‘Ring Spiel Tour ’95’ Release Day – A Profound Interview with Mike Watt (INTERVIEW)

It’s 11:30 the night before Mike Watt’s new album Ring Spiel Tour ’95 drops, and I don’t know what to say to wrap up our interview. It’s been a trying week; a trying year, for almost all of us. One of the highlights of mine was getting to sit down with the legendary bassist, now in his 36th year of making music.

From his first album with Minutemen in 1980, through the devastating loss of his best friend and bandmate, D. Boon, in 1985, through multiple bands and more collaborations than I could ever list here, and into 2016, Watt has remained a strong and consistent voice in the music world. Frequently hailed as one of the more innovative bassists to come out of the punk rock haze of the ‘70s, Watt has maintained a surprising humility, still undeniably excited to be a part of the movement that he helped create and with an almost disarming frankness, expressing gratitude for every opportunity that he’s had.

Ring Spiel” Tour ‘95, is a raw recording of one of the first gigs he played as a solo artist, back in 1995. Backed by artists such as Dave Grohl, Eddie Vedder, and Pat Smear, Watt took the spotlight and ran with it, ripping his vocal chords out on classics such as “Formal Introduction,” “Piss Bottle Man,” and “Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing.” The Blue Oyster Cult cover is expected; the Madonna cover, not so much, but the album is top to bottom full speed ahead rock and roll bliss.

The plan was to talk about the album and Watt’s plans for the future. The reality is a lackadaisical stroll through the stream-of-consciousness mind of one of the founding fathers of American punk rock, as he touches on everything from John Fogerty’s wardrobe to the now-infamous red caps of a certain president-elect to the fragile and sometimes scary nature of life.

As I was finishing this up, trying to figure out what to say, I got word than another musical legend, Leonard Cohen, had died. And so it seemed fitting to leave this interview exactly as-is, in Watt’s own untouched words, because life is too short to take any more words away.

wattringspielAre you doing alright today?

Just got back from Tucson, I played the Night of the Living Festival, and before that, I had a tour in Europe.

I saw that. How’d that go?

It was very good, probably our best one yet. We did all of the second album. We hadn’t played that in Europe yet. I went early, so I practiced six days with them. We were much more together. They’re a trippy band, it’s different than here. I’m used to bands from the town I live in, and we practice all the time. These guys, one lives in Bologna, one lives in Berlin, so I can’t practice with them all the time. But that’s okay. It used to be really scary — it still is kind of scary, but sometimes you gotta take chances and try. Some things about that band are much different than my bands in California. It’s more of a collaboration. These bands here, I write all the stuff. You gotta have more than one band, you know? You gotta make it different.

I’ve heard a lot of artists say that.

You don’t want to have the same bands with different people, unless you’re just totally in love with yourself. But you probably want to talk about this thing from 21 years ago.

I do, and then we can talk about whatever you want to talk about.

There’s nothing wrong with that, you know? My second band and Missingmen, I put those bands together and that mission got realized. I still like playing with those guys. We made eight albums, and we’re going to record soon, but in the meantime, I had a bunch of songs I wrote for D. Boon and Georgie 35 years ago. Some of them made it onto Minutemen records, but it’s just a bunch of stuff from the old days, when I was just learning to write songs. This is coming up 21 years ago, it was the first time I was starting to get brave enough to play with other people. So, not to be sentimental, Happy Days, Potsie, Fonzie bullshit, but if you look at in the scope of my journey through music, it makes sense that it’s coming out now.

It’s trippy, the man Tim Smith over at Sony Legacy, or Columbia — I was with Columbia 14 years, they were very kind to me — he found this thing around Chicago called Jam TV or something, and I guess they filmed a lot of the bands that came through. So he found this video with audio, and he said,”You ask the other guys who played on that thing,” and they were all into it.

I was kind of surprised, especially Pat Smear. Me and D. Boon, we went and saw the Germs, and then to have that guy play with you [laughs], and then he writes me back and he says “Watt, you’re finally putting this out? It’s about time.” I was like, “Whoa!” To have somebody like Pat Smear write that to me was pretty incredible.

It’s a pretty incredible recording.

