Celebrated musician, comedian, writer, and director Carrie Brownstein joins to talk about her remarkable career as the co-founder, guitarist, and vocalist of the legendary punk band Sleater-Kinney, her role in the iconic TV series Portlandia, and her new memoir.
Debbie Millman:
If it weren’t all true, Carrie Brownstein’s career would seem like fantasy fiction. She’s a celebrated musician first and foremost, but she’s also a comedian, a writer, a director, and an actor. In today’s interview, we’re going to talk about the band she co-founded, Sleater-Kinney, which has been called one of the greatest bands of all time. They just released their 11th album, Little Rope, but I’m also going to ask her about the now classic television series, Portlandia, which she co-wrote and starred in alongside Fred Armisen. Along the way, we’re going to talk about her memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, and everything in between.
Carrie Brownstein:
Thanks for having me.
Debbie Millman:
Carrie. I understand that you’ve described your look as akin to Mick Jagger in sweatpants.
Carrie Brownstein:
Really?
Debbie Millman:
Yes.
Carrie Brownstein:
I don’t remember saying that. But you know what’s weird? I’ve seen Mick Jagger in sweatpants. My only time ever meeting Mick Jagger he was in sweatpants, so maybe I somehow conflated those two things. When I saw him, maybe I thought, “That’s what I look like.”
Debbie Millman:
I actually think of myself as a little business casual, no matter if that’s appropriate or not. I’m business casual in my everyday life, but sometimes I’m also business casual on stage with my band, and I think this is when I should have not been dressing business casual. I look like I can go from stage to being a flight attendant on Delta right after the show.
Carrie Brownstein:
What made you attracted to the business casual look?
Debbie Millman:
I think early on when I was playing with Sleater-Kinney… I grew up in the suburbs, and I think my idea of dressing up was to just look a little like, okay, you just put a blazer on or you put a button-up shirt on. So in my mind, I thought, “Well, I’m going on stage. Probably should wear a loafer.” It’s not how rock stars dress, or should.
Carrie Brownstein:
Any particular favorite designers?
Debbie Millman:
In the current era, I really like Stella McCartney. I like Rachel Comey. I like Proenza Schouler. But that’s not what I… Also, let’s just admit, I have a lot of J. Crew, too.
Carrie Brownstein:
Well, Jenna Lyons day was quite nice, her time there.
Debbie Millman:
She was nice, yeah. Right now I am wearing a J. Crew sweater and Everlane cord, so pretty basic. Pretty basic over here.
Debbie Millman:
You said that you grew up in mostly the suburbs. It was the suburbs of Seattle, mostly in Redmond, Washington. And you wrote in your memoir that Seattle was your beacon and your muse, but it was never really yours. I’m wondering if you can explain that a little bit.
Carrie Brownstein:
I think because I was outside of the city and I never really came of age there, that’s… I had some formative experiences there, but I was always on the periphery. And when I finally found my voice and tried on the boldness and the brazenness that comes along with electric guitar and forming a band, I was in Olympia, Washington where I went to college. Seattle was something I sort of looked up to. I imagined that I would end up there eventually and I never did. It always just feels like the thing I thought I would be and something I thought I would be a part of and then never was. I feel sort of adjacent to it.
Debbie Millman:
In elementary school, you’ve described yourself as confident and popular. You were an early round draft pick for teams in gym class. I never was. You won the spelling bee. You attended every crucial waterpark birthday party and sleepover. You were active in music, sports, school plays, and was elected vice president. Would you say that at that time you were a bit of an overachiever?
Carrie Brownstein:
What a tool. God. That’s the kind of kid I would just loathe now and be like, “Ugh.” I was a little bit of an overachiever, I mean when you list it all like that. That’s not how I felt, but I think I was confident. I think I had, at the time… And this is sort of right before I lost all of that confidence. But yeah, I was a little bit of an overachiever, I guess. I mean, if I’m just listening to that list and feel exhausted by it, then yes, I was.
Debbie Millman:
But you had quite a range. I mean, you were sort of smart by winning this spelling bee, so that was one aspect of you, but you also were active in sports.
Carrie Brownstein:
I was an all-rounder. All-rounder. You could also call me a child dilettante, too.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, in what way?
Carrie Brownstein:
No, I think I just… Yeah, I think I connect. Even now, I connect with people via… I’m introverted, and I like activity-based hangouts. I ended up mostly being raised by my dad. But even when my mom was still around, we were kind of in the way that… And this is very essentialist, but in the way men like to hang out with each other through activities, that’s kind of how my sister and I were sort of ushered into our social lives. We sort of were mimicking our dad’s way of interacting, so it was my way of being around people because sort of one-on-one interactions were trickier for me, and sometimes still are, just because I get nervous and shy.
Debbie Millman:
Your dad took you to your first concert when you were in the fifth grade. Tell us about who you saw.
Carrie Brownstein:
Yes. Well, in 1985, Madonna was touring for her seminal album, Like a Virgin, so she was on the Virgin tour. She actually started that tour in Seattle. She played three nights at the Moore Theater, which is… Actually, it might be the Paramount, so someone can fact check that. Anyway, a really small theater, 2,000 capacity. Beastie Boys were opening. They were booed off stage, by the way. People hated those guys.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I read that in your memoir and was laughing out loud.
