Seattle’s DIY music scene remains a mystery to most outsiders. Bands like Casi have been kept out of traditional venues by barriers like age restrictions and fees and have turned to hosting DIY shows in public parks. Martin, editor of Real Change Design, sat down with Xay and Eli from Casi to ask them about the DIY scene in the Pacific Northwest.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Real Change: What attracts you to the DIY music scene?
Grind: I feel like our music embodies the DIY scene. When I think of the word “punk,” I think of “do it yourself.” I think about rawness, no excuses, just letting shit happen, and that’s something I really respect. There were so many shows where niggas didn’t have a PA system or maybe someone didn’t have a guitar or bass, but they always made it work. I find this so respectable because I feel like any other scene would fall apart. They’re survivors, they’re problem solvers, and I really respect that.
Eli: The great thing about DIY for us is that we were doing DIY before we even knew what DIY was. In Spanaway, Washington there is no infrastructure and no scene like that unless you’re over 21 and can go to a bar, and even then you’re playing at a karaoke open mic bar. At Spanaway, being a kid is everything. Everything was DIY, and the creation of rap music wasn’t looked at in a cool way. It was like, “Oh, you gotta put on your own show? That’s crazy. Y’all had to make your own music video? That’s cheesy.” So we’ve been doing DIY shit for a damn long time without even knowing it. If you just have the right people around you, it’s like a movement. I fail at DIY because people get props and people are respected for it and because people enjoy it. It’s like a love. It simply recontextualizes it. It feels better when you’re part of a team.
You mentioned that age is one of the barriers for traditional venues. Are there any other barriers?
Eli: Something I’ve noticed, and this is particularly bad for rap music, is security and profiling, even in our own venue in Tacoma. Real art is an amazing place. Don’t get me wrong, Real Art is kind of the pillar of all underground music. But they definitely always had a strange attitude towards rap music. And next thing you know, we were just trying to do SoundCloud rap and shit, and you could clearly tell that the bookers and promoters had something weird against it because they thought that rap music meant violence or that it meant there were going to be drugs and shit on the premises. I think other venues don’t want to take a loss. Especially in smaller towns, they have to have money coming out of the bar for it to make any sense, so they don’t want to take a loss by letting a bunch of kids play a show. That’s definitely why there isn’t much of a venue scene outside of Seattle.
Grind: When it comes to DIY, no one really cares about taking a loss. There are more fire bands in the DIY scene because it’s like, “Bro, I don’t give a fuck. You don’t have any streams? I don’t give a fuck. You ain’t even got music out yet? I fuck with your band – come play my shit, come play my shit, come join me.” There are so many more real connections. You meet so many more people who are passionate about the craft and this work ethic. Many bands don’t do it for money, but for love. This will give you a completely different experience. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy playing venues, but any time it’s a DIY show it’s a banger show for the most part. The venues are always a fifty-fifty kind of thing. At most DIY shows we don’t get paid, but it always feels so much better to play with niggas who want to be there, who want to see something different, who want to experience the shit.
Eli: When we came into this band we already had a lot of experience playing venues with other bands. So when we were ready to play around, we reached out to everyone: everyone we knew, everyone in a big band, every buddy who owns a venue. It’s not like we regretted it. We love it. But our first show was the Sun Studios sale. It was a DIY show with just one microphone. We shared it. We brought our own cables, and even though we were a band that got a little buzz before we stopped making music, we needed DIY to exist from the start. I think that says a lot about what the game looks like out here.
I imagine DIY shows come with a lot of risks, including harassment from the police. I’m wondering if you could talk about these risks and what the community is doing to mitigate them.
