Recently, Dan Volohov got the chance to speak with Gary Lee Conner – solo-artist, guitarist and one of the founding members of Screaming Trees. Gary tells us about playing the guitar and his solo-record -  “Unicorn Curry”, about his current activities and grunge-scene, about “Sweet Oblivion” and “Dust’, about being on SST records and live-shows. Hope you’d enjoy!

Punk Globe: With your current creativity you’re more or less focused on psychedelic and classical rock-guitar sounds. The elements that were prevailing in early works of Screaming Trees – especially “Clairvoyance”. What made you to get back that sound ?

Gary: I love all rock music, it’s my entertainment, my creativity and my whole life pretty much. However, psychedelic rock has been my first love as long as I can remember. When we first started the band, those influences were most prominent and continued through the SST years. Being the major songwriter for the Screaming Trees the music of course reflected my influences but the other guys in the band did not share my all-encompassing love of psych. After the band was done, I decided there was no one holding me back and I decided to write the most psychedelic songs I possibly could, which I continue to do.

Punk Globe: As far as I know now you’re in the process of recording of your next album. Could you please tell our readers about it?

Gary: I spent last year or so listening to a lot more music than I have for a long time. I started off right after I released Unicorn Curry in the fall of 18. I started off revisiting all the 60's and early 70's garage and psychedelia music I love. Using YouTube I even discovered a good number of songs that I had never heard before. After a few months of this I realized that I had missed out on at least 20 years of new music since 2000. Since then I try to find more recent stuff that is from that time and really try to concentrate on brand new releases. I have good news; Rock music is alive and well. Here's a list of my favorites from 2019:

• Psychedelic Porn Crumpets ‎– Now For The Whatchamacallit
• Buried Feather - Cloudberry Dreamshake
• King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard – Infest in Rats’ Nest
• The Kundalini Genie – It’s All In Your Head
• Oh Sees – Face Stabber
• Redd Kross – Beyond The Door
• The Claypool Lennon Delirium – South Of Reality
• The Schizophonics – People In The Sky
• The Orange Kyte – Carousel
• Nebula – Holy Shit

Mind you this is just stuff I've found and it's probably just the tip of the iceberg from what I can tell. Anyway, I am working on recording a batch of new songs right now so they will likely be influenced by all this new and old music I have been surrounding myself with. I all goes as planned I will have something new out by this summer.

Punk Globe: In describing your latest solo-album “Unicorn Curry” you used the metaphor of “a road”. Was it a hard road for you?  

Gary: The hard part as far as my solo works are concerned came in between the end of The Screaming Trees and my first post Trees solo album The Microdot Gnome. I was musically on my own in an isolated town in West Texas. It was suddenly a lot like before the band ever started when I was in Ellensburg. I’ve always been a loner and a hermit and being away from all the people and musical resources I had come into contact with was really hard. I continued to write songs and tried to contact a few people and labels, but nothing came of it. Finally, in about 2008 I got a new computer and started using the DAW Cakewalk Sonar which was a musical liberation for me. Now instead of recording things at home on the level of all my 4 Track Demos I realized I could produce album quality music on my own at home in the desolate middle of Texas. At the same time social media was taking off and digital music was becoming a big thing. I joined Facebook and My Space as well as the music site Reverb Nation and in 2010 released my first post Screaming Trees album The Microdot Gnome digitally. Another musically liberating thing I realized at this time was that I now was doing music for fun again and my own artistic satisfaction. As the Screaming Trees got more successful the more being in the band became a job. By the mid-90s it was a job that none of us was very fond of.

Punk Globe: If we’d speak about your playing – I’ve always felt that within your guitar parts you’re uniting very different elements. That’s why “Mystery Lane” sounds even more “grungy” than any of the records by Screaming Trees. A bit of psychedelic, a bit of garage- and hard-rock. But what allowed you to unite these elements in your play, what do you think?  

Gary: Much of grunge is a hybrid of Metal and Punk. The Trees music and my own, especially in the 80’ was a hybrid of Psychedelic Rock and Punk. The band that I always thought of as closest to our early music was the LA Band the Salvation Army (after their first recordings the became the Three O’clock and became much less punk influenced.) If I were to site influences it would probably be Jimi Hendrix, Ron Ashton, Steve Howe (Yes & Tomorrow), and Gregg Ginn.

Punk Globe: What attracted you in playing the guitar?

