by dustin hays
Back in 2005 the Wenatchee music scene was filled with a mix of singer/ songwriters, a handful of rock n’ roll bands, and everyone from your kid brother to your alcoholic uncle trying to ‘make it big’ in a heavy metal band. It was then, 15 years ago, that Ghost Power!!! began playing their first shows. As a student at Wenatchee High School in 2002, Andrew Houck sang and played guitar in his first band The Carrots. As most bands do, they broke up after a few years. For a short time Houck played guitar with Kings of Friday before forming Ghost Power!!! in 2005 with bassist Jasper St. Germain and St. Germain’s brother Drew on drums. The band quickly stood out with singer and guitarist Andrew Houck’s simple, hook driven song writing style. The group’s first recordings were released in 2006 on a CD compilation for Nevermore Records, a recording studio/label run by local musician and Chinook Music employee Justin Lawless. In 2008 the St. Germain brothers (both underage at the time) exited the group with Houck recruiting Brock Johnson on drums (formerly of the Seattle duo The Shots). After jamming with Johnson, Houck morphed Ghost Power!!! into a 2-piece, with Andrew splitting his guitar channel to run through both a bass and guitar amplifier.
HOUCK: “We couldn’t really play shows because they were too young. They couldn’t go into bars or anything. So I got really frustrated trying to book shows. Playing the Beacon Hill for awhile is when I saw the Shots and met Brock. I had never seen a two-piece - that, you know, had 2 amps, and had a really rounded sound.”
Later that same year Johnson moved back to Seattle and was replaced by Cashmere drummer Mitch Wixom. Wixom had most recently been playing Anoneim, a band that had morphed from the well loved Wenatchee band Waiting For Darryl. After the holt of live shows at the Beacon Hill Grange, Ghost Power!!! had continued to find gigs at the several short-lived venues across town, whether it be at the Flash Disco, The BPOE Ballroom, or the beloved Methow Street house venue, the Basement. It wasn’t until 2010, around the same time that Snatchee Records became active, that the group won a Battle of the Bands contest during the 2010 Taste of Harvest Festival, winning funds for new gear and recording time. They released their debut full-length CD The Basement that same year. Ghost Power!!! remained heavily active during the next three years, recording two more albums with Snatchee Records (Human Decay 2011, Heavy Hands 2012), and - along with other early Snatchee bands like the Wreks, Mothra, Not All There, Warpony & the 13 Cent Killers - filled local bills during the first few years of local Snatchee Records shows. In 2013 Houck moved to Seattle, and the band soon fell by the wayside as the distance became too much to keep up with practices.
HOUCK: “We had a couple shows while I was living there, but we couldn’t really rehearse where I was living. I didn’t have a practice space. I started developing the Crimson Field project, so I wanted to develop that, but that all just kinda fell apart.”
A small number of CD copies of Houck’s doom metal Crimson Field project were sold at Ghost Power!!!’s shows in 2018, featuring “Wolves of God” a song that has now been adapted into Ghost Power!!!’s set. The group’s sound has always fallen under the umbrella of rock n’ roll, with Wixom’s technical drumming, Houck’s simplified riff structure along with his gravel-y yet melodic yell, the band have long operated with their own mystic mutation of hard rock jamming. But since reforming, the duo have intentionally tried to morph their sound to incorporate more doom into the mix. The stretch of time Houck spent in Seattle is probably the strongest influence.
HOUCK: “I feel like that whole Seattle experience was really awful in retrospect, ‘cause there was a long period where I didn’t play music, I was just trying to survive. But I did get to go to shows and see a lot of rad local stuff.”
WIXOM: “He was around a lot of different stuff in Seattle. There’s a lot of heavier dark stuff over there. At first I was really apprehensive. I didn’t want to go slow and heavy, but I eventually came around, because the one thing I stressed was ‘we can do it, but it still has to sound like us.’ We still have some uptempo parts in a couple of the songs - we don’t have to lose that completely. I think we’re maintaining a good balance with changing our sound, ‘cause it’s not the same at all to what we were doing before, and you can still tell it’s us. But really there’s no rules when it comes to what you create, what you put out & what you do. There’s really no rules.”
During the group’s hiatus, Wixom was living in Leavenworth still playing drums in groups around the area, playing a stint with Jipsea Party, and then in Panic Bomb, a Ska trio with Drew Bradford and Tiffany Schafer. In 2016 he was a member of Heavy Petting, a revamped incarnation of Warpony, and performed with the Leavenworth combo Riverdog Shakedown throughout the latter half of 2018. Ghost Power!!! had played a few one-off shows in 2015 and ‘16, but the band wasn’t officially back on until Houck moved back from Seattle in 2018. Around that time, the south Wenatchee Warehouse 3 Design Center had begun renting rooms to local bands Himiko Cloud, Human Element & the Nightmares, and Ghost Power!!! jumped onto the opportunity to have a proper rehearsal space.
WIXOM: “He moved back to town, contacted me, and I was like, ‘Alright!’ Warehouse 3 had been going, but it was only word of mouth. I was like fuck, we gotta get into this place. We got in June of 2018.”
Ghost Power!!! returned from their long hibernation in August of 2018 at Hinklefest in Cashmere. As their first set in 2 years began, Houck fittingly shouted over the mic to the crowd of smokers in the parking lot, “where the hell is everyone, we’re fucking Ghost Power!” The crowd filtered in, a mosh pit ensued, and within a half an hour police showed up and shut down the party for noise complaints.
WIXOM: “We realized unless we rock with each other it’s almost futile to rock with other people. I mean, we’re able to do it, but when it came back around to it, we just need to rock with each other.”
Last year the pair returned to local engineer Chad Yenney to record their fourth album Pray For The Amplifiers. Yenney played locally in groups during the ‘90s and has been recording bands in his Earth to Emma recording studio just as long. Along with Ghost Power!!!’s albums The Basement and Heavy Hands, Yenney’s recording resume includes local groups Himiko Cloud, The Felts, Static Altars, Bratt Force, Save The Hero, The Nightmares, and Seattle bands The Ruby Doe, Tarantulada, Stuperhero and Will Rainier & the Pines.
YENNEY: “I first recorded Andrew Houck back when he played in the Carrots, later Broken Branches, Kings of Friday and different iterations of Ghost Power. I personally really like Andrew’s music, his influences and his ever evolving styles. These new songs they’re working on are really a new chapter, Mitch’s drum work is so great and the songs are just cool. I’m stoked for them and really excited about the new tunes.”
In the time since reforming, the group has performed a slew of shows in both Washington and Idaho and were part of Seattle’s 2019 Downstream Music Fest. They have more festival appearances, and a couple more upcoming recording projects on their to-do list for 2020. Pray For The Amplifiers is set to be released at their February 29th performance at Wally’s House of Booze with Himiko Cloud and Wet Temple (from Seattle). The album will be available for purchase on cassette tape (with download cards included).
You can follow the band’s activity on Facebook at fb.com/ghostpowermusic or hear their music at ghostpower.bandcamp.com.