Chris Estey : Tooth & Nail Records, Rock and Grunge | Interview

''Did I receive angry phone calls from kids’ moms who didn’t like something we released like The Deadlines (garage-Goth rock)? Yes, indeed!''

Over this past weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to ask some questions to Seattle writer, music journalist and publicist Chris Estey.

Currently, he is the press agent at XO Publicity and he was the executive assistant at Tooth & Nail Records from 1999–2002. The success of Christian punk, ska, pop punk and metalcore is inseparable from the success of Tooth & Nail Records!

Estey has been a music publicist for Light In The Attic Records, Chicago Review Press and Sasquatch Books. His PR clients have included the Black Angels, Betty Davis, and “Listen, Whitey!”(2012) book. Likewise, he has written for the likes of City Arts, The Rocket, Seattle Weekly and the Stranger. Furthermore, his essay on Phil Ochs appeared in Da Capo Press’s Best Music Writing (2010) and he has done comics about The Clash with David Lasky for Seattle`s Fantagraphics.

Here`s an interview all about the 90s Christian alternative scene, the time Estey got ‘‘tear gassed downtown during the WTO riots’’ and like always- GRUNGE.

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Was there a sudden influx of Christian rock or Christian grunge groups in the 90s? If so, what would you say was the reason for this? Did the social or political background influence this? Or was the 90s a good environment for Christian rock musicians to thrive in?

CE: Yes, with the overall music business growing in the wake of the alternative rock and hip-hop boom of the late 80s and early 90s, the Christian music scene grew as well, due in part to those related genres. The various Christian music scenes always tried to keep up with non-religious pop and rock-based music, usually a couple of years too late besides certain outliers. The influx wasn’t completely sudden but had been building up over time, especially on the West Coast with the seminal Southern California scene, as well as Seattle and Portland. Along with the niches of more counter-cultural inspired Evangelicals releasing more and more music through the 80s, artists tried to keep up and create or come into the amorphous sounds and scenes of what came to be called “grunge.” There were never that many explicitly “Christian grunge” bands, but there were a lot of things in the grunge orbit that could be defined more by milieu than the music itself. If you wish to hear what I think was “Christian grunge” that holds up pretty well, I’d check out the bands Breakfast With Amy and Plague of Ethyls on the Blonde Vinyl label, and the group Sometime Sunday on the eventual apex label of the independent-birthed Christian alternative scene, Tooth & Nail Records.

In the then recent past, there were always both affiliations between what was called “secular” scenes and the more overtly Christian business-based groups, with certain political and social differences. A religious and social Ecumenism was evolving out of the held-at-church and otherwise all-ages shows which were usually pretty tightly controlled about rock and roll behaviour, with a fluid crossover from the independent non-believers playing music that was usually more extreme or unusual, from hardcore to alt-rock to noise, and more.

In the mainstream, artists like U2, T-Bone Burnett, Sam Phillips, and of course Bob Dylan had been noted as having Christian themes and pasts, but except for country or rap artists the “regular” music business and the Christian music industry were sort of connected; not the same thing but resembling each other. The rise of alternative music in the grunge era did deepen and widen the outreach in both directions – Christian kids were seeing “normal” bands and buying music that influenced them as young music fans, and non-believers found themselves playing out with groups who had personal Evangelical histories, whether they openly proselytized their beliefs or not.

The 90s were an excellent time for many Christian alternative artists to thrive, due in part to the success of alternative music itself, and the DIY cultures which spawned spaces for “outsider” artists to create and maybe even become successful at it.

You were the executive assistant at Tooth & Nail Records from 1999–2002. Looking back at all the bands and musicians, was there any criticism from the non-Religious? What was the biggest challenge for Christian musicians on the label, did they face any limitations in the music industry? 

CE: Yes, I was. Those were the “boom” years when someone like me could be hired there, who had more of a reputation as a punk music writer (interviewing Spike for The Rocket, etc.). I was hired because in their need to get coverage for their music, there did seem to be some limitation on the amount of Christian alternative music being covered in the rock press. I edited Fuel Magazine for two issues to get more exposure for a label putting out about three or four albums a month and not always getting what they wanted in terms of press, transitioning into being Executive Assistant for the label. Also, Tooth & Nail ‘s owner and his core staff were mostly Christians, but we did things like outsourcing talented folks like Bob Weston (Shellac) and Bill Stevenson (Black Flag) to produce artists on the label, and even using the underground artist Coop to do an MXPX album cover. There were indeed limitations, but between the outreach to the greater creative rock community (which liked to be paid, and T&N was happy to pay them) and the base of Christian music scene Stans the label also inspired its own festivals, multi-band tours to secular venues, etc. Did I receive angry phone calls from kids’ moms who didn’t like something we released like The Deadlines (garage-Goth rock)? Yes, indeed. But I think, originating in Orange County, the label was well used to “normal” people just not accepting punk or grunge people, either.

