Mead High grad, now West Sider, part of two-day alt-rock Spring Reverb Bash

This year’s local display of all things DIY and alt-rock, Spring Reverb Bash, will bring a Spokane-born musician back to the Lilac City with his Seattle band.

Rob Joynes and his older brother Will Paulson bonded over music even before their stint in the local music scene. As children, Joynes took piano lessons while Paulson dove into the drums. Thanks to LimeWire and its once renowned ability to distribute pirated music, the two found “standard” Washington indie rock bands like Minus the Bear, Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse. They also took trips to the now-defunct Sasquatch! Music Festival on multiple occasions.

Once they began attending Mead High School, Joynes and Paulson helped found the band called Radar, which soon took up its more well-known name of Creech, along with guitarist Mike Graves and later bassist Jack Aldrich.

“I don’t know why we changed the name or whatever, probably because there was like a bunch of other bands called Radar,” Joynes said.

Creech would perform at venues of the city’s past such as Empyrean Coffee House and Second Space, where the building could be rented for around $100, with performers being able to keep all ticket sales from the door. They recorded their first album at a studio in Hillyard when Joynes was about 16.

“I hope it’s not even out there anywhere,” Joynes said. “I hope you can’t hear it anywhere. My God, I’m sure it’s cringe as hell.”

After Joynes graduated high school in 2011, Creech moved to Bellingham, where Paulson was attending Western Washington University. Thanks to the area’s well-established alt-music scene that features an array of DIY house shows and venues like Make.Shift Art Space, Creech fit right in.

“It’s a great lateral move for a young person who just turned 18,” Joynes said.

The band would partake in “Yellingham,” which was a music festival comprising house shows and featured their own “Creech House.” They started their own cassette-tape label called “Haze Tapes” and were the first to put beloved indie artist Alex G on physical media.

“I met him through Bandcamp or Tumblr or something like that,” Joynes said. “But then he kind of blew up and floated on our label for a little while.”

Creech also released its own music through Haze Tapes and Bandcamp, such as albums like their 2013 favorite “Pasture.” But with time and the circumstances of life, Creech dissolved by the late 2010s.

Joynes moved to Seattle, where he met his partner, Geoff. As the 2020 pandemic ensued, the two began working on a slew of songs in which Geoff played nearly every instrument while Rob wrote accompanying lyrics and sang vocals. These initial songs would turn into their band Fell Off and a 2023 debut record, “F/O.” And at first, Rob was purely a vocalist.

“I just held the mic and tried to do the hardcore tough guy thing and just pace around … the front man kind of thing,” Rob said.

Late last year, the band was in need of a bassist with a tour being scheduled, and instead of searching for a new member, Rob spent the month of December picking up the instrument.

“I didn’t really want to do the ‘walk around with the mic, front man guy thing’ anymore because I’m old; I’m in my 30s,” Rob said. “I went to bass boot camp, so to speak. … When I showed up to the first practice in January, I kind of already had the whole thing down.”

Although Paulson is now a teacher in Portland, every so often he will reprise his drumming abilities to play with younger brother Rob yet again, just as he did on Fell Off’s recent tour.

Now, Fell Off will be joining a stacked two-day lineup of diverse alt-rock at this weekend’s Spring Reverb Bash, which is being held at the Guardian, 1403 N. Washington St., and produced by Two Two One Press. Although Rob has performed solo in Spokane before, he rarely returns to his hometown, the place where his long and winding musical journey first began.

“It’s really, really cool; I’m excited to come back,” Rob said. “I’m really pleased that it’s an all-ages musical festival … I believe that ‘all-ages’ is all-ages, it doesn’t just mean that you’re under 21 and you can’t get into bars, it means the whole community comes out.”