by ron evans
Well, Wenatchee is in for a galldurn treat this month. Krist Novoselic, co-founder and bassist for Nirvana is coming to Numerica Performing Arts Center July 12. And he’s bringing some of his notable pals, including original Screaming Trees drummer Mark Pickerel. Sure, this is a fever dream of sorts for any of us 80’s/90’s kids all grown up (ahem…middle-aged), but the reach of these musicians have far outlasted any trends or eras as they continue to amass legions of new fans. Nirvana’s Nevermind LP has sold over 30 million copies. We don’t really think of these kinds of numbers in modern times but to put that into perspective, that’s twice as many sales as Led Zeppelin II. Seriously. I looked it up. It’s hard to grasp that for all the hugeness Nirvana has achieved, they were only a band for half a decade.
Since Nirvana, Novoselic has stayed busy with various music projects and bands. He also tends to his farm of chickens, horses and goats at his southern Washington home when he’s not flying around in his 1970 Piper Aztec… yeah, he’s a pilot too.
A longtime political activist, he has more recently been busy looking into starting a new political party for Washington State, The Cascade Party. He’s on a mission to simplify or reform some of the confusing, antiquated and just plain stupid aspects of the rules and legislation concerning voting, forming parties and getting involved with statewide and local politics.
Novoselic’s new music project, The Bonafide Band, is a bit of a spearhead for part of that mission. The band only recently formed and as soon as they started booking shows - local music promoter and founder of Apple Valley Vinyl Record Expo, Joel Myrene went right to work in booking them at the Numerica PAC in Wenatchee.
I chatted with Novoselic on the phone (and yes I was freaking the fuck out…hopefully only on the inside) to learn more about what keeps him passionately trying to make a difference through grass roots political action, what he’s been up to post-Nirvana, and what Krist Novoselic’s Bonafide Band is all about.
Novoselic giving his old pal Charles Peterson the money shots all these years later. Live at Easy Street Records in Seattle
I’m friends with Mark Pickerel, and around a month ago I started seeing you popping up on his social media pics. And I was like… “hmmm, what’s going on here?” I wasn’t sure if it was just a friendly visit - I knew you had worked with Mark going all the way back to Mark Lanegan’s solo record, The Winding Sheet (1989). And then it started to look like a band was forming. I think most of us assumed that Pickerel was joining your band 3rd Secret at first, but soon enough we got the announcement: Krist Novoselic’s Bonafide Band - a new thing altogether. Talk about the forming of this latest ensemble.
Yeah, Mark and I go way back of course and we have always stayed connected and we would see each other over the years. There was this event in Aberdeen for World Music Day (June 21) coming up and I was like…it would be fun to do a show for that. And Jack Endino (legendary recording engineer - Nirvana, Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, Soundgarden) actually mentioned to me that Mark had been wanting to talk and so I reached out about maybe playing for the Aberdeen show.
I was looking to put something new together for a specific reason. I’m working toward making the Cascade Party (Novoselic’s independent political entity) a bonafide party, and to do that you have to have these “political conventions.” We also need people to sign our petition to get The Cascade Party accepted as a bonafide party. And I was thinking…how could we make this fun, how can I use my own resources to get people together in a way that’s really just about having a good time? And I thought…we could do some shows. So that’s why it’s called the Bonafide Band and along with Mark and I, we have Jillian Raye (3rd Secret, Giants In The Trees), Jennifer Johnson (Giants In The Trees) and Kathy Moore playing a fairly eclectic mix of music for these shows.
Will this be a studio project down the road?
Well the “Bonafide Band” ends at the end of July, which is the end of convention deadline. We all may keep playing music though. I really like playing with these people.
What can we expect from the setlists?
Well, you know Nirvana did a few covers - we did “Love Buzz” (Shocking Blue) and “The Man Who Sold The World” (David Bowie) and so we do some covers of those covers. We do some Screaming Trees, we do a little from my bands 3rd Secret and Giants In The Trees…and we also have a few surprises we will be bringing. Some hard rock, some of the grunge stuff. But I also play a little accordion - and we aren’t afraid of the word schmaltz. So there will be lots of stuff I think most people will get into.
