I just didn’t have any experience with “friends in listenable bands” before meeting Arlie Carstens. We both came up in the same skateboarding and snowboarding era and smashed our heads on the Indie Rock in our respective corners of the world. I met Arlie up at Government Camp in 1995 on a camp ambulance run down to Gresham to get him stitched up. We became fast friends. I’d see him when he rolled through Bend on snowboard trips, always trading band recommendations and war stories.

And then Juno’s This Is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes came out in 1999, and it BLEW ME THE FUCK AWAY.

I just didn’t know how to process the power, craft, poetry and unfuckwithability of the songs. They were beautifully written, recorded, mixed, toiled-over and released on a proper record label, DeSoto Records. With beautiful graphic design by Jason Farrell of Bluetip, too!

And I knew Arlie? A friend and his buddies made this incredible thing? They sure did. Juno was a band I would’ve bought from the record store! And loved! And that still moves me.

Arlie and I would catch up every couple months on the phone. He’d turned me on to so many new bands, and we’d discuss our lives in Seattle and Minneapolis. I got to do a couple graphics for them, and then they came rolling through Minneapolis. I did my best to drum up kids from MCAD to go to the show. No dice. I went and devoured each song and snapped some shots, just so proud of Arlie and the band. It was powerful to see art like that and get to know the fellas behind it. It was so inspiring from my little art school perch in Minneapolis.

Thank you, Arlie. And thank you, Gabe Carter.

I still listen to and love those Juno records, albeit with a bit of bittersweet tinge.