Mudhoney ProfileWhile they may never have received mass adulation or shifted truckloads of units like some of their friends and contemporaries, Seattle rock legends Mudhoney have enjoyed an insanely successful career by most rock’n’roll metrics.
Formed back in 1988 from the ashes of seminal grunge progenitors Green River - other members of whom diverted off to form Pearl Jam - they’ve retained a steady four-piece line-up (with only one membership change over the journey) and released 11 quality studio albums, remaining steadfastly true to their underground ideals.
And while they’re still so often associated with that grunge phenomenon which sprung up around them in the Pacific Northwest during those heady early years and took the region’s aesthetics global - indeed, their 1988 debut single Touch Me I’m Sick and the same year’s Superfuzz Bigmuff EP are cited as foundational releases of the movement - they merrily continued on their way long after that maelstrom was a distant memory.
They never once compromised their primordial guitar sounds nor diluted their cynically humorous worldview, and retained their status as underground icons in the process.
Another defining feature of Mudhoney is their long association with Australia. Having cut their teeth on Oz rock pioneers like The Saints, Radio Birdman and The Birthday Party, as the ‘80s progressed they kept connected with the fertile Aussie guitar counter-culture and began devouring bands like The Scientists, Lubricated Goat (whose bassist Guy Maddison joined the Mudhoney ranks in 2001, that sole line-up change), Feedtime, The Celibate Rifles and Died Pretty (to name but some of the Aussie bands they’ve name-checked as an influence over the years).
Now on the verge of returning to Australia for the tenth time - for a headline run and to celebrate 4ZZZ’s ZED51 anniversary - frontman Mark Arm - who’s also toured Down Under as part of The Monkeywrench, MC3 and The Saints ’73-’78 - seems content at the prospect of the long flight ahead.
“Oh, I always look forward to coming to Australia,” he smiles. “Ten times does seem like quite a lot of times for one band, but not a lot of bands are around for as long as we are. And I guess we were given the opportunity very early on, which was incredible.”
The first Mudhoney Australian took place in early 1990 when they had just two albums to their name - organised by fledgling promoter Stephen ‘Pav’ Pavlovic, who would parlay the connection into booking the first (and only) Nirvana tour a couple of years later - and, unlike today’s ‘in-and-out’ tours, it found the band playing 19 shows over almost seven weeks.
“Yeah, but at that point none of us really had jobs,” Arm laughs. “And we didn't have commitments and family ties at that point, so it was pretty easy.
“For us, we were well aware of what was happening in Australia in the ‘80s - basically starting with Australian punk rock and even like a handful of ‘60s bands and whatnot - so Australia was already kind of a place that we felt a kinship with, musically.
“And the part of the American underground that we felt aligned with also seemed connected to the Australian underground, not necessarily in an actual, ‘We know these people!’ kind of way, but more in spirit and approach.
“We’re talking about bands who were interested in entertaining themselves and their friends, just kind of knowing that any idea of trying for the charts was just a stupid, out-of-reach dream, you know what I mean? So you just kind of make the music you want to make and not worry about pleasing anybody.
“But, I mean, we were pretty lucky early on in so many ways - there’s lots of good bands that don't get the opportunities that we had. You know, luckily we had friends that were just starting a label, while there are a lot of bands that might just be somewhere in a remote town and struggling by themselves without a lot of infrastructure around them.
“We kind of popped into the hole that was left by Green River's breakup at Sub Pop, and [label co-founder] Bruce Pavitt had a lot of connections in the fanzine world, so that opened a lot of doors for us and - we were off and running basically on the strength of who we knew.”
Speaking of longstanding Seattle institutions that in some circles remain synonymous with grunge despite operating for decades in the interim, the spectre of Sub Pop Records remains inexorably entwined in the Mudhoney narrative.
Not only have they been putting out Mudhoney’s albums for the last 36 years - apart from a major label sojourn during the mid-‘90s alternative boom - but Arm has also been employed there as warehouse manager for more than two decades, allowing him the flexibility to keep the band a going concern.
