Bassist Daniel House formed Skin Yard with guitarist Jack Endino in 1985 in Seattle. The first lineup was completed by vocalist Ben McMillan and Matt Cameron, the first in a series of drummers who would go on to play in bigger bands. Skin Yard appeared alongside Soundgarden, Green River and the Melvins on the Deep Six compilation in 1986, the debut release on C/Z records and widely recognized as one of the earliest documents of the burgeoning grunge scene. Daniel House would go on to run C/Z records, and work in sales and distribution in Sub Pop records. And while Skin Yard would never break into the mainstream, they were a huge influence on contemporaries and successors including Soundgarden, Screaming Trees and Green River, whilst guitarist Jack Endino would produce pivotal early records by Nirvana, Mudhoney and Soundgarden. Skin Yard themselves released four albums of primo Seattle sludgerock, Skin Yard (1987), Hallowed Ground (1988), Fist Sized Chunks (1990) and 1000 Smiling Knuckles (1991) before House’s departure and the group’s subsequent disbandment before releasing posthumous record Inside The Eye (1993) with new bassist Pat Pedersen. Now, House is preparing for the release of Skin Yard Select, a compilation boxset curated by House and Endino covering Skin Yard’s career from their beginning through their four great albums. Jonathan Thornton of OUTSIDELEFT speaks to Daniel House about Skin Yard’s music and legacy. OUTSIDELEFT: The Skin Yard Select boxset is coming out in December. Can you tell us a bit about it?
DANIEL HOUSE: Yeah, absolutely. It's likely to be the last thing that will ever be officially released with the name Skin Yard on it. But I suppose you should never say never. It's a 7” box set, seven individual 45s, all on coloured vinyl, and a really nice custom hard body slip case. So that's a total of 14 songs on it. And basically the songs span all of the first four records, which includes all four of our drummers that we recorded with: Matt Cameron, Jason Finn, Scott McCullum, who also goes by Norman Scott, and Barrett Martin. And there's one song on there, the very first one, is a song called California with Matt Cameron that nobody's ever heard before. It was initially from the sessions for the first record, and it was recently discovered. I think we had all forgotten about it, and Jack [Endino, Skin Yard guitarist] found it in the archives and remixed the whole thing. And I'm like, why the hell didn’t we put this on the first record? And Jack said, I think you didn't want it. And I'm sitting here listening to it, going, well, if that's true, that was my mistake. Because I think it’s a fantastic song. But there's material from all of the records. There's a couple of brand new remixes, The Blind Leading The Blind, and also Burning The Candle, which was on the first record, but only on the vinyl. There are a couple alternate releases or alternate versions. One is Living Pool, which is a song from our record 1000 Smiling Knuckles. And then there's also the alternate mix of No Right with Jason Finn, which only appeared on the Start At The Top CD compilation.
OL: It's a nice representative of tracks from across your career, and there's stuff there for both the hardcore fans that we've not heard before, but also it's quite a good summation of your career across those four albums.
DH: Correct. The idea, to some degree, is that for people that really don't know the band, we wanted to give them a broad overview. Calling it something like The Greatest Hits Collection makes no sense, because for one thing we never really had hits to speak of. But also when Jack and I put this together, we didn't think in terms necessarily of, what are the most popular songs from each record, or what would want people want to hear? We really put together what we felt would be a good comprehensive selection based on what we thought people should hear if they weren't familiar with the band. And we also wanted to pull songs from this span of many years, and several different drummers, and some different styles, to feel like a very cohesive thing. And I think we succeeded!
OL: Skin Yard were right there at the beginning of what we would later call grunge. And you yourself and Jack were involved in the scene from the beginning, from both playing in Skin Yard, but also on C/Z records. You were with Sub Pop records for a time as well, I believe, and Jack recorded albums by Nirvana and Soundgarden and Mudhoney. So, in many ways, you have the insiders perspective on grunge from its days as a very underground thing to when it completely blew up in the early 90s. What was it like being in on that journey and watching that happen?
DH: Well, it was unexpected! I started playing in bands in Seattle in the in the early 80s.I was in a couple of bands before Skin Yard. One band was 10 Minute Warning, and then the other band was a band called feeDBack. They were two very, very different bands. They were literally in the year prior to the beginning of Skin Yard, 1984 and the band feeDBack, I was in with Matt Cameron and a guy who called himself Nerm, and we played, people like to call it proggy, but I don't really think that's fair. But it was all instrumental. It was definitely kind of math-rock-y, very cerebral. And then the other band I was playing in was a band called 10 Minute Warning, which had been established the year prior to me joining. And it was actually the last band that that Duff McKagan was in before he left Seattle for Los Angeles. But that band was, in a way, the earliest example of the kind of the precursor to what people would eventually call grunge. So I refer to 10 Minute Warning as kind of a proto-grunge band. We were certainly influenced by bands like The Stooges, but also the Velvet Underground. We were very heavy, but also had a psychedelic component as well.