You know, it’s not remixed. They found the tracks and they said, “Watt, do you want to remix?” I asked Ed’s [Eddie Vedder] advice, and he said “No, man, keep it. That’s the way it was. That’s the way it happened.” I don’t know if people know, but Ed’s a lot more balls-up than people might think. He kind of lets the freak flag fly. And I was like, “Yeah, you’re right.” In a way, it reminds me of, remember in the old days they had bootlegs? The idea of a document of gigs, that’s what this is.

I had never stood in the middle before, I’d never been the frontman, I mean yeah, I did a lot of stuff for fIREHOSE and Minutemen, but it’s nothing like this, where I had to really get out there. But after this, when you look at my record or whatever, I started doing a lot more things, playing with different people; I started writing the operas. I never thought of it before, I just thought it was this trippy tour where I didn’t have a band. The band was the opening guys. But now, looking back, I think it was kind of a sea change for me, to be more brave.

That really comes through. It’s a very ballsy recording. My favorite track is “Formal Introduction,” it’s just right out there, in your face.

We didn’t know how to get material. The idea kind of came from the Ball-Hog or Tugboat? album, where we just got together with a bunch of people to see what happened. We didn’t have a lot of time to come up with material so I used a couple Minutemen songs, some I wrote with Raymond [Pettibon], a Blue Oyster Cult cover, Madonna for Pat to sing…

How did that come about? Why did you decide to cover a song by Madonna?

I just threw these songs out and I was like, “Hey, do you guys want to do these?” Yeah, I don’t know. I liked the bass line [laughs]. And then Ed brought a song, it might have ended up a Pearl Jam song. [The song was “Habit,” and it did end up on Pearl Jam’s 1996 album No Code.] Dave wanted to play guitar, and he brought this other guy [William Goldsmith] — you know he made that first Foo Fighters album, that’s all him. Then he made a band, and that’s why I think he was the brainchild on this. He wanted some way to go out there and break in the new band without having to deal with silly stuff. You know the year before, he had lost Kurt. There was weird hype in some ways around this that wasn’t so happening, but it doesn’t matter. It was a pants-shitter pretty much, overall.

Looking back at it, I hadn’t heard it since we’d done it. I’d never listened to a tape of it but I remembered being there in person. It was a scary thing, but it was good.

It is good. There’s a rawness to this recording that we don’t see enough anymore.

It’s a trippy thing, huh? Like why now? Why? Because the dude found it and asked. It’s been floating around, I knew of it, but I didn’t know it was sitting there and someone wanted to put it out. You wonder sometimes, on the YouTube, people record stuff with the leash, the phone, and it sounds terrible, and at least it isn’t like that. There’s something about people witnessing you without your makeup on, but in another way, man, sometimes you can’t even tell what’s going on. It sounds bad. This baby ain’t like that. It wasn’t remixed.

I’m kind of a forward-looking guy. I don’t look back much. But this was a trippy thing.

What did that feel like, when you listened to the recording again after 20 years?

I remembered being there, up on stage, shitting my pants. It was scary. There’s something about being in a trio with D. Boon and then Ed fROMOHIO. Those guys are very brave, they’re hard chargers, and when you’re not so brave, that helps you, you know, when people are genuinely like that — not in love with themselves, just like, “I’m going to play now, and do my hardest.”

Ig [Iggy Pop] is like that, with the Stooges, you know? There are certain people who it’s very easy to get on stage with, because they’re going to work so fucking hard. It’s like their momentum is contagious.

These guys [who backed me on the Ring Spiel tour], they’re brave, they were there for me in a way. They were always looking over and smiling, Pat, Dave, Ed… I think I’m Pat’s age, but I’m older than the other guys. And these Italian guys, you know? They’re 23 years younger than me, but in a lot of ways, I’m the student, which I think is okay.

It’s definitely okay.

That’s a big difference from when I was a teenager. I’m 13 in 1970, so I’m a ‘70s person. You didn’t do that then, you didn’t play with somebody even 5 years older, let alone 20. It just wasn’t done. That’s kind of gone away, and I think that’s good. Ageism used to be a big, big deal, because, I don’t know, there was the establishment, I’m talking about the ‘60s when I’m a boy and I’m growing up and I’m seeing how things are. And then I get there, to the ‘70s, and we were a pretty narcissistic group of people.

