and othersAs with most DIY endeavorsThe first Punk Palouse Festival, taking place on Moscow's main street on Friday, May 24th and Saturday, May 25th, began with a spark of curiosity.
Last summer, Moscow-based independent pop-punk musician Alicia Gladman visited old friends in Tennessee and Canada, taking in some eclectic, fun shows, then returned to the Palouse to “listen to these [musicians] If I go out and look at other places, can I come here?”
Gladman, a former Tennessee native, envisioned creating a music festival similar to Chattanooga's famous weekend punk festival, Do Ya Hear We Fest, and thinking that Moscow's super-friendly “arts-festival” microscene would support such a festival, he shared his fantasy with local friends Hannah Smith and Chris Proctor. They were enthused and sprang into action.
Of course, DIY is not about doing something. all On your own. A slightly clunkier but more accurate acronym might be DIWSFYF&C (Do It With Support From Your Friends & Community).
In November 2023, the three friends created an Instagram account (@punkpalouse) announcing, “We love punk and we love riot grrrl. We're looking for a band to play in our little town next May.”
They picked Memorial Day weekend as a quiet window of opportunity on the Palouse calendar, around the time out-of-town artists are filling up their vans with gas for their summer tours: “We're just going to take over the downtown Moscow area with a little pop-punk,” Gladman jokes.
Word spread quickly, and bands from near and far submitted songs. “We had a sound in mind,” Gladman says. Though she admires the local metal and hard rock bands that play local events, she acknowledges that the Moscow-Pullman area lacks the “poppy, melodic, glittery, post-punk, dancey music” she fell in love with in her early 20s — a kind of punk that prizes “irreverence” and attitude over “instrumental virtuosity.”
Ultimately, Punk Palouse Fest selected 16 bands that embodied a DIY punk vibe. The crew wanted to feature local and regional bands, including veteran Moscow band Ideomotor, young Pullman punk band Induce Psychosis, and Gladman's own group, Himbos. The fest's final lineup also includes bands from Boise, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, British Columbia, and of course Spokane. The Globs, a self-described “punk E Street band” from Sacramento, will be PPF's furthest-from-home.
Two downtown music venues, Mikey's Gyros and John's Alley Tavern, took on hosting the four official festival shows and three winter fundraiser shows to cover festival costs and the touring bands' salaries. Moscow's boutique Monarch Motel also provided lodging for the three bands. Indeed, DIY takes a village.
Mikey's and John's Alley are basically on the same block and both are wheelchair accessible. John's Alley's early shows (5pm-8pm) are for ages 21 and up, while Mikey's later shows (8pm-11pm) are for all ages.
PSychic Death, one of two bands representing Spokane in the punk Palouseare a hardcore punk three-piece extremely familiar with the DIY, “give it a go” ethos and the path-changing power of a great show.
Lead singer and drummer Audrey Gore played in a few bands (surf, pop-punk, emo) growing up in Coeur d'Alene, but now 26, she thought she'd never be able to have a band that could play drums as fast as she wanted. and But after hearing Seattle hardcore band Regional Justice Center's passionate performance at the Big Dipper in 2021, something changed in her.
“Seeing Ian the singer playing drums and singing and singing and singing at his best,” Gore thought, “OK, I can do that too,” so she formed Psychic Death.
The push was good, because when Gore steps up to the drums, belting out lyrics she's written herself and pounding away at her drums, she's as fast and ferocious as a bobcat. She's one of Spokane's heaviest musicians; she shares Psychic Death duties with guitarist John Montana and bassist Jeff Glinski, himself a longtime Spokane DIY booker and small-show player.
“DIY is at the heart of what we do,” Gore says. “We make things ourselves. I love the process. I spent three hours cutting J-cards at a copy store. [for cassettes]”She told me when we met at Berserk,” we said, and we had come to see her bandmate Glinski perform in Lipsic, another Spokane-based group heading into the Punk Palouse.
As Psychic Death prepares for a Midwest tour and tape release, Psychic Death III This July, Lipsick finds itself at a very different stage in the band's life cycle.
and othersipsick's late-night gig at Mikey's on Saturday will be the group's farewell show. That's because lead singer Judy Davis is moving to Olympia to study printmaking. “I love making music, but I love printmaking even more,” Davis told me when I burst into the post-punk quartet's penultimate practice at guitarist James Hunt's home.
Davis’ passion for print art (and DIY) is on display in a new batch of Lip Chic T-shirts that she silkscreened and tie-dyed herself in time for the band’s final Spokane show on May 9 at Berserk.
Anyone who's been to a Lipsick show knows that Judy's stage presence is simultaneously commanding and vulnerable. She often performs topless, usually with the ladies seated in the front row making room for her raw power. She's undoubtedly in chargeAnd she got off to an early start.
Davis got into punk at age 17 when he formed a band called the Crap with some high school friends and entered Café Solé's 2004 Worst Band competition (now defunct), a sham event meant to encourage young people to form bands.
The result? “We won,” Davis says. The Crap played about 10 shows before splitting up, but the thrill of playing with trusted comrades opened doors for Davis. “James, Nat and [Mooter]”Jeff,” her longtime friend, who Davis handpicked for Lipsic in 2018;
The band played their first show opening for Shannon & the Clams in early 2019 and self-released one tape. I only love2022.
“All our songs are collaborative,” says Hunt, who played with Davis in the dance-electroclash group Yokohama Hooks nearly 20 years ago. “Everyone's kind of amazed at the songs we've written,” adds drummer Glinski. [Lipsick’s sound] “That was something that came out of us,” he said. It was more emotionally raw than he expected.
Davis believes he's too “moody” to play most local dates, but is looking forward to Punk Palouse. “It's going to be a lot of fun. I feel like this is how this band should end,” he says, trying to balance the hurtful, melancholic songs. Glinski believes the intensity of these songs, and Lipsic's live set, helped the band members get together as friends and work through the traumatic personal events they'd experienced throughout their five-year run as a band.
In an Instagram post published on May 13, bassist Nat Mootah reflected on Lipsic's demise while emphasizing the DIY, interdependent reality of “DIWSFYF&C.” To those still hesitant to play in a band, Mootah wrote:
“I hope people realize how easy it is to get started. You don't have to be good, you just have to keep going. People around you help you. Without Patti and Tim we wouldn't have been a band. [owners of Neato Burrito/Baby Bar] They wouldn't give us a place to practice, they wouldn't pay rent, they just asked us to make sure there was beer in the fridge.”
TThe obvious goal for Punk Palouse is to make it happen again next year. Assuming the weekend goes well. But organizer Gladman said: Secret Plan For this inaugural festival, she hopes that attendees will be so inspired by what they see and hear in Moscow that they will form bands of their own.
“Go out and try things,” Gladman urges. “You don't have to be an expert. You don't need permission. Just go out and express yourself.”
Maybe some of these yet to be formed bands will take to the stage at next year's Punk Palouse festival.
To anyone considering taking a bold musical leap, Gladman promises, “We'll be there cheering you on, standing in the front row and screaming for you,” just as her friends in her early DIY bands did. “I want to pass that on,” she says.
Punk Palouse Fest • Friday, May 24 and Saturday, May 25, 5 and 8 p.m. • 21 and older (early bird), all ages (late bird) • $12 admission, $40 festival pass • John's Alley Tavern, 114 E. Sixth St., and Mikey's Greek Gyros, 527 S. Main St., Moscow • instagram.com/punkpalouse