Is there anything you find special or significant about grunge music?  Do you think it achieved something musically, socially or politically? 

CE: Grunge can be defined in various social, musical, aesthetic, and political ways, with its roots in punk and that scene(s)’ diversity of expression and ideology.

Grunge made suburban kids able to access really cool shit they never would have come across otherwise, as experimentally expressive entertainment or philosophically. They could move to the city and reinvent themselves, or do it in their basements with less fear of getting their asses stomped on the way to the record store (which happened to me, again and again, in 1979).

I think its value is that we lived in a “cool world” altogether for a while. At some moment in the 90s you could read its manifestos in both transgressive rant-fuelled personal zines like Ben Is Dead and in the glossy pages of Sassy; eat at restaurants that only served sugary breakfast cereals or vegan food, drink espressos or beers and shots while watching spoken word artists open for bands unafraid of playing expansive, experimental noise pop. All of this stuff existed before, but not nearly as much and with much less fear.

My parents saw me “moshing” at a hardcore show on Channel Four 6 O’clock news filmed in the living room of the two bands I lived with, and for the first time in ten years didn’t treat me like Charles Manson.

In the contemporary environment, is it still possible that anything like grunge in terms of its ideas, subversive power or ideology can happen again? Or has something like that occurred already in music? 

CE: I like this saying: “The Marquis de Sade said in 1802, ‘You’re a fool to think that nothing is new.’” I’m 58 and I live every day like I’ll discover a favourite band this afternoon while doing my publicity work for artists. And sometimes they happen to be my favourite releases, and I’m proud to have anything to do with promoting their work to media mavens and scribes. Something new is probably happening right now. Remember the musical miscegenation of the period coming out of grunge “proper” – all those weird fusions of hip-hop, ska, lounge, neo-psychedelia, post-punk coming back again and again strongly.

What do you think about situations where politicians use rock musicians or alternative music in their campaigns or to boost their image? Do you think that musicians have the power to influence areas beyond music?

CE: Yes, I do think that musicians have the power to influence areas beyond music. I’m not very fond of politicians but when Obama played my client at the time Nicole Willis on his playlist at the White House I thought that was awesome. I think a whole lot of politicians who try to co-opt the music they have passed laws against, the music scenes they have destroyed by raising rents and fees for services, the ones defending the asshole behaviour of immigration officials when foreign bands try to play here – if your town hall or church doesn’t have spaces for bands to play in, and doesn’t give any support for people to get together and exchange art and ideas and community, you’ll never get my vote anyways.

Looking back at 90s politics, were the any legislations or regulations that hindered the music industry or business?  Was the Telecommunications Act of 1996 detrimental ? 

CE: Our fight here in Seattle was the Teen Dance Ordinance:

https://twitter.com/zwickelicious/status/1770893076757627154

JZ (Jonathan Zwickel) can explain how harmful that was to our scene much better than I can.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 caused a wonderful cognitive dissonance under which Neoliberalism encourages what we once called the singularity and is probably to blame for the surging power of the oligarchs and the blindness of our society right now. But you know, kids got the Internet in schools, right? It’s complicated,  and why I own a landline and not a smart phone (seriously). I’d love to know more about this, but I am too busy shrieking into our immediate future.

I don’t know, in 1996 I was seeing multi-band bills every night, watching performance art in weird underground spaces, going to zine and underground comics cons, occasionally writing for The Rocket, working as a security supervisor in low-income housing (giving people apartments who had been on the streets for years, at three different buildings downtown).

When I got tear gassed downtown during the WTO riots, simply for living downtown and not because I’d made it to the protest yet, it was Bill Clinton visiting and the Seattle Police Department “protecting” him from the average citizen, shooting rubber bullets at me and nearly making me choke to death hobbling on ACL torn knees on my way home from Tooth & Nail.

What has been the main contributing factor to your success?  Do you have a personal motto?

CE: I have a wide range of music I enjoy and find out all I can about it and know how to turn other music heads who write and play records for people on to it.

Have you ever done something that goes against your principles?

CE: Voting. I don’t want to participate with “Babylon,” but they keep sending monstrously powerful and inimical people to keep pranking us into having to do something about it.

What would be your message to the younger generations?

CE: I hope we can make the world cool again together.

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