Evan Schoenfeld

Evan was a Pacific NW original. A shy weirdo. A bird like none other. In 2025, he killed himself. He had told his friend the Green Pajama’s Joe Ross he was not going to die from old age. He did not and it was Joe who found him. A few years ago, I had asked Evan if I could release his music – he said no, release someone current, not that old moldy stuff. I had Joe ask him again last fall and this time he said yes. Joe sent me the video of Evan saying yes. I will never know why he changed his mind but I am glad he did. Evan released at least seven albums on cassette, the first half recorded by me, the second half with Joe.

The TDS Sessions includes three cassette albums recorded between 1982 and 1984, “Beowulf’s Breakfast”, “Evan Presley and the Extreme Being: Singing Sensation From The ID” and “I Ching”. The first two were recorded on TEAC 4-track reel-to-reel, “I Ching” was recorded on my then-new TEAC 8-track reel-to-reel. The TDS Sessions also includes Evan’s five earliest recordings with me.

Evan was always a bit of an odd duck. Our first session was in my apartment back-bedroom studio in Wallingford. I think our mutual pal the long-gone Eric Erickson sent him my way. Evan was probably my first paying customer, ten bucks an hour! At that first session, he was so shy he could not look me in the eye. His compositions were both weird and delightful. We kept it pretty simple for that first batch, mostly just a guitar and voice. If you want to experience Evan’s development, start with songs 20-25, these were the first and have mostly never been released before. I still love them all, but in this batch, I have to give the prize to “Peace, Love & Eno”, which did appear on Jo Smitty of Mr. Epp’s 1982 cassette comp “The Public Doesn’t Exist” (which also happens to contain my first “public” release as an artist).

Session two became “Beowulf’s Breakfast”, Evan’s first cassette release. By now I had moved to the Queen Anne rental house by the Fremont Bridge and built my dinky basement studio. While small, this was a significant improvement from the apartment – we could have drums! For “Beowulf’s”, Steve Trettevik of The Icons (current GMR solo artist and FreeFormNW radio show sidekick) played drums. Steve is a guitar player and to say he kept the drumming simple is an understatement. Evan played guitar and bass and this was a big step forward. While all the songs on Beowulf are worthy, “Teenage Alien” and “Lust Song” get my special stars!

Next up was “Evan: The Singing Sensation From The ID”. By now I am pretty sure I had upgraded to 8-track reel-to-reel, I played bass and Brother Tim Nelson of The Icons was on “drums, beer and sleazy jokes”. (I have all of Evan’s original hand-lettered xerox covers available on the Bandcamp site as pdf’s – read them!) More great songs – my favorite is the spritely “Drive-in Overture” with Evan doing his best Robbie Krieger “Doors” stylings.

From 1984 came the "I Ching" cassette with, Evan on Vocals and Guitars; Rick Yust (The Icons) on Perfect Bass; Tad Hutcherson (Young Fresh Fellows) – Massive Drums; Jack Oram (Cosmic Tunas) – Synth on #4; Young Fresh Fellows (Scott, Tad, Chuck) – Backing Vocals on #2; and me – Sax on #3, Chanting and EBow on #5. The Young Fresh Fellows had just released their debut album, “The Fabulous Sounds Of The Pacific Northwest”, that year so it was pretty cool to get them for this. Don’t remember how we got that to happen. Amusingly, Evan also managed to get all the members of my then band The Icons to play in one of these three releases. “Europe After The Rain” is the masterpiece from this batch, I also included it on the extended-tracks cassette version 1986 GMR “Monkey Business” compilation. Probably the most ridiculously beautiful of the bunch is his piano version of Hendrix’s “Love Or Confusion”. The cassette cover says the piano was recorded with Russ Scheidelman’s tape deck. Joe recalls he recorded the piano at the UW in a piano practice room that he reserved for the occasion. We then overdubbed the rest at TDS.

“I Ching” was the last batch of recordings I did with Evan. After “I Ching” I introduced him to Joe Ross, then on hiatus from the Green Pajamas, who became Evan’s 4-track portastudio accomplice and lifelong pal. Evan released at least another four albums with Joe, plus some recordings as Glamourpuss, one of which appeared on the first GMR Xmas comp. I mixed some of the songs for Evan’s final release, 1988’s “Indoor Games” on Joe’s Endgame Records label.

I did not try to pretty this stuff up. It is taken from cassettes that I recorded and Evan released at the time. That said, I love this music and think you should too. It comes straight from Evan’s charming if somewhat unusual soul.

Evan's obscurity does not diminish his peculiar greatness. It is Joe and my plan to re-release Evan’s catalog to the world. No timeframe for that to happen.