APPEALING TO AN ENTIRELY NEW GENERATION OF FANS
A CONVERSATION WITH DANIEL HOUSE OF SKIN YARD
“It started as a fluke, but over time, it got more and more exciting and fun, and now I have this beautiful package featuring the artwork of Mike Egan, and there’s a thousand copies, 800 on red vinyl and 200 on neon pink vinyl,” states Skin Yard bassist and co-founder Daniel House. You might not know the name Skin Yard, but odds are they influenced your favourite grunge band, as Skin Yard were one of the pioneers of grunge. Recently, I chatted with House about the limited-edition vinyl box set Skin Yard Select, featuring fan favourites, alternate versions, rarities, remixes, and a previously unreleased song, all things grunge, and his upcoming Skin Yard oral history book, Words On Bone.
Skin Yard Select originated in 2021 from a10 Minute Warning record titled This Could Be Heaven – The Lost 1984 Recordings, a band House was part of in 1984 before Skin Yard. He recalls, “The person I was working with on the design of that record, he actually suggested it. His name is Jeff Kleinsmith. He’s the lead art director for Sub Pop and an old friend.” House was initially hesitant to pursue the project, but eventually, it intrigued him. “It was the thought that, you know, here we are, over 30 years later, appealing to an entirely new generation of fans, which in itself is a cool, very weird thing. These are all fans, most of whom were not even alive when the band broke up. Then it’s occurring to me that maybe if we had a standalone release that would be a good primer for somebody who doesn’t know the band as a way for them to consume the entire scope of who the band was from 1985 to 1991.”
Skin Yard had different feels between their albums and multiple drummers with varying playing styles, making it tough to decide what songs made the collection, getting some help from producer Jack Endino. “There was a real trick trying to pull songs together in a flow that felt fully cohesive, so it kind of felt like a single release,” states House. “We didn’t want to just go, ‘here’s a sampling.’ We wanted to make it special. Jack discovered this unreleased track from the sessions from our very first record, which is called “California”. That’s a track when Matt Cameron was our drummer – it’s a really cool song. In retrospect, I kind of wish that song had been on that first record, but by the same token, I’m really happy that we have it for this release.”
House never thought grunge would be so huge, or that Skin Yard would be so influential. “You have ambition in terms of things you hope might happen for your career, but in 1987 or 1988, I don’t think anybody in Seattle was thinking we’re gonna be part of an enormous international history… When we started, we were just exploring all possibilities and making music that we thought was great and really trying to make music that was distinct… We wanted to make music that sounded like Skin Yard as we envisioned it.”
Reflecting on the early days of the Seattle grunge scene House states, “It was very much a community – a very tight-knit and pretty small community. Once things got really big, things changed. Suddenly, there was a whole bunch of bands that you’d never heard of. Suddenly, you’d go to clubs where you’d used to see shows, and you knew everybody, you’d look around, and suddenly there were all these people you’d never seen in clubs before… The biggest downfall, I think most of us would agree, when all that success began to happen is that the community aspect we enjoyed so much before pretty much began to crumble and dissipate.”
PURCHASE SKIN YARD SELECT
House formed friendships with several bands from the Seattle grunge scene, including members from Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Green River. “Seattle was a small little scene,” he says. “Mostly everybody knew everybody, maybe with the exception of Alice In Chains because Alice In Chains were from the suburbs. They weren’t really part of the Seattle underground scene… Most of us all went to the same parties. We all knew each other. We went to each other’s shows. We were friends. But it was funny, back in their early days, Alice In Chains would show up together, as a band, at parties, and then they would actually leave together as a band.”
Out of the bands in the Seattle grunge scene, House thinks Skin Yard is most like Soundgarden, as they explored similar things musically. Drummer Matt Cameron was also in both bands. “We were often referred to as sister bands,” says House. “We were both bands that had various songs in non-obvious time signatures. We were focused a lot more on textural components, and we weren’t necessarily three-chord rock. Soundgarden always had a very cerebral component as well to their music… I think Skin Yard and Soundgarden, to some degree, had an influence on each other.”
Why did grunge explode and define ‘90s culture, music, and fashion? House shares, “A lot of it was a pushback against the corporatization of things we saw in the ‘80s and a lot of manufactured music especially when you look in the harder music that was going on, like the L.A. Sunset Strip scene and all the hair metal bands… Grunge was kind of raw, primal, and there was a purity to it. There was a ‘fuck you’ attitude about the whole thing… It captured the zeitgeist of the time and captured an attitude and an independence. I think most young people for every generation want some expression in their music and fashion that says, ‘this is me’.”
The World Wide Web also helped grunge explode. “Seattle was so kind of insular but once the World Wide Web came into existence, suddenly, the influence of the scene could be heard anywhere else. I think that organic component that would happen in regional scenes began to cease to exist… I actually think the Seattle scene is going to prove to be the very last regional scene that occurred in a very organic fashion.”
House has an upcoming Skin Yard oral history book, Words On Bone, which he hopes will be out by late 2025. Over 60 interviews have been conducted for the book. The book is very close to his heart. “Anybody who might be reading this, who is an author, understands the closer it gets to your own personal experience, the scarier it is… Even though it’s an oral history where it’s other people talking about the band and their recollections, it is still, for me, something of a memoir. It’s part of my life. Skin Yard is a band I’m still proud of… For the rest of my life, I can point to that and go, ‘I did that, and I’m proud of that.’ It’s a cool thing to be able to pursue something that you really want to do in your life and actually succeed.”
House finds oral histories essential. “It’s part of how we capture these histories, so they don’t get lost. I think Skin Yard was a very important band in that scene. But most people who are aficionados of the Seattle grunge scene may not know the name Skin Yard because we’re not one of the bands that got signed to a major, but I still think their relevance as part of that whole history is very important.”
House is unsure if there will be anymore Skin Yard releases. “There’s a lot of people who have been asking us to re-release our records, I won’t go into any detail, but I did have a conversation a couple weeks ago about the possibility of doing that.” The rising cost of pressing vinyl makes it an expensive endeavour, adding, “Sometimes it’s hard to justify the expense of putting out records for a band you haven’t been in for over three decades.” However, he does have a second book planned. “It’s a lot more exciting to work creatively on new projects instead of digging through the things you’ve done in the past. Finishing a book is a whole brand-new thing I’ve never done before. That’s exciting. Working on a second book after that. That’s exciting.”
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Main Photo Credit: Lance Mercer | Background Photo Credit: Jane Duke