Novoselic, Jillian Raye and Mark Pickerel at Easy Street Records. Photo by Charles Peterson
One of my favorite albums of all time is Mark Lanegan’s (singer of The Screaming Trees) first solo record The Winding Sheet. You appeared on that album for the Leadbelly cover “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” - you, Lanegan, Pickerel and this other guy named Kurt (or was it Kurdt?). Of course Nirvana later performed that song as the chills-inducing closer for the MTV Unplugged show. I’ve seen that performance 100 times and it never fails to sort of leave me breathless.
Wow, that’s amazing.
Kurt’s vocals on that song leave nothing on the table.
Yeah. It was kind of the perfect way to end that MTV show.
Have you and Pickerel recorded or performed together since those Lanegan sessions?
No, it’s actually been that long since we have played together.
Wow. What’s that been like - making music together after all these years?
It’s been great, we did a few jam sessions in Ellensburg to see how things would feel and it was just like - boom. Yeah, we can play together. And then in June - there was this music event in Ellensburg called Gustfest, it’s at the fairgrounds. And the headlining band had to cancel. So the promoters called Mark who reached out to me to see if we could do a show for that, and I was like - sure! The timing was good. And we just started adding these other shows around Washington.
So even though you are utilizing these shows as a bit of a platform for getting the signatures you need to launch the Cascade Party, you aren’t really making these political rallies or anything like that.
No, not at all. I don’t even really talk about politics on the stage. This is a music show and we don’t really wanna taint the spirit of that with a bunch of politics. You know there will be meet and greet type stuff, and people will want selfies and autographs. And I’m like, yeah - hey, I’ll sign for you if you sign for me. [LAUGHS]. Not really, you absolutely don’t have to sign. There’s not gonna be any pressure to do anything like that.
Jennifer Johnson and Kathy Moore at Easy Street Records. Photo by Charles Peterson
It’s also worth pointing out that signing the petition is really just to help you achieve bonafide party status in this early phase, you’re not actually joining the party by signing.
Right, and again - it’s a ticketed show and we are aware that you are paying to come see a show and that’s really all you need to get out of it, but if you’re curious about what the Cascade Party is all about, we are there for that and of course we’d love to get a few more signatures.
How many signatures do you need?
We need 1000 verified signatures, which means each name has to be confirmed as real names.
No ‘dead people’ signatures like some politicians have been known for?
Exactly, and it’s fair, right? You have to make sure these are true and valid signatures. Right now we are trying to change this rule that in order to be a bonafide party you have to put a presidential and vice presidential candidate on the ticket. And we don’t wanna do that, so we have done a ton of research and we have tried to show how this rule doesn’t make sense.
So if you find out that the powers that be refuse to change that rule of having to have a presidential candidate - can we expect to see Krist Novoselic for president soon?
Oh god, I don’t even really wanna think about that. [CHUCKLES]. No, here’s the thing…in preparation for that we are circulating nomination petitions and if I’m nominated I will accept that and step into that role and serve that role’s purpose. But this is why this rule is so silly - why do we need to clog up the elections with things like having a statewide-only presidential candidate on the ballot? There’s literally no way they can win - it just causes confusion. We have no interest in running a presidential campaign. Why should we have to?
I’m neither traveled nor educated so help me understand this - there’s such a thing as a statewide-ONLY political party but it has to act like a national party, but just for that state?
Oh yeah…it’s confounding, isn’t it? It has to be part of this federal system and changing that means lots of research and petitioning and litigation. Honestly, what we are way more interested in is local politics. Local elections. Statewide elections.
The Cascade Party seems to embrace the term moderate. It’s funny, in recent years it seems like that term has come to be thought of as a bit of a dirty word. I think many people think it’s synonymous with being passive or maybe even apolitical.