Gary: I took lessons at school in 5th grade but quit after a few. I had the guitar around and would just pick it up and play whatever came to mind. Once I started listening to rock by the time I was 12 or 13 I got more interested in it and bought an electric guitar at a used store (Silvertone with the amp in the case and an American flag painted on it, about 1975 or 76.) We used to by most of our records at yard sales. In the mid-70s this was like a goldmine of cheap cool music. One of the albums that really made me want to start a band was The MC 5’s ‘Kick Out The Jams.” I kept playing and just learned on my own, I did not usually figure out songs I would just play what I thought up in my head.

Punk Globe: Most of Screaming Trees’ songs were written by Mark and yourself. Can you say that as musicians and band members you always had the great feel of each other\understanding between each other?

Gary: In some ways yes and some ways no. After Mark had found that he had a really great voice I was able to understand things that would work with his voice though sometimes I didn't stick to that knowledge like on Black Sun Morning for example. He hated singing that because it was almost like Screaming. In most other ways we were in different planets and he would usually visit mine and what I had written and de-psychedelicize it as best he could. Consequently, most of our output through Uncle Anesthesia way pretty well and n the psych vain to the dismay of Mark.

Punk Globe: Speaking generally – when you’re writing a song, where does everything start from? And how how does it develop.

Gary: When I get to recording sometimes lyrics and parts change, especially now working on a DAW it's easy to chop thing up and move them around or redo parts or vocals.

Nowadays I work from titles. When I think of one, I like I check Google to see if it's been used (Sometimes I used previously used titles, but I like to come up with original ones)

Then I put it on my list and develop it musically and lyrically. Sometimes I just be playing guitar and a song will come out of the blue, that used to happen a lot in the old days.

Punk Globe: By the time you recorded “Buzz Factory” with Jack Endino, grunge had already established itself. So what was the most interesting and exciting about this new sound, and did you feel yourself as a part of this movement?

Gary: Not yet at the time. We knew of Mudhoney, Tad, Nirvana and Soungarden, but we were still outsiders living across the state and were on the SST label out of California. We had not played Seattle too much either. It was probably by the middle of 89 that we knew we were becoming part of the new scene, after Change Has Come on Sub POP and Marks Sub POP solo album. That’s when we started to spend more time there with all of us eventually living in Seattle.

Punk Globe: What can you say about your shows during that period? The best and the worst memories?

Gary: We went through a lot of drummers from 90 to 92 so lives changed a bit during that time. When Pickerel left we first got Sean Hollister who was from Ellensburg. We did Europe in 90 and a fall tour opening for Social Distortion with him. In 91 Dan Peters was our Drummer before we finally got Barrett later that year. I guess the main difference in shows was that we had more interest and fans at the shows around the Northwest. It wasn't till 92 that there was a real difference all over because the exploding Seattle scene.

Punk Globe: After signing to SST your sound started slowly changing. ““Even If And Especially When” sounds like yours truly classical sound. While “Invisible Lantern” would be probably the most psychedelic. What usually defined these sound changed and things you’ve been exploring as musicians?  

Gary: Recording in Ellensburg at Velvetone we would spend months working on albums. New songs would come along in the middle of working on one. “Clairvoyance, “Even If” and “Invisible Lantern” were all long drawn out projects and there were tours in between them do each one reflective a different stage of the band.

Punk Globe: In one of your interviews you were talking about SST you said that things with label just got bad at some point. The same as with Sub Pop. What “destroyed” them?

Gary: The main thing that I could see is that SST just had too many bands by the end of the 80s and many of them started to leave for various reasons. Sub Pop was somewhat different, and they had a lot of money problems in the early 90s but of course we're saved by Nirvana's game.

Punk Globe: After signing to Epic Records you released “Uncle Anesthesia” “Sweet Oblivion” that completely broke the charts. If we’d speak in terms of that era in your creativity – what were the factors, that defined the direction you’ve been moving to, as a band?  

Gary: Uncle Anesthesia was a transition. We were still writing the same way with me starting songs and bringing them to Lanegan but the production changed to a larger studio and of course the major label pressure was at least a little bit noticeable were as with SST you could do anything you wanted musically. Also during the recording of that album, we knew Mark Pickerel would be gone when it was finished. After it was done Van nearly left the band too as he played bass for Dinosaur Jr. for a few months but after we got Dan Peters on drums Van came back and we did a US tour for the album.

Sweet Oblivion was really a new beginning after getting Barrett play drums. I will get into it more in question 14.

