b-sides

THE COMET b-sides judging by their covers

The Wreks - Fueled By Foodstamps

Their second and final album. Solid classics the whole way through - these songs get stuck in your head with just one listen. While at the same time very rough around the edges, in my opinion some of the best songwriting of a local album I know. Early Snatchee Records stuff that I didn’t get to experience firsthand, so this album carries with it some added mystique. Cover art drawn by Mike Graham, the lead singer/songwriter. He works as a tattoo artist in Tacoma nowadays.

Ghost Power!!! - The Basement

Ghost Power!!!’s first. The art is a perfect example of some of the amateur Microsoft Paint/Photoshop editing that was being used by bands on MySpace from around 2005-2009. The low end work always made stuff look so much cooler. This album also is just packed with good songs. It’s like those old 60s private press LPs that always had pretty questionable artwork. Yet once you heard the JAMS inside, you looked back at the cover and thought, “oh damn, this stuff is on the next level.”

Moss Dog - Midnight Forest Run

Moss Dog’s 2nd and final LP. In my opinion the best thing to come out of the group of local bands from the 90s you could throw into the grunge category. Recorded at Ironwood in Seattle, it sounds legit as hell. Does not sound like some regional 90s rock band AT ALL. Catchy songs, really technical drumming - could probably rival Matt Cameron’s drumming most days. Paul Graves’ vocal work, the double tracks - some darn right tasty work. Cover art by Brad Hale. Each little square image could easily work as its own cover.

Empty Pants - Empty Pants

Just a garbage drawing of an amp. It’s perfect. But what really gets this on the list is the lettering on the back of the cassette’s J card and the cassette itself. Recorded at Darik Peet’s studio on Springwater Street in 1993. All Wenatchee high school dudes. Bassist Joey McGuire grew up to own Revolution - the skate shop that sat on North Wenatchee Avenue up until three or four years back. Not sure who did the art here.

High Risk - Livin’ On The Edge

From what I’ve heard, this is the only thing they ever released. I know there was a second batch of a few songs they recorded (a year later I’d guess) but I think the band split before they could put it out. It’s just 80s as all hell and I love it. The cover was drawn by the band’s bassist, Jeff Gerber. Cityscape drawing, super intense logo (with the cityscape inside the letters - for extra credit). It. Justs. Works. Recorded at Robin Goodrich’s home studio “Apple City Music” on Washington Street in Wenatchee. Tons of killer guitar playing by a young Darik Peet, Joey Dechenne on drums, just before Michael Dickes’ band Gypsy Kyss swiped him up and took him on tour in Germany. This tape is also fantastic because it includes the earliest Wenatchee hip-hop (as far as I know). A track titled “It’s Live.” 80s white boy hip-hop. Da best.

Lopez - The Kids Aren’t Bad

The five song 7” from 1998 - the same year that the band relocated to Portland. Legends of the Wenatchee punk scene. An alternate cover art - a photo of a girl drinking outside the Lopez House was used for a handful of copies. That version is my favorite of the two but I haven’t found a copy of that yet.

Not All There - Toilet Humor

From 2001 - the band’s third album and last one before they split for seven years. Recorded by Eric Frank and Brad Petit in their home studio in Wenatchee. Start to finish killer songs, hooks on hooks, and the recordings themselves sound leaps better than the band’s first two albums. The opening track “Rude Awakening” was recorded in one take. My favorite NAT album. The cover is so bad yet at the same time so good. SO VERY GOOD. It looks like some 90s scanning job and one of those old free Microsoft fonts. I believe Matthew (singer/guitar/ songwriter) does the majority of the album art for the band - excluding their 2016 release “Holy Crap, It’s Not All There!”, drawn by Mike Graham.

Hentch - Hentch

The only vinyl LP to come out of Wenatchee during the 90s - recorded in Spokane at Jello Tree Studios. Decades before Chad Yenney had his collage art land on album covers across the globe - this was his band. “Pain Pills” is probably my favorite on the album. The cover is a xeroxed and enlarged drawing (originally about the size of quarter). I believe drawn by bassist Colin Hedges. Rumor has it that a few hundred surviving copies of the album got trashed years back - as is what happens with EVERY good rare record.

Datura - Datura

From 2019. Recorded at Greg Shapolov’s home studio. The band’s first release - their second came out April 2020. Some good goth post-punk. Solid grooves, hooks and great vocals and guitar work by David Betancourt. I just dig the drawing. A perfectly simple band logo. The ominous three figures set a perfect tone for the recordings. For the first handful of their shows I caught at Wally’s they had red floor lights on during their set, filling the room with the eerie glow - and that little technical addition successfully transformed Wenatchee’s most beloved dive bar into some dark gothic club hideout. Artwork is by former Wenatcheeite Jeff Smith. Jeff was one of the people behind the Basement - a residential venue on Methow Street that housed a big chunk of the music scene during the early 2000’s. Jeff’s done work for other releases, his own (Holographic Beast) and frequently creates sticker art sold in limited qualities through his Bandcamp page.

Himiko Cloud - Himiko Cloud

Their 2016 debut EP. The band had existed for years prior as Mothra, then changed their name to Himiko Cloud in 2015. Really great recording, but still with the hint of tiny flaws in the performances, it almost sounds like a live album to me with how close their shows were to these studio recordings. Without any lyrics to add any imagery for the listener, the album art - collage by Chad Yenney (who recorded the album) - provides a good dose of a spacey vibe to lay on top of Kyle Folden’s huge, delayheavy guitar tracks.

