Nathan Jr.
Nathan Jr. Is a 33 year old musician who works at a locally owned music shop on Alberta street. When we sat down to interview him, it became apparent that he had a knack for storytelling. This is a partially transcribed document of what he told us that day. For the most part, everything below is transcribed verbatim, with the exception of a few minor cuts and edits in order to maintain continuity. Although it would be great if you were able to take the time to read it word for word from start to finish, we understand that there is a lot to digest. Please feel free to skim through.
I was awakened at somewhere around 1 AM to the skipper asking me if I was scared of heights...
I had a really really gnarly close call out on a boat and never wanted to go back. I had a job on land processing fish. I got into it and was the leader of that crew and it was really fun. But then I did the stupidest thing and I got greedy. This guy who was the main deck hand on a salmon drift net boat and he needed an extra hand and offered it to me and I cleared it with my boss and we went out there at 6 in the morning. I was only going to miss one shift of work and I was going to walk with between 7 hundred and 1000 dollars. My boss was like, "I'll totally let you do it. Don't tell anybody. We'll just give you a vacation day and hit it.
We were out at sea, left around 9 or 10 in the evening, and we were supposed to travel out 40 miles or however far we were going and get up at 5 in the morning and fish. And then it's done around 5 in the evening and then we go home. I was awakened at somewhere around 1 AM to the skipper asking me if I was scared of heights and I wasn't, or, I didn't know if I was, and so I said "no" and he said "okay I need you to climb to the top of the mast and untangle the stabilizer wires because I left port without putting out the stabilizers and we're going to tip over if you don't do this." And the boat is just rocking like crazy and I'm thinking if I don't get this done we're all dead so I just kind of WOOSH adrenaline rush start climbing to the top of the mast. I had never done that before and I'm like 40 feet up so when the waves come you can see the boat over there, it looks like a dinner plate or a boat plate from a restaurant. And then as I would tip back the boat goes out this way and forward and oh the boat's behind me. And the whole time he's waking up the other deck hand because it was pretty hard to stay on – to not die and untangle the damn stabilizer wire. So that was faux pas one that the skipper made.
Then we got out and fished the next day and we had our biggest catch of the day. You throw this line out over and over and if you're lucky you get one full net per hour and then you pick fish out, throw them down the hole. We had our biggest catch of the day, like big money, and this is before I became more environmentally aware and more tuned in with kind of how bad things are as far as over fishing and all the human problems we have on earth. So I just saw a big pay check in this net and I was all excited and getting giddy and like wow it's really going to pay off and the skipper was excited too and so excited that when he was reeling up the net he caught in the propeller of the boat and it wound up in there and we had to cut the net loose. And another boat came along and picked it up. And this is the type of situation when you need to have a diver on retainer and they come out and untangle your prop so you can get back. He didn't have a diver so we drifted back to the mouth of the Kasilof river, 130 miles from Homer, with the fish, and it took us 48 hours. Just being on the ocean and we didn't have enough food for that and so he would let us eat the really gross fish like the dead ones, the one's that kind of came aboard dead or the old haggard pieces. So that was that and it goes on.
We got to shore. The deck hand (you know we were young guys) he was like a total party animal and a friend of mine, dragged me into town and we were really grateful to be on land cause we'd been out for 72 hours. And so we went and got burgers and then he bought me a fifth of rum – yeah this is when I was 20 and I couldn't get into bars. He kept trying to get me into bars where he knew people and I'd get to sit there and have a beer or whatever and then they would ask me to leave. So the skipper had asked us not to get drunk that night and we were kind of like ‘fuck you, you almost killed us and now we're not getting paid'. So we came back to the boat drunk and Frank, the guy got up and was yelling at Tony my friend screaming at us about being drunk and Tony was like ‘what did you expect man this was a horrible trip. Screw you. We're back its not that late, we're going to get up and work', and he's like ‘no you're not. I'm calling the harbor patrol and kicking you off the boat'. So Tony slams his filet knife down on the navigation table and tears his hand open and he's gushing blood everywhere. Now he's mad too, bloody drunk and wants to beat up Frank. I was like ‘come on Tony, come out here'. Friends of mine that worked for Icicle and ran a skiff, that was the company I was with on land, happened to be dropping somebody off at another boat next to ours and we jumped in their boat and they drove us 7 miles up river and then we had to hike through the woods to the main highway and hitchhike home.
