|
The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support. Franz Kafka |
Carrie Rachel Brownstein (born September 27, 1974), is an American musician, writer, and actress, best known as a guitarist and vocalist in the now-defunct Portland, Oregon-based band Sleater-Kinney. In 2006 she was the only woman to earn a spot in the Rolling Stone readers' list of the 25 "Most Underrated Guitarists of All-Time."
In September 2010, Brownstein announced she had formed a new band, Wild Flag; the band released their self-titled debut album, on September 13th, 2011. Portlandia, her sketch comedy show for the Independent Film Channel, began airing in January 2011.
Contents |
Brownstein was "born and raised in the posh East Side suburbs of Seattle" and attended 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-and maybe that was the whole reason that I actually stuck with it."
After high school, she attended Western Washington University for a short time, before transferring to The 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 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, Oregon.
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 (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.
Brownstein and former Helium guitarist/singer Mary Timony, recording as The Spells, released The Age of Backwards E.P. in 1999.
In summer 2009 Brownstein and Weiss worked together on songs (produced by Tucker Martine) for the soundtrack of a documentary film by Lynn Hershman Leeson.
In September 2010, Brownstein revealed her latest project is the band Wild Flag, with Janet Weiss, Mary Timony, and Rebecca Cole, formerly of The Minders; according to Brownstein, about a year earlier "I started to need music again, and so I called on my friends and we joined as a band. Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a 'maybe, a 'possibility.' But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts."
Brownstein began a career as a writer before Sleater-Kinney broke up. She interviewed Eddie Vedder, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Karen O, and Cheryl Hines for The Believer magazine. Brownstein has also written a couple of music-related video game reviews for Slate.
From November 2007 to May 2010, Brownstein wrote a blog for NPR Music called "Monitor Mix"; she returned for a final blog post in October, thanking her blog readers and declaring the blog "officially conclud[ed]."
In March 2009 Brownstein contracted to write a book that "describe[d] the dramatically changing dynamic between music fan and performer, from the birth of the iPod and the death of the record store to the emergence of the "you be the star" culture of American Idol and the ensuing dilution of rock mystique"; The book, called The Sound of Where You Are, is to be published by Ecco/HarperCollins.
In 2007 Brownstein briefly worked at Portland ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, helping them review applicants for their WK12 program of one-year internships.
Brownstein has been an actress (in what she calls a "mere hobby"), with a role in the short film Fan Mail, as well as Group and the Miranda July film Getting Stronger Everyday. Brownstein and Fred Armisen have published several video skits as part of a comedy duo called "ThunderAnt". She also starred opposite James Mercer of The Shins in the 2009 independent film Some Days Are Better Than Others.
After their ThunderAnt videos, Brownstein and Armisen developed Portlandia, a sketch comedy show shot entirely on location in Portland, for the Independent Film Channel. The two star in the series and write for it with Allison Silverman from The Colbert Report and Jonathan Krisel, a writer for Saturday Night Live. The show, which features appearances of some of the characters from ThunderAnt, aired its premiere in January 2011. It has been renewed for a second season.
Jewish Woman magazine said Brownstein is Jewish, though she does not "seem to be very 'out' as [a] Jew."
Brownstein was outed as bisexual to her family and the world by Spin when she was 21 years old. The article discussed the fact that she had dated band mate Corin Tucker in the beginning of Sleater-Kinney (the song "One More Hour" is about their breakup). 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." In 2006, The New York Times described Brownstein as "openly gay." In a November 3, 2010 cover-story for Portland, Oregon's Willamette Week, Brownstein laid to rest questions about her sexual identity: "It’s weird, because no one’s actually ever asked me. People just always assume, like, you’re this or that. It’s like, ‘OK. I’m bisexual."
Carrie Brownstein
Found error in text? Please select it and press CTRL-ENTER
© 2008-2025, JewAge.org
Discussion
Please log in / register, to leave a comment