the big dude looming in the shadows, smiling mischievously, and holding up his punching fist. Your eyes are drawn to those two. Meanwhile, Lanegan's next to Pickerel, but turned away, watching Lee Conner stooped in the background. That, too, is spot on. Both dudes are solid, but in 1987, the rhythm section was doing the heavy lifting for the Screaming Trees.

To wit:

For all of the sludge rock reference points, “Transfiguration” kinda sounds like Los Angeles circa 1966-67. Hell, I just mentioned Love’s “7 & 7 Is.” On ”Transfiguration,” Van Conner has a Chris Hillman feel on bass, Lee Connor is playing some McGuinn-style guitar (not sure if he’s playing a 12-string Rickenbacker, but it has that chime), and Pickerel is throwing down some Michael Clarke fills on drums. Meanwhile, Lanegan’s voice is bringin the Jim Morrison heat. It’s ironic that Morrison tried so fucking hard to be the Dark Poet and just came off like a buffoonish pretty boy. Lanegan didn’t have to try to be the Dark Poet. He just was. He distilled the essence of Morrison and to some extent Iggy, but eliminated the performative element because he was smart enough to know that wasn’t his strength. He let his band, his voice, and his songwriting do the talking for him.

From 1988’s Invisible Lantern, the Trees’ second LP on SST, that’s the closing track, “Night Comes Creeping.” Lantern is the point where the four individual members of the Screaming Trees became one. It was still stone-cold acid rock, but as the principal songwriters and arrangers, Lanegan and Lee Conner were starting to incorporate melody and songcraft like never before. For a little over two minutes, “Night” comes off like vintage Hüskers. Van especially has the Greg Norton bass wiggle down pat. I would’ve been fine if the song ended there. But, at 2:17 the Trees suddenly shift into half-time blues rock and Lanegan delivers a fucking powerhouse vocal at “Ten million directions coming up and coming on strong.” Love how producer Steve Fisk puts Mark way up in the mix and even doubles his vocal in this passage, but doesn’t sacrifice the band to do that. Lee peels paint on lead guitar as the rhythm section accompanies him into the blast furnace.

What’s that? You want more Invisible Lantern? OK fine.

The Screaming Trees with “Walk Through To This Side,” which kinda has a mid-‘60s Who feel as Lanegan’s vocal is again effectively doubled. Like “Night Comes Creeping,” the Trees are learning to incorporate melody into the chaos and this track anticipates later poppy rockers like “Bed Of Roses” from Uncle Anesthesia and “Winter Song” from Sweet Oblivion.

The thing that separated the Screaming Trees from their peers certainly, but even their mythic influences, was that those other bands maybe had good singers, even great singers. They didn’t have Mark Lanegan. Lantern is the album where you hear his voice and it’s holy shit time. He was good before, but after consistent touring, evolving songwriting, and growing confidence, Mark Lanegan had found his artistic voice.

Another track from Invisible Lantern, that’s the Screaming Trees with “Grey Diamond Desert,” featuring Steve Fisk on piano. A power ballad in the best sense of the term, this was the first track like this on a Trees record. Lanegan’s voice is obviously next level, but everyone’s doing their part. A few days ago, Lee actually posted this to Facebook.

“By the time Mark and I wrote ‘Grey Diamond Desert’ we had been escaping Ellensburg by way of touring America for a year or two. None of us had travelled much before and it was quite a revelation to get out and see the world beyond Eastern Washington. Mark's lyrics talk about ‘getting out of this ugly town’ in the second verse, but his words are mostly about the spiritual journey we were on riding in that old gray Econoline from town to town for weeks on end. Listening to it always brings back visions of those early morning drives through the beautiful desolation of the southwest desert with the brilliant stars above.”
--Lee Conner on the Screaming Trees Facebook page, March 10, 2022

Trees with Donna Dresch on bass in ‘88

1988 was an interesting year for the Trees even beyond Invisible Lantern. They also released a split EP with Beat Happening on Homestead. I’d put it in the category of art project because the two bands basically wrote four new songs on the spot and then recorded them with a shuffling lineup. It’s better on paper than in reality, but for a fun one-off, it’s fine. Lanegan completists will wanna hear “Polly Pereguin.”

The Trees also went through a brief lineup change when Van was replaced on bass by Donna Dresch, creator and publisher of the zine, Chainsaw, later the name of her label, and a few years before she’d start queercore pioneers, Team Dresch. I’m not sure if Van left because of a job or school or “fuck you guys, I quit,” but was he gone long enough that Donna sat in with the band for a recording session at Spinhead Studios in North Hollywood. They cut a few tracks and my favorite is this early run through “Subtle Poison.”

That’s the Screaming Trees doing “Subtle Poison” with Donna Dresch on bass instead of Van. Fun fact: Dresch was Dinosaur Jr’s touring bassist after Lou Barlow and actually played on the original version of “The Wagon,” the one that came out in June 1990 as part of the Sub Pop Singles Club. Dino’s touring bassist after Donna? That would be Van Conner, who joined in late 1990 and stayed on through February 1991, rejoining the Trees for the west coast tour with Redd Kross and the first part of the Uncle Anesthesia tour.