I had met Jack before through feeDBack, and he had given me a tape of some stuff that he had done where he played all the instruments, and I was really impressed. This was the tape that later became the bulk of Jack's first solo record, Angle Of Attack. But I had a sense that I would like to make music with this guy. And so after 10 Minute Warning and feeDBack broke up, I had an idea for starting a band that was kind of an amalgam of those two bands. I wanted there to be a heaviness and a psychedelia, but I also wanted there to be kind of an intelligence and a cerebral component. A lot of bands were kind of more enamoured with just heavier, sloppier components of the Stooges. And I felt like you didn't have to be singular in that desire, what kind of music you wanted to make, you could combine these, these things. So I went, I went to Jack, I called him up, and I just said, hey, feeDBack’s broken up. 10 Minute Warning’s broken up. I have a very specific idea for a band, and I would like to start with you. What do you think? We just started playing music together, and it kind of went from there.
In terms of you talking about it from an underground scene, in 1984, 85, I don't think most of us were thinking of it in terms of it being a scene, so to speak. we were just a bunch of friends making music, doing whatever felt right. It was very small kind of thing. So we would all support each other and go to each other shows. But I don't think anybody had any idea that this thing was going to explode on the international stage. That, of course, changed absolutely everything.OL: Skin Yard never quite sold as many records as their contemporaries, despite releasing four classic albums. Do you feel it was a case of bad luck and bad timing that you never crossed over in the way that Soundgarden would a couple of years later?
DH: It's hard to know. There were plenty of other bands that also never really broke through, so to speak. I think the fact that we never really had anything of any genuine substance on Sub Pop was probably part of it. We were often compared to Soundgarden in those early days, largely because we were both kind of tighter than the average band in Seattle at that time, and we experimented more with textural ideas and also a time signature. But we did not have a Chris Cornell. His voice is unlike anything thing, and it's still to this day, unquestionably, one of the most powerful voices from that whole music scene. He's also one of the most gorgeous people to come out of that scene. And not saying anything about their music, which was amazing. But from a label perspective, they had just every component of that package.
At the time when I announced I was going to be leaving the band in 91, I actually had a deal in the works with Warner Brothers, and they were going to sign us to a developmental deal. And there was a fair chunk of money. It wasn't like big money, it wasn't Alice In Chains money or Soundgarden money, but for us, it was an awful lot, and I was going ahead with putting that together, knowing that I was going to quit the band. I was like, let's do this record. Let's get on a major. Let's get the support. And after that, if you guys want to continue without me, fine. But let’s make this record. Let's dip our toe in the water, let's see what this ride feels like. And if nothing else, we could get enough money to all put it downpayments on the house. And they just had a different idea. They actually said, well, we're gonna let you go earlier before the European tour. And I think there was some grandiosity there, because with me departing, the deal went away too. So who knows what could have been? It's hard to say.
My last show with the band was in February of 91 and their first show with Pat Pederson as my replacement was April of 91. The last show they ever played in Seattle was in September of 91, the last show they ever played in the United States was October, and they basically went on a European tour. And their last show was November, and that was it. They did record that final record, which didn't come out until 93, but the band had been broken up for a solid year and a half at that point.
OL: I guess it's always tempting to imagine the what could have happened!
DH: Sure. I mean, when all your friends are suddenly exploding on the international scene and obviously making a lot of money, that's an intoxication. I shouldn't speak for all of us, but I will say that that for me, that was never the motivation into why I was doing what I was doing with Skin Yard. I think Ben [McMillan, vocalist] had a little more desire to hit the big time. And I always felt, to some degree that that's kind of what Gruntruck was, an attempt to do what we were doing, but in a less cerebral, challenging kind of way. And I think they were very successful in that formula, but to me, it was a formula. And to me, Skin Yard was never a formula.
OL: And it's one of the one of the tragedies that Ben is no longer with us to see this box set coming out.