THE COMET PUZZLED: Local Artist Goes To Pieces

BY RON EVANS

If you’re like most people over the past year of hunker-down mode, you have likely experienced that panic-inducing moment when you’re getting a little tired of watching Netflix but you’re not quite ready to concede to crying in the fetal position for the rest of the quarantine. This is where you may have reached for that unopened jigsaw puzzle your aunt got you for Christmas that’s been hiding under the Scrabble and Catan boxes. You certainly wouldn’t be alone. In fact, in the first half of 2020 there was a massive shortage of puzzles to be found locally and even many “sold out” situations were popping up online. The verdict is in...jigsaw puzzles are a hot commodity right now. I’ve even seen people starting puzzle exchange groups on Facebook - which the CDC may have an opinion on…

Have you ever thought much about the puzzle image itself? Amidst the Mona Lisas and landscape photos there are hundreds of original works specifically designed to be pieced together on a coffee table with a fire crackling in the background and maybe a little Mozart on the hi-fi. Or more realistically, with your cat constantly wrecking it. Local artist and puzzle creator, Aimee Stewart has been busy crafting her eclectic, colorful and endlessly kooky art for just that purpose. And she’s been incredibly successful in this endeavor. Odds are you have put one of her puzzles together at some point. A Wenatchee native, Stewart now calls Cashmere home where she lives with her husband, Larry and churns out her creations in her studio. I reached out to get to know the artist and to learn about the somewhat mysterious industry of jigsaw puzzles.

When and how did you get into art in general, and how did you stumble upon the notion of creating specifically for puzzles?

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t into art. I have always had a massively active imagination - and it constantly spins on ideas and daydreams. I was always doodling and drawing, painting and coloring as a little kid. Throughout school, I was the one people came to when they needed backdrops painted, posters designed, etc. It was just a natural kind of talent that went hand in hand with whatever else I could get my hands on, creatively. Art, photography, music... whatever it was, I loved doing it and excelled. The same cannot be said for my math skills.

Oddly enough, once I graduated high school in 1989 I kind of dropped out, creatively. I got married, and just threw myself into life...making money at various jobs here and there, none of which were creative. They were a means to an end - which I was grateful for, but it didn’t nourish that part of me that always continued to daydream. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30’s when I got Adobe Photoshop for my computer, that I started to dabble with ‘computer art.’ I began to design elaborate websites, but pretty soon after that I found an online art forum of people making really cool artwork with Photoshop and I jumped in with both feet. Making digital art and conveying my daydreams became my oasis after long days of working jobs that drained me. And the best part of it was that I didn’t have to have a big studio, and didn’t have to spend a lot of money on supplies. I could just tuck myself away in front of a computer and work magic with pixels.

On a whim, I submitted some steampunk art to a British magazine called Advanced Photoshop Magazine. Much to my surprise, they wrote back and wanted to feature me. Right around the same time in 2007, an agent called Duirwaigh Studios spotted my stuff in the forums, and approached me with the idea of signing with them and licensing my artwork on greeting cards, calendars, t-shirts, and wall art. I signed with them, and royalties trickled in - enough to give us a little boost equal to a very part time job. Towards the end of my contract with Duirwaigh, they approached me about licensing my art as jigsaw puzzles. I hadn’t really thought about that possibility, ever. I had always imagined perhaps book covers, or album covers. Jigsaw Puzzles seemed like a completely different animal altogether. But I was game, and they licensed a couple of my existing images, but it never really caught fire.

Around 2012, I was approached by a second agent - who is my agent to this day, MGL Licensing out of London. Unlike my first agent, they were primarily puzzle licensors who had international connections with all the biggest puzzle manufacturers. They saw potential in my art, and offered to help transform it into something that could translate better into puzzles. More detail, more color...more everything. So I made the leap between agents, signed with them, and basically learned by the seat of my pants how to really take my vision and craft it into a good puzzle. The difference was like riding a fun local carnival ride, and then going to Disneyland. I love and appreciate what Duirwaigh did for me, but growing as an artist and as a professional - I had to hitch my star to an agency who had those crucial connections and who could help me learn how to navigate a very competitive industry.

I decided to quit working any kind of day job, and just put all my energies into my art. The results were astonishing. Pretty soon, my puzzles were flooding stores not just in the US, but overseas. I almost faint-

ed the day I walked into Target and saw my puzzles lined up on the shelves.

What was your very first published puzzle?

My very first puzzle was called “The Wish”, published by Buffalo Games. A little fantasy piece that I had made for wall art, not for a puzzle. It did ok, but I hadn’t found my vision as a puzzle artist yet and it shows.

Tell us a bit about your technique concerning the build up of these images. Are you using photographic elements that are then digitally manipulated? Is it mixed media with some painting/ drawing involved?

