quinn Walker

By Emily Easley

Photos by Sam Fleischner

After years of recording and performing as a solo artist, Quinn now sings and plays guitar for Suckers. The band released an EP last spring, just signed a deal with Gigantic, and are currently touring the US. Quinn's haunting voice and lyrics evoke Bryan Ferry and David Byrne at their rawest moments, and together the four-piece creates a forceful, melodic, golden-pop drone of tribal-bro-ness.

Quinn is one of the kindest people I've ever met, and always seems to have an extra orange hoodie to lend when I get caught in the rain. Here he shares stories of his teen years as a skater-thug-homie, his strange encounters with squirrel-eating old men and spiritual gypsy girls, near-death experiences, drug use, mental illness and even how he once faked his own death.

EE: You’re from Connecticut, right? Where in Connecticut did you grow up?

QW: Stony Creek. It’s a little fisherman village. My parents relocated there because it was really beautiful, really cheap waterfront property. It was just a little blue-collar village when they first moved; now it’s kind of become a tourist attraction.

Did you have siblings?

One younger sister. We were kind of best pals growing up. She was really tomboyish and had like, snaggleteeth and ratty hair – she wouldn’t let my mom brush her hair. She’d wear Bon Jovi shirts down to her ankles, and she had nodules on her throat for a while growing up so she talked with a really gruff voice.

How did you first get into music?

I was always obsessed with music since I was a kid. My dad would always play records and I’d dance to them.

What were the first records you got into?

First one I ever saw video footage of, I was about two, dancing around to John Cougar Mellencamp, “Hurts So Good.” But I remember taking my own liking to certain kinds of music – Rolling Stones and David Bowie and U2. Things my babysitters would play.

Did you have cool babysitters?

Yeah. We always had kind of tough babysitters. Kind of like, wrong-side-of-the-tracks kind of babysitters who had like, biker boyfriends, who’d be really into Van Halen, hair metal bands, things like that.

Did they corrupt you at all?

Maybe just with MTV.

What are your first MTV memories?

The “Blue Jean” video, by David Bowie, and being completely fascinated by it. The blue woman, Billie Jean, who dances around on stage the whole time.

Do you remember what it was that fascinated you?

It just seemed kind of far out and alien to me. I was a big costume addict. I would dress myself up in weird stuff all the time, like my mom’s clothing or anything I could find.

Did your parents think you were weird?

They kind of supported it. Just like, “Oh, there he goes again.” Maybe the rest of the family thought it was strange, but I think my parents have been supportive of everything I’ve done, besides, probably, drug use.

When did that start?

I used to smoke pot and eat hallucinogenics in high school. I didn’t start drinking until I was about twenty, twenty-one. It ran in the family, and I didn’t want to tempt myself.

What were you like in high school?

I got in trouble a lot. I was always getting into arguments with my teachers and cutting class. I used to spend most of my time in the woods. I would just write, and think, and try to clear my head of everything else. I was always the kid who was being picked on for dressing weird and doing weird things and not fitting in.

What did you dress like?

It changed every year. I used to be like, a skater-thug-homie. I’d Bic my head, and I’d shave swirls in my hair or stripes on the side, and wear like, prison uniforms.

Where did you get the idea to do that?

I just decided to.

You weren’t like, watching Ice Cube do it on TV?

Not really, at all. It was my own creation. It was how I expressed myself. I was always really shy and wouldn’t talk to people.

Did you have friends?

Not until like, senior year. Then everybody wanted to be my friend. It was off-putting to me – I was just considered the kind of artistic kid, and everybody thought that was more interesting at that point.

When did you start getting high?

At fifteen or so. Well, heroin was the first drug I ever tried.

How did you get your hands on heroin before anything else?

I used to hang out with a group of really kind of like, shysty skater kids in New Haven. I would go hang out with kids from the city because I didn’t get along with anyone in my hometown. They were all really into drugs at a young age, and experimenting with heroin, and opium, and ketamine, and coke.

“Opium.”

Yeah. “Dragon’s blood,” haha. Poppy drippings. It always ended up being cooked-up incense.

What was it like the first time you did heroin?

I used it intravenously. I didn’t like how it felt and I’ve never used anything intravenously again. I just kind of wanted to go all the way.

You weren’t scared?

