Kittitas Valley Living Fall '20 | Q4

From the Cascades to the Columbia | Q4 2020

INSIDE:  Mark

Pickerel’s vinyl collection

 Dyeing

wool  Fun art project

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TABLE of

Parke Creek Farm known for natural dyed yarn

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Mark Pickerel enjoying the resurgence of vinyl in a world still spinning at 33 1/3 rpm pg

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Autumn-arts and crafts pg

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LETTER FROM the

Editor

O

ne of the cool things about living in the Kittitas Valley, is there are definitely four distinct seasons: winter, spring, summer and fall.

The last couple years I’ve designated slightly different titles to them: Too cold, too windy, too hot, too smoky.

As regular readers know, once a quarter I’m afforded a wonderful opportunity on this page to complain about the weather, but aside from a brief week of smoke, I’ve been looking on the bright side.

Too cold? Last winter I embraced the snow, looking for sledding opportunities wherever I could find them, even places where bald tires shouldn’t go.

Too windy? Hardly. I embraced the breeze. It helps me hit the golf ball

KITTITAS VALLEY

farther, and turns my hammock into an automated swing.

Too hot? While I’ve often thought of the sun as giant ball of nuclear explosions simultaneously keeping me alive and trying to kill me, I lathered up the sunblock this summer and spent most of it out of the house.

Too smoky? Well, I don’t have anything good to say about that.

So as the weather turns and the sun starts to set at 3:30 p.m., read this lovely issue of KV Living. We’ve got an interviews with local rock legend Mark Pickerel, local farmer and artist Bambi Miller and a new feature: an easy do-ityourself arts and craft project.

See you next year.

Happy reading!

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2025693

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Q4 | 2020

Editor: Michael Gallagher Writers: Matt Carstens, Rodney Harwood Photos by: Jacob Ford Designer: Matt Carstens Publication of the Daily Record 401 N. Main St. Ellensburg WA 98926 509-925-1414 To submit a story idea or upcoming event, email newsroom@kvnews.com.

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Creative juices Mark Pickerel enjoying the resurgence of vinyl in a world still spinning at 33 1/3 rpm

By Rodney Harwood staff writer

T

here used to be a time when you went down to the local record store and walked up and down miles of aisles thumbing through the selections before picking out a new release or two.

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Mark Pickerel organizes records at his Roadtrip Records booth Wednesday, Oct. 8, at Thorp Fruit & Antique Mall.

When you got home you fired that record onto the turntable, sat down, and read the liner notes as you listened to song after song.

Before the internet or MTV, the liner notes were how you learned the song lyrics, who played on each cut, or maybe of a guest artist or two.

But along came digital music, YouTube, and eventually streaming services, and all that was lost on a new generation. But there has been a resurgence of vinyl in recent years and listeners are coming back to the record stores, finding once again the feel, texture, and the message of the album cover as a source 8

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of information. Even now, it just seems to enhance the sound.

Mark Pickerel, 52, remembers those times like they were yesterday, both as a musician and a record retailer. Vinyl was at the center of it all for the original drummer of the band called Screaming Trees that blew out of Ellensburg to international fame in the late-80s. Along with Van Conner, Gary Lee Conner, Mark Lanegan and Pickerel, the band became one of the pioneers of grunge.

A bunch of local high school kids from Ellensburg rose to fame as part of the grunge movement of the early 1990s, along with

the likes of Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden, making them one of the most successful underground acts of the ‘90s. The Trees landed one top 10 single on the Modern Rock Tracks charts.

It’s been an interesting loop around the world, from Screaming Trees to a solo career, a career in the music industry, his own retail shops in both Seattle and Ellensburg, to the right here and now. Pickerel is currently running record consortiums at Jerrol’s in Ellensburg and Thorp Fruit & Antique Mall called Roadtrip Records.

He invites people to follow

Sam Albright’s paintings in his studio at his home in Ellensburg.

him on Instagram and Facebook at @ roadtriprecords to keep up with new vinyl arrivals and highlights from the vintage clothes collection.

He is available at roadtriprecords101@ gmail.com for questions and comments.

“What I’m doing today is a lot more easygoing and fun for me than trying to predict what people are going

to buy next week,” said Pickerel, who ran Rodeo Records in Ellensburg for 13 years.

“It’s a welcome change from ordering tens of thousands of dollars of product on predictions that were oftentimes inaccurate.

“Vinyl has seen a huge resurgence in popularity.

It just so happens that all this information I’ve acquired over a lifetime, that seemed obsolete

until a few years ago, has become valuable again.

I have an opportunity to put that knowledge back to work.”

His generation and classmates grew up listening to mainstream ‘90s bands, but Pickerel and the rest of Screaming Trees were obsessing on The Doors, Hendrix, The Sonics, The Velvet Underground and new wave of alternative artists they

would go on to share stages with throughout the world: Sonic Youth, The Meat Puppets, X, Green River, and Soundgarden.