I use everything I can get my hands on! I consider it a mixed media that utilizes photographic and scanned ephemera elements. To create my most intricate puzzle images, I composite hundreds of photographic layers to create my ‘base.’ These layers can consist of something as big on the digital canvas as a sky, or a ship...or can be as tiny as a button on a blouse. I then arrange them all into the composition I like and then I start layering in painted details, painted lighting and shadows, changing colors, morphing shapes, etc. The challenge for me, as an artist, is to completely make the viewer forget they are looking at ‘digital art.’ I also challenge myself not to rely so much on a photograph that it becomes merely changing hue and lighting and calling it good. I want whatever elements I use to so thoroughly disappear into the new creation, that you can’t even tell how I did it. That’s what makes me the happiest, and what I feel good about when I claim it as my vision and art. I am really grateful and fortunate enough to say that doing all of this not only sustains me full time, but it also enabled my husband to retire early and delve into his own creative pursuits. I’ve been told by many industry folks that this doesn’t usually happen. A lot of artists keep jobs and do this on the side. But for whatever reason, my art coupled with the fact that I am an extremely prolific artist made a snowball effect, in that I have hundreds of images out there that I created over the years that generate passive income all the time in the form of royalties.

The way it works is the same as an author in the book industry gets paid, in that I first get an advance for whatever images I license. Then, when those products show up on store shelves, they ‘sell through’ the advance, and after that start generating royalties for me. So every sale earns a percentage royalty. Companies will license an image for a set number of years, and then they either re-license it (at which point I get another advance) or they let it go, and another company can pick it up and license it. My agent takes care of all the tracking and paperwork, and then sends me my combined royalties once a month.

As of last November, I signed a very rare 15 year exclusive contract with Buffalo Games out of New York. What this means is that for the next 15 years, they have the exclusive rights to license my art as jigsaw puzzles within the United States. Outside of the US I can still license to whatever puzzle companies want to take my work. I flew to Buffalo last fall as did my agents, and we met with the CEO, as well as the creative directors and everyone who makes it possible for me to do what I do. There is a fantastic synergy between Buffalo Games, MGL Licensing and myself , in that we are all on the same page, and all have the same passion for what we do.

I’m fortunate that my agent handles everything on the business end, and I can just keep daydreaming and making art. It is a sweet, sweet ride that I never for a moment ever planned for - never anticipated - but am grateful for, every single second of the day. I now have a private studio in Cashmere that I work from, which not only serves as a base for my digital art, but also a place where I can go craft, paint, and delve into all the other creative projects that I can possibly pursue. I have a fantastic friend who shares my studio with me who makes jaw dropping fantasy sculptures, and my husband has the studio next door where we do all our photography and he also designs for my agent.

Where do you typically start? With the concept, color scheme and layout, or initial sketching?

In general, I visualize the concept in my head while daydreaming. Yes, if you see me spacing out and staring into the vast gaping maw of the universe, I’m almost always thinking about a new piece of art. I look goofy, but it gets the job done. I never sketch anything out, though I probably should. I don’t even really have a specific color scheme in mind... the piece just leads the way. When I sit down to make new art, I almost feel like I’m cracking open a new book. I like it to surprise me. I enjoy not having it so mapped out. I am very intuitive, and I like for my art to follow that intuition, even if it ends up completely different than what it was supposed to be. I go with my gut feelings, and once I start placing layers down, I can always feel when I get the right composition.

I don’t have any fear of running out of

ideas... it’s wondering if I’ll ever have enough time to create them all that bugs me.

I’m curious about how the business end of this type of creative profession works. Is this sustaining you full-time? Do most of these publishers pay a flat rate for accepted works or is it a percentage of overall sales? Obviously any photograph or piece of art (or even a solid color for the real jigsaw puzzle maniacs) can be turned into a puzzle. What do you feel makes a truly satisfying but challenging puzzle image?

For me, I’ve found that my fans love images they can transport themselves into, and that gives them a ‘win’ with almost every piece, and that has lots of color. People compare my puzzles to ‘hidden object’ challenges because of the detail they contain. I tend not to put people in my puzzle images because I feel the minute you add in a person, you are dictating the experi-

ence for the consumer. I want everyone to be able to put themselves into the picture, as if it was made just for them.

One of my recent images is a highly detailed interior of an antique shop. I want my fans to be able to imagine themselves rummaging through the shop, and finding all the little things I’ve tucked around the picture. Although I admit that nearly all the animals I’ve included in my artwork are the pets of friends and family! And I’ve managed to tuck myself into a number of my own puzzles, whether through tiny vintage photographs, or other ways. I’ve even hidden a Tardis (hello Doctor Who fans!) in one of my puzzles. That being said - there are people who love very tranquil puzzle images, or like you mentioned... solid colors. It’s a widely diverse industry and fan base. I’m just glad my fans enjoy my hyper-detailed stuff. It makes it really fun to create.

The drawback to the industry is that if one company has a ‘hit’ with some specific puzzle, other companies will make knockoffs of that image. The reason being is that fans are often very loyal to one puzzle company. So it is kind of a bummer to see so much of the same thing sitting on the shelves at any one time. So when I make a new puzzle, I try very hard to make it something I would want to see and put together. Something that is new, and that will give a puzzle fan a whole new experience. I am really enjoying making retro-inspired puzzles right now. Stuff that people my age - Gen X’ers - will see and immediately recognize from their past. Like my puzzle Pixels and Pizza - that was inspired straight out of my high school years. And I think that makes a good puzzle experience for a whole new set of puzzle enthusiasts who aren’t quite into the quaint country/ farmhouse type puzzles that have dominated over the past decades.

