Alexander Coxen - Milk Music/Mystic 100’s Interview
Tell me about growing up in Olympia, WA. When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Were these things that were relevant around your household growing up? Do you have any siblings? What would you and your friends/brother do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? What ultimately inspired you to pursue a life in the arts?
My brother Joe and I grew up in a small town called Port Townsend, about 90 miles North of Olympia on the Olympic Peninsula. It’s a sea port town known for wooden boat building and the arts. Folk music, fiddle tunes, folk art, stuff like that. A lot of crunchy wood craftsman and organic farmer types. All in all it was and still is, a very beautiful and special place to grow up. Joe is six years older than me and mostly responsible for my early exposure to music. One really cool thing about growing up in the Pacific Northwest at that time was that we were exposed to all the fringe hippie culture and the music that came with it. Neil Young’s boat was always in the area, lots of Oregon country fair types, the mandatory presence of the Grateful Dead and that total abundance of old time folk and roots music that can’t be understated in our community. But then on top of that, grunge was this gigantic local movement happening at the time and seemed to have connections into every small corner of Western Washington.
Grunge was great because it came from punk and by being such a massive movement, especially where we were at, it brought a lot of fringe information to rural areas. Someone from Pearl Jam might be wearing a Meat Puppets, or Germs t-shirt and now suddenly in 1992 you’re exposed to something you have no business being exposed to in a tiny town in elementary school. Not only because Pearl Jam is number one in the country, but also because their tour manager lives down the street, or one of the band members is the nephew of some waitress that works with your mom. There were so many connections like that that led us to finding out about a lot of really cool things at a very early age. I got heavy into punk at around eleven, or twelve. Punk like grunge self advertises via patches and t-shirts, so it didn't take long to go from NOFX, Operation Ivy to Fear and GBH etc. About the time I was sixteen I fell in with a weirder crowd, shaved off my mohawk, started tripping on mushrooms and got really into a wide variety of music from Neil Young to Brian Eno to the Butthole Surfers. Also came back to punk, but connected with it differently. Seeing pictures of Black Flag with long hair and Hendrix t-shirts playing slow and heavy made an awful lot of sense to me at seventeen.
How did you meet your bandmates and what led you guys to forming the band? When and where did the band first get together to jam and what was the initial chemistry like between everyone?
Joe and I started the band and I probably don’t need to go into details of how we met, being brothers and all. I’m actually going to to take the liberty of skimming through this chapter since its been covered a lot. We started Milk Music in 2008 in Seattle, but only played in Olympia and/or with Olympia bands so it only made sense after a couple years to move to Olympia. It was very small, very cheap, very weird, the people were cooler and the music was the hippest in every way. It was a slum artist’s paradise with a rich history in fringe culture. After a few bass players (Logan, Yates and JC) Dave Harris joined and soon after Charles Waring, both being in the band ever since.
Milk Music recorded its self-released debut EP “Beyond Living” back in 2010 and its debut full length LP “Cruise Your Illusion” in 2013. Tell me about writing and recording those albums and what you guys ultimately wanted to express with tracks such as “Dogchild”, “New Lease On Love”, “No, Nothing, My Shelter” and “Caged Dogs Run Wild”?
Beyond Living was recorded twice in its entirety. Most people don’t know that. The first version was probably alright, but I remember that it felt like a small town band making a forgettable sounding debut EP and I was very self conscious then. We were inspired by so much musically, but knew so very little about making music that we knew we had to search in the dark until we found something, anything strong enough to be exciting to us and feel like real music we would listen too. Which eventually became that Beyond Living sound. Heavy-flowing-electric syrup. Doubled guitar track leads, drums tight, but muted and a melodic emotional feeling to the songs themselves (in a Neil Young way, not an emo way which is a very important distinction). It ended up being perfect. I don’t mind saying that because it’s true of itself and its own sound. “Cruise Your Illusion”, which took even longer to record, was far from perfect. But Cruise is so full of creative ideas, experiments and attempts to be greater than it was. Looking back I think it was an incredibly charming and valiant growing pain that still means a great deal to people. Songs like “Caged Dogs Run Wild”, “Dogchild”, “Crosstown Wanderer”, “No, Nothing, My Shelter” were so adventurous. I was definitely straining myself to show whomever, that we had far wider influences than the Wipers and Husker Du, or whatever. Like I said before, very young and self conscious! Some of the best Milk Music and Mystic 100’s songs are the shortest, simply because the ideas are so good, but my abilities as a songwriter and musician can only take on so much without feeling like I’m going to mess it up, so we pull off as much as we can and then wrap it up nice and tight. A song like “Pay Me” really deserves to be an eight minute long brooding anthem like “Almost Cut My Hair”, but its so good that it makes my hands shake and terrifies me to think of losing power by extending to far, so we wrap it up air tight as a minute and a half long haiku. Same with “Caged Dogs Run Wild”. Thats originally a full song twice as fast with great lyrics and everything, but we couldn’t handle that songs power yet and had to reduce it to a form we could pull off while retaining the power it demands.
