Evan Flory-Barnes is a Seattle-based musician. He is a gigging fool known for his upright bass mastery in bands like Industrial Revelation and The Teaching.

Ijeoma Oluo: What comes to mind when you think of anger in Seattle?

Evan Flory-Barnes: There is a spectrum of emotions that fall under being passionate and giving a damn and I think anger often gets misunderstood as something negative and often destructive as far as hurting people and whatnot – but what I think it really has to do with, is that there is this thing called outrage; and it’s a real and raw response. There are a lot of things that happen that require outrage as a response.

Ranging from the history of people who have inhabited Seattle – maybe there’s associations of inheritance of being reserved and that anger is a rare thing, and also that maybe people come out west to ‘chill out’ and that narrative creates a fog that people have trouble breaking through and I think the anger, or passion, or outrage is part of this city stepping into a new awareness of itself.

Because it’s no longer that whole escaping, passive aggressive, “let’s not make a fuss” – but a lot of things that are coming out, including music I’m involved with, embody this passion and outrage. It can be a response to half-hearted living, it can be a response to injustice, it can be a response to something you know that merits a response deeper than just an intellectual understanding of it. I look at it as wholeness. Anger and outrage and passion is part of being whole. You know, you can be chill. Chill is a good thing. Intellectual is a good thing. And there has to be a place for passion and outrage. I’d rather have a direct aggression than some uh <chuckles> …well I’d rather have that.

IO: You kind of touched on something that I’ve noticed in people’s responses – even to this project, and that’s the inability to separate people’s anger from the actions that they take out of anger. And the anger in itself that we seem to react so harshly to is a valid thing, but there are so many things that you can choose to do with it once you choose to acknowledge that it’s there. I think there is much less control over our anger when we don’t even acknowledge that we are feeling it because then what we are doing is purely instinctual.

You talked a little bit about music. What does it feel like for you to be challenging some serious emotion. I’ve seen you play and you’ve some serious emotions out there when you were playing. Is that helpful for you? Is that a conscious choice you make?

EFB: Absolutely. It’s definitely a conscious choice and I think it works out best because you get down to…I like to look at emotions as there is a core emotion, a type of big, sort of all encompassing, largely expressive, largely passionate feeling. But when you are starting out and you make a conscious choice to express your anger you get down do a level of sadness, and when you express that and you become conscious you get to this beaming, intense love that’s not like the love that people try to go out and find. It’s this all-encompassing and impassioned and unruly thing. It’s not a love that’s polite.

Sometimes outrage and anger can be a vessel to carry such intensity. Polite society allows a small range of expression. You can be flatlined accessible, with a little bit of generic, general happiness. Maybe some depression. That’s all allowed. But a range of in-your-face joy, raw exposed fears, impassioned intensity – that scares people. I think in music and art and expression, the opportunities for that to be a part of someone’s work is an empowering thing for the audience. I’ve noticed that with Industrial Revelation – when we all go there, everyone responds with this relief, passion, inspiration. It turns out to be a really positive thing.

IO: It’s wonderful to see at your shows such a large body of people, particularly a large body of brown people, expressing this in Seattle, where it can typically be difficult to be a brown person and express any intense emotion without it being judged in a particular way. Do you think if you weren’t a musician expressing this musically, do you think it would be as easy to get these emotions out as a black man in Seattle?

EFB: <chuckles> This is interesting. Music is such a key and integral part of who I am – I wonder sometimes. I know that I’d probably find a way, but this is interesting. I try as much as possible to try to create a line between how I view the world and the life around me and how I express myself artistically. I try to keep that very much in concert.

I think about an incident that happened a bunch of months ago at a gallery opening that someone I knew curated. Someone had a piece that had a doorway, and this noose and a mirror and all these names of black girls who had been lynched. There were over 100 names. And there was an invitation for people to interact with and touch the work.

So there was this environment where people were interacting with this piece with a very sort of ‘White Seattle’ they know not what they do, passive aggressive, not sure how racist they are <chuckles>, they were putting their kids in the noose….So then someone comes along later on talking about how this is offensive. How this piece shouldn’t be up. And what I was emphasizing was well, this piece is creating this type of conversation and yes all these things are happening, so yes, it should be here. Eventually things opened up and I said, see – if this wasn’t here we wouldn’t be able to do this. And she still didn’t think the work should be up, so I got mad. We went back and forth, I’d had a few cups. I became outraged. I expressed this outrage in public. I dismantled the piece.

