Field School is the solo moniker that Charles Bert has adopted following the end of Math and Physics Club, the beloved Washington state indie pop band he co-founded in 2004. His new project’s debut full-length, When Summer Comes, collects highlights from a series of EPs that were released over the past year and combines them with a few new songs. Dusted’s Chris Liberato recently reviewed the album, writing that its strength lies in “the way Bert charmingly pairs poetic turns of phrases about love, relationships and their incapacitating side effects with nostalgia-soaked melodies sure to replace whatever tune was previously lodged in your head.” Below, Bert shares his list of “10 things about growing up in Olympia that (predictably) led to me starting Field School.”
K Records
K offered a blueprint for making music on your own terms at a time when that was pretty revolutionary. Those bands still feel like hometown heroes to me, even the ones that were just passing through.
Capitol Theater
Hallowed ground in Olympia’s rock history. It seems like everything happened there, from International Pop Underground to Yo-Yo-A-Go-Go to Ladyfest. It’s my version of Carnegie Hall.
Rainy Day Records
The standard to which I hold all other record shops. The first cassette I bought was Cuts Like a Knife by Bryan Adams. I could walk to their original location from my house, which meant I could go by myself and spend as long as I wanted.
KGY
My main exposure to music as a kid was AM radio, and KGY 1240 was our local station. Morning DJ Dick Pust was as famous to me as Casey Kasem, spinning Christopher Cross and the school lunch menu on weekday mornings.
Rain
For about half the year, sometimes more, it rains, showers, drizzles, and mists. It’s a perfect excuse for hanging out in the basement and making music.
Walks
Olympia is small and walkable with a diverse patchwork of neighborhoods and urban trails. When I’m stuck on lyrics, I hit the sidewalks.
Puget Sound
Olympia is a harbor town, and I’ve always felt most at peace around water. There’s a romance and wistfulness about it that seeps into my imagination and my writing.
All-ages!
Most of the places to see music in Olympia were all-ages, which I assumed was typical. I know now that I was just lucky, because a lot of places didn’t (and don’t) support all-ages venues, which is stupid.
DIY
If R.E.M. was my entry point for listening to independent music, then Olympia was my entry point to making it. It blew up my conception of what bands could look and sound like and opened the door for shy kids like me who needed the invitation.
Beat Happening
When I was learning guitar, I couldn’t play “Driver 8,” but I could play “Fortune Cookie Prize,” and that was empowering. In Beat Happening I found songs that I could strum along to with easy chords, but also with depth, meaning, lightness, and darkness. Thirty years later, I’m still borrowing from them (and I still can’t play “Driver 8”). This video for their iconic song “Indian Summer” is a time machine to the Olympia I grew up in.
