I am sad to report the world has lost one of its true originals. My friend Chris Pettit unexpectedly passed away last week. He was my original musical collaborator. We met in Freshman Honors English Class at Mount High School when he saw the cassette cover of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper slid into my 3 ring binder. He introduced me to his parent’s amazing record collection. Growing up in a very small NW cow town, being turned on to T Rex and John Fahey and every thing in between at 14 years old really changed the direction of my life. He also introduced me to
@krecs which fit nicely into my mutating small town skater punk bubblegum pop predilections. We started recording weird songs right away, live onto crappy tape recorders, and learned how to make music together. By our junior year we had started our first “real” band, Understanding Blue, with
@coadyscottwillis drums . Our senior year we formed Yukon Stove and recorded with
@phil.ek at the legendary Word of Mouth Studios in Seattle. We were college roommates at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, first sharing a dorm room, and then getting a house with
@hownowkarlblau where lots of music was made. We recorded a bunch of still unreleased stuff as the Actual Hoots of Joy when I lived in the basement of the legendary Humdinger House in Bellingham and later when we shared a small condo on the west side of Olympia, WA. A few years later Yukon Stove reformed into Trespassers W. Our goal was to be the Melvins meet the Grateful Dead and we sometimes succeeded. I would commute up from Olympia, with many mics in tow checked out from the Evergreen State College, to the infamous Big Rock House, where we would record in the big living room, usually also always a big party. My ears are still ringing. I started to lose touch with Chris when I moved to Anacortes, but we did record one of his songs, “The Sweetest Wave” which become the title track for one of the infamous
@knwyrownrecords comps circa 2003 or 2004. Chris’ family is doing a Gofundme for help with these unexpected end of life costs, I will put the link above. Life is short. Don’t lose track of your friends. Give them hugs.