This wasn’t just a term paper to defend. This was the history, the raw ugly history of our country and we’re trying to talk about it like its some academic thing that you have to…like you’re going to get an “A” on it if you make the best argument. Untying that noose was such a release. I lost a couple of friends from that action, but a lot of people felt really good about it. A lot of people were like – wow, someone is willing to get in this and express what they feel so intensely. In the art world – it’s all about people trying to show how they feel about something. And you come up with something that heavy and that loaded with history – I mean, that’s a bomb. A bomb of raw feelings. I feel like the curator and the artist didn’t make space for the rawness – the range of anger and outrage. They wanted to control the anger. When you are dealing with what art is supposed to be and the range of feelings, and you have something about x-amount of girls getting lynched – it’s outrageous and it’s a part of that response, and not controlled outrage.

IO: I remember seeing some pictures from that event and I didn’t know what the installation was. I remember seeing pictures of people posing with this noose and I remember thinking “what the fuck is happening?” And I feel like a lot of people forget that if you have an expression of anger and you take it and open it up to the public – it isn’t yours completely yours anymore. If you set it out there, it’s going to set off a chain of reactions and I think it’s interesting when people want to control something like that.

Are there any artists who you feel inspire you with the way they express their depth of emotion?

EFB: Well <laughter> I think your brother’s pretty good at it (Ahamefule J. Oluo). Especially on the bandstand! Honestly I think all the dudes in Industrial Revelation really travel into that raw space. When we all go there it’s pretty potent.

Beth Fleenor is amazing. She gets very wordless, she gets into these chants, whoa – she’ll really awaken some things.

IO: I saw Beth perform once and it was absolutely breathtaking to see. Just the depth of emotion she was able to channel and how fearless she was there.

EFB: A choreographer friend of mine, Paige Barnes, is really good at channeling and allowing a really raw spectrum range of herself. I feel like a lot of Seattle artists that I know are really good at…there are a lot of people who craft things really well, a lot of interesting performances. Few work with ‘the raw’. I feel like there is a lot of polish, a lot of innovative creativity, but as far as the raw, raw, raw raw. I feel like there are a lot of artists who are into the presentation and creative product of their craft and a lot of emotion may be in that, but it’s different than just working with the raw. Those artists that I mentioned – I’m sure there are others – but those that come to mind are those who are just out there. There is no disguising it or mapping it, or something “clever” or “interesting” or “cutting-edge”.

IO: I want to touch on this here before we go. A little while back, maybe last year, Industrial Revelation had a blowup publically at a performance. And I was getting messages from everybody saying “what happened at that show?” But what struck me, and I wasn’t at the show but I got multiple accounts of it, immediately for me having known all of you for so many years – the first thing I remember telling Aham was “man, you guys just love each other too much.” Some people were scared or worried about this public expression of anger, but to me it just seemed like this natural overflow when you have four individuals who love each other immensely and love the work and how much of your soul you have poured into it. Did you want to speak on that a little bit?

EFB: Oh yes I’d love to. It’s funny, for me that came from exactly what you said. I should first say that I count on Industrial Revelation and all those involved to get to this space where I can clean myself out of all this stuff that’s inside me emotionally. Part of that is really rooting around in the love that’s between the four of us. When that’s always going the heights and depths of the band, it’s amazing. There was all this kind of weird energy going on before the show. I said hello to D’Vonne right before the show and I said, “Is everything cool” and he said “No, everything is not cool!” and I was all, “ok…”. And when we were playing with Skerik that night it wasn’t that big of a deal. Ok we can play the parts of drummer and bassist. But with Industrial, what I felt from him – what set me off, was almost this refusal of this connection. In my mind it was a refusal that this certain connection that he and I root in. This connection as friends, as brothers, as musicians – I felt a little like I was being held at arm’s length and I got pissed. What? You can’t do that! <laughter> I just started playing and it’s funny we never start off with “No Tears For A Wolf”, but we started out with it and we got to this part of it and I just started strumming and hitting the bass as hard as I can and the fingerboard fell off <laughs> oh God. It is eventually a good story. It’s a part of our story now.