The band made its long awaited follow up in 2017 with “Mystic 100’s” on Dom Records. A name that would later become the next chapter for the band, how did you guys approach this record that differs from your previous work? What was it like to work with the legendary Warren Zevon engineer John Golden on this project? How was the experience of being on a label for this album compared to other releases?
Mystic 100’s was an idea we had forever. It was a fictional brand of cigarettes (also slang for the two-paper spliffs we used to smoke a lot back then). It was going to be a double album and we would be the Mystic 100’s for it, just like the Beatles’ ”Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band”. So much and so many years passed by the time we completed the album. We had slowly become more and more successful while operating almost entirely as an independent band and started dipping our toes into the world of bigger festivals, music magazines and record labels. We made a “take the money and run deal” with Fat Possum for cd and digital handling for “Cruise Your Illusion” where eventually we moved to the desert outside Joshua Tree for a while. We then went our own ways once Joe got married and we barely had a pot to piss in between the four of us. I felt pretty burned out on the music scene and feeling bitter and semi homeless. I moved back to Port Townsend and spent a year as an apple farmer. This was a time of wondrous growth and magic that channeled into what became the Mystic 100’s album. Something just clicked and it all came together in a way that we were trying to do ever since “Beyond Living”. I think it was because of the relaxation that comes with age and also because we were taking more psychedelics. I think we were anyways. That’s always been a big part of our story, but it seems like it was even more fused with our playing and our way of life. As far as keeping the name Mystic 100’s, I just got sick of writing “Milk Music” when doing band art.
Mystic 100’s was cooler and we were different people so what the fuck? People seem to think that’s taboo, or something as a career move, which made it even more fun. We like breaking rules to prove that we’re in this entirely for love and creative reasons and prefer to be legends in the underground rather than flashes in the pan of “success”, whatever the fuck success means. Haha! I’m glad you brought up John Golden. We’ve never actually met John, but he’s mastered all of our albums and even came out of retirement to master “Micro Diet”. We are beyond grateful for this and 100% have Capt. Tripps Ballsington to thank for this. The Captain has recorded everything we’ve done on the same equipment. 4 track 1/2 inch tape in his tiny basement, bounced to 2 track tracks leaving 2 tracks open for vocals and overdubs. In other words, we have 6 tracks on tape to work with extreme limitations and an extremely warm sound. Tripps appears to have a relationship with John as that of an old school tape head hobbyist pen pal and it fits our political agenda that you can achieve high quality while remaining fiercely underground and independent by doing research and forming relationships. I urge others to try the same approach. The “man” and the “man’s” music industry is still a cesspool populated by two faced yes men and homogenized trends and compromise. No place for the heart to beat.
Jumping ahead to the band’s most recent work on Listening House entitled “On A Micro Diet”. A powerhouse of sound and visceral tones now known as Mystic 100’s, what was the band’s ultimate vision for this record as it turns a new leaf in light of hysteria and panicked feedback?
“On A Micro Diet” was pretty much a continuation of “Mystic 100’s” the difference being that we wanted to allow the record to be whatever it turned out being and let go of the idea of sculpting the perfect airtight album. I didn’t feel like I could do better than Mystic 100’s so why try? We had started going to Dead shows and dosing alot and wanted to trust the music, ourselves and our spiritual relationship with psychedelia to find its own way. We added Travis Coster as a relief pitcher when Joe couldn’t make it and as a second drummer when he could and also Abby Dahlquist on keys to get that ballroom starlight twinkle that we love so much in Neil Young and Grateful Dead songs. I think it turned out really great and I love letting go more and more so I can just relax and see where it goes.
Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
Right now we’re booking a tour of the west coast in March as a quartet with Charles, Joe, Abby and myself. This will be the most shows we’ve played in a row in a decade and I’m so so so very excited! Hopefully we make some new music as well and get it out before 2030. Who knows? We’re a band for life no matter how slow the pace.
