Jenny Toomey of Tsunami: "I Learned Everything I Know From Punk"

Self-sufficient and quick-witted, Tsunami were among the most pioneering and resourceful bands to emerge from the American underground of the 1990s. Founded on the scrappy, intertwined guitars and sharp-tongued lyrics of guitarists-vocalists Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson and the punchy rhythms of bassist Andrew Webster, and drummer John Palmer, the group was equally noted for their music and unwavering commitment to DIY principles, establishing them among the most respected voices in their community. After all these years, Tsunami is finally getting its due with Loud Is As (Numero Group), a complete catalog boxset collecting the group's three studio albums and numerous single and compilation offerings. To dive further, we chatted with Toomey all about Tsunami's beginnings, their rapid evolution from melodic noisemakers to shifting pop experimentalists, and launching the Simple Machines label and empowering a scene.

Photos by Pat Graham

How exactly did you get into playing music, and who were some of your musical heroes?

Jenny Toomey: Why aren't all people into making music all the time? Music is a lot better than almost everything… sports, video games, and certainly Wordle... music is scientifically 1,000 percent better than Wordle. I got into playing music because I made friends with a bunch of punk rockers, and one of them asked me why I wasn't in a band, so I decided to be in a band, and that first band was called Geek. I was very obsessed with the D.C. punk scene. There were all sorts of great bands playing back then. The best one in my high school was called Bloody Mannequin Orchestra. I was also really into a band called 9353, which didn’t get out of DC much. Of course, Rites of Spring, One Last Wish and Beefeater were also amazing. There was an awesome band called Fire Party, and I also loved The Hated, 3, Marginal Man, Grey Matter, Lungfish, and many others.

For our readers unfamiliar, tell us about the origins of Tsunami. How did you all meet and decide to play music together?

The summer after I finished college, I went on tour with my first band, Geek. It was everybody's first tour, so lots of our friends came along for the fun of it. Andrew Webster and Kristin Thomson both were hangers-on for that tour. Andrew and I started dating, and so he moved to Arlington, Virginia, and we just started playing right away. John Pamer had lived in the Positive Force house where KT and I lived as well, so we just dragged him into it.

How has your friendship evolved over the years, and what have you always admired about one another? 

I love all the Tsunamis. I'm proud of all of them. They've carved out interesting lives for themselves. John Pamer is still a professional photographer. Andrew Webster is a green architect, and Kristin and I have spent many of the last 30 years trying to protect the public from unregulated technology. We get together with our partners and friends once a year and hang out for a long weekend, and it's consistently one of the funniest times of the year. Getting to put out this Tsunami boxset has allowed me to work with Kristin more regularly, and that's also been super fun. Kristin is a fountain of creative energy.

What did you want to do differently in Tsunami that you didn't in your previous bands like Geek or Choke? Or how would you describe the experience being different? 

My first two bands… Geek and Choke were pretty serious/earnest bands, so with Tsunami, we wanted to be a lot lighter and funnier. We wrote all the first songs really quickly, and we got out and playing and touring in just a few months. We really wanted to get back out on the road as soon as possible, and we did.

What exactly led you to self-release your music and start the label Simple Machines together? What inspired the name, ethos, and the artwork/packaging? 

I started Simple Machines with my friend Derek Denckla, who was in Geek with me and another friend named Brad Siegal. Within about a year and a half, they had moved away, and Kristin had moved into the house. That's when it became a project that she and I did together. We started the label because we wanted to put out our music; nobody else would do that. I liked the idea of the name because it embodied the idea of punk. These little machines, screw, wedge, or inclined plane, were simple but managed to achieve big things. I also liked The Machine 7" series as a concept because it allowed us a big enough project over some time to determine whether or not we wanted to be a label. Had we just put out a 7" that wasn't part of a series, we may have stopped before we had the momentum that allowed us to sustain for several years.

How did you select the bands for that? 

What's great about compilation 7" records is that most bands have an extra song hanging around, so it was very easy for us to find bands that wanted to be part of the project. When we saw a band we liked, we just asked them, and nine times out of ten, they had a song to give us.

What's your proudest moment or biggest achievement associated with the label? 

All the releases were great!  Still I'm most happy that we closed the label on a high note in the black with a big celebration with all our favorite bands.

In 1992, you released the My New Boyfriend recordings onto a cassette. What can you tell me about the origins of that project and tape? 

The summer after college, I spent about five weeks in Olympia, Washington. My friends from Seaweed had invited me to come out there, and Candice Pederson, who co-ran K-Records, needed someone to rent her apartment, so I did that. Her apartment was in a building called the Martín Apartments. This is where all the punk rockers in Olympia lived. Calvin Johnson lived there. Tobi Vail lived there—Al from Some Velvet Sidewalk and Tae from Kicking Giant. As soon as I arrived, Calvin suggested that I was gonna be there for a month, so I should probably start a band and so Aaron Stauffer, Tobi, Christina, and I started practicing, and Calvin recorded it.

Earlier this month, you released the career-spanning boxset, Loud Is As. Can you share some insight on the conversation about putting this out with Numero Group and how it all came together? 

