Almost every Dead Moon song belongs to one of three modes. All of the trio’s members came of age in the late 60s, and slower, folkier tunes like “I Won’t Be the One” are beautifully personal and honest. As I make the trek out to 82nd Drive in Clackamas to interview Toody about growing up as musician in Portland, I wonder if discussing the past will tap into a similar emotional space as when, while on stage, she sings to vocalist/guitarist Fred Cole, her bandmate of nearly 20 years and husband of almost 40, “I won’t be the one who walks away / I won’t be the one who fades.”

I pull up at the old-west looking building where the Coles used to run Tombstone Music, and where many of the instruments remain, waiting to be sold online. I walk inside the open door into a hot, deserted room littered with instruments and junk. The surroundings remind me of the red leather boots Toody wore when I saw the band last spring at Lewis & Clark College, and Fred’s trade-marked wide-rimmed, limp country hat, as well as the second mode of Dead Moon’s music: Sinister and Southern-sounding. For a minute, I’m a little nervous, recalling the dark blues mystique of songs like “Room 213,” which, with its “man with no eyes” in “the room full of broken mirrors” is almost like a voodoo dream.

But, as I follow the sounds of Fred and Toody’s voices up a staircase, past a sign that says “smoking area,” and find them smoking, both sporting more worn versions of the piles of Dead Moon t-shirts that abound, I begin to realize that the tone of the afternoon will match that of Dead Moon’s tough, raucous, celebrative punk numbers like “Fire in the Western World.” Fred has to split to take care of business, and I begin to talk to Toody, who begins smoking and doesn’t stop until I leave more than an hour later.

In what part of town did you grow up?
Toody: When I was really really tiny, my folks were out in Wood Village in what the post war housing at that point. And then they bought a small cinder block house on 103rd off of Glisan, and there was nothing else around there—it was all raspberry fields and shit like that then. I was born in 48 so that was the early 50’s. When I was about nine we moved to a new subdivision on 146th off of Stark. There were like 6 or 7 houses and the rest was all forest land. I’ve pretty much always been in Southeast and this city’s changed a lot.

Was the musical climate a lot different then too?
Oh, way different. You were surrounded by live music all the time. There were a lot of all-ages places because we were—and still are—the biggest bulk of the population, so they had to cater to us. There were all kinds of teenage clubs. There was the Folk Singer ; there was another place [Caffe Espresso] that Darcelle [the female impersonator] used to run. There was one out in Beaverton, some skating rink way out in Southeast, and Division Street Corral was going on. Paul Revere and the Raiders used to play there all the time.

What was the first show you saw?
First show ever? Oh, gosh. I used to go to Cafe Orpheus , and at that point, it was all acoustic music rather than electric music. So I listened to a lot of people that were amazing, like Michael Grimes , who played flamenco guitar and was just incredible, and a lot of different people who played folk songs. PH Phactor , which was a jug band, had a guy who played washboard and did off-the-wall stuff like weird versions of “Teddy Bear’s Picnic,” just real campy kind of stuff. I used to go see Steve Bradley , who at that point was a young kid like us, too, 16 or 17, and he had a band called the U.S. Cadenza , which was great, and the Tweedy Brothers came around that same time and they were both electric bands.

What was the first album you ever bought?
I got introduced to rock and roll in high school, naturally when the Beatles first came out. The first album I ever bought was the original Meet the Beatles, and I pretty much bought all their stuff. I got into all the folk music, Dylan and Joan Baez and all that stuff and one of my best girlfriends had a pen pal in England, and through her and her friends we had heard of the Rolling Stones before they ever broke here in the states.

Would you say the Beatles was the first band you ever loved?
Oh yeah of course. I actually saw the Beatles on their first tour in 1964 up in Seattle so that was my first big concert. I saw the stones in ‘66 here in Portland, but there was a lot of stuff going on locally too: I saw the Kingsmen when I was in 8th grade when they played a sock hop in the basement of some catholic school.

When did you meet Fred?
I met him when [his former band] the Weeds first came to town in October 1966. They left Vegas and pit stopped in San Francisco and decided they didn’t dig that town. Supposedly their manager had arranged for them to play with the Yardbirds at the Fillmore, so they had this huge send off party and big gig and all that stuff in Vegas. But when they got there, knocked on the backstage door and said, “We’re the weeds, we’re going to play with the Yardbirds tonight,” they said, “No you’re not. Who told you that?” It was totally bogus. But they had already packed up and moved out of their place, so they hung around San Francisco for a few days and just had enough bad incidents to where they thought, man, we don’t want to be here. They were all draft age and freakin’ about that, so they were actually heading to Vancouver BC, ran out of gas here in Portland, and asked a young girl on the street who happened to be a friend of mine if there was any place for live bands to play. And of course there definitely was at that time, and she told them about the Folk Singer and they went up there and auditioned. They were an amazing live band like the early, early Stones, and the guy who ran the place was like “Whoa, this town’s never seen anything like you before,” and just hired them on the spot. They were the house band there for a while. I used to go there after school and on weekends to see bands and just kind of volunteer, help clean the place up or whatever. We just kind of saw each other around for a month or so and he finally came up and talked to me and shit went from there. We got married in June of ’67.