One of Screaming Trees’ early breaks came just after Pickerel’s senior year of 1986, when they were asked to open for Alice Cooper, an artist they had all loved throughout their youth.

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Mark Pickerel organizes records at his Roadtrip Records booth Wednesday, Oct. 8, at Thorp Fruit & Antique Mall.

Even though he was playing with the Trees, he was also learning the business, working at the independent label Sub Pop, which achieved fame in the late 1980s for signing Seattle bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney.

“When I was at Sub Pop, I had a unique vantage point of witnessing the passionate reactions to our release of the first records by Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and to singles that we released

by The Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Fugazi, The Rollins Band, and even by my own bands,” said Pickerel, who once worked at Ace Records in Ellensburg, which was a major influence on the band and instrumental in their music

Mark Pickerel organizes records at his Roadtrip Records booth Wednesday, Oct. 8, at Thorp Fruit & Antique Mall.

education.

“Working at Sub Pop was like being at the epicenter of a cultural earthquake. I was at the center of the storm that introduced grunge to an international audience. It was an exciting time for me.”

It wasn’t uncommon to have watercooler conversations with Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Courtney Love, members of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, or even an occasional chat with fans of the label like Randy Johnson of the Mariners, who would stop by with members of Soundgarden, or film director

Cameron Crowe. Crowe collaborated with label reps on a soundtrack for his upcoming film “Singles,” a movie that would further amplify grunge’s grip on Generation X, he said.

“Seeing our roster’s rise to stardom was really inspiring and exciting. I was with Sub Pop from ‘89 to ’91,” Pickerel continued. “It was a real education because I was learning about the other side of the industry, learning about distribution and promotion. It rounded out my education from wholesale to retail.”

He’s had his share of run-ins in the music business — royalties being withheld, disagreements with

bandmates, and constant demands from record executives.

“Once you sign with a major label there is an incredible pressure to please. It becomes an enormous demand, and you feel like you’re just part of the machine,” Pickerel said. “After Screaming Trees signed to Epic, we went from just fighting amongst ourselves to taking on more daunting battles, negotiating every move with the Sony Corporation, who I was often at odds with and who felt lacked a real understanding of what we were all about.

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It proved to be too much for this small-town boy.

“I’ve toured Europe and America, and I’m proud of the music I was a part of, but it put a huge strain on everything else, like personal relationships. I 12

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think it was good for me to get off the ride for a while.”

As for recent session work, Pickerel was on a release that Brandi Carlile produced and performed on by The Secret Sisters entitled “You Don’t Own

Me Anymore,” which almost landed him his first Grammy.

He is currently playing drums with an artist named Davidson Hart Kingsbery and with another local talent with her own impressive resume, Star Anna.

Both have shared stages here in Ellensburg with Pickerel’s own band.

“I’m still enthusiastic about playing, but it’s a lot more about balance these days,” said Pickerel, who returned to Ellensburg six years ago. “When I write, I usually don’t think about the musical inspiration behind my songs. I know that I borrow from everything from roots reggae to Neil Young, David Bowie and Elvis Costello.

“As far as I’m concerned, grunge is as old as Black Sabbath, so I still hear it everywhere all the time, too many bands to mention. It all boils down to bar chords and beer.”

He doesn’t talk much about the Trees anymore, but he does recall a plane flight with Cobain, discussing future plans and the idea of getting into the studio at some point in the future.

“The Kurt Cobain I knew was a very enthusiastic kid, very loveable, funny, quirky and awkward, ya know?” he said. “It was a double loss for me when he died because we had these big plans to record. He was also a good friend.

“We were on a flight to L.A. about nine months before he died. We had a long discussion about me playing on this follow-up to “In Utero.”

His description of where he wanted his next record, to go artistically, sounded as though it would have more in common with a John Lennon record than another Nirvana release.

“After an invitation to play drums on a session, I was so honored and anxious to be part of that process. I was devastated when I heard the news of his death just a few months later.”

They did have a chance to play together a few years earlier in 1989, when members of Nirvana and Screaming Trees formed a side project called The Jury. The band consisted of Cobain (vocals/ guitar), Mark Lanegan (vocals), Krist Novoselic (bass) and Pickerel (drums). They put together two days of recording, which included Lead Belly’s, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” “Grey Goose,” “Ain’t it a Shame” and “They Hung Him on a Cross.”

For the record, vinyl is a piece of Pickerel’s past, a piece of his heart, and a tie to some rockin’ good times. He is still sharing those times and a time when people learned about the music through the liner notes, when the world still spun at 33 1/3 rpm.

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Dyeing for wool

Parke Creek Farm known for natural dyed yarn

By MATT CARSTENS staff writer

B

ambi Miller and her husband, Eric, run Parke Creek Farm, and while she doesn’t really like the term small family farm, she admits, that’s what it is.

While the couple grow organic produce as well as raise sheep, pigs, goats and chickens, Bambi’s true love falls more on the artistic side.

With the wool shorn from the 100 sheep

she currently has on the farm, she uses flowers, roots and other things found in nature to create her unique natural dyed wool.

