Zookraught: GRIP IT SHAKE IT
For the power trio that makes up Zookraught, nothing is off limits.
“There are other bands that I play with where I'm like, ‘I kind of want to like hop up on this table right now, but I feel like I'm gonna distract from what the singer's doing,” says Sam Frederick (guitar/vocals). “With Zook, it’s kind of a normal thing to do.”
“Pretty much anything crazy is encouraged,” adds Baylee Harper (drums/vocals). “Sometimes Steph will kick my cymbal over. I always love that.”
Stephanie Jones (bass/vocals) corroborates this. She chronicles the band’s stage habits through the scars their instruments bear: the gouges on her bass from run-ins with Baylee’s cymbals, little scrapes from the bite marks on Sam Morrison’s guitar. “You must have strong teeth,” she says to them.
Sam nods, “I get hungry.”
Among other things (which will be obvious to you if you’ve listened to their music), the coordinated chaos of Zookraught’s stage antics are part of the charm that’s made them one of the most beloved punk bands in Seattle. When I meet with them earlier this year, they’ve just wrapped the recording of their latest EP, GRIP IT SHAKE IT, and are days away from tour. They’re humming with anticipation, preparing to trod out all their favorite performance bits on stages across the country—table-hopping and cymbal-kicking in their signature face paint and short shorts. “We have 1, 2, 3… 13 shows over like 2 weeks,” says Stephanie Jones.
Presently, that EP has just landed on the public’s ears, and with it, the band is now heading onto another tour nearly twice as long. “Bigger circle this time,” says Stephanie. “ And then our tour kickoff show is also gonna be our EP release—a double whammy for ‘em, you know? Hopefully by the time we get back, we'll have written our full length and will be able to take the money we make on our tour and go into the studio to record that,” says Stephanie. “We like to keep busy.”
GRIP IT SHAKE IT is Zookraught’s strongest project by a landslide, and a clear signal that the debut album she speaks of will be more than worth the wait. Though it’s not Zookraught’s only EP, this is the first to represent the trio as it exists today.
“When we first started, the group was originally just Baylee and I,” says Stephanie. “We’d been in another band together that had kind of an ugly breakup, but the two of us still wanted to play together. So, we were like, let’s start a little side project.” Between the near immediate onset of the pandemic—during which the two found themselves bereft of all inspiration to create for a show-less world—and the tenebrosity of the music scene in general, they found themselves sitting on the idea longer than they’d hoped.
When they did set into things, they found themselves in a bit of a testing phase. “We really didn't want a guitarist at first,” says Baylee. “We were playing with Sam Morrison - who did the saxophone on our first EP - jamming with him a bit during the pandemic, kind of trying it out for a while as a three piece. But then there was just space that needed to be filled up that wasn't being filled up.”
From there, they roped in guitarist Ian Reed, current front man for Stetson Heat Seeker. “He started playing with us and basically right away we kind of realized, ‘Oh, fuck, we really want a guitar player,’” says Steph. “Ian and Sam helped us launch off the ground.”
To get things in motion, they recorded a series of videos under “The Live Outdoor Sessions,” played in the backyard of the house I interview them in. Those videos encapsulate the first iteration of Zookraught, and it was through them that Sam Frederick found the band.
“I'm really into that weird sort of angular music and I was also just prepared to say yes to whatever, you know?” says Sam. “Probably a month after I moved to Seattle, I saw the video and I thought, ‘This is so cool and so strange and quirky and very musical.’ I could totally see myself just fitting right in stylistically.”
If you decide, as I did, to listen to their earlier releases—whether you choose those live sessions or their first EP, Like a Rotten Zucchini—as an intro to the group, know you might as well be listening to a different band. Their more current work borrows from their debut projects, carrying a few similar undercurrents and following along the same threads of heavy punk that load their songs with power. What unfurls, however, is a dancier, more collaborative, and overall enrapturing experience.