Carrie Brownstein:
People just thought, “What a bunch of brats up there.” I went to the first night, and it was incredible. I mean, there were costume change after costume change and all the hits. It was exhilarating,
Debbie Millman:
And I believe you dressed up as Madonna at that time.
Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, my very young version of that. My parents were… They weren’t strict, but you can do a lace glove like Madonna, but you’re certainly not going to have a bra… I probably wasn’t even wearing a bra. What would we be showing? It was very chaste. It
was a truly virginal version.
Debbie Millman:
I believe that it was seeing that show, that first ignited the feeling that you would much rather be the object of desire than dole it out from the sidelines. Did you have a sense of what that feeling meant in regard to who you wanted to be or become?
Carrie Brownstein:
I think it was actually a slightly later show. It was George Michael’s Faith tour.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, okay.
Carrie Brownstein:
Because I remember at that show my friend turned to me, and she basically said that she wanted to just make out with George Michael. She was just-
Debbie Millman:
It was slightly more-
Carrie Brownstein:
It was dirtier than that.
Debbie Millman:
… lascivious in the book.
Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah, it was dirtier than that. What she wanted to do to George Michael was unholy. I mean, I was sort of surprised, taken aback because the way I was watching George Michael was thinking, “I don’t want to do something to him. I don’t want to be like a side piece or accessory. I want to be that. I want to be the person that’s on stage that is making people feel excited. I want to have people projecting their fantasies and imaginations onto me.”
Debbie Millman:
That was the moment where I thought, “Oh, I’m in a different place than my friend. The way that I’m experiencing this is not sort of witnessing. I want to participate in this not just as a fan.” I think that really sowed the seed for me wanting to perform.
Debbie Millman:
Though your first music lessons were on the piano, you gravitated to the guitar. And when you were 15 years old, you bought your first guitar, a Canadian-made solid-state amp with a cherry red Epiphone copy of a Stratocaster. It was the first big money purchase you made with your own money. How did you make that money?
Carrie Brownstein:
I worked at the Crossroads movie theater in Redmond. I worked Saturdays and Sundays. I just saved up my money. By the way, big money, it was like a $300 guitar. That was a ton of money for me at the time.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah.
Carrie Brownstein:
But as far as guitars go, that’s not like a big ticket item, but it was a huge amount of money for me. And I just saved up. I started working that year, actually, at the movie theater. My weekends were pretty boring because I just went to the theater at 11:00 and I left at 7:00 and didn’t do much after, but it was a good lesson.
Debbie Millman:
I think my parents, rightly so, they were like, “Well, you’ve gone through these phases. You sort of have these pursuits that you get really excited about. You did tennis for a while. We got you…” They just were like, “If you’re really going to do this, maybe you’ll stick with it if you have more invested in it,” and they were right.
Debbie Millman:
You took guitar lessons from Jeremy Enigk, a music and part of the band Sunny Day Real Estate, and Jeremy and the band are often cited as pioneers in second wave emo. He taught you chords by way of playing “The Last Day of our Acquaintance” by Sinéad O’Connor, wherein you’d play along to the two-chords song, which I couldn’t believe that it was two chords, while Jeremy sang. Then, he’d get bored and play R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” or U2’s “New Year’s Day.” And you felt that even with just a few chords everything was in your grasp. At that point, did you think you wanted to be… Were you sure at that point, “I’m going to be a musician”?
Carrie Brownstein:
I wanted to be a musician in the moment. I was really raised to think that I have to go off to university, probably get a graduate degree, music seemed like a hobby and certainly a way of harnessing my emotions as a teenager, making myself heard and giving myself a voice when I just felt like I didn’t have the words or just sort of lacked coherency. I was excited to have that tool at my disposal and to have a way of expressing myself that involved volume and was naturally angsty, putting the guitar through a distortion pedal or turning the gain up on the amp. It seemed to match this rage and discomfort that I was feeling, or just confusion, the confusion of adolescence. But, I didn’t really think, “Well, this is what is going to sustain me for the next 30, 40 years.” I just thought, “This is great that I have this now. I can form a band and be around people and be part of this community.” Wasn’t thinking too much beyond that.
Debbie Millman:
While all of this was happening, your home life was becoming more and more unstable. Your mother had an eating disorder, and you’ve written that her illness permeated the landscape of your psyche, and you developed a kind of general anxiety and sense of unease. And this manifested in nightmares where you would wake up scared of a fire or that all of your hair was falling out. Did your parents understand what was happening to you at that point?
Carrie Brownstein:
I don’t think so. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, which I definitely do, they had a lot going on. My mom was dealing with her own illness, physical and mental, and my father was trying to keep her feeling safe. Of course, he was worried about her and then basically take on the role of sole parent while my mom was hospitalized for a few months. I think they were concerned about my sister and I, but I don’t really think they had the wherewithal or the bandwidth to do much more than sort of make sure we were fed and off to school and getting our homework done. They had a lot going on.
Debbie Millman:
You were 14 when your mom left your family to seek a cure for her eating disorder. You wrote in your memoir that in doing so she left another form of sickness and longing behind. Did anyone explain to you what was happening? How did you experience her leaving?
Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, it was explained as, I guess, that they were splitting up. But what we really didn’t understand was that she was forging a path that, in her mind, necessitated leaving behind her role as at least a day-to-day mom, the quotidian tasks of motherhood and nurturing, that that was kind of going on the back burner. We didn’t really realize that until she was gone and there wasn’t any sort of structure for custody except that we were just with my dad. There was no arrangement like, “Well, you have to see your mom,” or, “She wants you guys around on these days.” It was just, “That’s it.”
I think it sort of took a second for us to realize we’d been left. For me, I was a little bit older than my sister, so I was able to use that irascibility that starts to take hold when you’re 14. You can be defiant and reject, like, “I’m going to leave you first.” You have a little bit more of that gumption. But yeah, the truth was that we’d been kind of left behind.
Debbie Millman:
When did she come back, and what was it like when she came back?
Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, she would pop in and out every once in a while. She was not too far away, but there just was no sort of formal routine for us seeing her. It was sporadic and really, really confusing.
Debbie Millman:
All through this time you were still playing music. And in your junior year of high school, you formed a band with a few other people called Born Naked. What kind of music were you playing?
Carrie Brownstein:
Oh, we were playing rudimentary punk music, for sure, three-chord punk songs. Our singer, Lex Bratty vocalist. It was fun. It sounded like the punk music coming out of Olympia would sound like. It was definitely minimalist and more about intent than the actual product, I think.
Debbie Millman:
At 16, you wrote a song called You Annoy Me. You’ve stated that you sometimes feel that you’ve been writing that same song ever since. I’m wondering if you can talk about why or how and what maybe some of the lyrics were. I couldn’t find it.
Carrie Brownstein:
The first line I think is, “The way you look really annoys me. The way you talk really bores me.” That’s the opening two lines there. I think that it feels like a perennial theme in that… My friends call me Carrie David after Larry David. I have this kind of constant dissatisfaction, glass is half full. I have to be kind of poked and prodded into optimism, I think. Of course now I have a little more self-awareness to realize if someone else is annoying me, it’s probably a projection. In what ways am I annoying myself? In what ways am I not measuring up? So yeah, self-awareness sets in. But I think that can be my default mode. And the older I get, I try to rest myself of that and take a deeper look at why I’m feeling dissatisfied, or disdainful, or grumpy.
Debbie Millman:
How do you feel like you’ve been writing that same song ever since?
Carrie Brownstein:
Well, I can hear iterations of that song, not musically. Musically, I’ve progressed. But in a lot of the, especially early Sleater-Kinney songs, there’s a brattiness. There’s a get out of my way, leave me alone, I need to be by myself, this sort of lone wolf theme that keeps cropping up. But hopefully, I think maybe in the last couple years, there’s less you-annoy-me songs. Maybe more I annoy-myself songs
Debbie Millman:
At that time, Nirvana’s Smells like Teen Spirit came out. For you and your friends, Nirvana was a local band. I think you saw them play in your high school gymnasium. Is that true?
Carrie Brownstein:
College.
Debbie Millman:
College gymnasium.
Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah. The first college I went to was a state school in Bellingham, Washington, which is a small town really close to the Canadian border in-
Debbie Millman:
Beautiful, beautiful town.
Carrie Brownstein:
It is beautiful.
Debbie Millman:
Beautiful place.
Carrie Brownstein:
Very verdant. Anyway, Mudhoney, who was another Seattle grunge band on SubHub records at the time, were playing. It was very exciting. “Oh, Mudhoney’s coming to our college.” So, I got tickets, and I went in, and there was a surprise opener, and that opener was Nirvana, who had just released Nevermind earlier that year. I think they were really good friends with Mudhoney and said, “Hey, we’d like to come and do a secret show.” That’s a pretty special university show to watch. And they played all the hits, I mean, Smells like Teen Spirit. That album was probably already platinum at that time.
Debbie Millman:
Shortly thereafter, you started to become aware of the music scene in Olympia. You heard bands like Bikini Kill and Ratmobile and Heavens to Betsy. You’ve said that for the first time you heard your story being explained and sung to you, that you were being seen and recognized. I’m wondering how that music did that to you. What did it speak to you? What was it saying to you?
Carrie Brownstein:
I think it took a certain female experience and centered it and was fearless, and unapologetic, and unsparing in the specificity and the detail and just not sidelining those stories. It spoke to pain, and longing, and specific narratives that I could really relate to and had anger and fury, and was unafraid to express that in music. I just thought, “Oh, this is really the first time.” I mean, I’ve been listening to punk, and indie, and alternative music, at least by then, for a couple years and certainly had related to it. But all of a sudden there was a blueprint, and I think I could see myself on the landscape for the first time. People need that, right? Anyone needs to be able to see themselves in order to do it and to make it and have an example. It gives you faith and gives you the ability to try. It’s helpful to have people come before you, for sure.
Debbie Millman:
You also wrote that it was crucial to finally recognize yourself in the world. What were you beginning to see?
