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Carrie Brownstein

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Carrie Brownstein

Carrie Rachel Brownstein[1] (born September 27 1974), is a Jewish American[2] musician, actress, and music blogger. She is best known for being a guitarist and vocalist in the now-defunt Portland, Oregon-based band Sleater-Kinney.

She was rated as the 12th Most Underrated Guitarist of All-Time by Rolling Stone Magazine[3]

Early life

Brownstein grew up in a upper middle-class home 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 — kind of like Bryan Adams buying his "first beat-up six string" — and maybe that was the whole reason that I actually stuck with it."[4]

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). While there, Brownstein was in the 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.

In 1997, she graduated from Evergreen State with a degree in sociolinguistics, and stayed in Olympia for three years before moving to Portland.

Sleater-Kinney

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[5] (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.

Post-hiatus

Since the band's hiatus, Brownstein briefly worked at Portland ad agency Wieden+Kennedy.[6] Her former bandmate Janet Weiss worked there before she joined Sleater-Kinney,[7] and has called the company "an evil advertising empire," saying she "quit and washed her hands of it."[8]

Since November 2007 Brownstein has written a blog for NPR called "Monitor Mix".[9] 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."[9]

Side projects

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

Brownstein formed a comedy team with SNL castmember Fred Armisen, titled "ThunderAnt".[10]

Brownstein has also written a couple of music-related video game reviews for Slate.[11][12]

Personal life

Brownstein was 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 Tucker in the beginning of Sleater-Kinney (the song "One More Hour" is about their breakup[13]). 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."[14]

References

General reference:

Specific references:

  1. ^ ASCAP: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
  2. ^ Keep On Rockin’ Me, Baby - Jewish women are reaching for the ring of rock music stardom, by Debra Nussbaum Cohen, 2007 from The Jewish Woman magazine
  3. ^ The Twenty-Five Most Underrated Guitarists Rolling Stone.com
  4. ^ Rock of the Decade - The Stranger by Hannah Levin, May 2005 from Sleater-Kinney.Net
  5. ^ Eat 'em And Smile - Spin Magazine by Caryn Ganz, June 2005 from Sleater-Kinney.Net
  6. ^ Wieden+Kennedy Studio
  7. ^ “The Greatest Portland Band... EVER?” from the July 31st, 2002 Willamette Week
  8. ^ Nardwuar vs. Sleater-Kinney from YouTube
  9. ^ a b Welcome to Monitor Mix from the NPR website
  10. ^ http://www.thunderant.com/
  11. ^ Rock Band vs. Real Band, a November 27, 2007 review for Slate
  12. ^ Wii Will Rock You!, a November 19, 2008 review for Slate
  13. ^ Sleater-Kinney Last Show from Under the Radar
  14. ^ Out Magazine
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