The band cut “Subtle Poison” and several other tracks at Spinhead in 1988 thinking they’d be part of a double album. Instead, that idea was scrapped in favor of Buzz Factory, their final record on SST, and one with Van back in the fold. They recorded it in December ’88 and released it the following April. The album feels less like new territory than an extension and refinement of what we’ve heard up til now. This is big boned psychedelic rock with fuzzbomb riffs and leads and an animated rhythm section. But, the songwriting and arranging has evolved beyond the garage. We get choruses, bridges, and proper intros and outros.

The Screaming Trees with “Black Sun Morning,” my favorite song on 1989’s Buzz Factory. Granted, it’s no Cult Sonic Temple, but it’s pretty good. Buzz was the first album NOT produced at Velvetone. Instead, the band went to Jack Endino at Reciprocal in Seattle. The King of Sludge. I like the production on Even If, but I can’t deny that the bigger sound is good for the Trees. Endino actually sings a little backup in the chorus of “Black Sun.” You might not notice him what with Lanegan taking us to the woodshed again [laughs]. Just a monster vocal performance. But, props again to Pickerel for more great drumming. He’s efficiently busy, never taking away the spotlight from the voices or guitars, but heavy enough that you know he’s there. Van’s role is similar, especially in that middle 12th starting at 2:57. For most of the song he offers solid riff support, but at 3:08 he starts going on these squirrelly little bass runs, kind of a melodic counterweight to Lanegan’s vocal.

“End Of The Universe” takes that middle 12th idea to more of an extreme, so I wanna focus on that section. The song starts out like another one of those Nuggets-style throwbacks and then it enters the particle collider. Check it out.

That glorious cacophony is the Screaming Trees with most of “End Of The Universe.” Consider it an unofficial radio edit. Everything the Trees do well is packed into this 4 ½ minute jam. Pickerel giddyup drumming, Lanegan yelps, separate psych guitar tracks in each channel fighting for attention, Pickerel again keeping up, the song breaks down, here comes the Sabbath air strike, more Lanegan Godhead vocals and then the song breaks down again, and they go back into the Nuggets rip. It’s all about Pickerel until Lanegan starts the primal howls, more Lee solar flare guitar, choral vocals rise above it all, more Pickerel, and quick fade at 5:43. I mean, if you’re into that sorta thing. Maybe you just wanna chill on the back porch with a cold beverage. The Trees got you!

Lee Connor on acoustic guitar and assault guitar overdub, but “Yard Trip #7” is all about Mark Lanegan summoning spirits from the dead. Stunning vocal. The Trees toured like dogs for Buzz Factory, but ultimately left SST. They’d sign with Epic in 1990, but in between these contractual dalliances was my introduction to the band. When I joined KCSC in the summer of 1989, Buzz was spinning itself out of heavy rotation. I was alsoa total noob and had no idea who they were and what I was looking at. However, by December, when Sub Pop released the double 7” single, “Change Has Come,” I was a practicing arborist. I crushed hard on the band at this point because it was like I was hearing classic ‘60s/’70s rock, but this wasn’t a bunch of boomer loudmouths lying about their past. This was brand-ass new rock happening in real time and some of us were smart enough to get on that bus.

Screaming Trees, Change Has Come CD EP (5 tracks)

The Screaming Trees with “Change Has Come” and “Days” (aka “Days In A Glass Cube”). Nothing from this single – which the next year was released on CD with a bonus cut – is on Spotify. I’m not sure if these tracks made any comps either. To be fair, it’s a weird little island in the band’s discography, but pound for pound it may be their best release. “Change Has Come” sounds like a dry run for “Nearly Lost You” and I love the part in “Days” where Van goes on a sweet bass run, followed by Lee on trumpet (I believe he played trumpet in high school band), followed by predictably awesome Pickerel drum spillage. “Change” and “Days” were produced by Endino while the other three tracks were produced by the Trees & Steve Fisk. If you’re a Trees fan, you’ve gotta hear this single.

Outro

That’s a good stopping point for today because from here the Trees sign with Epic, record three excellent albums in Uncle Anesthesia, Sweet Oblivion, and, Dust, toured until they couldn’t stand each other anymore, and broke up. And in between this rise and fall of the band, Mark Lanegan found his solo voice, one of the greatest voices we will ever hear. Today, I wanted to do the pre-history because it’s easily overlooked. The ‘80s Trees were still figuring it out, but their journey informs the brilliant run of albums that came in the ‘90s. This will all be next time, though.

To remind ya’ll, if you want a free book about ‘90s roots, rap, and rock ‘n’ roll, go to dontcallitnothing.squarespace.com/book and a PDF download will be available there for free! There’s also a Book button in the nav bar. While you’re there, check out the website, past episodes, and sign up for the podcast at the $5 or $20/month levels. Just hit the “Buy Me a Coffee” button at the top of the page or “Support” at the bottom. Also, if you are so inclined you can kick me a few bucks in a tip jar kinda way at PayPal and Venmo dontcallitnothing@gmail.com. Thank you in advance. Like, comment, tell yo mama, and tell a friend. I’ll talk to ya next time!

Screaming Trees, “Transfiguration,” Cabaret Metro, Chicago, April 29, 1989