In the meantime, we're in bear country and it's my first summer in Alaska and I'm like total tenderfoot but I know that in the open wilderness there are bears everywhere in Alaska. So we're walking and he's dripping blood and it's nasty and every twig that cracks is kind of frightening but it was light out because it was summer time in Alaska, so it wasn't that scary. And then we tried to hitchhike home and nobody would pick us up because we were covered in fish scales and bloody and hung over, had not slept. We each drank a lot that night and didn't get to go to bed and then walked 15 miles to get to the road. Nobody would pick us up. We ended up walking 20 miles on the road to this town called Clam Gulch where the women/housekeeper ladies saw us when we walked in and saw how bloody he was and how haggard we were and took him into the kitchen and were rinsing his wound and he looked at it and passed out. So we were there for like 2 hours. They let me drink which was sweet of them so that took the edge off my waking hangover. The best part maybe was leaving the Clam Gulch Lodge all patched up with food in our stomachs and half drunk and then watching my dad roll by in his truck and not see us as we're running out the parking lot and screaming because there's our ride back home where I need to go badly so that was disheartening. And then about an hour later we got picked up by a guy and we repeated our story to him and he actually wrote for Field and Stream magazine and was up scouting fishing locations in Alaska. So he ended up writing a little blurb about it, which was redeeming a little bit. But I was out so long without calling my work that I was terminated when I came back – eligible for rehire, so I had the same job the next summer and I did that and then when I turned 21 I was up there again and did about 3 months in the same fish place and then I was like screw this – I'm going to get a job in a bar where there's live music and join a band. I did that and I did 3 summers in a row and then the third time I stayed the winter and then came back to Oregon the next summer and have been back ever since.
So that's when I developed my karaoke addiction...
I had started looking for other jobs because [Guitar Center] was an ugly place to work for. I got a job hosting karaoke at Chopsticks on Burnside. I was a prototype because before I got that gig just about everybody else that did it was like in their 40's or 50's or had their own business and would bring all their own CD's. Well David, the owner of Chopsticks, owns all the music and the equipment so all you got to do is show up. That made it really easy to get into but I lived a block from there and had been going there since I moved to Portland. Oh yeah, I sing karaoke – that's part of the deal. When I moved to Redmond that's when I got into karaoke because there were no musicians that I could jam with really, except this older blues guy that my friends dad turned me onto he had a horrible cocaine problem and was a severe alcoholic and he had a lot of money. He was a really good player so it was fun to go drink whiskey with him and jam because he was hot shit and really had a great record collection. That was fun and all but it was only like once a month I would even see that guy or even get a call. So it wasn't what I was used to which was spending 20 hours a week with my band. I was 21 and I decided I could practice singing while I'm here stuck in the middle of nowhere trying to save money. So that's when I developed my karaoke addiction for sure. Then I weaned myself after hosting because at one point I was the only karaoke host at Chopsticks and they were open 6 days a week. So I did karaoke 6 nights a week. When I first moved to that neighborhood it was 1999 and it had just started to develop. Basically our back yard was bordering Beulah Land's patio, which was great for eavesdropping because we had a wooden fence and Beulah Land's patio is intimate – like a breezeway more or less. That house was neat.
I had to limit "god bless the USA"by lee greenwood to once per hour
[the Rock-Dorm] It's an apartment building the The Dandy Warhols and some of their artist friends moved into in the mid nineties and there were a bunch of vacancies at once and so they all thought it would be fun to get apartments there and then every time a for rent sign came up they would take it down and call all their friends so by the time I moved in everyone knew each other and it had its own rules: no noise complaints; no calling the cops unless someone is dead or dying. Those were the rules so that was really really fun place to live. It's not really the rock dorm anymore. We all got older, a lot of people have families or bought houses or moved out of town. The rock dorm was great fun. It was my first apartment on my own, without roommates, or a girlfriend.