“I do all natural dying,” Bambi said. “I don’t do any synthetic chemical dying. I harvest a good portion of all the material I dye with right here in the Kittitas Valley.”

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Parke Creek Farm owner Bambi Miller prepares to hang wool yarn she dyed in natural indigo leaves from Tennessee Thursday, Oct. 1, in Kittitas.

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That material includes sagebrush, rabbit brush, golden rod and many more, mixing and matching different materials to create vibrant colored yarn that sells quickly at the Ellensburg Farmers Market, where Parke Creek Farms has had a stand since 2007.

Bambi said natural dyeing is a little bit science and a little bit art, with a lot of variables at play.

Different things can affect the end result, including time of the year, pH of the soil, how much

nutrients went into the plant and how stressed the plant might have been.

Some of her ingredients she finds along the roadside, but she needs to travel well off the road to find plants that have not been affected by car exhaust and other human factors.

On the farm, she grows other materials, including nettles, walnuts and marigold flowers. She also orders natural indigo material from a company in Tennessee.

“Some plants give a better dye color at the beginning of the season versus the end of the season,” she said. “If it was stressing it won’t release as much pigment, the pH and the water has a lot to do with it. Wool has to be good wool to take up the dye and show good color.”

Some colors are also harder to create than others, green being the most difficult Bambi said.

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Parke Creek Farm owner Bambi Miller drains wool of the water it soaked in prior to being naturally dyed Thursday, Oct. 1, in Kittitas.

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She recently posted a difficult to make green on her social media before the farmers market, and the unique yarn sold out at her stand in the first hour.

Besides sheep’s wool, Bambi also combines other fibers in her yarn, including alpaca and Angora rabbit wool.

“Angora is very fine and fluffy and really really warm,” she said.

“Alpaca is super soft and warm, and a really fun fiber to spin and work with. Sheep wool is superior to all of those fibers in function and workability, but I like to blend

the sheep wool with the alpaca and Angora. It gives that yarn more strength. It’s more sturdy and has memory instead of sagging and draping down when you wear it.”

Besides their new farm stand and farmers market business, Bambi’s dyed wool can also be found on her Etsy shop, where she has been shipping products all across the country and around the world.

“The last one I just did went to Germany,” she said, listing other countries including New Zealand, France, Romania and Canada.

Parke Creek Farm sheep wait to be let in to a grazing pasture Thursday, Oct. 1, in Kittitas.

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“A lot of it just goes around the United States.”

Moving to the valley Bambi and her husband, Eric, first had a farm in Snohomish. But as they looked to scale up in size, they had to look elsewhere. Bambi knew a friend in Ellensburg and soon it became home.

“When you drive from Yakima and come down the hill on I-82 and lookout over the valley, it’s like ‘Oh yeah, I’m home now,’” she said.

“You always have that feeling you’re home now because you’re driving

down into this beautiful valley. There are a lot of unique areas in our valley, and Upper County has lots of beauty too.”

After starting with just five sheep, she’s now over 100 total, and loves versatility of the animal. Parke Creek Farm raises Targhee sheep, Rambouillet sheep and Columbia sheep.

“The sheep in and of itself is such an amazing animal because you can get so many uses out of it,” she said. “I milk the sheep and I make soap, you get their wool — you can make all sorts of things with sheep wool — and they also graze and maintain property for you. Plus, you get lamb chops.”

Parke Creek Farm’s wool yarn comes completely from the sheep on the farm.

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Art at home

Grab some supplies and make this festive fall art, great for any age

G

allery One Community School of the Arts Coordinator Amy Davidson was kind enough to put together this fall art project for those feeling festive as the leaves change. For more art classes for any age group, visit www.galleryone.org to see what’s going down on Pearl Street.

Here’s a list of what you’ll need: 1) Flat piece of cardboard 2) Pencil/permanent marker 3) Scissors 4) School glue 5) Rope or twine to hang the art 6) A variety of beans and legumes from the grocery store.

Flip the page and get started!

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Step 1:

Draw and cut your canvas

Draw your favorite autumn shape on a piece of cardboard. Davidson sketched hers out in pencil first, then outlined it in permanent marker, making it easy to cut out.

Step 2:

Get gluin’

Use a *liberal* amount of school glue on the cardboard in the shape of the design you want. For her project, Davidson decided to use different beans to illustrate the different sections of a pumpkin. Davidson said don’t skimp on the glue, because some beans can be pretty heavy.

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Step 3:

Step 4:

Apply the beans!

Davidson said there are a few different techniques to apply here, usually depending on the age or patience level of the artist. Davidson applied the bigger beans one-by-one, while smaller legumes she dropped handfuls at a time and spread them out evenly.

When the beans are on, Davidson recommended letting it dry overnight.

Hang it up!

Once dry, Davidson said you can use jute or rope to hang your finished product. Here’s a more intricate one she made on display at Gallery One. K V LI V ING

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