While Green River had already been Sub Pop alumni - the indie label having released their second EP Dry As A Bone (1987) and their posthumous debut album Rehab Doll (1988) - Mudhoney were famously signed to the label after Arm handed Pavitt a rough-as-guts boombox demo tape, but the singer explains that in reality the groundwork had already been laid.
“We knew each other pretty well at that point,” he recalls. “We'd like hang out and get drunk and play records for each other - you know, that kind of friendship. And I think he knew where we were coming from - he knew all the right people and reference points.
“When the band started, he knew of The Melvins, he knew of Bundle of Hiss, and of course they tried to put out a Green River record. .. well, I mean, they did; they put out two releases eventually, though with the second one the band broke up before the mixing even started on Rehab Doll.
“And I worked with him at [company responsible for background and elevator music] Muzak, and I did hand him a boombox recording, which was just impossible to hear what was going on because it was just done with a condenser mic, so it was all just [makes distortion sound].
“So he was just, like, ‘I can't tell what's going on here; why don't you just go into the studio with [Seattle engineer] Jack Endino over a weekend?’ So we did just that, and we recorded five songs, and two of those were the first single.
“I mean, that was super lucky. And also we were friends with Tom Hazelmyer, who at that point started a label out of Minneapolis called Amphetamine Reptile, but the only band on it at that point was his own band Halo Of Flies.
“But then he did actually the first thing that was released into the world with Mudhoney's name on it, a seven-inch compilation with us [featuring their song Twenty Four] and the U-Men, and I think The Thrown Ups and maybe one other band… of course, Halo Of Flies! That was [revered 1988 7” compilation] Dope, Guns ‘N Fucking in the Streets Volume One.
“But that stability we get from Sub Pop - particularly myself - is something that I do not take for granted at all. Especially on the work side of things, which allows me to have health insurance and, you know, have a job and leave and come back and still have a job. Whereas, if I didn't have that stability, I don't know if I would be able to go on tour the way we go on tour.”
Even the fact that Mudhoney’s impending Antipodean sojourn finds them playing an extended run of shows in New Zealand for the first time - including the band’s first ever shows on the South Island - is an experience robbed of some novelty by Arm’s long-standing Sub Pop affiliation.
“We've only played in Auckland twice,” he tells. “Once in 1990 on the way over for that first [Australian] tour, and then again when we played the last Big Day Out there in 2014.
“But Sub Pop, when the company was a little bit smaller, to mark The Postal Service record going platinum - which was the first record to have gone platinum on the label since Bleach - [co-founder] Jonathan [Poneman] took the staff down to New Zealand for basically like a retreat, or whatever. We used to have these trips where we’d go someplace and then have this sort of ‘in-person end-of-year meeting’.
“That part was kind of dumb because you'd be in New Zealand or somewhere and wanting to go check things out, but you were stuck in like a hotel conference room for a day of it. I mean, we did get a chance to see things and everything: we landed in Christchurch and then went to the west side of the South Island and back, and then came up through Wellington. Can’t wait to check it out again.”
Arm has long remained an avowed music lover, and working in the Sub Pop warehouse even proves useful in keeping him connected to what’s going on in the outside music world.
"I don't chase new music down as much anymore, but I still hear it,” he grins. “I've got a couple people that I work with that usually play the music in the warehouse, which is good because it gets me out of my comfort zone. If I was to play the music, it'd probably be just like the same things that I've been playing and cycling through for the last 40 years!
“And one of my friends is deep into the reissue world and is constantly finding weird stuff from weird places, you know, like those kinds of comps where it’s, ‘Oh, here's all this weird Laotian psychedelia' or whatever. And then there’s another friend; he tends to be more, like, ‘What's this new band all about?’ And his tastes are nice and broad, they go from like sort of like just underground rock stuff to what’s happening in the current jazz world, it’s pretty cool.”
This conduit to current trends has yet to manifest in new Mudhoney music in recent times, though Arm discloses that there’s still some recordings and remixes from their most recent album Plastic Eternity (2023) which will hopefully see the light of day soon.
