Tarek Wegner just woke up.  It’s five in the evening.  Standing in a dirty alley, he holds a beer in a plastic bag.  The alley is quiet and bright.  No cars pass.  He sits down on the concrete and leans against an overhead door. 

“There was a secret party last night at The Warehouse,” he tells me.  “Secret, but there were a lot of people there.  There was a piñata.  The Nightgowns played.”

He’s wearing pink jeans, a leather jacket and a headband.  He’s waiting for the other members of The Drug Purse to arrive.  He lights a cigarette.

When I first arrived, about an hour ago, no one was around.  I rode down the empty corridor below Saint Helens Avenue, downtown, on my bike.  A guy polished his car, listening to R&B.  In the back of an old building, an auto showroom, I found a door.  I opened it and went inside.  A girl appeared. 

“Is this where all the bands practice?” I asked.

She said it was.

I explained I was writing an article about it.  I explained my theory that Tacoma has one of the most tight-knit music communities anywhere partly because so many bands jam in this basement — hidden below Sharp & Sons USA of Yesterday Motors. 

I wanted to see and hear it firsthand, I told her.

“I’m supposed to meet a dude named Tarek.”

She shrugged. 

I leaned my bike against the wall and looked around.  I walked down a long, dim hallway lined with padlocked doors.  Some bore the names of bands: Dem Zaing, I Defy.  Others were blank.  From somewhere came the muffled cries of a hidden television.   

I went outside, bought a sandwich and coasted down to Fireman’s Park.  I sat on a rock and ate my sandwich.  Women in heels clattered out of buildings, slid into cars and drove away.  I pushed my bike up the hill and got a coffee and then returned to the alley. 

I sit down beside Wegner.  We talk about the new record The Drug Purse is working on, which they expect to release in October.

“It’s sounding pretty psych so far, but we’ve also gotten more rock,” he says.

We talk about Team Unicorn, the loose collective of bands that includes The Drug Purse, Makeup Monsters, The Nightgowns, Friskey, People Under the Sun, Emperor Moth, The Shadow People, Popular Stars, and Wegner’s other band, Paris Spleen.

“We share gear and beer, but we don’t share money,” Wegner explains.

We talk about the practice space we’ll soon enter, where several Team Unicorn bands, among others, hone their chops.

“A meth head tried to break down all the doors one night,” Wegner tells me.  Renters had to get new doorknobs, but otherwise there was no damage.  When I ask how much bands pay, he says he doesn’t really know.  Not much.  Actually, he’s not sure his bands have been paying.

We talk about the Tacoma music scene. 

“Tacoma bands all get along,” says Wegner, who recently moved back after a winter on Capitol Hill in Seattle.  Tacoma bands help each other; they learn from each other; they challenge each other — often in this dank basement, the underground uterus of T-town rock. 

T-town rock is a fetus, nestled in the womb, shielded from danger, cells dividing.  We talk about it like parents-to-be.  What will it look like?  What sex?  Will it be a poet or plumber or leader of men?  We place our hands there to feel it kick.  We argue over names: Drug Purse, Nightgowns, Motopony.  We wonder, what’s it like in there, floating, becoming?  We hang blurry ultrasound pictures on the refrigerator.  We secretly worry, will it love us?  Someday, we fear, we know, it will leave us.  It will move to Portland or Seattle.  It will promise to write.  It will fall in with the wrong crowd, be fooled by charlatans.  It will fail, go astray.  But it will always have its hometown values to guide it, and it will prevail.  We’re certain of that.  We just hope it will remember us.  We hope it will love us back.

But perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  Perhaps we should just enjoy this time for what it is.  It all goes so fast.

Friends arrive: Amber, Kennon, Jasper, Hannah.  We go inside, turn a corner.  Wegner unlocks a door.  The room is full of gear: guitars, amps, drums, speakers, microphones, and mixers.  A yellow bicycle leans in a corner.  Pinup girls and show posters litter the walls.  A framed picture of Yorkshire terriers, a rotating Jesus lamp, a portrait of John Wayne, and many empty beer cans complete the collage.

“It smells like, I don’t know — like gasoline,” says Hannah.

“It smells like dude smell,” Jasper corrects.

“It smells like paint and shellac.”

“It’s dude smell.”

“It’s that new dude smell paint.”

Three bands share this room.  Their names are written in huge cursive script on the wall: Ten Miles of Bad Road, The Drug Purse, Paris Spleen.

Drug Purse guitarist Joshua Vega and drummer Cory Thomas walk in, say hello, and start setting up their gear.  Amber, Kennon, Jasper, and Hannah drift away.  I walk around, check out the bathroom — the toilet has been ripped out and stuffed with a traffic cone.

When lead singer Jason Freet arrives, the band gets ready to jam.  I remove a broken tambourine and a copy of the Weekly Volcano from a saggy thrift-store chair and sit down. 

Wegner tests the mike with a stream-of-consciousness screed: “Wet mother earth puss sleeping in the dark earth … .”

Now they kick off a song.

I close my eyes and sink deep into the rotten chair, deep into wet mother earth, as the narcotic retro tones of The Drug Purse wash over me.  They’ll keep on jamming long after I go.  Other bands, other friends will show up too — to jam, to listen, to just hang out.  The uterus will fill with sound and smoke and dude smell.  The freaky fetus will grow as the world outside passes by, blessedly oblivious. 


[Wright Park, Music & Art in Wright Park with performance by Tarek Wegner, Saturday, Aug. 15, noon-8 p.m., 501 S. I St., Tacoma, 253.305.1000]

[Bob’s Java Jive, The Drug Purse with The Hugs, 1776, Night Beats, Saturday, Aug. 15, 8 p.m., 2102 S. Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253.475.9843]