Carrie Brownstein:
I felt like I just didn’t have a voice or a means of expressing myself. Punk music, and particularly the music coming out of Olympia, it just became this container, this world that I could set myself in. I think what I was seeing was someone who was worthwhile, someone who could find the words, especially if the way of conveying them was through music, that there was a way out. I think that’s what I recognized, was a way out from who I was, which was someone who was very insecure, and diffident, and lonely, I think.
So, I recognized community. I recognized collaboration in these fellow travelers, and I dove into it. They’re also just queerness. I just recognize all these facets of myself that were very nascent and not even that clear to me yet, but my world just opened up.
Debbie Millman:
You left Western Washington University in Bellingham and transferred down to Evergreen College in Olympia in order to be closer to that music scene. I understand. Though, that you first met Corin Tucker, the lead singer of Heavens to Betsy, in Bellingham. What was that first meeting like?
Carrie Brownstein:
Corin played in a band called Heavens to Betsy, which was a two-piece, very deconstructed, unconventional music, which a lot of the Olympia scene was. They were playing a show at this space called the Show Off Gallery. It was them, Mecca Normal, it was a very avant-garde two-piece from Vancouver, and Bikini Kill, who were probably the most well-known riot grrrl band of that era, and very well-known band today.
But, Bikini Kill canceled, so it was just these two other bands. I went in and watched Corin sing. I’d seen Heavens to Betsy before, before I’d gone to college, and I went up to her afterwards and told her I was a fan. I said, “I think I’m going to drop out of Western and transfer to the Evergreen State College, which was in Olympia.” She basically said, “Yeah, you should.” I mean, I sort of took that as permission from this person I’ve never even talked to before. She said, “Well, why don’t you give me your address? I can send you my fanzine or keep in touch?” I think I knew I was getting out of Western because she had basically ordained it, and I wrote down my dad’s address in this notebook for her.
She remembers me as being very… She said very nerdy and shy, and I think I was. But yeah, so I dropped out two weeks later and my dad was not happy. He just thought, “That’s it. You’ve ruined your life.” But I did apply to Evergreen and transfer, so I finished college.
Debbie Millman:
You described Corin’s guitar this way. It was handmade by her and her father, and you described it as a crude piece of machinery painted matte black and looked like a home appliance that had been melted down in a fire. She also played with the tiniest of amps, an orange Roland cube with one speaker, no pedals, and no tuner. You’ve written that the ugly parts were edged in disgrace and disgust. It bordered right on ugly the whole time. But you’ve written this in a way that makes it feel very beautiful and something you really liked. I’m wondering if you can talk to that a little bit.
Carrie Brownstein:
I think feeling like the music that Corin was making, this grotesque grumbling sounds coming out of her guitar and the way her voice could sort of pin you to the wall, it was scrawling and screeching. It had moments of, I think, gracefulness to it as well. It just felt truthful, honestly. I just thought, “This is just real.” Not everything is pretty and beautiful, and female singers don’t just have to be folk singers that are a salve for people’s hurt. Another way to process hurt is to meet it, to scream back at it. And I loved that sort of beautiful ugliness of that music.
I think at the time I sort of felt like a distorted version of a person, and the music really matched that. It was kind of being splintered apart. In the moments where it came together, you just thought, “Aha! I can be both. I can acknowledge the parts of me that are broken, but also stand up, too.”
Debbie Millman:
You started your own punk band, Excuse 17, in 1993 with Becca Albee and be Curtis James and recorded two full length albums, a single, and you contributed to the Free to Fight compilation album. And you also started to tour the US as the opening act for Heavens to Betsy. What was it like to first start performing live?
Carrie Brownstein:
It was fun, and it was really scary. I mean, when you say performing live, one thing to remember is these were not traditional venues, so it’s not like I suddenly was on a big stage in a beautiful theater. I was in basements, some kind of ramshackle, jerry-rigged club or venue or space that had just opened up. Everything was a little bit derelict, so it was good that we started there because there was nothing real polished about us as a band or my sort of performance on stage.
But, it was really exciting being in those small decrepit spaces that didn’t live up to any fire code. It was wonderful and wondrous. And what I really remember about it was getting to see the US for the first time. I just had grown up in the Pacific Northwest. At this point, I’d never been to Europe. I’d only ever been to Vancouver, Canada. What I remember was just that comradery and meeting like-minded people in all these cities and just feeling less isolated. This is pre-internet. Just the only way you could reach people was to go there in terms of actually meeting them and getting to know them. You could have a pistol area relationships. But in terms of the face-to-face, you had to go to their town. It really was eye-opening in that way. Performing, I sort of got my sea legs a little bit as a performer.
I think the other thing people forget pre-internet is it’s a mystery what… You rehearse in a space, but you don’t necessarily understand. Even a club or some kind of fly-by-night venue, they still have a PA. They still have monitors, if you’re lucky. There’s a sound person. These are new things. You don’t watch a YouTube video. I didn’t go to a school of rock where you learn what all these things are. The tour was a full… It was just demystifying all these things that I really didn’t understand. When you get on stage, you need a monitor mix. That’s what you hear. The audience is hearing something through the PA speakers. But I was like, “Oh, what is that? How do I explain myself?” It was a real lesson in learning how to communicate and take these chances, but it was really scary, that first tour.
