Being a "Grunge" kid in the 90s, along with recently delving back into the genre as part of a project I’ve been working on (becoming nearly obsessed with Dinosaur Jr as a result,) I can’t tell you how excited I was when the offer to chat with a member of Mudhoney, one of the initial bands from that era, landed in my inbox.
Mudhoney, for those who may be unaware due to the small detail of not being born before the year 2000, makes up one of the five initial Seattle bands (six if you count the Screaming Trees – RIP Mark Lanegan and Van Conner) that simultaneously silenced the hair metal trend that was dominating the airwaves and provided a blueprint for how Rock would play out in the 1990’s and beyond.
While probably not as commercially successful or decade-defining as their counterparts, it can be argued that without Mudhoney at least three of the other bands may not have become who they are. Their debut EP Superfuzz Bigmuff birthed the anthem that defines what would later be coined Grunge - ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ condenses Steve Turner and Mark Arm’s fuzz-laden guitars, Dan Peters’ jazz-fused drums, and Mark’s trademark snarl and lyrics injected with both the humour and gen-x cynicism that a lot of 90s alternative would be known for, into two and a half minutes of noise that set the tone for what was to come from their hometown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nGsT_qFMBs
Long after the initial explosion died down, Mudhoney has since kept to their trademark blend of sludgy riffs for well over 30 years with reliable regularity, with anthems such as ‘Good Enough,’ ‘Overblown’ and ‘I Like It Small.’ Now, in 2023, they deliver album number twelve, Plastic Eternity, after an extended break due, of course, to the pandemic.
It’s here that I mention the pandemic on purpose, as Guy Maddison, Mudhoney’s bass player of over twenty-three years (and an Aussie expat,) found himself in the centre of America’s initial COVID emergency, due to his rather intensive day job as a nurse at Harbourview Medical Centre in Seattle, one of the initial entry points of the virus. An experience he has since detailed in a podcast, Emergency Room: The Covid Diaries (and we get into a bit of the experience below.) With the pandemic long behind him, and a long-awaited Mudhoney Australian tour on the horizon in April, I caught up with Guy over the phone, who has recently moved back to Australia to be closer to family.
Hi Guy, thanks for taking the time to chat – you’re been in Mudhoney for over 20 years now, does it still feel a bit surreal coming from Perth, moving to Sydney for a period, and then finding yourself in Seattle and being part of a band that was so integral to setting the tone of the 90s?
Yeah, when I moved to Sydney and I was in Lubricated Goat and we were releasing some records on Amphetamine Reptile Records, I met those guys back then in, like, 1989 was the first time I met Mudhoney. We were sort of both interested in each other's bands and what we were doing, and we did a. U.S. tour and I met them then.
So, I've known them for so long, there's no sort of ‘surrealness’ about our friendship. Cause that’s, you know, nearly 35 years ago now since I've known them. It's still a little surreal that I get to be in this band that I love being in that I was a fan of to begin with and that we travel around the world and always end up in new places every year. So that side of it is, I guess, a little surreal or a little sort of a little bit enchanting, really, that we get all these chances to do things. But yeah, after so long, you know, I've been playing since 2001, so the sort of the initial novelty of being in the band has worn off at this point.
And you moved back to Australia recently?
I have - last year my family and I moved back to Melbourne, mainly for my wife's work and just my daughter is coming up to high school age and it seemed like a good opportunity. And we've been running the band - Steve's been living down in Portland for about over a decade now, so we don't all live in Seattle anymore.
Granted, Melbourne's a lot further away, but we thought that we could keep the band functioning in this sort of remote setting. So, I thought I'd give it a shot and it seems. To be working thus far.
[caption id="attachment_156082" align="aligncenter" width="551"]
Guy Maddison, an emergency nurse at Harborview Medical Center and bassist of Mudhoney, poses for a portrait outside the ER, during his lunch hour on Friday, Oct. 8, 2021. Maddison has worked as a nurse for twenty years and has a new podcast about his experience in the industry during the pandemic. (Grant Hindsley for Crosscut)[/caption]
Being a nurse in your day job, you spent the key part of the pandemic on the front lines in America, which – putting it mildly - would have been an interesting experience?
Yeah, I actually made a podcast about it, it was so interesting because my usual job at the hospital in Seattle, at the time, was in the Anesthesia department - screening people for surgery and getting them prepared for surgery. And I got reassigned almost immediately when the pandemic broke because we shut down all elective surgery, so we didn't have a lot of work in our department and then we needed to refocus work elsewhere.
And I did a few months working as a COVID coordinator, just testing patients, and working out how we could test patients, how we could isolate them. What were the best strategies for decreasing the risk of infection in the hospital – so I made a little podcast about it, it was fascinating.
And then it drew on, obviously after that for the next couple of years and totally changed our work environment in terms of how we worked with patients and stuff.
Has there been any differences between Australia and America post-COVID that you’ve noticed?
