Kip Loui: Kaplooey! Seattle '87 (2020)

by Kip Loui

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Full Digital Discography

12

releases

Get all 12 Kip Loui releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Stonecutters (1994), Cold Out There (2023), Town And Country: The Best of Kip Loui Vol. 1 (2021), Kip Loui: Kaplooey! Seattle '87 (2020), Show Me State (2020), Diesel Island (2017), The Belle Starr Collection (1996-2002), Receiver (2007), and 4 more. , and , .

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1.	Motherlode 02:53	buy track
2.	If Only 03:10	buy track
3.	Rockin' Up Midtown 01:52	buy track
4.	Should Have Known 02:56	buy track
5.	Might As Well Stay 03:15	buy track
6.	Never Going Back 02:43	buy track
7.	Everytime 02:31	buy track
8.	Believe Me 02:18	buy track
9.	Waiting Until Then 03:06	buy track
10.	Say Goodbye 03:57	buy track
11.	Wasn't Ready 03:28	buy track

about

Welcome, listener to the mystical, magical world of Seattle circa 1986.

I was a twenty-two year old out-of-state college student and budding songwriter from St. Louis, Missouri enrolled at Seattle University. It was school by day and music at night across a wide assortment of bars, taverns and clubs. Kurt Cobain and the Pacific Northwest music explosion were just on the horizon, and the city was awash in a sea of young indie rock bands like the Walkabouts, the Fastbacks, the U-Men, Green River and the Young Fresh Fellows.

At the time, I was a journalism major. A stint at the school newspaper led to some freelance work at The Rocket, Seattle’s alternative music magazine where I ended up publishing a handful of concert and record reviews. On assignment, I was sent to interview one of the city’s fastest rising bands--The Young Fresh Fellows fronted by rock and roll superhero (and future fifth member of R.E.M.) Scott McCaughey. That interview is a blur now, but it begat a brief, ridiculously fun association with Scott and the rest of the Fellows. I became a dedicated front row fan at their gigs and something of a band buddy.

My student days in Seattle inspired some of my first original songs. Eleven of them are featured on this record. I’d been writing casually up to that point, but in the superheated, creative environment of 1980’s Seattle, the tunes came quickly and easily. A newcomer to the music business, I asked the Young Fresh Fellows if they would back me in the studio to flesh out some songs I’d written. Kindly and somewhat amazingly they agreed, and recording sessions were booked at Egg Studios in Seattle with the Fellows’ engineer and record producer, Conrad Uno.

The recordings we made included all four members of the early Fellows and a number of other musicians I’d become acquainted with that year including Kurt Bloch of the Fastbacks, who would later join the YFF as their lead guitarist. I had started my first group by then with some college friends, a ‘60’s cover band called the Chinchillas, and the members of that outfit all performed on these songs, too. High school buddy Matt Bennett got flown in from St. Louis on the cheapest flight I could find to play keyboards.

To be clear, this was my first time in a recording studio with a band, and I had virtually no idea what I was doing. Each musician came up with their own part on the fly, sometimes incorporating suggestions made by Conrad. The vocal arrangements were mine….lots of ooh’s and ahh’s and harmony parts borrowed liberally from the ‘60’s pop I love to this day. Part of me wishes I could go back in time and produce my twenty-two year old self. I would tell him to slow down the highly caffeinated tempos and loosen up his singing. I would have thrown out a couple of the songs altogether, or at least forced young me to rewrite some of the awkward, overly earnest lyrics. This is all hindsight, though. In the end, the album was never released, and the master tapes lived in cardboard boxes throughout many moves in the decades that followed.

I’m grateful to Jordan Oakes for urging me to finally release this album. Jordan had acquired a cassette copy of the project that I’d sent in vain to various record labels at the time hoping to find the album a home, and my song “If Only” from these sessions appeared on Jordan’s 2018 Yellow Pills compilation project of unknown power pop songs from the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. As for me, I went on to front and play in a number of bands over the years, and a history of my recorded output in different genres can be found here on my Bandcamp page. I perform and record to this day.

This record is like baby pictures, and it makes me smile (and wince in places.) I hope you enjoy it. Lord knows I had a blast making it with my college friends and some of the musical luminaries of '80's era Seattle.
--Kip Loui, St. Louis, July 2020

credits

released July 13, 2020

Band Personnel (to the best of my recollection):

Kip Loui: lead vocals, rhythm guitar, vibraphone on “Believe Me”
Jim Sangster: bass
Tad Hutchinson: drums
Kurt Bloch, Chuck Carroll, John Goldsmith: lead guitar
Matthew Bennett: electric piano, organ
Christian Bryan: 12-string Rickenbacker on “If Only” and “Everytime”
Scott McCaughey: mandolin on “Never Going Back”
Pam Comstock: harmony vocals
John Comstock: sax on “Rockin’ Up Midtown”
Pam Comstock, Bill Moyer, Tommy O’Connell, Scott McCaughey, Kip Loui: backing vocals

All songs written by Kip Loui. All songs copyright 1987 Kaplooey Music

Recorded and mixed by Conrad Uno in 1987 at Egg Studios in Seattle, Washington
Digital transfer by Jack Petrocek in St. Louis, Missouri July 2020
Mastered by David Torretta in St. Louis, Missouri July 2020
Contact Kip Loui at: kiploui.bandcamp.com

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about

Kip Loui St. Louis, Missouri

Kip Loui has been making music for a bit, mostly in his hometown of St Louis, Missouri. He is a musician by vocation and a Special Education teacher. Kip is a co-founder of the annual Twangfest music festival in St Louis; a former morning DJ on St. Louis radio station KDHX 88.1 FM; and a founding member of Diesel Island, a classic country band fronted by Brian Henneman (Bottle Rockets). ... more

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