The Tripwires

The Tripwires qualify as a quintessential Seattle supergroup if the definition excludes anyone tied to the grunge era. Drummer Mark Pickerel helped launch both Screaming Trees and Truly yet later associations with Neko Case, Steve Fisk, and Jim Carroll place his résumé sufficiently outside the flannel-shirt orbit to earn an exemption. John Ramberg, who sings lead and plays guitar, logged time in Stumpy Joe and the Model Rockets before entering the Minus 5 alongside Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck. Johnny Sangster handled lead guitar in the Sharing Patrol, the Congratulators, the Dear John Letters, and Steve Turner & His Bad Ideas—the folk-rock side project led by Mudhoney’s Steve Turner—while also serving as producer and engineer for numerous Pacific Northwest artists. Bassist Jim Sangster has long anchored the Young Fresh Fellows and the Picketts in addition to the lighthearted Boatrampsmen.

The quartet’s histories intersect repeatedly: both Ramberg and Pickerel have backed Neko Case; the Sangster brothers shared membership in the Congratulators and Steve Turner & His Bad Ideas while also serving as occasional players in Mark Pickerel & His Praying Hands; and Ramberg and Jim Sangster each collaborated extensively with Scott McCaughey through the Minus 5 and the Young Fresh Fellows, respectively. In 2007 the four friends entered a studio to cut Makes You Look Around, an album of brisk, Ramberg-penned pop songs issued that autumn on Paisley Pop Records. Although packed calendars have kept the group from extensive road work, they still perform occasional shows in the Pacific Northwest; a June 2009 opening slot for the Young Fresh Fellows prompted a Three Imaginary Girls writer to declare, “The Tripwires blew us right out of our Chucks.”