DH: That is true, it’s sad, there is a photo of him on the back of the box in memoriam to him. That was just a sad thing all around, his passing,
OL: Yeah, for sure. Kurt Cobain’s suicide in the 90s was a huge tragedy, but also, since then we've also lost Layne Staley, Chris Cornell and Mark Lanegan as well. So there does seem to be that tragic aspect of the grunge story…
DH: I think that kind of thing has to be incredibly emotionally difficult. I wouldn't know. But you hear so many stories, not just from the Seattle scenes, but just from rock and roll in general, where people get famous and very often try to find refuge in heavy drinking or drugging, or both. And obviously it doesn't end up working in the end, because you're just trying to mask something that is bigger, that you're not properly dealing with, or are not properly equipped to deal with. I think you have to be a resilient person to be able to handle that fame in a way that you don't get sort of caught up or emotionally stuck. I look at bands like Pearl Jam, who've been around for three decades now. And I'm really impressed with the fact that it's been the same band almost this entire time, and they’re just simply clear-headed and focused and healthy and, most importantly, happy. There hasn't really been any tragedy in that band, or at least not that I'm aware of. And that's an impressive thing, and that says a lot about who they are as people, and it says a lot about their particular focus as individuals. I'm sure they're fully aware of all of these things, and do a lot to ensure that that the whole organization stays healthy and takes care of business in a good way. I can't imagine what life would be like on that kind of stage.
OL: You've also got the Skin Yard oral history book, Worlds On Bone, that's coming out next year…
DH: That's the hope. I’ve conducted all of the interviews. They're pretty much edited and transcribed, and really, at this point, I just need to focus on the assembly and the writing and the construction of the whole thing. Because I'm hoping it to be a really good, engaging narrative. I think a lot of oral history books feel kind of aimless, and I'm trying to write a book that does not feel that way. To a degree this collection is sort of inadvertently kind of setting that up.
OL: That sounds very exciting, and I'll definitely be looking forward to that as well.
DH: What did you think of the songs on Skin Yard Select?
Yeah, I enjoyed it. It was exciting to hear the unreleased track California. Like you said, you can imagine that just slotting into the first record. And of course there are some absolute favourites there, like Hallowed Ground and River Throat and Living Pool. It's just always nice to hear them again.
We're doing a number of videos for number of these songs, too. We did one California, we’re doing one for Living Pool, which is an alternate version, a video for Hallowed Ground, which obviously we've never had before. There's been a couple others as well. So we're going to be launching those in conjunction with the release and leading up to it.
OL: And is there any plan to reissue the original four albums?
DH: It's pretty doubtful, but I suppose you should never say never. The first thing is just that it's really expensive to press vinyl these days. This Skin Yard Select package, is, by far and away, the most expensive thing I've ever done. There's 1000 pressing, and we're gonna have to sell 600 just to break even. Which is why it's kind of an expensive package, because it's just really expensive to press seven different singles and do a custom hard case slip case. Plus there are various fees, I've hired a publicist because I think we need some press to make sure people are aware that this exists. And so when I think about trying to press the original records, personally I'm not convinced that there are enough people that would buy the record when all said and done, to justify it. The only way I could see doing it as if it was, like, an Indiegogo or a GoFundMe kind of thing, where you raise money ahead of time, and only do it if and when the money is raised. Because people say they want it, and then you give it to them, and then they're like, yeah, maybe not. Or I didn't realize it was going to be that expensive.
We could easily do the first two records. Doing Fist Sized Chunks and 1000 Smiling Knuckles, that could be problematic, just because those were on Cruz Records [offshoot of SST Records set up by Black Flag’s Gregg Ginn]. We've tried for years to talk to Greg Ginn about selling us the records back, giving us the records back, re-releasing them himself, licensing them, and he's just been completely unresponsive. Which is why we did end up doing a complete remix of Fist Sized Chunks and released it digitally as Fist Remixed. And similarly, why we remixed 1000 Smiling Knuckles as well. Because we're just like, alright, if you're not going to respond and you're not going to entertain any of the scenarios that we've that we put in front of you? To me, it suggests that he's just not interested. When we were first doing this, Jack was nervous. He was like, what if Greg tries to sue us? And I'm like, I think that'd be a good thing, because then at least we would have a dialogue, and then we could resolve something. At this at this point, it's been so many years that I don't see that as happening.
I pressed that 10 Minute Warning record three years ago. It’s called This Could Be Heaven – The Lost 1984 Recordings. Jack remixed the entirety of that record, and I presse dit. It's a beautiful package. It sounds amazing. It sounds current. You can find it on Bandcamp if you want. And even then, I was hoping to at least break even. I have yet to do that. I'm getting close, but I'm not there yet. So that's the concern with putting out full length records. It is possible, once this box set sells out, that we might put a limited press 12” record version of this, but two songs would have to be cut because it's too long to fit on a single LP. So we’ll see if, if there is enough interest, and people do indeed buy the limited pressing of 1000 of the Skin Yard Select box set. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. There are no current plans per se.
Essential Information
Main image, Skin Yard by Lance Mercer
For more information on Skin Yard, and to pre-order Skin Yard Select, plesase visit: Skin-Yard.com