Punk Globe: Being a fan of blues, psychedelic and classic rock you used to mix those things together. And at the end, creating something new that the sound of Gary Lee Conner. But what defined the combination of things and sounds that we all know as “your sound” ?

Gary: I guess just all the music I listened over the years. My mom was very instrumental in getting me into music. My earliest musical memories are listening to her big box of 50s singles. She had Elvis, Little Richard, Bill Haley and the Comets and a ton of other stuff. The only other thing I remember hearing in the 60s (I was born in 62) was the Beatles and oddly that was all from the Saturday morning cartoon of the band. In the 70s I started playing trumpet in 6th grade and really got into Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and James Bond movie music. At this time also we went to a lot of yard sales in Ellensburg and people were selling off their 60s record collections it was a goldmine of 60s records. We got Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Doors, Hendrix, The MC5, and created a huge collection of 60s music that I began to listen to. Another unexpected source of music was the Ellensburg Public Library, my first exposure to Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica was when I checked it out from there. It had a pretty good collection of 60s and 70s rock. In high school I was into all sorts of rock but got sidelined by Art Rock and Prog. From about 77-81 I was a total prog snob, especially for Yes but King Crimson and ELP were right up there for me as well. My first rock concert was when I was 16 in 1979 going to Yes (In the round) at the Seattle Center Coliseum. After high school I really wanted to be in band, but I was too much of a loner and hermit and it took till Van got old enough in about 1982 to have anyone else to play with. I went to college in Ellensburg and majored in Music on my trumpet for two years, but my heart wasn't in it because of my love of the guitar and rock. In 81 I began listening to XTC and the Dead Kennedys and left behind my prog snob days for New Wave and Punk. I soon realized that I loved just about all rock music and became more interested in the songs as opposed to the styles. By 1985, the time the band started, I had discovered the Stooges and Black Flag which both really influenced my guitar playing. Also, at the time I was totally immersing myself in 60s psychedelic music. I was really into the 13th Floor Elevators, Love, the Seeds and had just discovered the Pebbles US garage and psych comps and the English Rubble freakbeat comps, this was the beginning of my lifelong love of psychedelic music, I was also into current 80s psych like Plasticland, the LA Paisley Underground Bands and UK stuff like Echo and the Bunnymen and Julian Cope. After this time, I continued to expand what I listened to but psychedelic music remained my favorite to this day.

Punk Globe: In particular “Sweet Oblivion” became you’re the most groundbreaking record. So let me ask you – how were these songs written?

Gary: This was really the only album besides Clairvoyance that we wrote songs together for and actually rehearsed them. We had always hated practicing and did so as little as possible going as far as giving Mark Pickerel a demo tape of a new song and telling him to learn it and going straight to the studio to record it. Barrett joining the band was really energizing and we would have relatively long rehearsals working on the new songs. We would also get together in various combinations to write tracks for the album, this was all happening During the fall of 1991 against the backdrop of Nirvana and the Seattle scene suddenly becoming huge deal in music.

Punk Globe: You’ve always been saying that “Dust” was done while you were completely

separated from each other. So, at the end, what helped you to put all the mix together?

Gary: We were not exactly alone; I was in between moving out to NY with my wife and living in Seattle, but I stay there in 94 and 95 to write for the album. The alone part was that we very rarely got together to write. Mark was shut in his place all day and would call me and maybe Van every night asking what we had been writing. Usually every night I would drive across Seattle and take Mark a tape of what I had written. Once and a while he would call me and say he really liked it. It became a total job writing songs and one we didn't like.

It was the darkest two years of my life, somehow though the music transcended that time and mood and we had a great time when we finally got to LA to record it with George Drakoulias producing, he really helped us get the whole thing together. The result was probably the Trees record that I am the proudest of.

Punk Globe: Do you think that grunge is still alive these days?

Gary: Today in 2020 about every genre from rock exists in some form. Some bands do a good job hybridizing genres and making something new and others stick to the roots of their favorite type of rock. I definitely stay in the realm of the psychedelic, but I am not trying to make something that people will think is from 1967 but rather from today but it's still psychedelic rock, ultimately, I just try to sound like myself. I know there are bands out there that try to sound like the grunge classics which might be a bit of a dead end but so are a lot of other revival genres. That doesn't necessarily stop me from listening to them though. People have been saying for a while that all rock music is dead, but I sure have discovered a lot that I really like from the last decade. I don't know if grunge is alive or dead or if it ever was, it was just a label but if you're making or listening to music you love in 2020 and the years to come then it's definitely alive for you.