Jack Endino’s name has been on a lot of records, but it remains one of the downsides of being an in-demand producer and mixing engineer that oftentimes your name becomes associated with other people’s music. That’s not always a bad thing. As Endino joins us from his home in Seattle, the one-time “engine room of the Battleship Grunge” testifies that getting the early works of Mudhoney, Soundgarden and Nirvana on record can be good for your career.
“I tell people who are getting into the recording world, like, ‘Your mileage may vary; your first clients when you are learning how to record might not be Soundgarden and Nirvana!’” he says. “I was in the right place at the right time, and grunge is the gift that keeps on giving in that sense because I still have all the business I can handle.”
And yet for Endino the recording artist, whose career as a musician came together in the ‘80s with the alt-metal, grunge-adjacent Skin Yard, those producer credits can be illusory, telling us little about where he is at artistically. Right now that could be with Purple Strange, who are waiting for the pressing plant capacity to put their album out, psych rock act Sky Cries Mary, or Beyond Captain Orca!, Endino’s pure improv power trio, or with the release of a new solo album, Set Myself On Fire.
An expansive work of alternative rock, was once scheduled for a 2012 release before the label at the time fell through. Endino went on to write more songs, eventually finding enough down time