I was a little intimidated. I was more scared once I was actually on it and I felt like I was never going to come down from it. Cos I just wasn’t certain what drugs were like at all at that point.

Where were you?

East Rock Park in New Haven. It was a few kids that I never really hung out with again. I took a disliking to them after that whole experience, cos they kind of took advantage of me – like, “Oh, this is gonna be funny if he does this and he’s never done any drugs before.”

Oh man.

But I was really interested in trying it. I just felt like if I started my drug experiences with such a heavy narcotic, then everything else would be easy. Which I was completely wrong about because all of the psycho-drugs are a lot more intense.

Did you want to be a musician from an early age?

I wanted to be a basketball player for a long time. I was really into basketball, but I always had trouble with coaches. I’ve always had trouble taking orders, haha.

How did you start singing?

I’ve always sung, all my life. I never took lessons or anything that serious. Started with Suzuki piano when I was three or four. Never really did much with it – I felt more forced into it. And Austin and I are cousins, in the band, and our older cousin introduced us to playing the guitar when we were about eleven, and we just became obsessed with it.

Were you guys always close?

Yeah, we’ve been inseparable since we were born. He’s a year younger.

Did you have a band in high school?

Not in high school. I just messed around with my own stuff and recording it on Dictaphones, and collaborating with my cousin and a couple close friends. I was always really standoffish about playing music in front of people.

How come?

Just had terrible stage-fright issues, or at least I thought I did. I would hole myself up in the bedroom or at a friend’s house and play music, but I never took a chance playing in front of people until I was about twenty-three.

So what did you do after high school?

I went to Hunter, in New York, for about a year, and went to the University of Washington in Seattle for about a year. I was trying to  see how much different life was the further away you got.

I went to Seattle and never really became close with anyone at my school, and befriended mostly schizophrenic bums who lived on the streets, spent most of my time with them.

How did that happen?

I don’t know, I guess they were the most inviting people I met, haha. Kind of the homeless kids, or people who were kind of strange and involved in the arts in a whole other way other than like, scholastically involved – that were just kind of like, starving artists on the streets of Seattle.

Do you have any stories about them?

Well, there was this guy Jerry, who was a famous bum on University Avenue. He was half-Native American, half-Chinese, and always wasted out of his mind. His son was a famous painter in Canada, and he would go up to his son’s place when things went wrong in Seattle, and he fell on his face too many times and was hospitalized – he’d go break into his son’s house while he was away, steal his son’s paintings and sell them for money for booze and go back to Seattle.

Wow. What would you guys do together?

I’d just hang out on the street with him. I worked at a pizza shop and a coffee shop and I’d give him free food. I fell in love while I was out there, and dropped out of school and moved in with my girlfriend.

Who did you fall in love with?

This girl Melissa. She kind of struck me as this very spiritual gypsy girl who was about five years older than me. I lived with her probably for two-and-a-half years, on and off. It went pretty well but I always had an itch to keep going and move somewhere else. I’d always leave and go back to her, and leave and go back, and kind of tore her up, and I felt bad about it. So I left her for good one day.

Can you tell me more about what were you doing during the time when you were making music but not able to get on a stage? What was your life like?

Really topsy-turvy, and pretty manic.

How so?

Lots of near-death experiences. Like driving an ex-girlfriend into the ocean and hanging off building ledges.

How did that happen?

Um…Easter morning, I tried to stop on the end of a pier, in my hometown.

What was going on that led to that?

Nothing really. It was just a rainy night. I wasn’t even really drunk at that point. We were going home, we had sobered up. There was plywood laid down at the end of the dock and it had been raining out so there was like, a sheet of ice. When I put the breaks on we just jettisoned off the end, like a hundred feet out, and I had to save her life.

How did you do that?

I just kind of turned into a robot. I got really mechanical.

Wait, the car went off –

The end of the dock, yeah. They took the pilings off to gas the boats. So it was just wide-open space at the end of the dock and we just went flying into the ocean.

And you had to get out of the car?

Yeah. Well I had to save her, most of all. And then I got her –

You weren’t thinking about saving yourself.

I was thinking about saving myself in order to save her, like, “I have to be on top of this and make sure I swim her to safety and she doesn’t die of hypothermia.” Cos it was freezing out.

But what was going on with you guys that you would even be doing that?