Grind: One thing that is always very scary is the drugs and alcohol. Most DIY shows are open to all ages, which has a positive impact on participation. But this is always a really big deal: kids being kids, getting drunk, kids getting hurt, and fucking stupid people starting big fires and causing destruction just to be nervous and cool. I feel like all this shit is so damn cheesy and it’s ruining things. We played a show at Gasworks Park once and it was a wild show, but a lot of the closure was due to people setting a whole fire. I don’t mean a little campfire: They made a raging fire – they thought that shit was funny, but they turned all that shit off, and then they wanted to throw a tantrum. We say, “Brother, if you all hadn’t done that nonsense, we could still have played.” When you do a DIY show, you’re already afraid of being shut down and harassed by the police. You worry about all this other shit and then you don’t use your brain to mitigate the risk and attract even more negative attention when you don’t need to.
Eli: I’ve been thinking about this and I’m glad you asked. This really upset me when I heard that there was a show going on last summer and a boy climbed one of the huge structures at Gasworks Park, fell off and died. I thought that this would be the moment where we would start to think about it and take more responsibility when it comes to our responsibilities when hosting a DIY show in a public place, but to be honest I feel like not much has changed. That same week I saw a video of a show at Cal Anderson Park. Some damn teenager pepper-sprayed a homeless man because he was uncomfortable. There’s a lot of shit like that. I just feel like there’s a problem in Seattle. I’ve been to a lot of DIY shows up north and in Olympia and Spanaway, and this kind of thing doesn’t happen if you just have values and understand what you need to prepare for. I understand that a lot of these shows are about 16 year olds performing for the first time, but it’s really not that hard to hand out a few wristbands at the door. There are ways to convey things like this and it makes me angry that we are giving ourselves a bad reputation. Nobody will care if only Seattle has a problem with unsafe shows. It will be applied to the entire state and the entire DIY community. That’s why I have to give a lot of respect to people like Bat House, Green House, Evil House and others. They understand that putting on a DIY show involves risks, and there are ways to prepare – like bringing a few cases of water, or giving three of your buddies $20 or a damn beer or whatever as payment to keep a lookout. When these kids from Bellevue who’ve never been to a show before come over and see punk dudes and think this is just anarchy, there’s gotta be someone to tell them, “Yo, this is DIY, this is punk, but there’s things to think about here.”
What common misconceptions do people have about the DIY scene?
Grind: They think we’re just causing destruction just to be punk.
Eli: Yes, the dopest, toughest, toughest punk people are nice.
Grind: Beautiful as fuck.
They described the shows as punk, a style of music that I would describe as inherently political. I’m wondering if you see the DIY scene as inherently political.
Eli: It’s political because we are influenced by politics – it’s a chain of events. There are definitely a lot of people at shows who have their own beliefs, but at the end of the day, we have to do DIY shows for a reason. And why is that? We have to put on DIY shows because it’s so expensive to put on a normal show or because of the hurdles placed on these establishments. This is due to the political landscape and the fact that we are in a recession. I don’t think most people at these shows are aware of it, especially the younger ones, but I really don’t think it’s their responsibility. But the politics of the world and America definitely influence the show.
Grind: There are politics and there are good-intentioned people with good intentions, but I think there is a lot of fakery and cosplay behind it. There are a lot of people who say, “I stand for this; I stand for this,” but they’re fucking racist. It’s very counterintuitive.
What is your favorite DIY show you’ve ever played or what are your favorite moments?
Eli: Our Abum release show at Sprinkler Skate Park in our hometown of Spanaway. I don’t want to toot our own horn about blowing the show, but we literally delivered the exact experience we wanted throughout our hometown childhood. We received approval from the city. We got permission from the park but they didn’t provide us with anything, so we pulled a million different strings and got the best PA we could from our DJ friend and my mom sold ice cream out of her truck. Xay’s family was cooking hot dogs. We called in every favor and it was so sick.
Grind: There were so many good ones. That’s definitely the best, but before that, playing Gasworks Park really meant a lot to me. It was our third show. It was back to back. It was the first time we played in front of a big crowd and we didn’t even have a drummer. It was just me and Eli. That set the tone for opening our eyes like we were really like these niggas; We can really do something. That gave us our first big impetus to ask, “How can we improve? How can we do this even better?”
How can people follow you and keep up to date with shows?
@casi_rightnow on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify and all other social media.
https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2026/07/15/no-money-venue-do-it-yourself