A good friend and I and two other of our friends all rented this big brick house off of Hawthorne great neighborhood, really really cool. All of us had just been dumped basically, the four of us, or, had our relationships go their separate ways, and we all moved in there and we were single, in our mid twenties. My other friend had just gotten a job hosting karaoke downtown from these people who worked at chopsticks for years, and got to know me, and asked if I knew anybody that could do it, he lost his girlfriend and his job, and then got a job hosting karaoke, which I did, and our other friend was a bartender, so, you can imagine the late nights that went on a that place because we all get home from work somewhere between three and four and then we would, you know, bring whoever from the bar. God, that was nuts, that was really, we lasted a year there and then we were all kinda just like, looking at each other like do we want to do this for another year lease"It was a toxic adventure, it was loads of fun, and we all kinda needed it at that point.
Then I moved to this neighborhood shortly after that. I was doing the chopsticks karaoke; I did that for four years, four years solid. It was the highest paying job I've ever had. My first day, and this is how I can remember, was September 12, 2001, the day after. So I have a different flavor of that whole event. I had to limit "god bless the USA"by lee greenwood to once per hour because it was driving everybody nuts. I literally had thirty people sign up for that song a night in the week after September 11, and I was like, sorry, once per hour. There's twelve people here waiting for other people to leave and we only do karaoke for six hours so, sorry. Can I do ‘born in the USA?...'--‘Taken'. That was a nasty time for sure. I did the chopsticks thing up to six nights a week for the first year. And then I started working at Trade Up cause I missed guitars and stuff. I walked into there, I would wake up and count my tips and see if I had enough money to go buy more gear! And that's how I put together my whole home studio. I learned how to home record; I don't really understand gigantic mixing consoles and all the hi-fi shit, so, I kinda fall into the medium fidelity category. But I record with the pros now, which is kinda fun, and I'm learning a lot doing that.
I'm pretty up there as far as the wear and tear factor in the family
I was in a pop band that got a little, a small record deal and some national notoriety cause we had a song in the Tampax Braid Tampon commercial during the winter Olympics of 2006. This woman who licenses songs in Los Angeles had heard our record and pitched our song to Tampax, and they wanted it, and they were willing to pay X amount of dollars. So we got on TV a couple of times, that was, sorta fun. It was during a murder scene in this alien invasion show that only lasted for a year that came on after "lost,"or is it "desperate housewives"that it came on after. I'm trying to remember what it, oh, it was just called Invasion. It was terrible. A total ‘B' show, you know, no stars, kind like The X-files. There was a lake and the aliens cursed this lake or something. We had a song in the show during a murder. And I didn't know, we didn't know, what they were gonna do with it. We just said they could use it, for, X amount of dollars, and then, I told my family, you know, like, my moms side of the family, who were, pretty into television, and they thought it was... (I had had far greater accomplishments in my life than that but I knew that that's something that they can you know, say, wow, Nathan did this). It's a different level of accomplishment versus like, jamming with John Fayhey for three hours. Which, you know, in the indie rock world when I get to tell people that I knew John Fayhey and grew up around him and stuff and they're like, wow! That to me is like way more cool and heroic, you know. Getting to know that guy was defiantly, trying. He was a difficult man to gain the trust of. Yeah so, that really hit home for my family, getting on TV.
I'm the oldest grandkid on my mom's side, and I have two older twin cousins on my dad's side, so I'm pretty up there as far as the wear and tear factor in the family. Like I really have been stubborn for so long, they all know, kinda, who I am now. And a lot of the other kids didn't really figure out what they wanted to do the first time and maybe still don't know, so, I don't know, in a weird way I was the black sheep for a long time, for, you know, dropping out of college and, just taking this alternative route to wherever. The only constant was just working on music and working on music. Um, they were all worried about me for years, and then once I started getting sweeter gigs like hosting karaoke, and they could come up and see that and then being on "invasion,"which mortified my mom and grandma, the murder, and the stabbing, and our song is playing and she's like, you know, my grandma especially, "E-Gads!?