Debbie Millman:
In your memoir, you write about how you were anxious to pour your guts out, and many of your songs with the Excuse 17 are a sonic and lyrical purging, like a caged animal who upon release head straight to the recording studio. I’m wondering, given how you’ve mentioned that you were introverted and shy, where did this stage persona come from and what’d it feel like to have that persona on stage given your introversion?
Carrie Brownstein:
I don’t think it fully came to be in Excuse 17, but there were shades of it. Again, punk is a great place to practice loudness. You are turned up in terms of your amps, and often you don’t have a great monitor mix, so you better be singing loud or literally screaming. In screaming, which I did a lot of Excuse 17, I just literally found my voice, literally was more in touch with my anger. Performance-wise though, I’ve seen video of myself back then, I’m not moving around very much. I still feel kind of stuck in place.
I had this little leg move I did. Not like Chuck Berry, but a little bit of a Buddy Holly, I guess, sort of my foot sort of moving back and forth. That was as bold as I got back then. But the music, it’s bigger than you. That’s, I think, is the first thing that really gives you license because you’re like, “Oh, this music can hold me. I have felt so unheld and just free floating in life for a long time, and now I have this sonic vessel that allows me a sturdiness and ballast.” Then, once you accept that, once you realize that, you can start taking steps forward, and I think I did. Excuse 17 was sort of the early iterations of that, but I didn’t really have a full stage persona yet, which I still don’t quite have, but I definitely… It’s very rudimentary compared to what came later.
Debbie Millman:
You don’t think you have a stage presence now?
Carrie Brownstein:
Oh, no, presence, yes, but I wouldn’t say I have a persona where I sort of get on stage and fully transform. I think there’s always something of me that comes through. But I definitely have a stage presence, yes. I move around on stage in a way that I never would in real life. I don’t quite know where that comes from, except to say that, again, the music as a place that I understood as just having me. It has me. It’s not going to let me go. And this is a world that I’ve built, this with my cohorts and collaborators and with the audience is a steadiness that I’ve built.
Debbie Millman:
I would describe your stage presence almost like punk ballet. There’s something very balletic about it. How did you learn how to windmill, to do the windmill?
Carrie Brownstein:
I don’t know how I learned to do it. I don’t think I practiced it, but I realized I was able to do it. It’s interesting that you say balletic because I am coordinated, but I wouldn’t say I’m the most graceful person. But on stage, I’m able to sort of mimic a gracefulness that I think I don’t really in my day-to-day life.
But things like the windmill, it’s interesting, on stage, I just possess a fluidity that I just don’t have anywhere else. Something like the windmill, which I probably just auditioned one time on stage, without knowing whether… I mean, even Pete Townsend, I think, actually pierced his hand, like a whammy bar. It’s not the safest move. But luckily, yeah, I came back around and was able to strum the strings, and I just thought, “Oh, okay. I guess I can do that.” It wasn’t me auditioning that in my room or something. I just did it on stage. But, the stage just gives license for those kinds of things, including failure and error and a lot of things that could go wrong. But I think I like that. I’m willing to take those risks on stage, risks I would not take in real life.
Debbie Millman:
Now, Sleater-Kinney started as a side project with Corin, and you named the band after one of your practice venues. When did you decide this was it, you’re both leaving your other bands and starting your own band together?
Carrie Brownstein:
Probably around 1995. It’s a weird story because… We were in a very insular but vital artistic music community. In Olympia, there were a lot of bands. We were gleaning a lot of influence and inspiration from our friends, but it was also sort of suffocating in its smallness.
We actually went to Australia and sort of took ourselves to the other side of the world, and it just allowed us to see ourselves in a different way, to just dare to imagine ourselves existing outside of Olympia, bigger than Olympia, just let’s reinvent.
I think it was during that time that we decided we probably wouldn’t continue with our other bands, and that was tough. It’s been a long time now, and Corin and I have spoken recently about that wasn’t easy. I think our other bands felt a little betrayed by that, like, “Oh, you guys are just going to form this thing.” Then, it ended up being bigger than those other bands. I think, obviously, that’s difficult, too. But, we had this chemistry, Corin and I, that was undeniable. We were creating something very singular together, and I think we didn’t want to let that go.
Debbie Millman:
You said that when you started playing with her it felt like you’d met your musical match?
Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we just are really intuitive together. We can sort of finish each other’s musical sentences. I think because we are both self-taught, the way that our guitars interlocked and the way our vocals would play off each other, it just felt very different than anything else we’d done. To this day, there’s certain ways that I play that I can only play with Corin, and that always makes it more unique than something I’m doing with another collaborator. I really value that.
Debbie Millman:
As the band grew in popularity and stature, critical response, you began to grapple with issues that you said you’d face for years, the requirement that you were going to have to defend or analyze decisions like why you were an all-female band or why didn’t you have a bass player. You realized that those questions and talking about that experience had become part of the experience itself. Was that something that you resented or just figured it was part of the equation?