Yeah or just kinda mushy. But look, the right lane is pretty crowded. The left lane is pretty crowded. And are we happy with how things are going? I wanna take the middle lane and start affecting change from that standpoint. And it’s not mushy at all, I have strong ideas about all kinds of things but they don’t all fit into this fairly narrow view or set of rules that left vs. right tries to impose.
It is interesting, if you get people away from social media or even the mainstream media and start having more intimate, level-headed conversations we often find out rather quickly that we actually agree on more than we might have guessed.
Exactly, it’s almost always more agree than disagrees. The Cascade Party has actually created its own social media. And it’s the anti-corporate social media - it’s essentially owned by the members. We aren’t pushing ads at you all day, we aren’t selling off your personal information. It’s really just a place to work together and to start making a real difference, again starting right here - locally.
That’s an interesting idea. Because social media should be, and often is, used for all sorts of positive things. But holy shit it’s ugly sometimes.
Yeah. It’s like some of those psychological experiments from the 60s sometimes. And it’s all orchestrated.
Nothing sells ads like 5000 comments of arguing. But like it or hate it, we are a social media species now and there’s no going back. Being able to get the connectivity and community that comes from social media without all that junk sounds really appealing.
Yeah. And this is just for the Cascade Party so that’s how it will stay. So these are just a few of the ways we hope to start changing things - again, I wanna stress that we are really about getting involved at the local level, there is so much to work on right there.
One thing about not having a presidential candidate on the ticket is you can sidestep a lot of the blowback that many independent parties get - “oh, you’re just gonna steal votes from OUR candidate who has a better shot at winning.”
Right. That really just isn’t something we are trying to do. So we haven’t had any blowback like that yet. We can exist and make changes right alongside all of these other parties, we just want to do it differently.
You’ve been pretty active politically for as long as I can recall, going all the way back to the Nirvana days. Would you consider Nirvana a political band?
Oh yeah, I think to some degree. I mean we were all very aware of what was going on and we’d talk about all these issues. With Kurt’s lyrics though, you know - he was very cryptic in a lot of ways and so it was usually more subtle than just beating you over the head with it.
Certainly most people know that Nirvana was formed in Aberdeen, what was it like performing there again for World Music Day? Had you gone back to play there much before that?
Actually I played there in 2018 with Giants In The Trees. And it’s always a homecoming feeling you know. Aberdeen is home. World Music Day was great, the people were super friendly and happy to be there.
We just recently lost the legendary (record producer) Steve Albini. Wondering if you’d like to share any thoughts on your time working with him.
Oh god. It was so just…shocking to hear he passed. I’m still shocked. He was really great to work with. And we went back to Chicago to do the In Utero 20 Anniversary remix and that was an amazing experience too, you know all those years later. But yeah, it’s really a huge loss. Gone too soon for sure.
I’m curious if you recall the first time you ever heard the term “grunge” and what you thought of it.
Oh, I can’t really remember exactly when but, you know…I was ok with it. I took it in stride. I thought it made sense. Some people didn’t like it.
Yeah some artists and fans alike found it a little cringy back then - but I think most of us have warmed up to it over the years. It’s the best word I’ve heard to be affixed to that scene.
Well yeah and it’s way better than ‘alternative,’ right? The record companies wanted to keep the dominant paradigm established. So they came up with this term, oh here’s the “alternative” to the mainstream stuff. We were like no, this isn’t the alternative, this is the new sound. So I never liked the word alternative.
Fans can catch some of those ‘new sounds’ Friday, July 12 at Numerica Performing Arts Center as The Bonafide Band takes to the stage with CobraHawk in the opening slot. The show is all ages and the main floor will be general admission while the balcony seating will be reserved seats. Either ticket is $20 (you can’t even buy albums that cheap anymore!) so grab them fast. And no matter where you land concerning politics, one thing is still true – even in the age of social media induced rage and division, we can certainly all get together for an evening of great music.
The Bonafide Band w/CobraHawk
Numerica Performing Arts Center
Friday, July 12, 7:30pm
TICKETS: numericapac.org