Big Monti Amundson - Straight Out! (1990)

I moved to Portland, Oregon in 1987 and got a job working security At The Palace, a 25-room rehearsal warehouse. For my services I was given the use of one of the upper-floor practice spaces where I could live as well as rehearse. Chris Stucky, also a resident security guard and aspiring guitarist and I pooled our money after a weekend of busking and bought a 50 lbs bag of brown rice. Thereafter, whenever one of us made a little money we would buy some carrots and broccoli and eat like kings. Rock-star-thin? No problem.

The Blubinos (Cory Burden and Debbie Smith) rehearsed 3 or 4 times a week. It was a very productive time for me. I would write a song in the morning (my favorite time for writing) and rehearse it with the band in the evening. If the song worked, it was in the set at the next gig.

When The Blubinos started making a little money performing, we spent it all on recording. In those days recording was very expensive. Not like today. Just for starters, a roll of 2" tape was $150 and had only 15 minutes of recording time. The studio was, for that time, quite reasonably priced at $50 an hour. Before the Blubinos I had sent many a demo-tape to the record companies with no luck at all. If we hadn't of made that first album ourselves, it would never have been made. Hell, I might have gone back to being an electrician.

"Straight Out!" (by The Blubinos) was originally released on Cassette and sold extremely well in the Northwest. In 1991 The Blubinos were invited to perform in Belgium at The Handzame Blues Festival. We took several boxes of cassettes with us for promotion and to sell. Much to our chagrin, we could barely give them away and sold, I think, 12 cassettes. Europe was headlong into the CD thing by then and no one even owned a cassette player.
-Big Monti