Carrie Brownstein:
That’s a good question. I did resent it sometimes. What it is is it’s an energy suck. We just wanted to talk about the music. I would just think have you ever asked a band of men, “Why are you an all-male band?” I know you’ve never asked that question, and I just thought, “Oh, all the time saving that those guys get to do. They don’t have to waste a single moment thinking about these other things and having to speak for everyone.” Just not being able to be seen as an individual or a specific entity, that was frustrating. I don’t know if I was resentful, but it was frustrating because we didn’t want to have to do that. We didn’t want to have to spend our time doing that.
Debbie Millman:
Years ago, I interviewed David Lee Roth, and I kind of wish now that I’d asked him, “So, why were you in an all-male band?”
Carrie Brownstein:
I wish you had. I wish you had.
Debbie Millman:
Me too. As you moved into the late aughts and early 2000s, the band continued to grow in fame, in stature. But you stated that to court fame, money, and press felt dirty and sweaty. It implied that you wanted to be accepted and loved by the mainstream, the same people who had rejected, taunted, and diminished you in high school. You wrote that it sounds silly now, but at the time, these categories seem finite, immutable, and significant. Has your relationship to fame changed over the years?
Carrie Brownstein:
I mean, I think it’s still something that I don’t really value as a category. I try to examine things more from a place of feeling gratitude, like, “Oh, I’m grateful for access to certain things. I’m grateful for certain privileges that come with success.” But in terms of what I value and who I want to be around, it has very little to do with fame or celebrity.
I find it a strange thing to sort of worship or put too much of a premium on. I just want to be around kind, smart, interesting people in all walks of life from all walks of life. I have a lot of hobbies that purposely sort of bring me around people who I would never meet through film, music, or television.
Debbie Millman:
What kind of hobbies?
Carrie Brownstein:
Dog agility. It’s interesting with dog agility because we all think of like, “Oh, what’s a diverse group of people? What’s an interesting intersection of people?” Well, you actually have to step out. Dog agility is very interesting. I mean, it is people… I just like, “Oh, I would never meet you.” This is not academia. This is not the arts. It’s wonderful. I love it.
Also, now I do a lot of pickleball, and I’m hanging out with a lot of older people and younger people. Anyway, I just love these kinds of hobbies or pursuits that really get me outside of a social group that I would normally be around and make genuine friends there and have a common interest that we form our friendship around. I love it. It’s one of my favorite things.
Debbie Millman:
In 2005, Sleater-Kinney… Or 2006, I’m sorry, Sleater-Kinney took a hiatus. It had been about 12 years and seven albums together. You took an indefinite hiatus. And speaking of dogs, you dove headfirst during the hiatus into volunteer work at the Oregon Humane Society, and you won the Oregon Humane Society Volunteer of the Year Award in 2006.
Carrie Brownstein:
I did, yes. I also worked at the time as a trainer at a private facility and got a job at the humane society as well. I was not just a volunteer. I also worked in their training department, and I was the assistant in a reactive rover class. Then in the other, at the private facility, I was an assistant in just more like basic obedience. I was all in with that. My social life was all… My best friend that year was a woman named Jean, who was probably 70 years old. We hung out all the time. We went on dog walks together. I stayed at her house on the coast and became friends with her son. I really dove into that world, and that was pretty much my main social group for at least a year.
Debbie Millman:
My first dogs, which I got back in 2000, after going through a particularly depressive experience, I think I credit them with opening my heart. My wife was never a dog person, but she knew when we met that I’d had a history with dogs. And both of my dogs, who were very close to each other, they were like soulmates, had passed away at 17 and 18-
Carrie Brownstein:
Wow.
Debbie Millman:
… six months before we met. So, she knew that I had this giant hole in my heart for dogs. And despite not being a dog person, she got me a dog three years ago.
Carrie Brownstein:
That’s sweet.
Debbie Millman:
Now she is a dog person. She is even more of a dog person than I am. So, I do think that dogs can save and change our lives in the most profound ways.
Carrie Brownstein:
Absolutely.
Debbie Millman:
Did that job at that time help you get over some of the loss of Sleater-Kinney and the sadness that you were feeling about the band going on hiatus?
Carrie Brownstein:
Absolutely. For one, it just was a way of understanding, just broadening my comprehension about life and loss and giving me a task to do. I think dogs, or animals in general, their needs are very clear and they’re simple. You realize that humans aren’t that much different. Most of us want to be loved and protected. You start to see all these through lines, and it really is so clarifying, I think. It also just teaches you patience.
One of my volunteer jobs at the humane society was just cleaning out the cages. You see, obviously, the literal feces of these dogs, but you just sort of see this is just a temporary thing for most of them. They’re just living in this cage. There’s just so much humanity in here and there’s just… My only job is to just make sure for this moment that this dog has an okay life as we are stewarding them into the next phase. I just thought, “Well, that’s how it should be with everyone.”
Whenever I have an interaction with someone that’s finite, I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again, it should be as pure as what I’m doing with these dogs. I don’t know what state someone else is in. My job is just to be kind and open and leave them feeling either the same or better than when we started this conversation. I think that clarity of purpose really helped me just have perspective on the band and also just appreciate what we had done, not just mourn the hiatus, but appreciate the journey we’ve been on.
Debbie Millman:
One thing that I’ve come to realize about dogs that I try to consider what it would be like as a person to be this way is just how unselfconscious they are.
