Carrie Brownstein

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Carrie Brownstein
Closeup image of Brownstein singing into a microphone
Carrie Brownstein at Coachella 2012, while performing with Wild Flag.
Born Carrie Rachel Grace Brownstein
(1974-09-27) September 27, 1974 (age 38)
Seattle, Washington, USA
Alma mater The Evergreen State College (1997)
Occupation Musician, writer, actress
Years active 1993–present
Known for Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag
Style Alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock
Home town Portland, Oregon
Television Portlandia

Carrie Rachel Grace Brownstein[1] (born September 27, 1974) is an American musician, writer, and actress, who first widely became known as a guitarist and vocalist in Sleater-Kinney. Since 2010, Brownstein has sung and played guitar for the band Wild Flag;[2] they released their self-titled debut album in September 2011.[3] Brownstein stars with co-developer Fred Armisen in Portlandia, a sketch comedy show which began airing in January 2011 on the Independent Film Channel.

Contents

Early life[edit]

Brownstein was born in Seattle, Washington, and raised in Redmond, Washington.[4] Her mother was a homemaker and her father was a corporate lawyer; her parents divorced when she was fourteen, and she was raised by her father.[5] She attended Lake Washington High School before transferring to The Overlake School for her senior year.[6][7] She began playing guitar at 15, and received lessons from future Sunny Day Real Estate/The Fire Theft frontman Jeremy Enigk.[8] 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."[8]

After high school, she attended Western Washington University before transferring to The Evergreen State College where Corin Tucker, Kathleen Hanna, and Tobi Vail were also students. While there, Brownstein was in the band Excuse 17. Around this time, she met 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.

In 1997, Brownstein graduated from The Evergreen State College with an emphasis in sociolinguistics[9] and stayed in Olympia for three years before moving to Portland, Oregon.

Music career[edit]

Brownstein at Lollapalooza 2006.

Sleater-Kinney[edit]

Main article: 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[10] (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 studio albums before going on indefinite hiatus in 2006. Brownstein has since affirmed that Sleater-Kinney will just start playing music again in the future doing a 2012 interview with DIY magazine.[11]

Other work[edit]

Brownstein and former Helium guitarist/singer Mary Timony, recording as The Spells, released The Age of Backwards E.P. in 1999.

In summer 2009, Brownstein and Weiss worked together on songs (produced by Tucker Martine) for the soundtrack of a documentary film by Lynn Hershman Leeson.[12]

In September 2010, Brownstein revealed her latest project was the band Wild Flag, with Janet Weiss, Mary Timony, and Rebecca Cole, formerly of The Minders; according to Brownstein, about a year earlier "I started to need music again, and so I called on my friends and we joined as a band. Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a 'maybe, a 'possibility.' But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts."[2][dated info]

"Music has always been my constant, my salvation. It's cliché to write that, but it's true. From dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna as a kid to having my mind blown by the first sounds of punk and indie rock, to getting to play my own songs and have people listen, music is what got me through. Over the years, music put a weapon in my hand and words in my mouth it backed me up and shielded me, it shook me and scared me and showed me the way; music opened me up to living and being and feeling."

—Brownstein in October 2010[13]

In 2011, they toured for a second time,[14] and played at CMJ Music Marathon.[15]

Accolades[edit]

In 2006, Brownstein was the only woman to earn a spot in the Rolling Stone readers' list of the 25 "Most Underrated Guitarists of All-Time."[16]

Writing career[edit]

Brownstein began a career as a writer before Sleater-Kinney broke up. She interviewed Eddie Vedder, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Karen O, and Cheryl Hines for The Believer magazine.[17] Brownstein has also written a couple of music-related video game reviews for Slate.[18][19]

From November 2007 to May 2010, Brownstein wrote a blog for NPR Music called "Monitor Mix";[20] she returned for a final blog post in October, thanking her blog readers and declaring the blog "officially conclud[ed]."[13]

In March 2009, Brownstein contracted to write a book to "describe the dramatically changing dynamic between music fan and performer, from the birth of the iPod and the death of the record store to the emergence of the "you be the star" culture of American Idol and the ensuing dilution of rock mystique";[21] The book, called The Sound of Where You Are,[22] is to be published by Ecco/HarperCollins.[13]

Acting career[edit]

Brownstein with Fred Armisen at the 2011 Peabody Awards. Brownstein and Armisen's series Portlandia earned the award for Broadway Video and IFC.
See also: Portlandia (TV series)

In 2007 Brownstein briefly worked at Portland ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, helping review applicants for their WK12 program of one-year internships.[23]

Brownstein has been an actress (in what she calls a "mere hobby"),[24] with a role in the short film Fan Mail, as well as the experimental feature Group, and the Miranda July film Getting Stronger Everyday. Brownstein and Fred Armisen have published several video skits as part of a comedy duo called "ThunderAnt".[25] She also starred opposite James Mercer of The Shins in the 2009 independent film Some Days Are Better Than Others.[26]

After their ThunderAnt videos, Brownstein and Armisen developed Portlandia, a sketch comedy show shot on location in Portland, for the Independent Film Channel.[2][13] The two star in the series and write for it with Allison Silverman from The Colbert Report and Jonathan Krisel, a writer for Saturday Night Live.[27] The show, which features appearances of some of the characters from ThunderAnt, aired its premiere in January 2011.[28] It has been renewed for a third, fourth, and fifth season.[29]

Personal life[edit]