To be a successful puzzle artist, you need to understand that people spend a lot of time and money on this hobby, and they want a fun experience out of it. It isn’t just about having a pretty picture to put together, it’s about being engaged, challenged, but not irritated to the point of quitting. The other thing is that you can’t be too precious about your art when you submit it to a company who mass-produces your work. They absolutely will come at you with a dozen different edits. They’ll ask you to move things around, to add in details, to take away elements, change colors, change lighting, and on and on. The people who are willing to work with requests and edits and do it with a good attitude are the people who stick around. After all, you are creating this artwork for other folks to enjoy...it really is about them, and not you.

However, if you can find the balance of really enjoying the art you make, and you love making it for yourself and for them it really becomes this magical kind of thing.

Do the puzzle manufacturers/publishers do open calls for art? Are there puzzle makers/designers you are inspired by?

Sometimes they do. It is worthwhile to follow puzzle companies on their social media sites. They announce there on occasion when there is an open call for art. It is definitely worth a shot.

In the age of print on demand and higher quality small run publishing, are many puzzle creators putting their own puzzles out - sans a larger publishing company?

I have seen quite a few companies out there forging their own ground and creating their own niche in the industry. While they may not get shelf space in major retail stores, online purchases are very popular - and puzzle fans are as diverse as they come. So I’ve seen some small publishers focusing on edgy or more sophisticated imagery that cater to a different clientele than what would ever be found at Fred Meyer, for instance. I think now more than ever, people are looking for options and variety. And most importantly, quality. Puzzlers love high quality puzzle pieces, interesting puzzle piece shapes, and clear, quality images (posters inside the box, even) to use as their guide with the puzzles. So if someone is willing to do their homework and invest in those things, they stand a good chance of finding a market for it. There are so many talented puzzle artists out there. Two of my favorite contemporary artists are Stephanie Law and Kinuko Craft, and both of them have puzzles out there that are exquisite. But mostly, I collect vintage puzzles. I love the kitschy children’s puzzles of the 1940’s and 1950’s and the psychedelic puzzles of the late 1960’s. I also have a collection of “what were they thinking?!” puzzles which includes things like a cringe-worthy photo of seafood ragout from the 1970’s, and a photograph of a messy bathroom from the early 1980’s. Those are gems that make me chuckle every time I see them.

Are you creating other types of art on a regular basis?

Outside of the puzzle industry, I still make a lot of art just for myself that won’t ever see any kind of commercial success. I have fun writing stories and illustrating them, and I still love attending fantasy/sci-fi conventions, which I always make art specifically for. In the end, I started off making art for my own delight, and to my utter surprise I’ve found that people around the world find joy in my art too. It’s the happiest accident I could have ever hoped for.

Woody guthrie: the columbia river songs

BY RON EVANS

About 20 years ago I discovered the music of folk legend Woody Guthrie. I was listening to some radio interview with Beck, who I was obsessed with at the time, and he mentioned that his earliest recordings were largely inspired by Woody Guthrie. This sent me on a quest to find some of Woody’s music as I love tracing the influences of my favorite artists. I was immediately charmed by the simplicity of the tunes, the catchiness of Woody’s playful yet earnest vocals and the ghostly, frozenin-time feeling you get when listening to these scratchy, muffled, tinny songs captured in the early days of recording.

I was sort of shocked when I first heard Guthrie mention the Grand Coulee Dam in some of his lyrics but soon learned that not only did he write about the dam, he did so while he was actually up here in Washington State. And he was hired by the government to write an entire collection of songs to sell the American people on the idea of The Grand Coulee Dam and the notion of publicly owned power. It’s hard to truly express how surprising that sounded to me after learning of Guthrie’s often-polarizing politics, anti-government (in some ways) lyrics - Woody was even associated with the Communist Party, although most accounts claim this association has been somewhat exaggerated. But the biggest surprise to me was...how the hell had I never heard about this?

Around that same time, KEXP radio host Greg Vandy (The Roadhouse) had had a similar realization concerning Woody and The Grand Coulee dam. Vandy intended on getting to the bottom of this fascinating story and soon found himself working on a book (something he’d never done before) and the history he uncovered plays out like a Cohen Bros. film with a convergence of so many unlikely happenings, it hardly seems true. Yet it is. Vandy’s book, “26 Songs In 30 Days: Woody Guthrie’s Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest” paints the picture of this ‘almost lost to time’ story in great detail. I sat down with the author for an in-depth talk about the book, the folk singer and the mighty Grand Coulee Dam.

How and when did you first fall in love with Woody Guthrie’s music and how long after that did you start researching the book?

Well, I’d say it’s more like ‘when did I begin to appreciate his music’ and understand the greater context of why he’s considered so important. Woody can be a difficult listen, and like many, I knew the name more than his songs. I made the connection that he wrote all these songs about the Columbia River Project and then one day, when I was supposed to be working, I was in the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center. They have this really cool little theater there, and while I was watching all the reels of historical films about the building of the dam, there was some female harmony version of “Roll On Columbia” that I’d never heard before. It’s not like there’s a lot there to recognize Woody’s contribution to the project. It sounded like a 1980’s recording and I still don’t really know who it was. But I was like, ‘oh, that’s a new version.’

