A new Kickstarter campaign is raising money to remaster a largely lost album by Napalm Beach, a proto-grunge band with Longview roots.
The campaign is being organized by Erika Meyer, wife of the band’s late guitarist and lead singer Chris Newman, to give the band’s 1987 album “Moving To and Fro” its first official U.S. release.
Napalm Beach was one of many bands that was locally famous in the Pacific Northwest‘s underground music scene that would eventually create grunge music in the early ‘90s. The band was a regular presence at Portland’s famous Satyricon punk club.
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The band’s style ranges from two-minute blasts of punk to the acid-rock and metal that helped shape grunge. Newman’s baritone voice echoes Jim Morrison on the albums and gets spikier when he gets on stage.
According to a 1993 Daily News article, Soundgarden opened for the band before they took off nationally and Newman briefly lived in the same house as Courtney Love in the early 1980s.
“I think these albums are really good and should be released. But I’ve had a difficult time getting any label interest at all,” Meyer said.
Newman was born in Longview and lived there on-and-off as an adult, working at a relative’s sign shop and taking other jobs in between bands. Napalm Beach was the biggest of multiple bands he joined or started during his life.
Meyer met Newman in 2007, as he was slowly recovering from a decade of struggles with drug addiction and homelessness. Around the same time, Newman was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame and began performing with Meyer in a new band called Boo Frog.
Newman died of cancer last year at age 67. Sam Henry, the drummer for Napalm Beach as well as renowned Portland punk band Wipers, died in February 2022.
Like many small or independent bands, tours and live music were the major focus for Napalm Beach. “Moving To and Fro” was recorded over a few days in a Portland warehouse, had a limited cassette release in the U.S. and an even smaller run of vinyl albums in Germany, where the band regularly toured.
Still, the music found a fan base.
“It was hard to put out a record but you could duplicate cassettes and distribute them,” Meyer said.
Meyer said the money would allow her to purchase the original master tapes for the album and have them professionally transferred to digital. The digital remastered songs will be released through Skullman Records and, if the campaign is successful enough, allow for a limited run of vinyl records to be made.
As an add-on for the Kickstarter, Meyer pulled together a music zine covering Napalm Beach’s first four records. The zine quotes excerpts from a memoir Newman had been working on before his death.
According to Newman’s writings, “Moving To and Fro” was intended to be a journey through the styles of music he loved at different points in his life. He had considered releasing it as a solo album because it might be “too diverse” for Napalm Beach.
“I got so thoroughly involved in the process, and the deeply personal music, that when I returned to Longview, I felt a dark sadness, just like when I was a kid,” Newman wrote. “I had finally expressed myself in a gratifying way I had never before experienced.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a source’s quote.