The Oral History Of Botch: Thank God For Worker Bees


It is entirely possible that many of the bands who have recently appeared in the pages of this very publication would not be the musicians they are today without Botch. At the very least, those bands-the Underoaths, the Norma Jeans, the Thrices-would sound very different had Botch never existed. At a time when the local hardcore scene (led by Himsa vocalist John Pettibone's old straight-edge crew, Undertow) was on the verge of extinction, four guys from the suburbs with virtually nothing in common-except a love of Helmet and the (eventual) ability to play the living shit out of their instruments-laid the white-hot template for a generation of bands that followed. Botch-guitarist Dave Knudson, bassist Brian Cook, drummer Tim Latona and vocalist Dave Verellen-started out as clueless dorks. But by the time they recorded 2000's We Are The Romans, they were the devastating killing machine the term "hardcore" could only aspire to. When they pulled their own plug in early 2002 before the specter of obstinate careerism could do it for them, they instantly became more popular than they had been just six months earlier. A line in the sand had been drawn, and there were suddenly two kinds of people: Those who had witnessed Botch, and those who hadn't. Either way, it's time to meet your kingmakers.

BY: J. Bennett

THE PLAYERS

BRIAN COOK: Bass; currently in These Arms Are Snakes and singer/guitarist in Roy
DAVE KNUDSON: Guitar; currently in Minus The Bear
TIM LATONA: Drums
DAVE VERELLEN: Vocals; currently drumming in Roy

THE WITNESSES

MATT BAYLES: Producer (Botch, Isis, Mastodon)
SCOTTIE HENRY: Guitarist, Norma Jean
NATE NEWTON: Former guitarist/vocalist for Jesuit; currently bassist in Converge
JOHN PETTIBONE: Botch tour manager; former vocalist for Undertow and Nineironspitfire; current vocalist in Himsa
MARK THOMPSON: Team leader, Hydra Head Records
AARON TURNER: Founder, Hydra Head Records; guitarist/vocalist in Isis
BEN VERELLEN: Brother of Dave Verellen; Botch lighting technician, 1998-2001; current guitarist/vocalist in Roy
BEN WEINMAN: Guitarist, the Dillinger Escape Plan

1993: MAN THE RAMPARTS
In October 1993, Botch held their first "practice" at Tim Latona's house in Tacoma, Washington. Helmet's "Unsung" may or may not have received a severe beating.

TIM LATONA: Dave [Knudson] came up to me in the high school cafeteria; I think he was wearing a Rage Against The Machine shirt. He was like, "So, I hear you play drums-do you wanna jam sometime?" I had never thought about playing in a rock band before. I was totally into jazz, and I was thinking about going to Juilliard. But it turned out that we lived about half a mile from each other.

DAVE KNUDSON: We were probably 16 or 17. I brought my amp over to Tim's house, and we ended up on his back deck playing Helmet covers for a couple of hours. [Laughs.] Then I wrote a couple of really bad riffs, and we tried to write a song. Then, I remember we picked the band name by opening a dictionary. Then it was like, "Okay, let's play that Helmet song again."

BRIAN COOK: The first time I played with Dave Knudson and Tim, Dave Verellen hadn't joined yet. The very first thing Dave said when I walked in was, "Okay, we're gonna be playing in drop D." That was the tuning that Helmet and Alice In Chains used-you could play a power chord with one finger. Right away, I was like, "Fuck." I was 16 and barely knew how to the play the instrument, and all of sudden it was tuned differently than what I was used to. After that practice, Dave bribed me into joining by promising to do a Dead Kennedys cover-which never happened.

DAVE VERELLEN: I think I became the singer because I couldn't play an instrument. At first, I actually tried to sing. It was terrible. Once we decided to become a harsher band, I just started screaming. I remember thinking, "That guy from Undertow screams and gets away with it. I can do that, no problem."

1993-'94: IN SPITE OF THIS
The first Botch show took place in Dave Verellen's garage in Puyallup, Washington, on October 31, 1993-which also happened to be his birthday. He wore a Barney (as in, the Purple Dinosaur) costume.

D. VERELLEN: This was during the time that the Barney phenomenon was going on, and the show was really popular with kids, so Brian wrote this song about how twisted and wrong Barney was. I think it was called, "Barney The Purple Dinosaur." And they thought it'd be a good idea for me to wear this $10 Barney costume at our first show. We had a lot of horrible songs: There was "Vegetarianism Is Anarchy," "Barbed Rectal Thermometer" and one was called "Pudenda," which I think might be Spanish slang for "multiple vaginas." [Laughs.] We had to go through some growing pains, for sure.

KNUDSON: During the first two or three or even five years of the band, we made some of the worst music you've probably ever heard in your life. [Laughs.] We were all interested in different styles-Brian listened to a lot of ska music-and we didn't really know how to write songs. So there was this really bad mishmash of styles going on for a lot of years. There are a few copies of our first demo tape out there, and I really hope they're all broken by now.

BEN VERELLEN: I remember Dave got permission from our parents to do that first show. It was like, "Mom, Dad-can I have a concert in our garage?" "Okay, Dave." I think there were about 20 kids there. All the stoners showed up, which was ironic because I think Botch was trying to get into the straight-edge scene at the time. They were all into Undertow.