At the time I was developing these theme shows on KEXP, where I take one song and play the many versions of the same song. Usually traditional songs. It makes you appreciate the song and learn about it and see the evolution of it. So I started doing that with “Roll On Columbia” and then I realized there was a whole song cycle that Woody Guthrie wrote about his experience being employed by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). Given this context, I understood and appreciated the songs much more. The same is true for his Dust Bowl Ballads. I became a fan like everyone else who seeks it out.

I started doing research for a special threehour radio show, in which I interviewed some of the people with first-hand experiences with the story, including Michael Madjic (University of Oregon) who produced a video documentary on the whole thing. I aired different versions of this radio show over the years, and it landed on the ears of Sasquatch Books who offered

Grand Coulee Dam mid-construction in 1939 - Photo/Bonneville Power Administration

me a deal to write a book. I started writing it in 2014.

The book sets the stage pretty early on for this collaboration between Woody and the BPA. And for unlikely as that pairing was, the stories leading up to it illustrate why it wasn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. Where do you begin to research for a book like this, which is part biographical and part historical documentation?

Well, I go from knowing that there’s this song cycle (which is on an album called The Columbia River Songs) to finding Madjic’s documentary and then producing the radio special. And then from there, after the book deal, I filled in the details with independent research with lots of help from people like Jeff Place from Smithsonian Folkways, The Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa and the BPA archives in Portland. Libby Burke was a godsend there.

And so through all that I picked up on the amazing story and soon realized that not much had been written about it before. At all. The two main Guthrie biographies, surprisingly, only provide a scant half dozen pages or so to the BPA story. And most people who live in this state, and in Oregon, are unaware that this happened at all, or that Woody Guthrie has an imprint here where he actually wrote songs about us, about where we live here in the Northwest. And that “Pastures of Plenty” is literally about the Columbia River Basin and a big utopian vision to solve the Dust Bowl crisis and bring electricity to rural farmers.

It’s very exciting to find out that these songs are about us and where we live. It’s like going to a museum, and you’re like ‘Oh, I can see my house in that Rembrandt.’ It’s kind of mind blowing.

The idea of writing 26 songs in 30 days is impressive on just about any level. But the fact that some of those songs ended up living on, like “Pastures of Plenty”, as icons of folk music - I think is pretty incredible.

Although Woody was known, as were most folk musicians of the time, to borrow or straight up repurpose melodies for his new songs. Talk a little bit about Woody from a songwriting standpoint.

Woody’s process as a traditional folksinger is fairly typical. And like most folksingers, he sang the old songs. And this is something that I think is lost on a lot of modern listeners, because it’s certainly an old fashioned concept. But it’s really what folk music is all about, which is not necessarily writing new songs the way the Beatles wrote The White Album. It’s more like, there are these old songs that people have always sang to each other for generations, learning from each other and from song books well before the advent of recording technology. The songs passed from person to person in what has become known as the ‘oral tradition’ where people learn songs from people actually singing the songs.

Over time the songs changed, morphed, and adapted, sometimes into whole new songs, to fit the needs of the performer and reflecting different geographies and local vernacular - where everyone has their own way of doing a popular song, his or her way. This is called the ‘folk process.’ When records happened in the late 1920’s and the first recordings by the Carter Family were released, these were old songs. Songs that A.P. Carter heard orally, from his community. He was like a collector. Then he recorded them. Woody was like this too, but Woody would write his own lyrics to existing song melodies. Again, not the first one at all. Joe Hill used and adapted old melodies for his labor songs at the turn of the 20th Century as did other protest singers. The idea being that if you knew the melody already you could follow the song easier. That whole thing is really fascinating to me - ‘the folk process.’ That’s what Woody Guthrie did. Nobody owned the old traditional songs. Still don’t.

So yes, Woody adapted old songs to fit his needs all the time.

was thought to be a pipe dream by most people. Just a thing too impossible to imagine or even justify. But one early visionary and champion for the project is a prominent name here in Wenatchee. Publisher of the Wenatchee Daily World, Rufus Woods. How important was Woods’ support for the project of the dam in getting things off the ground?

It was huge, because he was the ultimate booster. And it’s a little bit complicated as to what he wanted versus what ultimately happened, as he was for private interest and for making the whole project a private enterprise. The federal government at the time, however, was all for public power and for public ownership. So there’s a difference there. But Rufus was great, because he made it really sort of an entertaining story about how the little guy was gonna win over the big guy, and the Grand Coulee Dam is gonna help the community and bring a better life to the Wenatchee area.

Understanding that time and place is so interesting and so important because they had these movie reels that played in all the cinemas back in the day. When you’d go see a movie you’d see the main feature, then you can maybe see a short and then there’s always a newsreel in there too. The story of the Grand Coulee Dam was a popular feature in these reels. This is be-

Treasure in the closet. Unearthed acetate of Woody’s BPA recordings. “Propaganda for the People.” Early poster to promote public power.

fore TV sets of course. And I think it was really fun and encouraging for people who were living through the Great Depression to know that there is a sense of progress going on. And I think that’s why it was such a popular story because not only was it the biggest thing that man had ever done in the middle of nowhere, but it was a sign of America coming back from the Depression.