Brownstein was outed as bisexual to her family and the world by Spin when she was 21 years old. The article discussed the fact that she had dated band mate Corin Tucker in the beginning of Sleater-Kinney (the song "One More Hour" is about their breakup).[30] 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." In 2006, The New York Times described Brownstein as "openly gay."[31] In a November 3, 2010 cover-story for Portland, Oregon's Willamette Week, Brownstein laid to rest questions about her sexual identity: "It’s weird, because no one’s actually ever asked me. People just always assume, like, you’re this or that. It’s like, ‘OK. I’m bisexual."[32] In 2012, Brownstein told interviewer Marc Maron that no one in Sleater-Kinney was gay, and that when she and Tucker had dated it was for "a second."[33]

Since working together on ThunderAnt, Brownstein and Armisen developed what Brownstein has called "one of the most intimate, fun­ctional, romantic, but nonsexual relationships [they have] ever had";[34] According to Armisen, their relationship is "all of the things that I’ve ever wanted, you know, aside from like the physical stuff, but the intimacy that I have with her is like no other."[35]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Works written by Brownstein, Carrie Rachel". ASCAP. Retrieved 2010-10-26. 
  2. ^ a b c "Carrie Brownstein: 'I Have A New Band'". All Songs Considered blog. National Public Radio. September 22, 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-26. 
  3. ^ "Wild Flag’s Debut Album in Stores". Merge Records blog. September 14, 2011. Retrieved 2011-09-19. 
  4. ^ "Interview: Carrie Brownstein on Portlandia". TheFader.com. January 19, 2011. Retrieved 2012-04-02. 
  5. ^ de Barros, Paul (March 3, 2012). "Carrie Brownstein: the Northwest's funny girl". Seattle Times. Retrieved 2012-04-02. 
  6. ^ de Barros, Paul (March 4, 2012), "Cover story—Full Frontal Fun: Watching Carrie Brownstein in 'Portlandia,' we have to laugh at ourselves", Pacific Northwest magazine (Seattle Times): 9 
  7. ^ Matsul, =Marc (December 17, 2002). "Eastside spotlight: Overlake School". Seattle Times. Retrieved 2012-02-29. 
  8. ^ a b Levin, Hannah (May 2005). "Rock of the Decade". The Stranger. Sleater-Kinney.Net. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2011-01-12. 
  9. ^ Julianne Shepherd (2006-08-28). "Get Up". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved 2012-05-21. 
  10. ^ Eat 'em And Smile - Spin Magazine by Caryn Ganz, June 2005 from Sleater-Kinney.Net
  11. ^ "Carrie Brownstein: Sleater-Kinney ‘Will Just Start Playing Music Again’". Thisisfakediy.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-09-14. 
  12. ^ "Carrie Brownstein Talks Sleater-Kinney, Acting, Writing, and More." Pitchfork, March 25, 2010.
  13. ^ a b c d "A Final Word From Carrie Brownstein". Monitor Mix (blog). National Public Radio. October 6, 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-26. 
  14. ^ Weil, Elizabeth (December 29, 2011). "Carrie Brownstein, Riot Grrrnup". The New York Times. Retrieved January 1, 2012. 
  15. ^ Caramanica, Jon (October 19, 2011). "Wild Flag Is What Passes for an Inspirational Supergroup at CMJ". The New York Times. Retrieved January 1, 2012. 
  16. ^ The Twenty-Five Most Underrated Guitarists Rolling Stone.com
  17. ^ Contributors: Carrie Brownstein from the The Believer magazine website
  18. ^ Rock Band vs. Real Band, a November 27, 2007 review for Slate
  19. ^ Wii Will Rock You!, a November 19, 2008 review for Slate
  20. ^ Welcome to Monitor Mix from the NPR Music website
  21. ^ Matthew Thornton (March 16, 2009). "Book Deals: Week of 3/16/09". Book News. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 2010-10-26. 
  22. ^ "The Sound of Where You Are". Monitor Mix (blog). National Public Radio. December 17, 2007. Retrieved 2010-10-26. 
  23. ^ 12.4 Candidates Arrive, a February 26, 2007 blog post from the Wieden+Kennedy blog
  24. ^ Carrie Brownstein Talks Spells, Book, Sleater-Kinney a November 2008 article from Pitchfork Media
  25. ^ "Thunderant". Thunderant. Retrieved 2012-02-29. 
  26. ^ Some Days Are Better Than Others from the Internet Movie Database
  27. ^ "SNL Fans Prepare for 'Portlandia'". IFC Channel. August 6, 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-26. 
  28. ^ "Before There Was 'Portlandia', There Was 'Thunderant'". IFC Channel. October 7, 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-26. 
  29. ^ "IFC Unveils 2012-13 Programming Slate". Deadline Hollywood. March 20, 2012. Retrieved 2012-09-14. 
  30. ^ Sleater-Kinney Last Show from Under the Radar[dead link]
  31. ^ Sleater-Kinney May, or May Not, Be Bidding New York Farewell, an August 4, 2006 article by Jon Pareles for The New York Times
  32. ^ Mock Star a November 3, 2010 article by Aaron Mesh for Willamette Week
  33. ^ "Episode 267 - Carrie Brownstein". WTF Podcast. WTFpod.com. April 2, 2012. Retrieved 2012-09-14. 
  34. ^ Portlandia’s Comedy Chemistry, a January 9, 2012 Elle article. Retrieved on 2012-09-14.
  35. ^ Fred Armisen: Transcript from WNYC's Here's the Thing. Retrieved on 2012-09-14.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Carrie Brownstein
Sleater-Kinney (1994–2006)
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