I was just always taking really stupid risks. I kind of still do sometimes. I don’t know, just kind of juvenile mentality – not really happy career-wise in life, and working in pizza shops and working as a carpenter and a painter. 

What was the other near-death experience you said you had?

I had a bunch. I had one where I was fed from this little wooden bowl by some ancestral – what seemed like some ancestral woman in a vision after I fell off a cliff and landed on my chin on a rock and knocked myself out.

Where were you?

In the middle of the woods, at some party.

Just hiking out on your own?

Yeah.

And you had a vision. Was she saving you?

She was saving me, and feeding me this concoction that kind brought me back to life, and I came to, and this crazy guy who lives in the woods where I grew up was over me with his big thick bottle-glasses on. Like “Come on Quinn! Quinn, Quinn, wake up, you’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay.” I’m like, “Get away from me!” He’s touching my wounds and I’m like, “Get your fingers out of my wounds!”

“Get your fingers out of my wounds!” haha.

He sort of became notorious for having a meth-lab in the middle of the woods and then finding little kids’ clothing scattered about. After this.

What was he doing with the little kids?

Nobody knows what that was about. We don’t really think there was any molestation, we think he just like, collected little children’s clothing. He used to eat squirrels. Ran a place called The Puppet House.

Did you tell me once that you faked your death?

I faked my death in my hometown. Everybody always thought I was gonna die really young –

How come they assumed that?

Everybody just thought I was out of control, and not like, planted in reality. Even before I ever did drugs I was always the kid that everybody assumed did lots of drugs, just because of my behavior. I was always trying to escape myself.

I just decided one day while I was on a trip across the country with my friend Bob and Steve and my girlfriend Melissa at the time, that I wanted Bob to go back to our hometown and tell everyone that I’d died in an alleyway in New Orleans and I was stabbed to death and my wallet wasn’t taken and that they were all suspects in the murder.

He went home and my entire town believed it for about two or three days. They made an announcement at high school and all of these kids left crying, and people were calling my parents and giving condolences.

How come you wanted to do that?

I just wanted to disappear. I wanted to test it out and see what would happen. I had this really demented notion that if I were to fake my death – since I always sort of felt on the verge of death – if I faked my death, then people found out it wasn’t true, when I actually died nobody would ever believe that I was dead and people would think that I was immortal, and was living somewhere.

Like Tupac and Elvis. Or Tom Sawyer?

Like Tom Sawyer, yeah, haha.

Were there people you wanted to emulate who seemed immortal?

It wasn’t anybody in particular. I’ve always felt like as long as I’m gonna be here and exist on this planet I might as well do something important, or at least be considered important. I just always had a really bad way of going about it – I never really understood what to do.

Do you want it to benefit people?

I’d like our music to benefit people, yeah. I feel really good when I hear people tell me things, or send me messages saying, “One of your songs got me out of a really terrible depressing time in my life, I would listen to it and it would shy me away from killing myself.” Or, “it got me over my disputes with my father.” 

So bringing them out of the place that you felt like you were?

Or the place that I always feel like I am. I’m like, “Well, if I can’t make myself happy, I might as well make other people happy.” I always kind of lived my relationships under that guise too. I like somebody else to be there that I know that I can make happy and do good for, since I don’t really feel like I can do it for myself.

Why not?

Cos I’ve tried, and I’m not really capable of it. I’ve never really liked myself.

What have you tried to do about that?

See psychiatrists and take lots of different medication for Bipolar Disorder. The things that have helped the most are Lithium and Effexor.

What’s your experience been with psychiatrists?

I feel like I put up a front when I talk to people who I don’t feel a total affinity with. I won’t reveal myself to psychiatrists, so it’s kind of like the talking portion of it is futile. The prescription portion of it is really helpful due to whatever chemical imbalances they think I have – and that I’m sure I have, because medication helps.

Has this kind of struggle with sanity affected your creativity?

I feel perfectly sane most of the time, or I guess I convince myself that I am. I don’t feel like medication really takes away creatively. It sort of gives you a different perspective on your brain creatively, as do any other drugs you’re to tamper with or even foods you eat, experiences you have.

I feel that way too. But I feel like with Bipolar it can be really hard because the mania can feel so good.