“There are a heap of extras,” he says. “There’s seven extra songs, which is enough for an EP, but as you know, an EP sells for less than an album but costs the exact same amount to make. So we have enlisted a couple of people to do some sort of remixes, like our friend Johnny Sangster did a really cool dub version of Almost Everything, and then [Australian producer and Eddy Current Suppression Ring guitarist] Mikey Young has done something where he's taken a couple different songs and made something completely new.
“And Robert [Hampson], who is in that UK band Loop, is potentially working on something, and hopefully the Clipping people are working on something too. So when that's all together, that'll fill things out and make it hopefully kind of cool and interesting.”
In the meantime we’ve got the Aussie shows to look forward to, and - in the absence of new music - it seems we’re in for a setlist spanning Mudhoney's entire storied career.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Arm laughs. "We have yet to get together to work up a setlist, so that'll happen when we all get to Melbourne - we’re going to have a few days there to get our shit together. I imagine it'll be not too different from these types of setlists that we've been playing recently, because that's the stuff that we know the best.”
When coaxed into disclosing his favourite of the many Mudhoney traipses Down Under, Arm concedes that their third trip in 1993 is the one that remains fondest in their memories.
“Well, the one that kind of sticks out as sort of legendary in our minds was the first Big Day Out that we were on,” he admits. “Because, you know, it felt so weird that we were amongst all these bands that we loved and we had that whole Wayne's World ‘We're not worthy!’ kind of feeling.
“There was Iggy Pop, The Bad Seeds, Beasts Of Bourbon, Sonic Youth, The Hard Ons with our friend Jerry A from Poison Idea, Cosmic Psychos were on several of the shows - it was just, like, ‘How did we get to be on this?’ That was our feeling at the time; we knew even then that it was like a pretty great thing.”
Now closing in on four decades since the Mudhoney story started back in Seattle, Arm admits to being content with his band’s place in history and the adventures he’s been able to experience with some of his closest mates.
“Sure, it is what it is, and it’s been a blast,” he reflects. “And, you know, even if I was like kind of disappointed in what we’ve achieved or not achieved, it would be terrible to dwell on that.
“We didn't really have any ambition going into it. I mean, all we wanted to do was come up with records that sounded like something we would imagine that we would want to hear, even though we're not going to listen to our own music, if that makes any sense.
“Like at the end of the day, are we happy with this record? Does it sound good to us? And that's kind of all we really wanted to do, you know, make music that we like with our friends. And we’re really lucky in that regard too - we started out as friends and have remained so. A lot of bands don’t get that.”
Mudhoney return to Australia and New Zealand in October for a headline tour and to perform at 4ZZZ’s ZED51 concert. Tickets are now available.
Press Play Presents
MUDHONEY
AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2026
FRIDAY 16 OCTOBER - The Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne VIC - Moshtix
SATURDAY 17 OCTOBER - Torquay Hotel, Torquay VIC - Oztix
SUNDAY 18 OCTOBER - Theatre Royal, Castlemaine VIC - Oztix
TUESDAY 20 OCTOBER - Volta, Ballarat VIC - Oztix
WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER - Felons Barrel Room, Manly NSW - Oztix
THURSDAY 22 OCTOBER - Factory Theatre, Sydney NSW - Ticket Search
FRIDAY 23 OCTOBER - King Street, Newcastle NSW - Oztix
SATURDAY 24 OCTOBER - ZED 51, Brisbane QLD - Oztix
SUNDAY 25 OCTOBER - The Northern, Byron Bay NSW - Moshtix
WEDNESDAY 28 OCTOBER - Blue Smoke, Christchurch, NZ - Flicket
THURSDAY 29 OCTOBER - Meow, Wellington, NZ - Flicket
FRIDAY 30 OCTOBER - Totara St, Tauranga, NZ - Flicket
SATURDAY 31 OCTOBER - Harbour Hotel, Raglan, NZ - Flicket
SUNDAY 1 NOVEMBER - Double Whammy, Auckland, NZ - Flicket
