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Time and time again, their childhood yellow house and its occupants make an appearance on the album. Aural outliers such as a harmonica-buttressed cover of 'Rivers of Jordan,' a spiritual hymn about the quest for freedom, or the banjo ballad 'Striped Walls,' about Eva’s room in her grandmother’s house, only amplify the other songs’ thundering power. In other songs, such as the roaring lament 'Mama, There’s a Spider in My Room,' Eva’s boisterous guitar and voice rule.

On Cobain and Cornbread, it’s the forceful drumming that grabs you from the first song: 'Ghetto Spaceship' is a musical come-on from the perspective of a space nerd. Cedric Walker of The Black Tones during a practice session at Mode Music Studios in West Seattle. “I’m like a hammer,” Cedric says, “to the point where the kick drum always ends up 5 feet in front of me.” He laughs. Today, his drumming lies square in the vein of Eva’s self-taught drum style: ear-shatteringly loud and forceful. When I found out she had the voice, I was like: I can't not do anything about this,” he says.Įva eventually taught her brother to drum. So when he eventually heard Eva sing for the first time at Folklife, he was blown away. She did not tell her brother - a popular, easygoing and successful basketball player - that she’d been practicing singing. There, Eva was the self-described “socially awkward” music and outer space fan, a drummer who felt more confident singing in front of strangers than her own family. It was a warm home in the cold Northwest.Īfter moving on from their grandmother’s home, they attended Summit K-12 in Lake City. It was filled with food and family, including their mother and grandparents, all music lovers from the South. The house “looked like it came straight from New Orleans,” Eva says. If their songs were an image, they say, it would be the wood paneling in their grandmothers’ bright yellow Mount Baker house, where they grew up. On Thursday, they celebrate the long-awaited release of their first album, Cobain and Cornbread, with a concert at Chop Suey on Capitol Hill.Ĭobain and Cornbread is a collection of songs that speaks to their hometown and youth. They closed out 2018 as the opener of a sold-out Red Fang and Thunderpussy show at The Showbox. The band, which plays with guest bassists, confirmed their reputation as a live sensation in performances at KEXP (where Eva is now also a radio host) and the Capitol Hill Block Party. And all of that, of course, wouldn’t matter if they weren’t a killer live band.” They infuse the spirit of punk rock in their modernized version of blues rock, in a really cool and subversive way.

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They feel like an amalgamation of the spirit of Seattle: Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana, plus their own vibe. “The Black Tones are the most exciting up-and-coming band in Seattle,” says Adam Zacks, who founded the Sasquatch! music festival and booked them as the opening band for Death Cab For Cutie last year. It became one of KEXP’s Most Played Songs of 2018 Only 3 minutes into their hit song 'The Key of Black (They Want Us Dead),' Eva, dressed in an all-black ensemble, finally gets to the gut-punching first lines and point of the song in a low, roaring voice: We Want Love / They Want Us Dead.īy now, most local music fans know the follow-up lyrics to the start of the protest anthem against racist police brutality. Eva breaks out a thick, nervous riff that won’t end. Just a couple minutes later, Cedric kicks the drums and hits the cymbals into a rip-roaring rhythm. To her right, her twin brother, Cedric Walker, the other half of the band, dressed in a Seattle SuperSonics sweater, grins from behind a drum kit. We’re all gonna have yellow mouths,” frontwoman and guitarist Eva Walker quips into the microphone. In a basement rehearsal space that’s also a music school in West Seattle, there are no egos, hard drugs or hard alcohol.

Friday night rehearsals of one of Seattle’s most-hyped rock bands, The Black Tones, do not speak to the clichéd tropes of rock ’n’ roll.