6 Things We Learnt From Carrie Brownstein Live In Conversation

On a confusingly hot Autumn evening, a crowd congregated outside the Melbourne Town Hall. An International Women’s Day march had passed by not long ago, unperturbed by the heat.

The crowd now was also overwhelmingly female: an older contingent of seasoned rockers; palpably excited younger women; even Courtney Barnett and Jen Cloher could be spotted trying but failing to remain inconspicuous within the mass.

Among the crowd was a clear sense of community, as if the queue was just a long line of friends bumping into friends. We were waiting to see a figure from another famously tight-knit community, Olympia, Washington throughout the 1990s.

Carrie Brownstein of key Riot Grrrl band Sleater-Kinney does well to symbolise the gist of that movement: bold, passionate, on stage she seems fearless.

The musician, currently undertaking an Australian tour with Sleater-Kinney, has also recently released a book. Hunger Makes me a Modern Girl traces the demise and resurrection of the band and the somewhat tumultuous formative years of Brownstein’s life, which seemed to wet the ground for her ability to make discordant punk music.

Seated beneath the gargantuan Town Hall organ, Myf Warhurst was tasked with the role of interviewer—her trademark, sunny Australian temperament proving a slightly jarring contrast to Brownstein’s sometimes-sardonic Portland cool (Yes, she’s the one from the show). Myf quizzed Brownstein about the writing of her book, we listened, and here are some things we learnt:

If Someone Says They Only Listen to Punk Music, They’re Lying.

“As a kid in the 80s, I loved Madonna”. On seeing the pop icon in ‘85, Brownstein said, “It was her Virgin Tour, it was my virgin tour. We were virgins in very different ways… I asked my mom if I could wear her wedding dress to the show…my mom said no”.

Eventually teenage Brownstein transitioned to punk music, but she still has an affection for pop (“Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, Rhianna”). She said she is wary of people who profess to only listen to punk music. “Don’t believe anyone who says that.” This even applies to Joe Strummer, Brownstein pointed out: “right before he started The Clash he was a long-haired hippy”.

Buying Your First Guitar Is Not A Mythological Event.

According to Brownstein: “People romanticise the buying of a first guitar, as if it’s handed down to you buy an old blues guy at a crossroads.”

As a teenager in suburban Washington, Brownstein just went with her parents to the local music store that smelled like antiseptic. “I just went in there and said, ‘I want the red one’”.

Take Kathleen Hanna’s Advice and Start a Band with a Boss Bitch.

Brownstein moved to Olympia in the early 90s, where she found “a weird confluence of people”. Riot Grrrl was just taking root and it seemed a natural progression for Brownstein to start a band. “Kathleen Hanna [of Bikini Kill] said, ‘find the biggest bitch you know, and be in a band with her’”.

When Brownstein saw Corin Tucker’s first band Heavens To Betsy she was impressed, thinking of them as “really loud librarians”. Brownstein was drawn to Tucker. “I thought: she has teeth and I’m going to be in a band with her—we’ll make it work.”

Australia Played a Key Role in the Sleater-Kinney Origin Story.

The first Sleater-Kinney album was recorded in a garage in Melbourne when Brownstein and Tucker were in Australia, taking a deliberate breather from their scene in the US. “We partitioned ourselves off from Olympia. That really helped us create a musical vernacular that was specific to the two of us.”

The Melbourne garage in question Brownstein remembers as “next to a bakery or brewery… somewhere that mice and cockroaches went to live.” The exact location seems lost to history; points for anyone who can track it down.

Writing a Book is Hard.

“I discovered it’s really hard to write a book,” Brownstein admitted. “There’s no magic to it, no flash of inspiration. It’s just diligence.” A natural early-riser, she said she “basically just woke up around 5 am everyday”, but is also not immune to bad habits.

“For me, procrastination starts out noble… then you’ll be writing to distant family members and signing up to reward certificates for hotels”. But there is a plus side to early starts: “If you get up early you can finish at 11 and just drink for the rest of the day.”

Even on International Women’s Day we will conclude by discussing a man.

It is often tempting to ask famous people about the other famous people they know, and this habitually happens in questions-with-the-audience. Brownstein fielded a question on her collaboration with The Go Betweens’ Robert Forster, and another about Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam.

She said when Sleater-Kinney supported Pearl Jam on tour—playing to audiences that weren’t necessarily SK fans—Vedder would help out before their sets by coming on stage, singing a few lines of a song to lure the crowd to their seats, then disappearing and letting Sleater-Kinney take over. Brownstein still has a clear affection for Vedder: “I am really glad he exists in the world.”

And with that, it was time for Carrie Brownstein to thank her enraptured audience, exit the stage, and begin preparations for three consecutive sold-out Melbourne shows, Golden Plains Festival, and — an opportunity she couldn’t pass up — seeing Madonna at Rod Laver on the weekend.

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Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is out via Little, Brown Book Group. Purchase via Readings here.

For more info on upcoming talks happening at The Wheeler Centre, visit www.wheelercentre.com.

Upcoming Sleater – Kinney Dates