TACOMA, Wash. — For 40 years, practicing in the very same shed at least two nights a week, Girl Trouble have been keeping the spirit of garage rock alive in the hometown they share with The Sonics, The Ventures and The Wailers.
"Where are we going? they'd chant before shows. "Nowhere! Where's Nowhere? Tacoma!"
"My brother Bill started playing guitar and I thought I would like to play drums," remembered Bon Von Wheelie. "I always wanted to play drums as a kid and they didn't let girls play drums. Bill had a school friend, Dale, who had a bass but we needed a singer and then we got Kurt."
"He said 'I can't sing' and we said it doesn't matter because we can't play so we're good," Von Wheelie laughed.
Nirvana opened ahead of them at a show in 1989. Neko Case danced in a music video before her career took off, but like the city they call home, Girl Trouble say they've been eluding fame since 1984.
"But we're still going to get signed, right guys??" asked Kurt P Kendall, to much laughter.
Their first show was a Battle of the Bands at the Steilacoom Community College. They came in second behind the organizer's band. In their early days, playing at the Java Jive, Girl Trouble would toss gifts into the crowd and invite the octogenarian Granny Go-Go to dance onstage.
Some things never change.
"The cutest girls go to Girl Trouble shows and they dance," Von Wheelie said in a documentary her nephew Issac Olsen did called "Strictly Scared: The Story of Girl Trouble."
Front man Kendall has yet to find a shirt he'll wear for an entire show.
"My thought when I get up there is drink if you want to drink and dance and have fun and for an hour and a half just forget what's bothering you," he said.
Leave it to the quintessential Tacoma band to write the quintessential Tacoma anthem. Von Wheelie says "My Hometown" is inspired by a misheard Nirvana lyric.
"They said 'Here we are now' and I thought they were saying 'Here in our town' and I thought 'Oh! They wrote a song about their town. That is such a good idea and then when I found out it wasn't about their town I thought OK we'd better write one," Von Wheelie said.
Her favorite lyric?
"'The driver said on the speaker loud and clear/Don't get off the bus because they're ain't nothing for you here.'" she said. "That happened to Bill! It actually happened to him".
40 years and dozens of record releases later, Girl Trouble is still rocking out and still dreaming.
"We still might make it," Kendall said.
"We're still going to make it!" laughed Von Wheelie.
Girl Trouble's 40th Anniversary show is March 8 at the Spanish Ballroom in Tacoma. Mudhoney's Mark Arm is among the guest vocalists performing with the band that night.
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