(Photo: Divided Sky opening for Sweetwater Dec. 9, 1993 at Colours in Yakima.) It began with a mangled three-song demo tape. A rat’s nest of unraveled tape, Yakima music promoter Scott Abrhams decided to put the cassette back together. Inexplicably, he succeeded and liked what he heard. Abrhams called the phone number on the tape and invited Divided Sky down to Yakima to headline a five-band bill in March 1993 at D.A.V. Hall. The show was dubbed “A Tribute to Sleaze.”
This was the sort of “break” we had been hoping for when we produced the demo, which was recorded in a sound engineer’s loft in Seattle. We saw the engineer a few months later when he was working the sound board at the fabled Off Ramp. There are three things I remember about that recording session in the winter of 1992. One, we had no idea what we were doing and the music we recorded was sketchy at best – except for the song “Nothing” which we still play today. Two, it was freezing cold inside this dude’s loft, probably because, Three, he had the biggest pot plant I’d ever seen and all the electricity in the place was focused on keeping that thing warm.How the tape made its way to Yakima and in the hands of a music promoter is a mystery and we didn’t ask too many questions before loading up Jeff’s Jeep and made the 30-minute trip south. The one question we probably should have asked, however, was if everyone had packed their instruments. As we rolled into Yakima we realized Jeff had forgotten his guitar. We still had a couple hours before show time, so Jeff was able to drive back to Ellensburg to retrieve it. I don’t remember much about that show, but I do remember that we played well enough to impress the locals and ink an indie record deal for the newly formed Ritual Records that eventually dissolved before we could record a note. But the gig opened some doors and led to more shows in Yakima.
Eventually, we’d play as many or more shows in Yakima than in Ellensburg. A majority of them were at Colours, an over-21 club that catered to the burgeoning music scene in Yakima. Many of the Seattle-scene bands would make the trek over or make it a tour stop, but mainly you’d see Yakima bands like Phallacy or Brown or Thane Phelan who also managed a record store called Music Station. A lot of the CDs that were produced by these bands were recorded at Hearing Hole Studio, owned by Phallacy guitarist Willie Hoffee. And you could every so often catch songs by these bands on KATS 107 FM. Even mainstream media like The Yakima Herald promoted our little scene. The all-ages shows were best, though. There was a community of kids under 21, who really had an appetite for live music and probably had little else to do in Yakima. There had to be a thousand of them at the Love Battery show at the Selah Civic Center, where we were lucky enough to have opened. You can see some of the fliers from the bigger shows here.It was big fish in a small pond syndrome for sure, but we never enjoyed the kind of success we had in Yakima and Ellensburg when we eventually relocated the operation to Seattle. In the early to mid-‘90s, there were too many bands and too many venues in the Seattle area and surrounding burgs. It seemed like every restaurant or bar in the area all of sudden catered to live music. The problem was there wasn’t an audience for it. I mean, how many people want to listen to blaring rock music while their trying to eat their dinner on a Tuesday night?
While Yakima was a far cry from what was happening west of the mountains, it was still a vibrant little scene with some real talented musicians and music lovers propping it up. Thank you Yakima and good night.
Cheers, Dan
(Photos: Second from top, Matt and Jeff at the first Yakima show at D.A.V. Hall March 13, 1993. Above, Teague and Matt May 16, 1993 opening for a gaggle of bands including My Name and The Melvins at the Yakima County Fairgrounds.)
