City of Olympia on a mission to document and preserve its place in indie music history

When you look up the history of indie music, Seattle gets a lot of credit for the wave of grunge and punk music that hit the country in the 1980s and ’90s. But people who have lived in Olympia for a while know that some of that scene got started here.

Now, the city of Olympia has launched an effort to highlight its place in the history of independent music. After all, some of Nirvana’s first performances were in downtown Olympia, where the band lived between its life in Aberdeen and its life in Seattle. And Sleater-Kinney is named after the road in Lacey.

Though some bands that were formed in the Olympia area made it big, the city’s project focuses more on the lesser-known artists and their creative endeavors.

Project researcher Elaine Vradenburgh said the goal has been to have the process of gathering information be community based. On Tuesday evening, Jan. 31, Vradenburgh and researcher Kelsey Smith put together an event at the Olympia Timberland Library to help spread the word and encourage the public to get involved in the project.

Olympia resident Sean McCoy attended the scan-a-thon and listening party with boxes full of cassette tapes and concert posters. McCoy grew up in Olympia and was excited to share some of the memorabilia he had been collecting since high school.

Among the dozens of items he had with him were fliers for the Yoyo A Go Go music festival from the late ‘90s. Though it was a local festival, McCoy said he was blown away to see people from around the world who traveled to hear Olympia bands like Fitz of Depression and Bikini Kill.

McCoy said growing up surrounded by the indie music scene sparked a lifelong obsession with music, and it inspired him to pursue the art, too. He plays the bass guitar in a handful of local bands.

McCoy said he remembered going to Nirvana concerts for $3, which was a lot cheaper than venues in Tacoma and Seattle. Smith and Vradenburgh talked about that being the norm for concerts in Olympia, which contributed to their popularity and accessibility.

“It didn’t matter, male, female, what color you were — if you liked punk rock, everyone belonged,” McCoy said. “Olympia had a really cool community in that regard, and I think it still does. But it was definitely special in the ‘90s.”

Nick Rawson, 27, said he attended Tuesday’s event both out of interest and as a volunteer to help people scan and label ephemera as needed. He brought with him some magazines from local label K Records he obtained as an intern and while the company was moving locations in Olympia.

Born in 1995, Rawson said he missed the true indie/alternative wave locally, but the impact of it on music culture is intense. Still, he managed to see some local indie bands perform, most of them managed by K Records, founded by musician Calvin Johnson.

A musician himself, Rawson plays the bass in some local bands, including a Grateful Dead tribute band. He said the history of the music scene in his hometown gives him a sense of pride anytime he works on a new project.

Rawson said he thinks it’s important for the city to own and uplift this part of its history. He said a lot of the memorabilia, such as cassette tapes, posters and magazines, only exist in the physical realm and haven’t been made digital yet.

The music scene changed things about Olympia, too. Smith said at the time there were ordinances limiting skateboarding, cruising and busking, as well as teen dancing ordinances. Not everyone in the city was ready to embrace the youth culture, and Smith said she hopes to highlight some of the tension that came with the indie music movement.

Putting the pieces together

Vradenburgh said she wants the project to not only be led by the public, but by the artists themselves. Much of the timeline and the stories will be anchored to oral interviews. Smith said they aimed to talk to about 20 artists, but they’ve reached 30 now and are going to have to cut it off soon.

The team has been able to get in touch with some of the bigger artists who are still performing and now live elsewhere, such as Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney. Vradenburgh said she credits some of the volunteers they trained to interview people for their work in connecting to and convincing artists to be involved in the project.

Among the community historians are Tobi Vail, a founding member of the band Bikini Kill, and Ali Baker, another local musician.

Many artists passed through the region between 1980 and 2002, Vradenburgh said, and the scene in Olympia was especially participatory and inclusive. Still, despite the number of people involved in every level of music production at the time, there wasn’t much diversity, Smith said. She said most performers in the region at the time were white, and so were most of the city’s residents. But she said one of the team’s historians is making a concerted effort to reach more people of diverse backgrounds.

Gathering all the oral interviews, posters, music recordings and more is just the first phase of the project. Smith said the plan is to wrap that portion up in March before compiling it into walking tours, as well as online and in-person resources people can access. Everything they collect is going to be kept on file at the Washington State Archives.

Smith said she would like to get more people involved in the information-gathering process. She will be hosting office hours from 5 to 8 p.m. every Wednesday until March 1. She said it’s a chance for people, especially those who don’t live in the Olympia area anymore, to share their music stories and materials. The link can be found on the city’s website.

Smith said Olympia has a rich jazz history that continues to influence artists today — and it has a more diverse repertoire of artists. She said she’d like to take on a project highlighting that genre and its artists, but it’s a big feat, and they have to see how the indie project goes first.