No, actually - surprisingly it's pretty well aligned. You know the standards of care in Australia and America are very similar and I'm in the same situation that I was in the US where I wear an N95 mask at work when I deal with patients all day long. So, most of the mitigation protocols are very similar between the US and Australia, and I think that they're probably standardised across areas where the standard of care is the same because everyone follows the same best practices, because…you know… papers are published, and research is done, and the facts are known to everyone, and everyone just adopts the best practice.
Right, back to the music – after everything that’s gone on, what has it been like easing yourself back into ‘musician mode’?
Well, it was pretty easy - it was interesting for us because for the first year of the pandemic before vaccination was available the band, essentially, didn't see each other. Even though we lived in the same town - in the US everyone pretty much, at least in the community that we were in Seattle, were very respectful of the protocols and we didn't really socialize, there were no shows to go to.
So, we didn't actually do anything until we were vaccinated and then we got back together immediately - as soon as we were all vaccinated, we got into the practice room at Mark's Place and started exploring the ideas that we've been storing up for that year - just, you know, playing around at home and that's where the new album came from. We just found we had a lot of material and we just started.
Because we didn't have any shows, all our tours from 2020 were cancelled and postponed to 2021. They were all cancelled and postponed again because 2021 wasn't happening, and it wasn't until into 2022 that we were able to go out on tour again.
So, we had a lot of time to write and that's where we came up with the new album - plastic eternity is essentially due to COVID lockdown, and then the sort of intense practising and working out that record that happened as soon as we were able to get together again.
Oh ok – the press release that came with the album’s announcement gave me the impression that the band wrote everything at the same time as recording it because you had a tight schedule of 9 days to record?
Well, it's a little bit complicated - the way that we write is we get together and we throw down riffs, each person brings in their ideas into the practice room, we flesh them out and then we record them in the practice room.
And then we wait for Mark to choose the ones that he feels he can put lyrics to, then he writes the lyrics and then we go back in, and we retool the songs.
So, my plans to move came up - not unexpectedly, but definitely changed the recordings schedule, like when we needed to get in - some of the songs we didn't have fully worked out before we went in. But it takes Mark longer to write the lyrics than it takes us to write the music, essentially, because lyrics are a difficult thing, you know, you want to do a really good job because he's the one that has to get up there and sing those lyrics repeatedly over and over again.
Of course, yes!
So, it takes him a while to get that right - understandably so. Some of the songs we did work out in the studio, but most of the work was done in the same fashion that I just explained, which is how we do all our records, essentially - just perhaps the schedule was a little different because of my travel, yeah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83M3QBsXfGg
So, it's been nearly a decade since the band last toured in Australia - give us an idea of what a Mudhoney show is like in 2023. Is it still loud and fuzzy or has Mark and Steve turned it down a bit?
(Laughs) No, people coming to these shows can expect a full dose of traditional Mudhoney at full volume! I don't think the show has really changed that much over the years except for the introduction of new songs.
So, crowds will get the same show that they probably are expecting, where they'll hear some of the well-known songs that we play that are just part of our continuous repertoire. Obviously, people would be disappointed if they came to a show and they didn't hear ‘Touch me I'm sick’ or ‘Sweet Young Thing (Ain’t Sweet No More),’ ‘In and Out of Grace’ - those sort of ‘marquee’ tracks. But then there'll be a smattering of stuff from throughout the entire catalogue at the band and then also we're hoping to probably bring about 6 or 7 brand new songs from the new record that will be in the set this time.
In terms of the energy on stage, I think it's pretty much the same as it's always been. We try and bring the punk as hard as we can, so hopefully, the people will get what they want.
[caption id="attachment_156955" align="aligncenter" width="418"]
Mudhoney on tour - tickets selling REALLY fast! Get yours here[/caption]
I'm looking forward to it, actually, I've been meaning to see Mudhoney for years, but for whatever reason, I’ve missed it each time - this time I'm going! One last question - one of the stops on the tour is the Gumball Festival, which is about an hour out of Newcastle – in a place called Lower Belford (a small farm that’s played host to some great local music festivals since live music returned, including one called ‘Thrashville’.) When was the last time you played a gig out in the bush setting?
So probably it was on the last tour in 2015 - I think we played at a festival out near Ballarat, we were on the bill with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Icehouse that night, as I remember. So that was Ballarat, probably a similar setting to Newcastle/Belford, a couple of hours from the big smoke.
Awesome! Well, Guy, thank you very much for your time - looking forward to the album and seeing your show in Sydney in April.
Yeah, that'll be great. Thanks, mate, have a good day!
Interview by Simon Valentine (@SimonValentineAU)
Plastic Eternity is Out April 7th via Sup Pop. Pre-Order here
Mudhoney – Plastic Eternity tracklisting
1. Souvenir of My Trip
2. Almost Everything
3. Cascades of Crap
4. Flush the Fascists
5. Move Under
6. Severed Dreams in the Sleeper Cell
7. Here Comes the Flood
8. Human Stock Capital
9. Tom Herman’s Hermits
10. One or Two
11. Cry Me an Atmospheric River
12. Plasticity
13. Little Dogs