Sometimes it feels good. Sometimes it feels like hell. It’s just too much. I’m not really trying to proclaim that I am this way because it’s all hypothetical. But I’ve struggled with what they say is Bipolarism for a long time. I don’t really feel comfortable with um – I guess letting myself know that that’s actually true.

Well, what does it mean to you?

To me it just means that I’m fucked up, and I’d like to get in there with some tweezers and straighten out some neurons. I guess I’ve kind of taken offense to a lot of press that I’ve gotten as a solo artist too – everybody calls me a mad man and all of this stuff.

What do people say?

Just like, “Either this guy’s a genius or he’s completely insane,” or “he’s totally off his rocker,” or, “there’s something terribly wrong with this person but I just love listening to his music, and he’s just here to give us this music.” Just really bothersome things like that.

With all the crazy people that are out there making music I don’t see how you would stick out as so unique.

I don’t either. It’s really troubling.

Well, to get back to the music – I’d wanted to ask you – Suckers does so much harmonizing. Was that something you were always interested in? I mean, when I first saw you guys I thought of the Grateful Dead and the Beach Boys…

They were always big influences on us – the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys, Beatles. Just any band that tampered with four-part harmonies I find interesting, if they’re good. But my best friend has been in and out of really prestigious choirs since he was young, and so I was always surrounded by a bunch of choir kids, so I was always intrigued by harmony. And I’ve never really liked my own voice. I don’t like listening to my own voice.

So is that part of it?

Covering it up? Yeah. Either with my own vocals on my own stuff or with the other band-mates.

Your voice sounds so strong on the recordings though. Are you happier with it now?

Not really. I don’t think I ever will be.

Since you've been making music for so long on your own, what’s it been like to finally have an audience, and lots of people coming to see you?

I feel like it all came to a head when Coco Rosie found my album and became interested in my solo stuff and I started touring with them, and getting a lot of attention. Then, as soon as we focused more on the band – that was always my main goal, was to make the band work – I want to split up the creativity and enjoy what we’re doing. I never wanted to just hire musicians to play with me.

Is it hard for you to split it up though?

It is hard.

So what goes on between you guys?

We’ve come to an understanding where we just kind of jam and make stuff up and whoever comes up with parts we want to keep, we just keep them. Before, it was a lot of Austin and I approaching the band with our own songs, and restructuring it and telling the other members what to do. It felt more like our project than the band’s project.

What do you think you and Austin bring to the table, in terms of influences or what you want to sound like?

I think Austin and I have a very similar artistic approach. He might be a little more avant-garde than I am. I’m a little more – not traditional, but I guess pop-oriented. We all are, but Austin just likes to tamper a bit more with unfounded sounds than I do, which I love to do too. But he’s more kind of the found-sound guy in the band. Like, just playing an instrument a way that you wouldn’t normally play it.

Does that happen a lot on your recordings?

Yeah, it does. We’ve all kind of decided to approach our instruments or approach each other’s instruments in a whole new light, and kind of either – not necessarily writing parts for each other on other instruments, but maybe just playing those instruments ourselves so that they sound different. Or writing each other’s parts on an instrument, and you know – you wouldn’t normally think of this if you were trained as guitarist or you trained as a drummer.

So that’s kind of a conceptual approach.

More of an art piece, yeah. Kind of like we’re all painting the same painting.

What does it feel like to be in this moment in Brooklyn, where there are a lot of bands around you that everybody’s talking about – how do you see yourself in all of that if you’re a person who always wants to get away from everything?

I feel totally flattered by the whole thing, and to be involved with the bands that we’re involved with. We’ve always appreciated each other’s music, and I feel really blessed to be part of what’s going on in Brooklyn. I couldn’t see myself amongst another group of artists anywhere else right now, that I can think of, at all.

What do you think it is about it that makes you feel so at home?

Maybe that we’re all coming from different creative places – we’re not necessarily influencing each other, but we’re giving each other ideas.

I guess it’s a little overwhelming. Just the feeling of uncertainty, or questioning: is this is really what you actually want? If you strive for something your whole life and then you actually have it, then it becomes unsatisfying again once you gain it. So it’s kind of the challenge that makes it worth it.

So do you feel unsatisfied on some level already?

I feel really satisfied and really happy with the way things are going. But I guess unsatisfied that I never really had the balls to go for it up until this point, and that it took me so long to put myself out there. 

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