For as many rock stars as Seattle has produced, it’s a little surprising that none currently anchor a music festival of their own on their home turf. At least not until now.
Indie rock titans Modest Mouse had floated on the idea for a while. The band even played two 2018 shows in Port Townsend, where late drummer Jeremiah Green lived, effectively serving as a test run for Seattle Theatre Group’s THING festival, which relocated to Carnation’s Remlinger Farms last year.
Seven years after those twin Port Townsend gigs, the band, led by Isaac Brock, and STG have reconnected to launch the Psychic Salamander Festival at Remlinger Farms, roughly 20 minutes from where the frontman — and former Seattle Times paperboy — grew up in Issaquah. The two-day fest takes over the family-friendly venue Sept. 13-14, with a stacked lineup led by Modest Mouse and their summer tour mates The Flaming Lips performing both nights. Sunday’s bill has the kindredly wiggy rock bands each playing one of their most celebrated albums, “The Moon & Antarctica” and “The Soft Bulletin,” respectively.
Joining the lineup are Courtney Barnett, fellow Pacific Northwest heroes Sleater-Kinney and Built to Spill, Yo La Tengo and more. Similar to THING, which overhauled its format this summer, kids 12 and under are free, and Remlinger Farms’ mini amusement park will be up and running during the festival.
Ahead of the inaugural fest, we spoke with Brock, who now resides in Portland, about starting Psychic Salamander back home and “The Moon & Antarctica,” released 25 years ago this summer. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did the idea of doing your own festival back in Washington come about?
Honestly, it started a long time ago with Jeremiah and I. (We) had started talking about doing a festival and never really got it together. He started talking with the people who put on THING fest. I think THING fest was something that he had started talking with them about, but then they didn’t end up working on it together. They brought the (festival) idea back to the table, and I was pretty on board. Initially, I was hoping it could be in Issaquah, being where I was from, but Carnation is close enough and Remlinger Farms is awesome. I like the idea of curating a festival. It’s like a living mixtape.
In terms of the bands, were you coming up with names and (asking STG) to get these folks, or what was that process like?
Yeah. And there were things that I’d wanted to have on it, but didn’t end up on it because people have their own touring cycles. But I ended up really happy with who ended up on board. Especially some of the smaller-name things that I think are really great that probably not a lot of people have heard of, like Sun Atoms, Mattress and The Vaudevillian. The Vaudevillian, I don’t know what in my YouTube feed gave it to me, but somehow it popped up, and I watched it like a thousand times, one of their songs.
Every once in a while, the algorithms come through.
My algorithm’s pretty certain I want to be miserable, just having doomscrolled so much. I get trippy (expletive), which is good. I get a lot of Carl Jung things, which is funny because I never Googled him.
You have played a ton of festivals over the years. Was there anything that you wanted to do — or not do — in terms of the experience you wanted to create?
If I’m going to be completely forthright, I’m cutting my teeth on this one. One of the better festivals I ever played was Electric (Picnic) in Ireland, and they set up all sorts of different areas. They even had a lot of these logs or trees — there were campfires, but they were burning from inside out. Well, we won’t be doing that.
No contained fires?
Yeah, no. But we’re still putting together different ideas to make it fun. That’s one of the reasons Remlinger Farms itself was ideal. There’s already a lot to do there.
Where did the name Psychic Salamander come from?
At my house, I have these two ponds that are rife with salamanders. I’m really into them. It just seemed like a silly thing. I was hanging out, finding salamanders and just liked the name.
It’s been a while since you lived in the Seattle area. How would you describe your relationship with your hometown at this point in your life?
My mom still lives in Issaquah, so I’m there very frequently. I (expletive) love Seattle. It’s great. It even has its own smell that nowhere else has, and it’s damn nice.
You guys are playing “The Moon & Antarctica” the second night of the festival. What are these full-album performances like for you?
I got talked into the first one I did, “The Lonesome Crowded West.” The idea of playing a full record, there’s the songs that you drift away from, where you’re like, “Eh, I don’t know.” Once I did that one, I was (expletive) sold.
Anytime I put a record together, I’m very calculated in the order and every song’s there for a reason, to paint the bigger picture. “The Moon & Antarctica” was an absolute version of that. We don’t have plans to do that record in its entirety again, although I’m sure we (expletive) will once we’ve got it together. I like it because it’s a challenge. Piecing the whole thing back together is not as easy as just playing random songs off other records.
You mention getting talked into it the first time. Was that the Seattle Children’s Hospital benefit, SMooCH, at the Showbox?
That’s funny, yes.
I remember you commenting on stage, like maybe it wasn’t something you would normally be into. But it sounds like you’ve come around on the concept.
Honestly, I think I was intimidated by the idea. The process of putting records together is such a (expletive) headache, and it’s a lot of work. The idea of then doing that live is (expletive) daunting. But it turns out, the songs are already written. The stress level’s a lot (expletive) lower.
Some songs, they’re just born in the studio, so they didn’t have a live life, and that (expletive) gets tricky. But it’s nice to figure out how to do it.
Does “The Moon & Antarctica” especially feel that way? You guys were doing a lot of cool stuff in the studio in terms of the sonic palette.
Yeah, like for instance, “Paper Thin Walls,” where someone tuned five guitars to different open tunings and just walked by and played each of them as a chord progression. That’s not going to (expletive) happen on stage. That’s where you start getting cute in the studio, and you realize you could also just play the five chords.
And that record, in particular, I was essentially barricaded in there for a couple of months, just me and an engineer, because the neighborhood literally wanted to kill us — and they already gave it a go. So, I just stayed in there and made some weird noises.
Are you someone who would continue over tinkering?
Abso-(expletive)-lutely. I am finishing up a record where there’s so many different versions, we couldn’t even find the ones we liked. It’s real proof of too much time is too much.
Have any of “The Moon & Antarctica” songs changed meaning for you over the years?
Yeah, but I don’t really want to go into that. It personally means something to me, but I don’t want to concrete that for other people and have that be the only way it can be looked at. When you put music out, it’s for them at that point, you know?
Around when “The Moon & Antarctica” came out, indie rock was pushing further into the mainstream consciousness. It was your first record on a major label. From the Pacific Northwest, there was this boom with you guys, bands like Built to Spill, Death Cab for Cutie and The Shins. How did you feel about the Pacific Northwest scene that was bubbling at that time?
I felt (expletive) great about it in so much as there’s a lot of people making music I really like. But also, after the alternative thing in the ’90s, where every major label was tossing money on anything that was alternative, by the time Modest Mouse and Built to Spill were getting signed, they were much more cautious. No one was throwing money around. To make the decision to go to a major label felt like a weird move. I know why I did it, which is trying not to be too elitist and wanting to get my music to places it wouldn’t have been otherwise.
But the music scene, it was a community. We all knew each other in one way or another. You’re all part of something, and I don’t know that I saw the big picture.
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