Along that propaganda line, there were plenty of people that were sort of scoffing at Woody Guthrie, his lyrics for these songs and his involvement with the dam in general as little more than propaganda, which I suppose, by definition is propaganda. Or do you see it differently?

Well, yeah, I think it’s classic propaganda but as I wrote in the book, it was also “public relations for The People.” That’s how Harry Hopkins put it (Roosevelt’s WPA Director). He said, “it’s about time people have propaganda for them. The big power companies spend millions on propaganda for private utilities.”

And I think that’s what this was - it was propaganda to educate people that public power was something that was viable and possible, and that we didn’t need private interest to charge whatever they wanted for power from rivers that belong to everyone, because they are our natural resource. The project was aimed at improving the lives of common people by bringing electricity at a low rate to people in rural eastern Washington and Oregon for the first time. Literally bringing people out of the dark and providing a more modern lifestyle for everyone. It was part of The New Deal, and yes, it needed to be sold by a folksinger because this was actually our first folk revival, back in the 1930’s. A new American narrative featuring working people that was both organic and fully sponsored by the Roosevelt administration to promote New Deal policy. It’s quite fascinating.

Plenty of artists or celebrities have cashed in on a paycheck to promote something or another. But a major difference here is that it seems to me that Woody truly believed in this project.

He needed a job really bad as I explained in the book. He was at probably his lowest ebb, ever. He was discouraged. He was broke. He had a family and needed a gig, and this was a great gig. But this wasn’t selling a bar of soap or a brand of cars. It was about a whole ideology of public or private. About public utility districts providing energy and power to people who didn’t have it before and irrigating dry dusty land for people in order to create something for themselves. A cure for the Dust Bowl and a place for migrants to settle down. So, yes, he was way into it. We make reference in the book that Mary, his wife at the time, said that Woody would come home super jazzed about the whole thing and he was inspired. That’s clearly evident in the quality of the songs. It was the perfect job for him. And he loved it. He loved this area too. I mean, think of how pristine and beautiful the Pacific Northwest was back in 1941. I think being from the Dust Bowl region, the lush landscape made a lifelong impression on him.

“Roll On Columbia” was a song that we actually learned in grade school by heart. I don’t remember Woody Guthrie’s name ever being associated with it. It was one of those songs that just was. In fact, the song itself was famous before Woody’s recording of it was released. How does that even happen?

So this is one of the most amazing discoveries and most interesting aspects of the book for me. The fact that the most well known Woody Guthrie song from this song cycle was never recorded by Woody Guthrie. For years people thought it was never recorded by him. Now, this goes back to the idea that songwriters published songs in song books back in the day and that Woody wrote a million songs but only got a chance to record a fraction of them. And of the 26 songs we reference in the book, only 17 of those songs had been recorded. So it’s not too crazy to think that we know “Roll On Columbia” from other artists, or from summer camps or school via a song book.

It wasn’t until 1987 that anyone heard a recording of it by Woody Guthrie. It was Bill Murlin of the BPA who discovered the old acetate when he made contact with retired BPA employees via an internal newsletter. And there were others too; all these lost acetates that Woody Guthrie recorded in the BPA basement as demos were found in private hands. I imagine this make-shift studio closet where he banged out these songs during his month-long employment there. And one of the lost recordings was “Roll On Columbia!” It’s pretty amazing and I imagine it blew the minds of hardcore Guthrie fans when it was discovered.

There are actually 12 songs that came out of the woodwork from surviving, physical acetate copies which were in the possession of old BPA employees. And of the 26 songs that Woody wrote for his Columbia River song cycle, he recorded 5 of them later, commercially, for Moe Asch for his Folkways label in 1944, and those are the songs we know, like “Talking Columbia”, “Hard Traveling”, “Grand Coulee Dam” etc. Apparently, Woody forgot about “Roll On Columbia” by then. We try to explain that in the book. The whole story has one amazing thing after another.

suppose it’s too much to hope for some sort of preservation, or memorialization of that auspicious occasion.

The BPA moved out of their original building, and I doubt anything was preserved there. I’m not even sure the structure still stands.

Another aspect of the dam that I don’t remember ever being taught in school was the devastation that the project had on the indigenous people of the area. Talk a bit about that and how it led to the Ceremony of Tears.

Whenever we talk about the Grand Coulee Dam there are two sides of that tale. In the introduction of the book we give a full disclaimer to inform the reader that this is a story about Woody Guthrie, and how this whole thing came about. And you have to keep in mind that while we tell the story, there’s a whole other side to it that’s terrible. The over-damming of the Columbia, turning this natural, beautiful river into a lake is a terrible consequence, environmentally. And the consequence of the Coulee Dam for Native Americans is the loss of salmon, lifestyle, and culture. And they received none of the power or electricity, even though the reservation is literally on the other bank of the river. The whole story is really ridiculous. The best book that I’ve read about this angle of the story is called “A River Lost” by Blaine Harden. He explains how arrogant it was to not consider anyone in this equation other than white males. So that’s a fact you have to know going into telling a story like this.