Ken Shipley from Numero reached out and asked us a couple of years ago. We weren't sure we wanted to do it. It seemed too good to be true. While we were waiting, Numero began to work with some of our friends' bands, like Karate, Chisel, Codeine, and it seemed like they were enjoying it, so we decided to say yes.

How exciting was it digging through the archives organizing the boxset? Did you have to reach out to fans or friends for items or have you been documenting everything since the beginning? 

It's a bit of a mix. There are a lot of wonderful memories, and we have saved so much stuff. Even with this big box set, we probably only used one percent of the ephemera and photos. It's been lovely reconnecting with the band and working with Kristin daily. Other things were also less fun—running across pictures and letters from people no longer with us and reading through journals documenting sad events. I think KT and I are very focused on the future, so there is something strange about spending so much time focusing on the past.

What are some memories you have recording the cassette demo Cow Arcade in Dan Kozak's basement in March '91? 

I have almost no memories of that. It was quite a long time ago. I just remember that they were very generous to offer to record us and he was also quite generous to help us transfer the masters to get a much better sounding version of those songs on the boxset.

The opening track "Answerman" is one of my favorite Tsnuami tracks. What can you tell me about how that one came together? 

That song was probably written in about five minutes. All of the early Tsunami songs were intentionally written as quickly as possible, and by stealing a whole section of a Beat Happening song, we made it even easier on ourselves.

Your debut LP Deep End is a truly incredible release that's aged so well. What do you recall putting that album together and what are your thoughts looking back at it now?

We recorded that record several times. The first time was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at Cat Box Studio in a basement where one of our engineers lived with his parents. We tried to re-record that record from scratch in London with John Loder in his garage studio at Southern Records. It was interesting, but ultimately, after a couple of weeks trying everything we could think of…, I think we felt like the whole record sounded too slick, and we returned to the original mixes. It's a long time ago. I don't have a lot of concrete memories just really sort of vague feelings about what it was like in Lancaster, PA. I do remember it was spring… or maybe summer… and there were baby bunnies everywhere …it's all pretty vague, but the bunnies and the abundance of yard sales are crystal clear.

What was it like working on your second album The Heart's Tremolo in comparison to the debut album?

We recorded it at Steve Albini's first studio in his house. He was very friendly and let us all stay there. He decamped to his girlfriend's so we could take over the place. We recorded with Brian Paulson, who had just made a great record with Superchunk. Brian was incredibly professional, very supportive and sweet…very low-key. I remember our sessions were happening at the same time that David Grubbs was doing some recording with Mayo Thompson from Red Krayola. It was the first time I'd seen him in many years after being friends at Georgetown University, where we both went to school. I think that was one of the recording sessions where we toured out to the studio and then toured home or somehow tacked the recording into a tour. A lot of that record is downbeat, introspective, and blue. You could tell we'd spent a lot of time touring… and I was feeling pretty burnt out. It's kind of a bubble of a record. We worked long hours. I remember Andrew and I got to stay in Steve Albini's bedroom. We just unrolled our sleeping bags on top of his dirty sheets. We were pleased to be off the floor.

During this time, you were also playing in Grenadine. How did that group come together and what are your favorite memories associated with it? 

I think Mark and I just really liked each other's music, and we really liked each other as people. We wanted to have an excuse to play together. We lived about ten minutes from one another, and it was a tiny scene… it was inevitable we'd end up in a band. Mark and I were working on a song one day in the basement of the group house where he ran to TeenBeat Records, and we thought it might be good to add some drums. Mark remembered that one of his housemates, Rob Christiansen, played drums. He went upstairs and invited him down to the basement; the rest is supergroup history.  My favorite memories of Grenadine are spending a lot of time driving around Arlington, VA with Mark in my huge baby blue-wood paneled station wagon, listening to oldies radio, and conniving potential songs to sing. I also have a lot of fond memories of recording with Warren Defever in Livonia, Michigan.

Warren is among the most creative, funny, generous, and talented people. Everything seems possible when you're working with Warren.  At the time, he was living in what had been his parent's home with all their furniture preserved like a museum if someone was allowed to drop a studio into the middle of a museum. Davin Brainard was also living there at the time, and they were just constantly working on art projects, events, and book fairs. Seeing Davin’s paintings hanging up right next to grown-up museum furniture was incredible. Mark Robinson had written many songs for that second record that were Tiny Tim inspired. So, of course, he decided he needed an empty coconut shell to make the sound of a horse walking for the song “What on Earth has Happened to Today’s Youth.”  So we spent a day going to supermarkets to find a coconut and then figuring out how to crack it open.  Warn is a hands-on engineer. If you need him to build a haunted tube or do Foley work…he’s down.

What was it like working on your final LP A Brilliant Mistake at Kingsize Soundlabs in Chicago in April '97? Also how do you think the LP holds up as a "final LP" today? 

Recording with Dave Trumfio was a treat. He is very even-keeled and professional but also quite funny. He loves pop music and hooks, and there are some of his fingerprints on that record. I was even-keeled a bit back when Jon Langford invited me to compose a song for his the Executioner's Last Songs record. I had so much fun in the studio that I decided it might be the right place to do the next Tsunami record, and it was.

