It was fucking miserable outside - quintessential Tacoma. Gray. Cold. Wet. And depressed. 8:55 a.m. As I waited in the alley (technically South Court D Street) near the downtown Tacoma YMCA - between Market Street and Fawcett Avenue, close to South 13th Street - a woman stared back at me from a fourth story window of her sad, beige, pre-Grit-City-renaissance apartment. Smoking a cigarette, her pants-less figure covered by a slumping, oversized white tank top that even from 100 feet looked dingy - the woman's defeated eyes were piercing. Standing steadfastly in front of a wide-open window, wind and rain kicking up her hair and loose pieces of paper in what appeared to be an otherwise barren and lonely room, the woman looked like she had nowhere to go.

Tapping the toe of my boot in an oil slick puddle and cupping a cigarette of my own, I wished these kids had chosen somewhere else to meet.

"They're kind of little shits," Mark Thomas Deming, the Volcano's "Writer at Large" had told me days earlier, in regard to Apache Chief - the band of "kids" I was meeting on this dismal Friday morning.

"But they're pretty fucking good."

Don't call them kids

As the minutes slid by and the rain continued to fall, I was reminded of a different conversation I'd had not too long ago with another Volcano writer, Rev. Adam McKinney. Considerably younger than me, with the red in his cheeks to prove it, McKinney humbly suggested I change my tack with what we both agreed was the most exciting, vibrant and potent corner of Tacoma's music scene - the young bands.

The kids.

But that was just it, McKinney said. I needed to stop treating Tacoma's young breed of bands like kids. More importantly, I needed to stop calling them kids.

Poorly planned meeting places weren't going to make this task any easier, but I also knew McKinney was right.

The energy, passion and undeniable talent coming from Tacoma's young bands has been obvious for far longer than it's been hip to talk about it - since about the time SOTA became a household acronym and Smilin' Andrew Foard was standing outside of Hell's Kitchen bumming cigarettes. From Durango 95 to the Freakouts to Makeup Monsters, Red Hex, the Gypsies and - the reason for this clandestine rendezvous - Apache Chief, Tacoma's young music scene isn't something to be humored or ignored. It's grown into legitimacy. Regardless of age, the music speaks.

This I knew going in. What I didn't know was why in god's name Miles VanMatre, Apache Chief's guitarist and frontman, had insisted on meeting me in a shitty alley. More importantly, though, I didn't know what the fresh insides of Tacoma's young music scene really looked and smelled like. I understood something was going on, but I also understood I was an outsider.

While I knew one interview wouldn't answer all those questions, or indoctrinate me, I did hope to get a little closer to the truth.

First, though, I would have settled for getting out of the rain.

A trip inside

Eventually, after momentarily retreating to my car, I saw VanMatre, bassist Ruben Aleman and drummer Jake Hupp go bounding past me - seemingly much less bothered by the precipitation. That's one of the things about youth - even within the day-to-day gloom, rays of hope pierce through - an outlook made evident by the bounce in their steps. After tentatively hopscotching potholes filled with black rainwater to catch up with Apache Chief, we agreed a retreat to indoors was in order.

The walk back to VanMatre's tall, skinny home - where he lives with his dad, the band practices, and Beatles' memorabilia covers the walls - is short, and soon I'm petting the family dog, firing up the conversation and trying to act hip and young enough to belong. For their part, Apache Chief seems both wholly unimpressed by my presence, and happy to be talking about their passion - music. It was probably the reaction I deserved. The band has recently been informed of their spot in this year's EMP Sound Off! competition, one of 12 hopefuls out of 130 applicants to be selected - but they're not gloating. Although the Sound Off! Competition has gone a long way toward making bands like Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, Schoolyard Heroes, New Faces and Tacoma's Makeup Monsters household names to fans of local indie music, Apache Chief acts as though the idea of music competing is kind of gimmicky.

The band is wise beyond their years.

VanMatre, Hupp and Aleman begin to tell me about the creation of Apache Chief, which takes the conversation all the way back to May. With Aleman and VanMatre finding their way to Apache Chief off the heels of an unfulfilling experience in another, now defunct young "up-and-coming" Tacoma band, the poppier Intrepid Young Sleuths, their current project is a chance for the SOTA students to do whatever the fuck they sonically desire - which carries Apache Chief from craters of stoned sludge to surf rock to breakneck punk.

Later, VanMatre would pass me two CDs, both packaged in stapled white paper adorned with adolescent ballpoint pen scribbles. One, recorded live at Bob's Java Jive, includes the hard-to-decipher, handwritten instructions, "Sit back and pretend like you were there."

Two days later, I'd do as I was told. I scribbled some nearly indecipherable notes of my own.

Apache Chief is filled with a sloppy, fevered angst - the kind of angst only the young can pull off, like they know better than you and are going to live longer anyway, so who the fuck cares. The band's live Java Jive recording, highlighted by the detuned "Starvick's Van," "Frank," "Witch Hammer" and "Mutations" makes Apache Chief seem most comfortable at quicker, easier to master, ADD punk speeds; but they show the most potential on the gigantically lethargic, Mudhoney-grunge churners that make this disc more than youthful rehearsal. Apache Chief can tiptoe in sludge, surf and rockabilly, and play the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" with the salty piss and vinegar it deserves.

"Apache Chief is super raw and abrasive and noisy," Jessi Reed, EMP's Public Programming coordinator would tell me later. "I've heard from a couple of staff members who have chosen these guys as their personal favorites for Sound Off! this year."

Back inside VanMatre's living room, Apache Chief tries to describe the band's appeal.

"For me, I didn't want a poppy sound. I wanted dark," adds VanMatre.

"Because we're dark," a laughing Aleman chimes back.

"Yeah," responds VanMatre.  "I'm going to move to Norway" - the discussion devolving into something more like a third-period BS session than an interview, which feels like progress.

Bigger picture

More than a story about Apache Chief - a band that, for all I know, might youthfully implode at any moment and scatter into a thousand, nitrogen rich pieces - this is a story about Tacoma's young music scene, a scene that few of us, outside the SOTA population and our city's 15-21 year-olds, have ever truly seen or understood.

Apache Chief tells me about boom times and lulls, moments when the young music scene in Tacoma seemed on the cusp of explosion, only to recoil like a turtle into dormancy. The band doesn't seem to think twice about the fact that their provided timeline is measured in months, not years, so I decided not to either.

"I think definitely younger bands are taken seriously," says VanMatre. "Within Tacoma."

Other places, they all agree - not so much.

They don't seem to give a fuck. Outside of a desire for more all-ages venues, Apache Chief is content with Tacoma.

"There's nothing really to do except play music," offers VanMatre. "Which is cool."

"The Tacoma scene definitely has its moments, but a lot of the times it's pretty dead," Issac Solverson of Makeup Monsters says of Tacoma's relationship with its young bands. "I think that for young musicians or bands sometimes this can be a good thing. I think people have to focus more on the music they are actually making rather than the scene."

That's fine for the kids, but what about older Tacoma? How are we to soak up what's happening?

Realizing and acknowledging that there is, in fact, a legitimate young music scene in Tacoma seems like a good place to start.