The Ceremony of Tears was this moment in time when the native tribes were realizing their fate and that the Columbia River was going to be dammed, and that the river was going to rise. And that not only were the salmon going to be blocked, a lot of the land would be covered with water, including burial sites. The ceremony was sort of a solemn acknowledgement that things were going to change at that moment for them. And not for the best, obviously. Oh, yeah, definitely a one-off. It was meant to finally recognize Woody Guthrie at the Grand Coulee Dam, which they really never had done before. Which kind of surprised me and kind of blows my mind in a certain way that a guy as famous as Woody Guthrie who wrote a song called “Grand Coulee Dam” is not fully recognized at the Grand Coulee Dam. I felt like, you know, 75 years after the fact it would be nice to have some sort of recognition of those songs and the guy who wrote them. Granted, there is a display of him in the Visitor Center with a xylophone thing where you can play “Roll On Columbia”, but it’s easy to miss. My book was timed to come out on the 75th anniversary of Guthrie’s employment with the BPA, so we partnered up with the Bureau Of Reclamation to do the event. They were pretty cooperative in helping us out.

We had Deana McCloud come out from the Woody Guthrie Center (in Tulsa), which was really flattering. Bill Murlin and Libby Burke were there from the BPA, and we had these great panels, which I think was the best part of the event, in that little theater. And of course we had singers and some bands. I really envisioned a whole big stage and a grandstand and Arlo Guthrie playing, but you know, we really couldn’t get that together. There was no budget at all. Everyone did it because they wanted to be there. The location is so remote that it was hard to get Seattle people to drive all the way out there. But it’s a special place in the Coulee Corridor, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a gorgeous road trip.

In 2016, you organized something that I had been waiting for for a long time, even if I didn’t know it. Woody Guthrie Day at Grand Coulee Dam. An all day event with live music, film screenings, panels and Woody-centric exhibits. How did that all come together? And was this a one off? Or are there plans for maybe future Woody celebrations? When I first learned about Woody’s time up here with the Columbia River songs, I hit the road. I was on a quest to see the dam with renewed interest. I was also looking for any little roadside marker - some sort of attraction or mention of Woody that I could find, only to discover there was no such thing. Except for a little power substation they named after him - you know, one of those eyesore things that we all try to hide with fences and shrubs - somewhere down on the Oregon-Washington border, which is such a touching tribute.

Your book really helps the story come back into light. But why do you think it ever faded to begin with? And why do you think these acetates ended up under the bed of some dude that just never really thought about it until someone

I don’t think anyone even knew what really happened until the 60’s. We mentioned in the book that there was a writer for the AP who sort of pieced it together for the first time in a news story. The original documentary film, “The Columbia”, that Woody was hired to write songs for eventually materialized but not until after the war, in 1949. By that time, it wasn’t very relevant and nobody actually saw the film. After World War II the country immediately shifted its focus to a more urban economy and the agrarian utopia featuring a Planned Promised Land was already outof-date and not realistic.

So not many people know this happened, even to this day. The five songs released commercially were heard much later, and music fans referred to these songs as “Woody’s dam songs” or his “Columbia River songs”, but not many knew that there were 17 other songs until Murlin produced the Columbia River Songs album in 1987 with all the unknown recordings. However, another prized nugget of my research uncovered an album that Moe Asch released in 1948, which was actually the first Columbia River songs album, with many of the songs we are talking about here, but for some reason Asch called it Ballads From The Dust Bowl. It’s weird because it had only one Dust Bowl song and all the other songs were Columbia River songs. So I assume that Asch was just using the tried and true Dust Bowl brand to sell the record. But the cover is a man reclining in his car driver seat looking at the Grand Coulee Dam. Nobody made this connection before, and when I called Jeff Place at Smithsonian about it, he agreed. It’s a pretty rare record. So that’s always funny to me.

One of the things I always thought would be amazing on a road trip of that region would be some sort of ‘Woody sat and strummed his guitar here’ roadside markers overlooking the river. A man named Elmer Bueller was tasked by the BPA to drive Woody around and basically do just that. Take in the sights, smell the fresh Columbia River air and write songs. You once interviewed Bueller about his time with Woody. How does he recall this experience?

maybe? Just a few years before he passed away. He was a very elderly man and just a great guy to talk with about his experience - you know, having someone with first-hand experience at whatever you are researching is so valuable. Especially to someone like Woody Guthrie, which was pretty exciting. There are really not many people you can say that had first hand experience with him or with this whole story. Besides his stories, I wanted to know what the route was from Portland to Grand Coulee and back when they drove it in a government car - a brand new 1940 Hornet Hudson. And that way I could make a map and do what you’re saying, visualize Woody Guthrie singing over the river or whatever he did, and share the romance of that vision. Also, to make a definitive timeline because Woody only worked on this job for 30 days.

But, I just could not get him to nail it down. Of course he was 90 years old and this happened so long ago for him, but I was hoping for some sort of logbook, you know. When you work for the state or for the federal government everything is written down, so I thought there might be a surviving journal or log book or something like that. But the best I could get from him, which I wrote in the book, was they started going east on the Columbia and through the towns of Dee, Parkdale and eventually to The Dalles. There’s a story about a stop-over in Arlington, and a quick side trip to Lost Lake, which apparently blew Woody’s mind. He said something like, “I’m in paradise.” This was before the interstate highway so they were taking all these older roads and they cut up somewhere before Walla Walla, then north east to Spokane, and then from Spokane to Grand Coulee and from Grand Coulee they followed the river down to Portland. So that’s the route as best as I can tell. Speaking with Elmer was one of my favorite parts of the research.