Carrie Brownstein:
I know.
Debbie Millman:
I mean, Max, my dog, doesn’t really like when anybody’s looking at him when he poops. That’s probably it. Everything else he’s just completely okay as is, and I love that about him.
Carrie Brownstein:
I love that, too. Sorry, my dog is barking. There’s probably someone… Hold on. I do need to at least bring Banjo in here. Hold on.
Debbie Millman:
Okay. Absolutely.
Carrie Brownstein:
Banjo, buddy. Come here, monkey.
Debbie Millman:
In 2005, you began working with Saturday Night Live alum Fred Armisen on a series of comedy sketches for the internet titled Thunderant. What first inspired you two to do that together?
Carrie Brownstein:
Fred and I met through music because he is a drummer and we’d been in the same circles for a while. He had just started on SNL, but was still… Like in the cast, but not one of the main stars of the show.
He reached out. He said he wanted to collaborate. I assumed he wanted to do music. He said, “Well, actually, I…” I think it was the year John Kerry was running for president, so it would’ve been 2004. He said, “I have to make this video for their campaign.” He’s like, “My idea is that you’re a host of a cable access show and you’re running it out of your basement, and I’ll play Saddam Hussein as like…” He’s like, “When I see pictures of him…” He’s like, “He looks like one of those aging rockers. He’s got this beard now, and he just looks like a Paul Weller.” I was like, “Okay.” So, I played Cyndi Overton and had the first interview with Saddam Hussein, who he did. He played with a British accent and had a guitar the whole time.
I don’t know if Fred ever turned that into the Kerry campaign. I can’t imagine that they would have used it. I mean, they’re not going to put Saddam Hussein in a campaign, a viral video ad. Anyway, that encouraged us to keep making videos. So, we would just get together every once in a while. The next thing we made, actually, was the feminist bookstore, which became a recurring sketch on Portlandia.
Debbie Millman:
Yes. One of my favorite.
Carrie Brownstein:
We really enjoyed it. Fred would fly out to Portland. Although, I think we did one in New York, too, where he was living… We would just make these videos and put them up online and send them to our friends, and it was really fun. We kind of developed a language and we built our own chemistry. We were just like, “Oh, we have this sensibility now. These are ideas. These aren’t just disparate sketches. We’re creating a world here.” So then we took it out as a pitch for a show.
Debbie Millman:
And you pitched it to Lorne Michaels. He proved it in 2011. Portlandia debuted on the IFC network, and it was an immediate success. I know
that when you were in high school you were, I believe, the star of one of your high school plays, but did you feel surprised by this sort of naturalness at which you could enter into this new world of acting and comedy?
Carrie Brownstein:
Yes. And I was absolutely surprised. I had terrible imposter syndrome. I felt like I’d snuck in through some kind of side or back door. What’s also amazing is that if this had been created in any other way, I think that someone would’ve said… I mean, Fred was working with Kristen Wiig, and Amy Poehler, and Maya Rudolph, these heavyweights, heavy, brilliant, brilliant comedic actors, and somehow Lorne… This is why he’s genius and he just has that acumen. He just thought, “No, this is… You guys are friends.” Not that Fred isn’t friends with those other people, but, “You guys have this specific way of being together that if we just sub out Carrie for someone else, it will change the nature of the show.” So, I felt very lucky, but I also felt like I had a lot to prove.
I remember when we were shooting the pilot, Fred and I had done every scene together, and then all of a sudden we were doing a shot. It was the Put a Bird on It sketch. It was just me, and our director, Jonathan Krisel, yelled, “Action,” and I just thought, “Oh my God. It’s just me. What am I going to do here?” I was really nervous.
I really credit Stacey Silverman, who is a wonderful writer. She had written for Colbert, and now she writes for a ton of comedy shows. She just had a lot of faith in me, especially as a writer. I think becoming more confident as a writer in terms of writing the sketches helped me become more confident as a performer. Fred was really helpful, too. But yeah, I was terrified.
Debbie Millman:
Your beloved feminist bookstore sketch, which you’ve just referenced, Women First, stars your characters Tony and Candace. This was one of the first of a range of characters that you and Fred played together where you were cross-dressing with Fred appearing as a woman. Later, you appeared as a man, most notably as Andy, the men’s rights activist, or Lance, husband to Fred playing your wife, Nina. You were so great as Andy. I wouldn’t have even known it was you, truly.
Carrie Brownstein:
That kind of gender expression is just really… It’s very freeing. It also grants you, I think, a little bit of an understanding, too. I was like, “Oh, yeah. Okay. This is a different headspace to get into for a little while.” I loved it. I missed that.
Debbie Millman:
Portlandia ran for eight seasons. The show received 22 Emmy nominations, won three, and in 2011 won the prestigious Peabody Award for its good-natured lampooning of hipster culture, which hits the mark whether or not you’re in on the joke. In 2015, Jerry Seinfeld stated that Portlandia was one of the best comedies of all time. And that very same year, Stereogum chief editor Tom Breihan stated that Sleater-Kinney was one of the greatest rock bands of the past two decades. Did you believe any of it?