There aren’t a lot of three-piece bands out there that have crafted both their stage presence and their studio work in way that makes every musician feel equally indispensable. What Zookraught has developed goes beyond what many can accomplish with a stage full of people. Each person is naturally integrated and becomes newly captivating with every track on this EP. With instrumental exchanges, call and responses, solos and vocal harmonies like the ones that simmer over the heat of the EP’s opening track, “Canvas Eyes”—none of their songs belong to any one clear member of the group. This too is intentional, a split-even spotlight between the three of them. “With the new way we're doing things—or the way it’s kind of happened naturally—it’s all really collaborative,” says Baylee.
“Sometimes Sam will take a little bit of a lead on the songwriting, or sometimes I will,” says Stephanie. “All of us sing leads, we all do call and response kind of stuff. . . there's not one clear cut person who's like, ‘Oh, I'm the songwriter. It's my band.’ It's not really like that with us.”
You can see as much in any of the songs on this EP, and you’ll notice it live too—how each of them have a presence that flares in and out of focus.
“We like it that way,” says Sam. “As much fun as it is to be constantly singing and up in the front, it’s really fun to be like, ‘Yeah, I can shred on this instrument.’ you know? It's cool to be able to switch like that, and it adds some dynamic to the live shows too. It’s like we're all sharing the duty of being the front person of the band.”
“Yeah, totally,” Stephanie adds, “cause it can be a lot. It also changes the way we interact with each other. Sometimes I'm like, ‘Oh man, I need a break. Thank God Sam is singing this one. Just nobody look at me for a second. I'm just gonna look at Baylee and do this for 10 minutes.”
Like many of this city’s bands, its current members all belong to a slew of other projects. Baylee, for one, also drums for Seattle’s King Shiem, and the 4-piece pop-rock group, Madam Monarch. Stephanie is the resident bass goddess of Bad Optics, and occasionally plays fill-in both for King Sheim and Beautiful Freaks. And Sam can sometimes be seen joining local act Queen Chimera on guitar, splitting the rest of their time between Seattle and Minneapolis, where they play in Lunch Duchess and front for New Primals. They all bring their own flair to the mix, and because of that, as Sam notes, the band is quick to come up with ideas. Writing isn’t nearly as painstaking when it’s injected with multiple creative voices, especially when they fuse into a sound that embraces the eclectic.
“It’s been so fun,” adds Baylee. “We’ve really just started figuring out our dynamic. It’s been our first year playing together, so we were just saying yes to a lot of gigs and trying to travel and tour as much as we could. And I think it's fun when it kind of shapes itself in a way that's natural.”
If you’ve been to any of their shows this year, you’ll recognize the bass lines in this EP. The magnetic thrums Stephanie lets fly, intricate and effortless at once. You’ll retrace the palpitating, thunder-like drumbeats that Bailey throws over the warbly synth and eerie three-piece harmonies decorating “Canvas Eyes.” And then there are Sam’s galvanic riffs, their fingers crucially dexterous in the midst of their violent rippage. It’s the guitar that tears “Bank” into existence and propels others like “Your God” forward with both an urgency and technical skill worth its own show.
This is the kind of band where you walk away remembering their music. The echoes of them will haunt your subconscious, where you’ll turn them over and over like a stone in your palm—each song so clearly their own, none quite like the other. The vocals, of course, are no exception here. With the three of them reveling in a split-even spotlight, these songs are smattered with infectious chants, call-and-response exchanges, and lead transfers that have audiences yelling shit like “bop it, twist it, pull it,” and “you’re not a saint, suck my dick, ey!” with an energy that combats that of the stage.
GRIP IT SHAKE IT showcases the ridiculous talent that put together makes them an undeniable force. Though the EP is fantastic—glorious in its perfected mayhem and dancey-throes—nothing can show you Zookraught’s magic quite like seeing them live. Rob and I have been saying as much for months: this is hands-down one of the best bands in Seattle right now, and we won’t be at all surprised when suddenly everyone knows it.
Ok, dweebs. Go check out Zookraught, and stream GRIP IT SHAKE IT ;)