Now, a young person can like Black Sabbath at 14 and that’s okay. They’re a 45-year-old band, I mean that never would have happened back in my day.

I know what you mean. I realized not long ago that Meat Puppets II came out in like ‘84-

Yeah, and shit, now his son is in the band! Curt’s son is in the band now! He’s playing guitar.

Exactly, and I was thinking, am I really that old? When I was a kid — I was born in ‘74 — Pink Floyd seemed old. They had already been around forever when I was a teenager. And now, the Meat Puppets still seem like new music to me. It’s definitely changing.

Yeah, and I think that’s a good thing. Music used to really be marketed with this age thing. Rock n’ roll was for young people. Music, period, but especially rock n’ roll. But I think back in the older days, things changed way quicker. Nowadays, it’s more spread out. Is it really that different, 2016 from 2006, in terms of music?

They’ve got this thing now, it’s like a social category, it’s called “hipster.” They don’t really have a music, right? Usually every group has a music, and they don’t really have one. I guess after the latest batch of dance music, there’s no more innovation, right? No more movements, it doesn’t seem like.

Maybe it’s not a bad thing. Music can be timeless, it doesn’t have to be hooked to clothes, or whatever. It’s just so many beats per minute [laughs]. That’s how you know it’s chill wave, or whatever.

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Count the beats to know what you’re listening to.

[Laughs] Yeah, how did we lose all that stuff? I remember when Tim [Yohannan] put out the Maximum Rock n’ Roll, he had crust and power violence, and what is all that stuff? What does it mean?

I write about music, and I still can’t keep up with what everything is. Sometimes I feel like my dad, back when I was in my hair metal phase, going “What is this? This is just noise!”

But there’s still good stuff coming out. It isn’t hopeless.

[Laughs] When I did that gig [the Ring Spiel tour], I had to deal with that label, “alternative,” which had to be the most stupid name ever. I mean what’s the alternative to music, silence? It was totally invented by the label marketing people. I remember that at the time. 15 years before that, there was “new wave.” Same thing, it was just invented, you know? It was actually borrowed from some film movement from France. They want to stick a label on everything.

That’s true, and it’s hard to fit good music into one category. Minutemen was “punk rock,” but you look at what punk rock is, and it’s all different. You have elements of funk, jazz, everything in there.

Also, I think there was another kind of understanding in the ‘70s. Punk wasn’t really a style. Punk was more a state of mind. Yeah, there was a lot of fast guitars, but there were a lot of other strange things. The first band to sell out The Whisky didn’t even have guitars. A lot people stopped going to gigs in the ‘80s, so we’re playing for young hardcore people, that’s what they called the hard music later on. But we were actually schooled, or learned, with the ‘70s punk, which was pretty much anything. [Laughs] A lot of these people were into art, and theater, or glam and glitter, they didn’t give a shit about rock n’ roll. Some of them were anti-rock n’ roll, or wanted to get back to like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.

I always thought punk wasn’t so much about a particular sound or style, but more about just doing your own thing and being authentic.

That’s what it was. That’s the way we figured it out, because for one thing, the word “punk” — it’s so weird to call your music that. In those days, especially here in Pedro, man, [a punk] was a guy who got fucked in jail for cigarettes. You’d never call your music that, unless you just didn’t give a shit. You didn’t fit in and you were trying to make your own world.

That’s what it kind of seemed like. There was this guy, the drummer from The Weirdos, he was from Pedro and that’s how we found out about it. This is how pathetic it was: The scene was, nobody wrote their own songs, everybody just copied stuff off records. And then we see these guys who are obviously learning in front of everyone, and not giving a shit. The best guy isn’t the guy who can play “Black Dog” the best, you know? He’s the guy actually using music for expression. This is what attracted us to the scene.

I think part of it too was being boys, younger people in the ‘60s, dealing with issues like free speech and the war and civil rights. By the time we come of age, that’s all over, and it’s just arena rock.

I did 125 months with the Stooges, finally the youngest guy in the band, and I learned that in the ‘60s, there was a whole garage band thing. All the stuff we learned in the ‘70s with punk, that already had happened. It just got lost in the success of the arena rock and FM radio, the “disco sucks” and “punk sucks.” All of these were countermovements to the big blob of arena rock, where everybody likes the same 10 bands. It was really strange, it didn’t last that long, but the people running it didn’t want to let go.

