Exploring Wild Terrain: Interview with Seattle Rocker Eva Walker

Often when I’m cooking, I tune in to Fresh Air; Terry Gross can make a recipe without chopped onions bring tears to my eyes. Whether her guest is an author I admire, an actor I don’t, or an obscure political figure about whom I know nothing, Gross has a way of bringing out the humanity in just about everyone she interviews. Even the occasional curmudgeon is no less interesting a kitchen companion when Gross is the host.

Which begs the question: What is it that makes an interview sing, on-air or on paper?

This is the fertile writerly ground that drew me to Jacob Uitti’s recent Hugo House class, “The Art of the Question.” Uitti is a prolific journalist whose work regularly appears in American Songwriter Magazine and myriad other publications. During our 4-session virtual class, he was nimble as fingers on a keyboard as he fielded questions from the screen:  

How do you keep the conversation feeling natural while making sure you keep your interview on track?

What if the interviewee doesn’t want to talk about a given topic?

How do you cold pitch an interview to a magazine?

In between Q and As, we read from published interviews and tapped on crucial ingredients like clarity, humor, pivot and control—just a pinch of the latter so you don’t overpower the flavor. We wrote. We practiced. We laughed, mostly at ourselves. And on night 3, we relished the delicious main course: taking turns interviewing Seattle rocker Eva Walker, lead musician for the Seattle sibling band, The Black Tones. Walker also happens to be Uitti’s spouse.

Although these days I follow hiking trails more than I do rock bands, music has long brought me solace—despite my grating relationship with playing first clarinet in junior high (squeak!) I also seemed to have a thing for musicians in my teens and early twenties. One hazy night, after watching a show with my keyboardist boyfriend, we drove two famous Boston rockers home in my mother’s yellow Chevy Nova. But I digress.

The Black Tones was founded by Eva and her twin brother, Cedric, whose drums are the heartbeat to his sister’s vocals and guitar. In my pre-interview research, I discovered that this dynamic duo (Cedric has called himself Robin to Eva’s Batman) has developed an impassioned fan base in Seattle and well beyond. Now I know why.

The Seattle Times characterized the eclectic music of The Black Tones as a marriage of “swampy blues-rock with brawny and psych-laced guitars.” The band’s 2019 debut album, “Cobain and Cornbread,” received critical acclaim, with “The Key of Black (They Want Us Dead)” serving as an anthem of protest against racist police brutality. “Heard of Seattle band The Black Tones? You will” read a Crosscut headline.

After listening to their music, I, too, became a fan. I love Eva’s soulful voice and the way she’s using it as both an artist and an activist. But most of all, I’m moved by the way she and Cedric represent the best of what “family” and being a twin can mean.

Paula: I have a twin sister, Pam, a self-described extrovert who will readily tell you that she was born 3 minutes before me. It has brought me so much joy to watch you and Cedric together in videos—especially the one where you’re challenging each other to a parallel parking competition. I’ve found myself wondering, how do you think your dynamic might have been different if Cedric had been a twin sister versus a twin brother?

Eva: You know, that’s a really good question. I’ve thought about that before, and, I don’t know, I think I would be a totally different person. We may have gotten along just fine, but I have this boyish personality at times, and I get along with boys more. I get along with women just fine, but I mean, I was supposed to have a twin brother, you know, like…I know how to fix cars, sometimes I change the tire on the car when somebody else doesn’t know how to do it. I’ve got some masculine qualities, so I don’t know how well, exactly, we would have gotten along if he was a girl. But I get along with my older sister just fine so maybe it would have been fine.

Paula: Yeah, being a twin shapes who you are from the very beginning, so it’s almost a bottomless question.

Pam, like me, is a white woman, and she’s married to a black man from Seattle. I feel very fortunate to be part of a biracial family now, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from this experience. Your music has been a really important part of the ongoing conversation in Seattle about racism. Given that you’re part of a biracial couple, could you talk about your experience in that way and how that may or may not have influenced your thoughts about racism?

Eva: Yeah, great question. I’ll try to make this answer short, I promise. I went to a Catholic school, and my school was predominantly black, and Filipino, and some white people sprinkled in there. But I also have play aunts that are white, I have a Korean aunt, and I was around everything as a kid. That feels like a privilege, because I have friends who are like, ‘I was the only white kid at my school,’ and I don’t have that experience, thank goodness.

But, you know, how I choose my lovers, for lack of a better term (laughs), it’s solely just based on connection, personality, and do we get along, and can he make me laugh. I’ll date—not anymore! (more laughter)—whoever I want because I feel some sort of connection with them, but never forgetting issues in the world.

More to the answer of your question, I also have told myself that I can’t just be with a white person with their head in the clouds. Because potentially you’re going to have a mixed kid, or I can’t do some of the same things they do in certain parts of the country, or maybe I don’t feel safe driving in certain parts that he does.

But my brother also has a white partner; his wife is white, and they have a mixed child, and it doesn’t keep us from talking about things that are uncomfortable. Also, if you’re going to join in the partnership with someone of a different race in a country that has this historically terrible history of the person that’s black, then you have to be willing to have the uncomfortable conversations, or to be corrected.

I like to tell people, you know, racism—I use the analogy of when a kid wants a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but they don’t eat it because it’s cut in squares and not triangles. It’s like I’m a square, and he’s a triangle; we’re made of the same thing, but I’m black and he’s white. It’s so childish, racism, right? It’s ridiculous.

And I’ll wrap it up with this. Despite the history of black people in the United States, and the horrific things you can say historically that have been done by white people to black people in the past, I can never hate someone just because they’re white. My brain wiring doesn’t understand it, it’ll never get it. I have “Black Power” tattooed on my arm, and I’m with a Finnish white guy, like the whitest of white, white, white.

When I write songs, I’m not really thinking about the relationship I’m in. I’m just thinking about history and my experiences through life in general. There’s nothing that’s ever been like, ‘Will Jake be offended by this verse?”

Photo: Crosscut

Paula: Thanks for that vulnerable answer. My husband Robert and I have talked a lot about how my being a twin probably set a high bar for intimacy—for as long as I can remember, there was somebody else looking back at me. How do you think being a twin has affected the way you experience relationships with other musicians or significant others?

Eva: Yeah! My twin brother, because he was so amazing, and good to me, made me feel beautiful and smart, that I know my worth. Also, my twin brother is the world—the universe—to me, and so I find qualities in men, in anyone, that have those qualities that my twin brother has. There are little things Jake will do that are just like, oh my god, Cedric would do that! You know, you’re around either your chosen or your blood family, and that influences the kind of people you look for, right?

Paula: Or you don’t look for!

Eva: Or you don’t look for, exactly! So yeah, he’s like my standard. And I remember telling someone, before I met Jake—this is going to sound really weird, and I realize thinking back on it how weird it sounded—but I was like, ‘I’m never going to find the perfect person! The perfect person for me is my twin brother, but he’s my brother, I can’t marry him!’

Paula: That’s awesome. Thank you.

Rock on, Eva!