Thrash and Blood

The metal-loving, amp-designing, scene-building Verellen brothers and their radically sensible dad

These arms are cute little snakes: Ben Verellen, left, and brother dave in a pre-post-hardcore moment.

A couple summers ago, Ben Verellen and I began hosting monthly BBQs at his shop on 36th Street in Fremont. Ben had just opened his business, designing custom amps for guitarists fond of heavy rock ’n’ roll; he was also close to completing a B.S. in electrical engineering at the University of Washington and playing in Helms Alee, an up-and-coming metal band recently signed to Hydra Head.

We figured bringing together local rockers to cook with fire would foster a community. We knew we’d hit the mark when we shared a plate of spareribs cooked to tender-loving perfection by Tad Doyle. Between crushing empty cans of Rainier and debating how to grill chicken without burning the shop down, connections were made and the Verellen Amplifiers business picked up. Members of Blonde Redhead, Black Breath, Russian Circles, and Sick of It All swear by his gear.

Ben’s older brother Dave often showed up to those BBQs, sharing Ben’s dark blond good looks but exuding a more serious demeanor behind his intense blue eyes—perhaps developed while working as a firefighter for a South Tacoma fire and rescue station. This was after his stint as leader of Botch, a metal-inflected hardcore band he formed while still in high school. In their decade-long career, before breaking up in 2002, Botch influenced countless younger bands—including the Blood Brothers and Akimbo—with their aggressive, mathematical take on punk. He currently fronts Narrows, a project similar to Botch but with a sharper focus on melody and dynamics.

The brothers sometimes brought their sister Laura Jewett—a sweet-tempered, equally blond physical therapy student and former ballerina who’s currently my Pilates instructor—and, one time, their father Jim. Jim wasn’t a musician but a music-loving intellectual with a well-honed sense of social justice, a professional judge-turned-arbitrator who raised his kids with a balance of freedom and accountability.

I thought, here’s a family that’s doing it right. The more I learned about the Verellens, the more I respected their commitment to family, friends and their art.

Living in the Tacoma suburb of Lakewood during the early ’90s, hints the brothers would wind up in the music business showed early. “Dave was in an imaginary band when he was 10 called Vampyre with a ‘Y,’” says Ben, now 31, sitting with his brother on the sun-soaked deck of the coffee shop next door to Verellen Amplifiers. “I remember trying to learn a crappy graphic design program on our computer to make a logo for him.” Dave moved beyond fictitious bands to real instruments, luring Ben from an early interest in hardcore gangsta rap. “When Dave started Botch, that seemed way more awesome to me,” Ben says. “I started stealing records from Dave’s room and making tapes of them.”

“We had a pretty good relationship,” Dave says. “We took him on tour in Europe and across the States right out of high school. There was a baby brother dynamic—I made him wear the fanny pack and be our roadie.” “And I was like, ‘Fuck yeah, I’m a roadie!’” Soon enough, Ben formed his own band,Harkonen. Rather than compete like a pair of punks, the bands worked in harmony like a pair of brothers. “People called us Baby Botch,” Ben says. “It wasn’t even on our radar to compete. If Botch took us to play a show in Bellingham, that was a huge victory for us.”

When Botch went on its first tour to Canada, Jim Verellen was along for the ride. “I offered to drive them all up, chaperone and be a roadie,” Jim says. “I figured as long as the kids were involved in something constructive and positive that it was a good idea to support them.”

He went as far as paying for a hotel room and letting the kids party. Not that it was much of a risk—they were straight edge at the time.

“We had a really supportive exposure to what’s considered the ‘punk rock way’ of booking our own shows at VFW halls and being responsible for doing things ourselves,” Dave says. “It’s rad to look back on the choices my parents made. They were betting on the fact that they’d given us a good example to follow.”

Jim sees a parallel between his kids’ music and their personalities, both of which, directly or not, he helped develop. “I’m no music guru,” he says, “but my sense is that all their bands have always been characterized by great sincerity in their music and what they communicate. They’re not putting up some kind of façade to be popular. I think that’s the kind of people they are.”