Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Brownstein
Carrie Brownstein in 2005. (Photo by Eliah Hecht)
Background information
Also known as	Carrie Kinney
Born	September 27 1974 (1974-09-27) (age 33)
Origin	Portland, Oregon
Genre(s)	Alternative rock Indie rock Punk rock
Occupation(s)	Musician Writer
Instrument(s)	Guitar, Vocals
Years active	1993–2007
Label(s)	Villa Villakula, Chainsaw, Kill Rock Stars, K Records, Sub Pop
Associated acts	Sleater-Kinney Excuse 17 The Spells The Tentacles Tommy
Website	http://www.sleater-kinney.com/

Carrie Brownstein (born September 27 1974), is an American musician and actress. She is best known for being a guitarist and vocalist in the currently-on-hiatus Portland, Oregon-based band Sleater-Kinney.

Background

Brownstein grew up in Redmond, Washington, and attended the The Overlake School. She began playing guitar at 15, and received lessons from future Sunny Day Real Estate/The Fire Theft frontman Jeremy Enigk. She later said "He lived in the neighborhood next to mine, so I would just walk my guitar over to his house. He showed me a couple of open chords and I just took it from there. I'd gone through so many phases as a kid with my interests that my parents put their foot down with guitar. So [the instrument] ended up being the first thing that I had to save up my own money for - and maybe that was the whole reason that I actually stuck with it."^[1] After high school, she attended Western Washington University for a short time, before transferring to Evergreen State College (where Corin Tucker, Kathleen Hanna, and Tobi Vail were also students). She graduated with a degree in Sociolinguistics in 1997. After graduation, she stayed in Olympia for three years before moving to Portland. She later moved to Berkeley, California for a relationship but returned to Portland after six months. The Sleater-Kinney song "Jumpers" is partially based on her time spent there and Tad Friend's article from The New Yorker, "Jumpers".^[2] She is currently living in Portland, OR.

College

While attending the Evergreen State College, Brownstein was in the queercore band Excuse 17. Around this time, she met and later dated Corin Tucker, who was in the band Heavens to Betsy. The two bands toured together and both contributed to the Free to Fight compilation. They formed Sleater-Kinney as a side project, and released the Free to Fight split single with Cypher in the Snow.

Sleater-Kinney

After both Excuse 17 and Heavens to Betsy split up, Sleater-Kinney became Brownstein and Tucker's main focus. They recorded their first self-titled album during a trip to Australia in early 1994, where the couple were celebrating Tucker's graduation from Evergreen^[3] (Brownstein still had three years of college left). It was released the following spring. They recorded and toured with different drummers, until Janet Weiss joined the band in 1996. Following their eponymous debut, they released six more critically acclaimed albums before going on indefinite hiatus in 2006.

Side Projects

Brownstein created The Spells with Mary Timony, who released one EP titled The Age of Backwards. She also had a role in the short film Fan Mail, as well as Group and the Miranda July film Getting Stronger Everyday.

Recent

Since the hiatus of Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein has begun working at Portland ad agency Wieden+Kennedy.^[4] Her former bandmate Janet Weiss worked there before she joined Sleater-Kinney,^[5] and has called the company "an evil advertising empire," saying she "quit and washed her hands of it."^[6] Brownstein has also started a comedy team with SNL castmember Fred Armisen, titled "ThunderAnt". The two film comedic shorts that are posted on their website, thunderant.com. ^[7] In addition, Brownstein writes a blog for NPR called "Monitor Mix". Brownstein says of the blog, "My hopes for Monitor Mix are that it will be descriptive as opposed to merely prescriptive. I would rather discuss and examine what it is that people actually consume than to tell you what you should be listening to." ^[8]

Personal

Brownstein's sexual orientation was infamously outed to her family and the world by Spin magazine when she was 21 years old. The article discussed the fact that she had dated bandmate Corin Tucker in the beginning of Sleater-Kinney (the song "One More Hour" is about their breakup^[9]). After the article was out, she said, "I hadn't seen it [the Spin article], and I got a phone call. My dad called me and was like, 'The Spin article's out. Um, do you want to let me know what's going on?' The ground was pulled out from underneath me... My dad did not know that Corin and I had ever dated, or that I even dated girls."^[10][11][12] She later said "It was something that I’d been planning [to tell them] when it felt like the right time. The process was rapidly sped up for me with the aid of a national magazine. It’s fine now, and my family is very supportive . . . it’s just not the way I wanted to go about doing it."^[13]

External links

• Official Sleater-Kinney Site
• Official Sleater-Kinney Fan Site
• Sleater-Kinney at MySpace
• Carrie Brownstein discography at MusicBrainz
• Carrie Brownstein at Discogs
• Interview with AVClub
• Thunderant
• Monitor Mix

References

1. ^ http://sleater-kinney.net/index.php?go=library_rock_decade
2. ^ San Francisco Bay Guardian
3. ^ http://sleater-kinney.net/index.php?go=library_spin_june05
4. ^ http://wkstudio.typepad.com/studio/wk_twelve/index.html
5. ^ http://www.wweek.com/editorial/2839/3023/
6. ^ http://youtube.com/watch?v=XjTz3sT91ms
7. ^ http://www.thunderant.com/
8. ^ Monitor Mix
9. ^ http://www.undertheradarmag.com/sleaterkinneylastreview.html
10. ^ http://www.indiedarlings.20m.com/articlepages/outmagazine.html
11. ^ [1]
12. ^ http://www.sptimes.com/2004/04/01/Floridian/_Queer__no_longer_sti.shtml
13. ^ Curve: Vol. 7 #2