Local Music Spotlight: Scatterbox celebrates 20 years of creativity and friendship

Emerging from Coeur d’Alene in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Scatterbox had a fresh sound to take to INW stages. They mixed various punk and punk-adjacent genres into one coherent whole and then drove up the BPMs until you couldn’t not move to it. It was fast, it was cathartic, and it quickly got traction in the local scene.

The group was formed in 2001 when brothers Tom and Ryan White invited then-guitarist Dan Stamper and drummer Scott Rozell to play and write some songs. “It was just jam sessions and seeing what we liked,” Tom White said. Within a few years, they had released several albums.

“When we started, there wasn’t a lot going on,” Rozell said. The vast scene of the mid-to-late ’90s had died down to a murmur. “We were probably one of the only punk bands that were in existence at that time in this area.”

The band recorded their debut album “Run Faster, Jump Higher” and released it in 2001 on Blackhouse Records, a label that Rozell founded partially out of a need to publish the album. 2021 marks 20 years since the band’s formation and the release of that debut.

To celebrate such a momentous achievement, Scatterbox pulled out all the stops. They played a show at the Big Dipper in mid-October, their first in more than 18 months, and had it filmed for an upcoming movie about the band. The setlist featured tracks from across the years, and the performance became a career favorite for many of the members.

“It might be the best show, the most fun show, I’ve ever played with these guys,” Rozell said. Guitarist Sean Nicol agreed. The years have not worn down their love of being onstage, giving their all to these songs.

“Even if we’ve played the song a million times, I still get the same feeling. It’s just fun,” Ryan White said. “It’s watching the reaction of the crowd and people enjoying themselves. It never gets old.”

Part of what made the show so special was that Scatterbox pulled three of the band’s former members onto the stage. The past two decades have seen turnover in the group’s lineup, but the reunion show meant winding back the years and bringing most of the band’s contributors under the same roof.

“Every six or seven songs, we had a different member come in from out of town to join us on stage,” Rozell said. The band currently consists of Tom and Ryan White, Rozell, Nicol and Mark Cogburn. The three past guitarists who joined the stage were Justin Smith, Chris Cope and Nicol, who has since rejoined the group for their next project.

For both audience and band, the show was a huge success. “We haven’t gotten to do that for two years,” Tom White said. “So, we had a ton of pent-up energy that will get out. Longest set we’ve ever played.” The monumental 21 songs, though, went by in a flash.

The second major piece of the celebration is a movie by Seattle-based Jason Frost centered on the show at the Big Dipper. But it’s not just a concert film, as Frost “followed every one of us around for a while the week leading up to the show and filmed us just doing other stuff,” Rozell said.

The movie will feature interviews, insights and of course music. “I’m excited to see what he comes up with,” Tom White said. Twenty years is an immense accomplishment for a band. For Scatterbox, it was friendship and a strong creative environment that helped get them this far.

“I don’t remember ever having any kind of argument or disagreement on how something should sound or whose part sounded better,” Nicol said. “Yeah, I don’t think there’s one song I wrote completely. I came up with a riff, and somebody else came up with something,” Cogburn added. “And there’s a new song.”

Hearing them talk about the crazy shows they’ve played, the van breakdowns and subsequent improvised repairs of touring, it’s clear that Scatterbox is more than a band for these guys. With 20 years behind them, they’ve got a bright future ahead. It would hardly be a surprise to see them back in a couple of decades rocking the Big Dipper yet again.

For more information on Scatterbox and to keep up to date on upcoming releases, shows and the film, follow them on Instagram @Scatterbox208.

Julien A. Luebbers can be reached at julien.luebbers@gmail.com.