There’s a song on this record called “Against the ‘70s,” it’s me in the ‘70s with that Happy Days shit. I remember back in ‘74, I was 14, just starting high school, and I remember my pop saying when that show came on with all its kitsch and corn, he goes, “Those were not happy days!” He was a chief in the Navy, he was 19 when I was born. There was a lot of scary stuff. There’s no scary stuff in Happy Days. They tested the sirens the last Friday of every month. There’s that whole thing about sentimentalism, and I have to remember that too.

One good thing about the punk movement in the US is that it was pretty tiny. We actually did learn — actually, this is tradition. Walt Whitman put out his own stuff in what, 1855? I could say that’s a big part, but not really, because over in England, all those bands got famous right away. They were like big rock n’ roll bands: The Jam, The Clash… But in the US, with the scene being small, DIY was a real part of it. It was more than a style. The clothes come from Richard Hell, they don’t even come from England, although those guys made some incredible variations. [Laughs]

We ended up learning our own stuff through them, so many times. It gets taken for granted, you don’t even know you invented the blues or jazz, until they come and play it for you. Then they come back with the Black Keys and the White Stripes…

The thing that I think keeps things healthy is the dynamic. This thing came out 21 years ago, but the guys are still out there trying to do something, and that makes it relevant. And for sure, it was not fucking Happy Days. It was easier than maybe 20 years before that, ‘74, ‘75? The Stooges broke up, nobody wants to see them. Grand Funk [Railroad] was the big band out of England, and nobody remembers them. It’s trippy how things change.

Talking about the nostalgia and how it changes the way we see things — I saw something the other day that said “Make America kind again,” and I thought, It was never really kind. But looking back, things always seem better than they were. There’s always been that ugly side.

Yeah, exactly. The guys who wrote these “great words” were owning slaves. When I started wondering about those Happy Days, I started wondering when I was a boy in the ‘60s, why were there so many World War II movies? They were marketing to that generation. There’s always been that kind of scheme. Even in the current, that will happen. Pat Boone sold a lot more “Tutti Frutti” than Little Richard, and now he says that was his manager’s idea and he never wanted to do that. But Little Richard is like, “You know what? It’s okay, because his version was for the living room. My version was for the bedroom.” [Laughs]

You know what I mean? It’s perspective, because that’s what they’re doing in politics now. They’re spinning things, they’re fooling people, pushing buttons and blowing dog whistles, and there’s certain kinds of coded talk, which has always been the MO of the demagogue, the clown who just wants to make hay out of people getting very angry with each other.

They have no respect. They’ll grab the patriotic, whatever, and wrap themselves up in it — it’s really embarrassing and shameful. Sometimes I try to rationalize it in my mind, like maybe this country has some kind of karma it has to work out, so we have to put one of these motherfucking clowns in.

It’s hard to try and rationalize what’s going on in the country, because it defies any kind of rationale. Is there really some guy running for president,  talking about grabbing people by the pussy?

Yeah. It’s hard to believe it’s happening.

Speaking of politics, there’s a song on the new record called “Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing.”

I sent it to him. He never wrote me back. That song came off of Double Nickels on the Dime. I actually thought, “If Mike Jackson sang that song, the Minutemen would never have to explain themselves again. Everyone would know exactly what we’re about.” [Laughs] I really thought that.

Harold Bloom wrote an intro to the 150th anniversary of [Walt Whitman’s] Leaves of Grass. He claims that this guy, Walt Whitman, wrote these 12 poems to try and stop the Civil War. He thought the farmers in the fields and the people in the factories would read these poems, and say, “Fuck it, we don’t have to fight. We don’t have to have slavery.”

It’s a nice idea.

I know, and I read this many years after I wrote that song, but in some ways, yeah… maybe trying to let people know what the Minutemen was about wasn’t quite as noble a cause as trying to stop the Civil War.

But D. Boon, he liked that name [Minutemen]. I remember he said, “Put a bunch of names on paper.” When I wrote it down, it was two words: Minute [as in tiny] Men, like the opposite of arena rock. But D. Boon said, “No, put the words together.” But anyway, I wrote that song in hopes that Michael Jackson might want to cover it. I thought maybe he’d want to sing it.