How exactly did the split with Velocity Girl come about? 

I think you will have to ask them… I don’t remember how it happened. I'd met both Bruce and Jonathan from Sub Pop many years earlier when Bruce was touring with Mudhoney around Europe and I was in school in England and hitchhiking around the country following punk bands. Maybe that's why we were invited? Or maybe V-girl set it up once they were on Sub Pop. I honestly can’t remember.  What I do remember is that Charles Steck (who sadly passed last year) took the fantastic photographs that we used for the single, and we had such an awesome time hanging out in his studio with costumes and fireballs. 

You also collaborated with Super Chunk on a split 7" for the First Singles Club. What's the story behind that, and how far back do you go with them? 

I recently found a Slush Puppies cassette, which was Mac's band before Superchunk. I saw them play once at DC Space in the late 1980s, and they were terrific. I think that was the first time I met him but I'd heard about him before that. My sweetheart from college left Georgetown U in his sophomore year and moved to NYC to go to Columbia. That's where Mac went to school as well. My best friend from high school, Derek, who was in Geek and Choke, also went to Columbia, so I knew Mac from those circles. When Geek booked our first and only tour, we did it in partnership with Superchunk and Seaweed. All three bands had never toured before, so it was on that tour that we became better friends. Our first single with Superchunk was called Three's Company, and it had a song from each of those three bands on it. We used it to book the tour. Superchunk was also on the Inclined Plane 7" and the December Working Holiday single.  

How did the other Tsunami-associated group Liquorice, come about?

Dan Littleton and I played together for years and years before being in a real band. Mainly, we would invite ourselves into Georgetown University student parties, sneak into upstairs bedrooms, and sing Roches, Ferron, and X covers until we knew we were ready for prime time. We tried to be in a band once, but there was a devil in that band so we had to exorcise ourselves. Some years later, I met Ivo Watts Russel, who ran 4AD at one of Mark Robinson's Teen Beat celebrations at "Oriental Restaurant" in Arlington. He talked a lot about eating garlic pills… A LOT. He called them "garlic pearls"… but maybe that was just his accent. After one too many flaming volcanoes, he told me he liked Grenadine and wanted to put it on 4AD. Mark wanted to keep Grenadine on TB and SMR, and Mark was too busy with Unrest, which was already on 4AD, to be bothered so Ivo Watts-Russell suggested I do some demos at Warren Defever's house instead. I asked Dan to join me…Dan was game because Dan was quite game back then… we flew to Livonia and practiced with Trey Many, who was also in His Name is Alive at the time and is now a big deal booking agent who is booking The Coin Toss tour… Anyway, when we finished the demos, Ivo liked them but said we had to record them for real…and we said…we liked them the way they were. I wrote the song "Blew It" about how Ivo was "blowing it." I can't really remember what happened after that… 4AD put out the record…there was a little touring, and I wrote a bunch more songs, and I think maybe Ivo had a minor nervous breakdown and sold half of 4AD to Beggars Banquet and eventually, the people who thought we'd definitely be a hit decided we were over. I remember we were supposed to open for an up-and-coming band called the Foo Fighters, but then they decided we were not supposed to open for them. So we didn't. I asked Dan if he agreed with this summary of who and what we were, and he wanted me to add this additional information:

"We opened for The Raincoats and Gorky Zygotic Minchy in London and toured with Luna in the US. Vaughan Oliver, who designed all 4AD records, wanted you to get naked in a little hat (because the album was called Listening Cap) so he could take pictures for the album cover. You said 'no' and sent me to London in your place cause I was game, and I sat in a cold room naked, wearing a little hat and doing inappropriate elephant-man impersonations. We also did a video that was used in Cindy Crawford’s fashion show on MTV." —Dan Littleton

I corroborated Dan's recollections and added that I didn't want to get naked because PJ Harvey and Liz Phair had recently gotten naked for their album covers, so it had already happened enough. I later became a nude model for an art class to prove I wasn't a prude, but then I realized that it was incredibly tedious and painful work.

You've always been very active in advocacy work and currently the director of the Ford Foundation Catalyst Fund. How would you say that experience has informed much of the music you've been part of?

Our music always has politics, even when it doesn’t seem like there is.

How excited are you for your co-headlining US tour with Ida next spring to celebrate the reissue?

We couldn't be more excited to whip their asses. Also, I want to see them play and hang out with them as we are not just opponents but friends.

Where and when was your most memorable gig you played?

I can't remember… probably for Tsunami; it was one of the SMR funeral/finale shows.

There were so many fantastic musician friends in the room! For my solo work, I was able to play some of the Antidote and Tempting music once in NOLA with Calexico and friends as my backing band. John Doe was in the audience, and he said nice things, so that's a high point there.

Lastly, what have you learned most from playing rock 'n' roll?

I learned I don't play rock 'n' roll because I am a punk rocker. I learned everything I know from Punk.

Loud Is As is out now on Numero Group.