JOHN PETTIBONE: There was a record store in Seattle called Fallout Records, and I was in there one day when the Botch guys walked in. I hadn't seen them play yet, but I recognized them because a bunch of the older straight-edge guys I hung out with had this elitist attitude about younger bands and had told me they didn't like Botch. So they came up to me like, "Hey-you're John from Undertow. We love Undertow." And then-I'll never forget this-they asked me if they could be straight edge. [Laughs.]

COOK: Dave K. was never straight edge. I think there was maybe a six-month period where three people in the band didn't drink. At first, we thought straight edge was cool because we didn't like drunken frat boys. We thought about it in terms of Ebullition Records, but when the youth-crew stuff started becoming more popular and bands like Earth Crisis started taking over the straight-edge scene, we thought, "Ugh, these are the frat boys." Other bands we knew might drink, but at least they were fun to hang out with.

1994-1997: INCH BY INCH
One of Botch's first big shows was with Metroschifter and Die 116 in late 1994 at the Velvet Elvis, perhaps the only place in Seattle that was doing all-ages shows in the face of the city's Teen Dance Ordinance, a 1985 law that imposed huge fines on clubs and venues that granted admittance to unsupervised patrons under the age of 18 into events at which over-21 patrons were present. Within six months, Botch took their show on the road.

DAVE VERELLEN: We did this pseudo-tour in Canada, and my dad drove. Talk about supporting your kids' aspirations-it was unbelievable. He had this old van that was a stick, a four-on-the-floor, and he'd drop us off at the shows, help us load in and then take off to let us have our night before coming back and picking us up and taking us back to a hotel. In Vancouver, we played with Sparkmarker. We were supposed to stay at this punk-rock house after the show, but my dad wouldn't let us.

PETTIBONE: It was cool to see somebody from the city I grew up in get out there. At the time, Undertow had done a couple of U.S. tours, but no one else had. Botch was the first band from the next generation that went out and pushed it-and pushed it their way. It was remarkable.

DAVE VERELLEN: If you check out the John Birch Conspiracy 7-inch, we thank the Hui, which is like the Hawaiian equivalent of the Mafia. What happened is that we booked two or three shows in Hawaii, which is where Brian is originally from. When we got there, we made a flyer for one of the shows out of a picture we found in the garbage at Kinko's. The photo was of a little girl in a hula skirt, and we basically made her look like Satan. Then we totally plastered the whole island with them. It turned out that this little girl was missing, and these huge dudes turned up at the show like, "Who the fuck made this flyer? Who the fuck pasted all this 666 shit on my niece? If you don't tell me, I'm gonna call the Hui and they're gonna shoot this place up." It was one of the scariest moments of my life-everyone just scattered. I thought we were gonna get fucked up.

COOK: In the spring of '97, we did a seven-week tour with Ink & Dagger and Nineironspitfire. We went all over the U.S. and Canada. Ink & Dagger were kind of a big deal at that point, so we were playing a lot of club shows. I think we did a show at some theater in Buffalo, New York, with Snapcase and there were, like, a thousand people or something like that.

DAVE VERELLEN: That was the best tour ever. The Ink & Dagger dudes were big into shoplifting. They'd go into a grocery store and come out with dinner for everybody. Of course, we caught the stealing bug, too. We'd walk into a 7-Eleven, steal a few candy bars and think we were hot shit. Meanwhile, those guys would walk into the Gap, fill a bag with shirts and walk out.

NATE NEWTON: The first time I ever saw Botch play was in Madison, Wisconsin. Jesuit was on tour with Piebald, and we played this basement show in '96. Botch played, and I was like, "Who the fuck is this?" I remember being completely blown away. They were loud, they were heavy, they were aggressive, they were technical-but not in a noodly, stupid, metal kind of way. We immediately became really good friends, like, "We gotta play more shows together!"

1998: AMERICAN NERVOSO
Hydra Head Records founder Aaron Turner asked Botch to contribute a Black Sabbath cover ("The Wizard") to the label's In These Black Days 7-inch series. He ended up with the band's full-length debut, American Nervoso.

DAVE VERELLEN: I remember being at Dave and Brian's house and finding out that we were gonna be signed by Hydra Head. We were so psyched to be on a label that wasn't just a guy who lived down the street. Hydra Head was on the East Coast and actually had other records out. [Laughs.] We were stoked.

AARON TURNER: One of Botch's early triumphs was "O Fortuna," the choral thing that was on the John Birch 7-inch. I thought that was amazing. Anytime I made a mix tape for someone else, I'd put that on there. After that, they sent me a demo of songs that were re-recorded for American Nervoso, but I can't remember if I had solicited it or if they just sent it to me. In any event, it was more than I was expecting from them even though I already thought they were good. I think I gave them about six or seven grand to do the record, which was probably more than I had given any other band that we had worked with up to that point.

LATONA: I remember Aaron sent us this contract that was written on a napkin that said, "Don't break up after I put this out." Then we met Matt Bayles and ended up recording in [Pearl Jam guitarist] Stone Gossard's studio.

MATT BAYLES: I met Botch at the Undertow reunion show. It was Undertow, Murder City Devils, Botch and someone else. I was recording Undertow's final show for them, and I asked Botch if they wanted me to record their show just so they'd have it. They ended up blowing everyone offstage that night. That was sort of their coming-out party because they played in front of, like, 800 people. It was one of the biggest hardcore shows in Seattle up to that point, so that really put them on the map.

Hey, 1998 isn't over yet. And then there's four more years after that. Pick up a copy of issue No. 226 to see what becomes of Botch in the new millennium.