When did you start playing music together?
After the Weed’s album came out, everything just sort of fizzled. The management was trying to push the band in a totally different direction than what they started out at, and Fred couldn’t handle it and just said enough of this shit and split. Then he just sort of meandered around with a lot of different bands that didn’t really do anything with people he knew here in Portland: Musical chairs like bands do, but he just couldn’t come up with a good combination again. In the mid-seventies he was just tired of revolving players and just thought “Hey, you’d be great! If we go on the road, we can go together, it’ll be cool.” So we started the Rats and he started playing guitar and taught me how to play bass but we kept changing drummers all the time, so after a couple of other bands, he decided he wanted to just go back to basics and play old style rock and roll, a lot like what he had done in the Weeds. We knew Andrew [Loomis] and thought he looked great and was an interesting person and knew he played drums, and thought we’d just do something real basic. It just took off from there. It was a great combination right from the first time we got together with Andrew to practice and we’ve been at it ever since.

So Fred taught you how to play bass? Had you played music before?
I took piano in the 7th or 8th grade, something like that, but luckily punk was just real simple. Not only that but with a few exceptions almost everybody was just learning their instruments and experimenting around. Here in Portland, there was luckily a wide variance of what was considered punk at the time. Between Smegma which was basically a noise band, to the Four Skins which was like the Dead Boys or Sex Pistols, to Greg Sage and the Wipers. To this day he goes, “I don’t know how I got lumped into punk.” But pretty much anything that anybody was doing that was original and different went.

And there wasn’t really an expectation for virtuosity.
Hell no! A lot of time the funkier the better. So everybody kind of slowly learned instruments and widened their horizons a little bit. It was the perfect time for me to try something like that and not feel intimidated because everybody else was just smashing and thrashing too.

How did you and Fred first get exposed to punk?
He was in King Bee, and they were kind of doing a real grungy, nasty, blues riffs kind of sound, and they actually got put on the bill with the Ramones in Portland in ‘78. So we’re standing backstage wathcin’ the energy of this band, and Fred’s going, “Oh my God this is awesome! I’ve gotta start doing something like this band; I just have to.”

When was your first performance?
The first gig that we played was about 2 weeks after Fred taught me four songs or something like that. He goes, “Oh, by the way, I booked us a gig,” and I go “Wait, man! I am not ready!” But he said “Everything’s just straight ahead, just do three chords and keep the beat.” We played somebody’s house party, just on their living room floor, and we started playing all these little places around town.

You had sold instruments for years at the music shops you and Fred owned; had you ever thought about playing in a band before that?
I’m still amazed to this day I’m up on stage. If Fred hadn’t talked me into it, I doubt if I ever would have done it but I’m glad I did. Different things had appealed to be about being onstage like acting and stuff, but thinking about actually being a musician and being on stage…no…

So it was scary at first?
It scared the piss out of me! It does everybody. You’re up there, you’re bare in front of people. And singing especially: It took me a few years to get comfortable with it, and it’s only been the last 10 years that I really take to it and enjoy being up there.

Was the punk scene a lot different for you than the Folk Singer?
Actually it was so reminiscent. We feel lucky as hell to have lived through that experience twice. We had complete and total involvement in making the scene happen in sponsoring gigs, promoting gigs, the second time around we were actually supplying instruments and helping people out with good cheap stuff that they can afford.

Do you think that having the shop being a part of the scene before you formed a band affected you when you began to play shows?
It gave us a different realization of the music business and how important everybody’s roll is. Whether it’s you writing stuff, the kids putting up posters, drawing the posters, cleaning up the room afterwards, on and on and on, we’re very appreciative to everybody who has a job to do at any venue anywhere we play anywhere in the world. We still feel that way: Like no job is above us or beneath us. It takes everything to make it happen; it’s not just the band up there for an hour and a half.

Do you think that your development as a musician was purely a product of the times? Could it have been the same anywhere else?
A lot of people were packing up and moving to San Francisco or what was supposedly the hotspot at the time, but being from Portland, I’m glad I got a chance to be a part of the history of this town, and to see all the changes Portland’s had in a million different ways and to have been a part of it.

Photo: Toody Cole playing at Dante’s at Musicfest Northwest on Sept. 9, 2006. By Michael S. Day.

The WW cover story which also features Zia Mccabe (Dandy Warhols), Jumbo (Lifesavas), and Brandon Summers (Helio Sequence).

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