Mudhoney

Mon 5th Dec, 2011 in Features

Seattle’s roaring, surging, fuzzed-out, punk legends Mudhoney are currently on their sixth Australian tour of their eight album/23 year career stopping in to play at Meredith and a run of sideshows. Just before the tour kicked off, frontman Mark Arm fielded FL’s call in Seattle to chat about the band’s history, their connection with Australia and the joy of being some of the lucky few to have curated an All Tomorrows Parties festival, all with an eerie echo coming through on the other end of the telephone.

Forming nearly twenty four years ago, did you ever expect to last this long?
Ah no, when we first started we just thought we’d be lucky if we got a single out and that might be it.

I was born in 1988, the same year you guys started. So, is it a strange feeling playing to people who have been die-hard fans since day dot, to people that may not have even been born when you released the bulk of your work?
(Laughs) Um, it is weird but it’s cool, it’s great that there are people that may not have been there when we started. It’s awesome that we aren’t playing to people just our own age.

How do you feel your music has changed since those early days?
That’s not really for me to say, that’s more for critics and people who get paid to come up with statements like that. Obviously it has changed, you can never make anything stay the same. I wouldn’t really want to.

What about you guys as a band/people?
(Laughs) Well you know people grow up. I’m not indulging in some of the activities I was indulging in twenty years ago.

What is something you would have done different over the years?
Given what I knew, probably nothing.

What about continuing the career of Mr Epp and the Calculations?
Well that wasn’t entirely up to me. (laughs) That was a decision that Smitty and Darren came up with. They were like, we’re done.

Now that you only play a good handful of shows every year in comparison to the older days, But one of the venues that always popped up in your gigography is the famous Crocodile Cafe (Now know simply as The Crocodile) in your home town of Seattle. What does that venue mean to you?
It closed down for a while and they rebuilt. We haven’t played it since, but we knew the people who ran it and the place was really friendly to us so we kept playing it.

With your live show, would you consider it a different beast now in comparison to the 90s?
How has our live show changed over the years… We’ve gotten older and slower (laughs) I know we’re nowhere near as crazed as when we started. There is a documentary that is being put together at the moment and watching some of that old footage and it is crazy what we used to do, what we used to be able to do.

Are you familiar with the amazing Meredith festival you are playing?
I am not, but I have heard that we are playing with both OFF! and Grinderman.

Nick Cave as Grinderman are headlining during a full lunar eclipse! This is at a BYO festival out in the sticks as well! Do you think Mudhoney would work with a lunar eclipse as a light show?
(Laughs) Sure. I have never given our light show much thought. All I ask is no strobe and no smoke.

You don’t want to give the crowd a seizure.
(Laughs) Or us. and smoke just makes it harder to breathe.

Have you gotten the hang of coming Down Under. Have you got a favourite bar, people you need to see, places etc?
We have old friends, but things have changed since 1990. Guy our bass player is from Perth and he used to live in Sydney. The first couple of times we came down, we spent like a week playing shows in both Melbourne and Sydney and I was like, this is how you’re supposed to tour instead of going from town to town. When we were in Brisbane and Adelaide we only got to spend a day in town so we didn’t get to meet many people.

Every All Tomorrows Party band I speak to I always have to ask, what is
it like playing that festival?
It’s always a lot of fun. We’ve been lucky enough to do it a couple of times now.