Before Sleater-Kinney took the stage at the South Sound Block Party, Evergreen had a chance to reconnect with two alumni whose music is deeply intertwined with the college and Olympia.

Following the band’s sound check, Carrie Brownstein ’98 and Corin Tucker ’94 met with Evergreen representatives and posed with an evergreen tie dye shirt, which felt like a fitting reunion in the city where the two musicians first began creating music together more than three decades ago.

Later that evening, Brownstein and Tucker headlined the first night of the South Sound Block Party as Evergreen alumni and community members cheered them on. From the stage, they also acknowledged their connection to Evergreen, bringing the relationship between the college, the band and Olympia’s music history into the center of their energetic performance.

The Friday-night performance offered a powerful beginning to Return to Evergreen, the college’s annual alumni weekend. Evergreen sponsored the Aug. 28–29 festival, which brings regional and national artists to Olympia while celebrating the city’s distinctive musical legacy. The following day, more than 200 alumni gathered on campus to learn, reconnect and experience Evergreen together again. Attendees represented 49 of Evergreen’s 54 graduating classes and hailed from 15 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.  

For Brownstein and Tucker, returning to an Olympia stage was also a return to a place that helped shape their creative lives. The two met while attending Evergreen during a period of extraordinary artistic activity in Olympia. Tucker was already performing with the influential band Heavens to Betsy, while Brownstein played with Excuse 17. They formed Sleater-Kinney in 1994, developing a sound that emerged from the Pacific Northwest’s independent music community while refusing to be confined by it.

Over the ensuing decades, Sleater-Kinney became one of the most acclaimed and influential bands in American independent rock. Brownstein and Tucker’s interlocking guitars and urgent vocals about power, identity, relationships and resistance helped the band build an international audience and influence generations of musicians.

Their work beyond Sleater-Kinney has been equally wide-ranging. Brownstein is also an acclaimed writer, actor and director, best known as the co-creator and star of the television series “Portlandia.” Tucker has continued to perform and record, through projects including the Corin Tucker Band and Filthy Friends. Through it all, their creative partnership has maintained a connection to the experimental, independent spirit they encountered as students at Evergreen.

That made the South Sound Block Party meetup more than a photo opportunity. It was a moment of recognition between Evergreen and two alumni who took what they began here and made it entirely their own.

The same spirit carried into Return to Evergreen on Saturday, when alumni returned to campus for hands-on workshops, seminars, conversations and social events to reconnect with the people and place that shaped their lives.

Together, the two events made for an alumni weekend rooted in creativity, community and return: Evergreen linked up with Sleater-Kinney, Greeners filled the crowd for a hometown performance, and more than 200 alumni came back to campus to discover what still connects them.

For one late-summer weekend, the Evergreen community returned: not only to campus, but to the heart of Olympia.