Why did Sleater-Kinney name the band after a forgettable suburban road?
Sleater-Kinney co-founder Carrie Brownstein grew up just outside of Seattle and graduated from high school right as the grunge tsunami was at its peak force, but rather than staying in the city to chase her own rock dreams, she headed an hour south to Olympia, Washington, where a completely unique and influential music scene of its own was thriving.
“Growing up in Seattle, everything about recording and making albums was a big mystery,” a 22-year-old Brownstein told the Olympian newspaper in 1996, “We’re lucky to have access to it here [in Olympia]. In this town, they’ve allowed things to be demystified.”
While a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, she became immersed in the local indie music world, which bore little resemblance to the flannel-laden ‘Seattle sound’. These were the stomping grounds of Calvin Johnson and his fabled DIY indie pop label K Records, a big but less discussed influence on Kurt Cobain’s offbeat and melodic sensibilities. It was also ground zero for the punk-feminist riot grrrl movement, led by another Evergreen student, Kathleen Hanna, and her band Bikini Kill.
Brownstein formed a riot grrrl-esque band of her own at Evergreen called Excuse 17, but soon started a side project in 1994, playing with her friend Corin Tucker, who was then the frontwoman of the band Heavens to Betsy. “It started out just being about me and Corin wanting to be friends and have some fun,” Brownstein said in ‘96, “And now it’s a bit more serious”.
As the duo’s side project became a proper band of its own, they inevitably had to discuss the important matter of what to call themselves. At this point, they’d been practising in a rehearsal space in the Olympia suburb of Lacey, Washington, requiring a drive along a road connecting the two towns, a forgettable bit of urban sprawl filled with shopping centres and car dealerships, called Sleater-Kinney Road, named after two families who were earlier settlers to the region.
Lots of old pioneers have streets named after them, with very few having an influential punk rock band carrying on their legacy, but that’s what happened when Brownstein and Tucker decided to release their 1995 debut album under the name Sleater-Kinney, a local Pacific Northwest reference that has now travelled around the world for 30 years.
“It’s a reflection of where we were at the time,” Brownstein said after Sleater-Kinney completed their first international tour in 1996, adding, “I think [the name] embodies the spirit of creation in this town, by taking a street sign and completely creating something out of nothing. It’s like, we looked around and here’s what we had to work with.”
Sleater-Kinney, the band, migrated to Portland, Oregon, by the time their second album came out, but their Olympian roots would be a permanent part of their identity.
After a lengthy hiatus earlier this century, the band have continued to record fairly steadily since 2015, with their most recent record, 2024’s Little Rope, ranking among their best.