Carrie Brownstein:
I feel like that stuff is so arbitrary and subjective, and of course it’s a lovely thing to hear, but you can’t really hang your hat on that. You have to take it with a grain of salt. Because if you put a lot of faith in that or give that kind of stuff too much power, you also have to give the negative feedback a lot of power, too. I think my role is to hopefully tune both those extremes out as much as I can, even though it’s flattering. It’s so arbitrary.
Debbie Millman:
2015 was a big year. The band reemerged with the launch of the album No Cities to Love. And your most recent album, Little Rope, was launched earlier this year. While you were making it, Corin was by the American Embassy in Italy that your mother and stepfather had been killed in a car accident while they were there on holiday. I’m so sorry, Carrie. I’m so sorry that this happened.
Carrie Brownstein:
Thanks. I appreciate that. I will just clarify that Corin just got a call that they were trying to get a hold of me. So, she didn’t actually have to deliver that news.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, okay. It was hard to read. I’m sorry I didn’t get that quite right.
Carrie Brownstein:
Oh, no. That’s totally fine. That’s totally fine.
Debbie Millman:
Most of the songs for Little Rope were already written by the time of the accident. Can you talk a little bit about how grief mitigated into the work, perhaps in ways you didn’t expect?
Carrie Brownstein:
Yeah. That time was so awful and disorienting. It’s been good to contextualize all this because music for me was something that had existed for so long, and I knew how to write songs. I didn’t know how to grieve my mom. I sort of was able to transfer just some of that confusion into a choreography that I knew, which was songwriting and playing… It was even more simplistic than that, more reductive. I just literally played guitar. I hadn’t played that much guitar since I was in high school. I mean, obviously I’ve played guitar for many years now, but I don’t usually just sit around for eight hours a day. I just needed somewhere to put my hands to place myself in time and space and literally in a room. It was so comforting to put my hands on the neck of the guitar and feel my fingers move along the frets. It helped ground me. It became a ritual and just started to give shape to days that felt very foggy and misshapen.
The other thing was, I think when you lose someone, you lose the ability to do anything for them, and you sort of miss that ability to reach them, to connect with them. So, I transferred a lot of that caretaking, and nurturing, and tending to onto the album because I couldn’t tend to my mom.
I think more than the songs sort of being about grief, the sorrow just informed the way we approached the record, the way I approached it, and just the stakes felt very, very high. Just didn’t want to put anything out into the world that wasn’t fully formed, wasn’t intentional, didn’t have life to it.
Debbie Millman:
I read a review, and I thought this was a really, really apt line, “The songs feel despondent and treacherous at times, but at others they’re hopeful and gleaming.” I think it’s a really complicated, really beautiful album. What do you think Little Rope tells your audience about who the band is now?
Carrie Brownstein:
I think it tells them that we’re a band willing to reckon with the present, that we’re not steeped or trapped in our own history except to bring it along with us. We’re not stuck there. We’re not sort of tricked or intoxicated
by nostalgia or sentimentality, but we’re willing to carry the weight of our history, and our failures, and our frailty along with us and transform it into something that exemplifies strength and that we have a willingness to keep going and persevere and to connect. That desire to connect and commune with an audience is ever present and ongoing, and that we’re uninterested in no longer telling our story, that we have, I guess, enough confidence and willingness to keep the chapters going, keep the narrative going. I think it just expresses a willingness and also a celebration at the same time. Not something that’s a burden, but something that’s a real joy.
Debbie Millman:
I have one last question for you. In your memoir, which was published several years ago, you wrote that much of your intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw your way out of it. I’m wondering if that’s still the case.
Carrie Brownstein:
I think in some ways it is, but I don’t feel just wholly dissatisfied. It’s too cynical to be steeped in dissatisfaction. Also, there’s something whiny about that. I’m like, “Ugh, come on.” Dissatisfaction, what does that mean? That’s sort of your own making a little bit.
Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s a tough world out there, especially now.
Carrie Brownstein:
It’s a tough world, but it’s tougher for other people. I guess that’s how I feel. Sure, existentially, if you’re lucky, it’s just existential. If you’re less fortunate, those can be very real threats, corporeal threats.
So, yes. I mean, I’m not saying that I can’t be dissatisfied, but I guess what I’ll say is that I try to at least question what I’m dissatisfied about. But I also like to be a voice for those of us who are discontent, for those of us who are still clawing, and fighting, and wrestling, and thrashing about. Those are my people. Those are my people who just are restless by nature, and that restlessness can be born of many things, and I love that. I want life to feel urgent. I want art to feel urgent. I want people to leave everything on the stage, leave everything on the page, leave everything on the screen. Just put it out there.
I don’t know if it’s dissatisfaction, but it’s definitely a restlessness and a desire to keep wanting and to not settle, to just not look out and think this is okay. I will continue writing for myself and for other people who think this is not okay.
Debbie Millman:
Thank you, Carrie Brownstein, for making so much work that matters. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Carrie Brownstein:
Thank you, Debbie. That was a wonderful interview.
Debbie Millman:
Thank you. Carrie Brownstein’s memoir is titled Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. Her latest album with Sleater-Kinney is titled Little Rope. You can find out more about the band on their website, sleater-kinney.com. This is the 19th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.