Sleater Kinney

Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon, United States (1995 – 2006) Sleater-Kinney, a trio of unrepentant feminists who made waves with their 1997 release Dig Me Out, grew out of both the riot-grrrl movement and the punk/indie scene in the Pacific Northwest. Consisting simply of a drummer and two guitarists, the band has earned both sincere praise and fawning press. According to Rolling Stone writer Evelyn McDonnell, Sleater-Kinney "is poised to become the first band to emerge from the feminist-punk riot-grrrl movement of the early 1990s and cross over to a broad rock audience." As a child, Sleater-Kinney's co-founder, guitarist, and frontperson Corin Tucker lived in both Eugene, Oregon and North Dakota. Her father was a folk singer and she grew up listening to his Velvet Underground records. Co-founder and fellow guitarist Carrie Brownstein was a native of the Seattle area and, during her formative years, became a fan of English punk acts like the Jam and the Buzzcocks. By the mid-1990s, Tucker was a student at Evergreen State College and member of a band called Heavens to Betsy, which grew out of the riot-grrrl scene that originated in the Pacific Northwest. Riot-grrrl politics and culture involved a wave of radical young feminists like Brownstein, who was running a feminist network group booth when she met Tucker. The riot-grrrl movement was well organized and its participants often relied on thought-provoking street art or action to get their messages across. Many of them picked up the instruments of previous oppression--inherently sexist rock and roll--to further explore new avenues of communication. "Riot grrrl suddenly made feminism something I could embrace and utilize and be empowered by," Brownstein explained to McDonnell in Rolling Stone. Brownstein was also a musician who played in the band Excuse 17. She and Tucker became romantically involved, and one day during the summer of 1994 sat down and wrote a few songs. They found a rehearsal space in nearby in Lacey, Washington, and, in need of a band name one day, simply adopted the street names at the nearest intersection. They had a more difficult time, however, finding a permanent drummer. In their first two years of existence, Sleater-Kinney went through drummers at an alarming rate: first came Australian Lora Macfarlane, who stayed until 1995; she was replaced by Toni Gogin for part of 1996; finally Janet Weiss joined that year.