Gruntruck… those guys were one of the real workhorses of the early Seattle scene.
I first heard them around ’91 when someone at the record store put on Inside Yours. Ben McMillan had that voice that just grabbed you — he came from Skin Yard, so you already knew he could deliver. The band had this groove that felt different from a lot of the other stuff going around at the time. It wasn’t trying to be pretty, it was just solid.
By the time I moved here in ’92 they were already a regular thing in the clubs. I caught them live a few times that year, but one night at the Off Ramp really stuck with me. The place was packed and hot, and they played like they meant it. They went through stuff from Push and the older songs, and the crowd was right there with them the whole set. No big showy moves — just four guys laying it down.
They started in ’89 when Ben and a couple of the other Skin Yard guys decided to jam on the side. They put out Inside Yours in 1990 and then Push in ’92, which a lot of us thought was their best one. They toured with some bigger names and even opened for Alice Cooper once, but they never really broke through the way some of the other bands did. I always felt like they got overlooked a bit.
The band kind of faded out after the mid-nineties. They put out one more EP in ’96 and then things went quiet. Last I heard, the guys were doing their own things — some of them still playing around town in other projects.
These days in 2002 I still throw on Push or Inside Yours when I want to remember that early-nineties club sound. Gruntruck were never the band that ended up on MTV or the cover of Spin, but for a lot of us who were going to shows every weekend, they were one of the bands that made the scene feel real.
They didn’t get the big fame, but they earned a ton of respect from the people who were actually there. And that’s the kind of band I’ve always had a soft spot for.