Wyoming’s Garage Bands: The Untold Grunge Connection?
Wyoming may be synonymous with country music, but in the late 1960s and 1970s, the state rocked to a different beat. Casper was the heart of a vibrant garage band scene, inspiring young musicians to take up guitars and drumsticks.
One of those bands, The Tremors, led by Casper native Cory McDaniel, toured the West Coast from 1969 to 1985. While they never achieved widespread fame, a fascinating legend surrounds them: that a young Kurt Cobain, future frontman of Nirvana, attended a Tremors show and was inspired to pioneer grunge music.
McDaniel himself finds the story intriguing but unconfirmed. “I’d love to know where that story came from,” he said, though he acknowledges the possibility.
Cobain, born in 1967, would have been a teenager during the Tremors’ heyday on the West Coast. The band’s bluesy, distortion-heavy sound could have sparked a musical evolution in Cobain’s mind, from blues-rock to the heavy, raw sound of grunge.
By the 1990s, Nirvana led a movement that toppled the flashy glam metal of the ’80s, replacing spandex with flannel and hair spray with raw emotion. Though McDaniel never listened much to Nirvana, he appreciates their impact, calling the Foo Fighters’ music “complex and brilliant.”
The Wyoming garage band era may have faded, but its legacy lingers. McDaniel now writes music for Wyoming filmmaker Dennis Rollins and occasionally performs with old bandmates. As for the Cobain connection, McDaniel muses, “Maybe he saw us one night and thought, ‘If these yahoos can write stuff, maybe I can too.’”
While the legend remains unverified, the story adds an intriguing chapter to Wyoming’s musical history.