I shot the gap, and I'm still here.
My budget was slender, in Alaska, cause you work a lot of hours but the wages are not the legendary wages you heard about in the eighties, you know, when you could move up there and make twenty dollars an hour doing what I was doing. We were making more like, nine dollars an hour, and then overtime, but you'd go into overtime after your third day at work, so then we were making, thirteen fifty an hour, and we were like ‘Yeah!' We thought that was huge, and it kinda was, cause most of us were living in tents, you know, which is cheap, but we would all want to party extravagantly on our days off, and go to bars, and take trips around Alaska. In a beautiful place at a beautiful time of year like that, you tend to have these epic sort of adventures on your day off cause your so tired of not being able to do anything, so you'll blow four hundred bucks to go across the bay and fly around in a helicopter or whatever. [I flew in a helicopter] once. Don't like helicopters. Stevie Ray Vaughn, when I was fourteen or fifteen, died in a helicopter crash, and he was my hero back then, when I was a little guitar player, Stevie Ray was awesome! White guy that can play the blues! Wow! Helicopters have always kinda spooked me a little bit. They just don't seem quite right, do they"What always freaks me out is that if the engine stops, you don't get to glide, like in a plane. Helicopters go straight down, and in that bubble window you would be able to see everything that's happening to you. I had always been scared of helicopters because of the Stevie Ray Vaughn thing. I figured I had to do it once. I don't want to let anything rule my life that hard that I couldn't at least try it.
Most of my near death experiences have been in Alaska. Moose are the most dangerous part of the wild life in Alaska. They kill more people per year either through auto accidents or trampling than all other wild life combined. A caribou herd once scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, cause it was, not stampeding, but not walking, and I was like, right in the middle of it. like they were heading across this river and I was right there when this was happening, playing along and then its coming towards me, and I started going and I got pretty close to the edge but they were still on each side of me and I was you know, ten or eleven. You can't really rehearse that or prepare for it, you know. So, I didn't know what to do, what are you supposed to do, be still, or try to shoot the gap, you know. I shot the gap, and I'm still here. I wouldn't recommend it though, until you talk to the experts.
I'm more interested in growing food than being a rock star.
I'm old-school Oregon in the deepest way. Like, I've been here since I was two, and I've been playing music since I was three, really. My parents divorced when I was eighteen months so, I don't remember my mom and dad being together like, even a little, that's always been the way it is. But my mom started dating this guy and his dad was the president of the Oregon Dixieland jazz association. His name is Denny Clark and he could just rip up a trumpet, you know, and also knew how to play guitar and do charts and had an organ. So I grew up meeting heavyweights. I've grown up around the luminaries of Oregon, I guess.
I kinda want to buy land, a lot of land, and put a yurt on it, cause yurts are cheap and they last a long time, and I don't really have enough faith that our system as it exists is going to last longer than a yurt. So why kill myself with a bunch of debt. I've followed my passion my whole life you know, playing music, being creative and nurturing my friendships and relationships with Portland and Oregon and the west coast on a larger scale... I feel very regionally oriented at this point in my life, and I thought, I know enough people that own good restaurants, what if we all got together and bought a bunch of farm land somewhere close to town and then started that process of like growing all the food and animals for the restaurants. The whole local movement, you know, I think is going to be necessary and, it just seems like the simplest, best idea to preserve as much of an in-Oregon food network as we can. And Oregon has enough farm land to do it.
"Where do you want your music to go in the next five years??
I'm more concerned with where civilization and everything is going. I want to know how to grow my own food in the next five years. I want to beef up my survival and agricultural skills. I'm more interested in learning how to grow food than becoming a rock star. If I had an opportunity to buy a piece of property and live off of it in a meager way, I would probably take that over touring. I've defiantly indulged like a rock star at points in my life, and I have felt that lifestyle, and certainly I've been around enough famous people to see how they live. I love Oregon so much that I don't really think of vacationing out of it.
For more info on Nathan's music check out his myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/fogmachine
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This is Nathan Jr.
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This is Nathan holding up his favorite shoes that he has bought every six months for the past five years!