Bueller once claimed to have heard Guthrie strumming his guitar in the backseat on one of these drives throughout the region. And apparently he was working and reworking lyrics to a song that hadn’t been recorded yet. A little tune called “This Land Is Your Land.” This isn’t one of the official Columbia River ballads, but is it fair to at least imagine that Woody might have been influenced by his time here in writing one of the most famous songs in US history?

The rare, earliest Columbia River songs compilation by Moe Asch - oddly attributed to the Dust Bowl ballads in spite of the fact that the man in the illustration is clearly parked in front of the Grand Coulee Dam, as spotted by Vandy. An original poster for the documentary Woody was orignally hired to write music for.

Governor Clarence C. Martin placing official first concrete pour at Grand Coulee Dam. Photo by: William S. Russell. Dec. 6, 1935 - Courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation.

Well, Woody definitely wrote that in 1940 in New York, but didn’t record it until 1944 with Moe Asch. Like I mentioned before, writing a song and recording a song are two different things, and back then Woody would record a whole batch of songs on a whim, then Asch would release them whenever, and as he saw fit. Folkways was a very small indie label, and most of the recordings Woody made back in the 40’s are on albums that came out in the 50’s and 60’s or his songs were made popular by other singers, like Pete Seeger. The Folk Revival of that time is how most people discovered Woody Guthrie’s songs, but ironically he was too sick (with Huntington’s disease) to play and participate in that new scene. That’s how the legend of Guthrie really began, in that people knew these songs that were written much earlier but he was a man of mystery to kids in the early 60’s folk revival scene. But he very well could have been still working on it and just singing it, or maybe changing it, who knows? I think “Pastures of Plenty” is just as important as “This Land Is Your Land” and it’s really the same kind of song in how ‘this land’ belongs to you and me, and the private versus public space argument. It’s the ultimate migrant song.

What we did discover about that song (Pastures), and Libby Burke has a lot to do with this, is that we know for a fact that Steve Khan, the guy that hired him at the BPA to write songs for his film gave Woody a copy of the book The Grapes of Wrath. Khan gave him a bunch of materials for Guthrie to bone up on the history of the area and the meaning of the project. So we think that he was reading The Grapes of Wrath with Elmer Bueller during those rides and that the book was really influential in writing “Pastures of Plenty.” And I figured out that Woody Guthrie had never read it before, even though he’d written a song about the lead character, Tom Joad. But he’d seen the movie. The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939. John Houston’s movie came out in 1940, which is a pretty quick turnaround for a movie of that magnitude. But I found this audio recording from December of 1940, five months before heading to Portland, where Woody was performing with Leadbelly in New York City, and in between songs Woody says, “Oh, here’s a song called ‘Tom Joad’. I haven’t read the book. But I saw the movie!”

On the topic of your book, as a radio personality and an author the obvious question, I suppose: Did you think about doing an audio book version? Or is that something possibly on the horizon?

Well, I talked to the publisher about that. I thought that’d be something great to do back then. But it was a question of cost considering you need the rights to the song recordings in addition to the rights to print the lyric manuscripts. It’s all very expensive. lishing for Woody Guthrie. And they were pretty hard to deal with. So for the audio recording, I think it would be cost prohibitive for any publisher to pay for those to use in an audio book. Who knows, I had my hands full just writing the book with my co-author, Dan Person.

I think a lot of people are surprised that Woody Guthrie isn’t in the public domain.

There’s so much to say about that. Public domain is about 1925, I think. But for this situation and for the sake of argument, when you write songs for the government you’re being paid for by the government - which is us. So really, don’t we own the songs? But to have that discussion with the rights holders... you may as well just forget about it. The other thing to say is I would never object to any copyright that Guthrie and the family lays claim to because the fact is, Woody Guthrie never really got paid. He was scraping and struggling his entire life and he got hardly any royalties from anything. When The Weavers did some of his songs he got paid a little bit, but it was far too little far too late. When Woody passed, a lot of the publishing rights served a great purpose in helping his family. So there’s no beef from me.

Are there any other subjects that interest you enough to pursue a book? Or is this one good for you?

phies, there’s only like four to seven pages dedicated to this amazing, incredible story. So I’m very proud that we - me and Daniel Person, told the story, finally. And it’s a great story. I love the story. But, I wouldn’t call myself a dedicated author. This whole story, in a way, chose me.

That was a while ago now, and considering I have kids and zero time, it’s hard to imagine doing another heavy lift - because the money just isn’t there. But to answer your question, the whole weird story of local hero Harry Smith would be a good one to explore. He’s the guy behind the Anthology Of American Folk Music and he’s from my hometown of Bellingham. He’s a very complicated figure, so I’m assuming that’s why no one has chased that dragon. Maybe someday!

Final Note: After reading this you may just want to load up the car, pop in some Woody Guthrie and head out on a road trip to the Grand Coulee Dam. Unfortunately the visitor center is closed due to Covid but the park and the main vista points are all open so you can take in the vast views of this seemingly impossible monument of human ingenuity. Breathe in the fresh air of that ‘misty crystal glitter’ as the waters slide down the spillway and think about the culture, politics, dreams and hardships the Grand Coulee Dam represents. However you feel about this controversial creation, I think we can all agree that it might just be the biggest thing that man has ever done. C