We had 45 songs [for that album] and we didn’t know how to put it in any kind of order, so I came up with this scheme and had everybody pick their favorite songs. I got third pick, and that’s the one I picked first. I thought it fit Watt, speaking for the Minutemen, trying to speak through Mike Jackson.

That makes perfect sense.

I had a very strange experience downstairs at the 9:30 club, the one on F street. H.R. [Henry Rollins] said a funny thing. It was his first solo band and it was just me and him downstairs, and we’re just sitting there, and I have such incredible respect for this man. It’s very quiet down there, and the turd pipes from the head were right above us and you could hear that [laughs], and he looks at me and he goes, “What kind of man do you think Michael Jackson is?” That was the last question I ever thought he would ask. I’d thought about it, though, and I told him I thought he was a pretty good singer. I didn’t know how to answer that. [Laughs] It was right around the time that “Double Nickels” came out, so maybe that’s why he asked me that. I never could figure it out.

I have friends who have worked with him, and when it came down to it, they all say Michael Jackson was a pro. He wasn’t just some little toy, doll thing. He worked hard at music and singing and dancing. When I met people who actually worked at his organization I was glad that that was the dude that I picked. Out of all the people I could have picked to sing about the Minutemen, I picked Mike Jackson. I wrote all those words, I could see them coming out of his mouth. I’ve never done that before, but I did it with that tune.

Because of my lack of confidence with this thing with Ed, Dave, and Pat, I asked them to do that song, and they said okay.

It’s one of those songs that’s still relevant all these years later.

It is, but you know, humans, we’re slow learners. In some ways, we can really come together, but in some ways, we still get fooled by the same old fucking hustles.

I think we’re getting there. I was talking to my 23-year-old daughter about politics the other day, and she said that whoever won the election, it might not affect her, but she said, “It’s not just about me, it’s about everybody else.” We’re slow learners, but we’re learning.

That shows a real depth of consciousness that a lot of people don’t have. Especially when these other agendas are being shoved down your throat. I remember when I was that age, it was always, “What are we going to do with the Soviets?” Everything was about the Soviets. So when that finally came to an end, there were still all these loyalty tests. There’s all this macho stuff, trying to get people to be afraid.

I guess the thing now is to say things to hurt people, to prove you’re not for censorship. There’s this whole tough guy thing, you know. At the end of the day, all the huffing and puffing — they just want to run their hustles. They talk this big game.

Young people, they can feel it. The trick is to not let them get so cynical that they give up on the whole thing.

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It can be hard to find that balance between helping them be aware and making them become cynical.

That’s a lot of the idea of the expression, the arts, not just bass players but poets and people involved in making TV and movies and writing books. That’s what all this kind of expression is for, to connect. It’s not just about who has whose boot on whose throat, there are other ways to connect.

It is about connection. You’ve been doing this since, what, 1980? And people are still coming to see you, to hear what you have to say.

That’s why I let those guys make “We Jam Econo,” that documentary. I thought if people saw what we did, then they’d try it too, in their own way. That’s what happened to us, we saw these other people trying. We were going to use it for expression! You have to have that autonomy, doing it yourself.

But there’s a danger for less-younger people. You think you know it all, you think you’ve seen it all, and once you get there, nobody can teach you anything. That’s the big danger for someone in my situation, you think you know it all, just because you’ve done it a couple times. I like it, it’s trippy, but at the same time, I have to let go. So many times when you have to let go, but not your autonomy. That, you have to cling to a little bit.

Yeah, you can let go of a lot of things, but you can’t lose who you are. You have to share it, you can’t just exist. You put yourself out there, and see what other people are putting out there, and hopefully that will all come together and make things a little better.

I think it’s bitchin’, those are words to live by. That’s what amazed me about the old days, when I first got involved with the movement. It seemed like they were just taking turns playing for each other. I’d only went to arena shows, I’d never seen something where there’s just the guy standing next to you and then it’s his turn on stage. It is important to listen to the others.

There are still a lot of shows like that, where the bands are the only people there, playing for each other.

[Laughs] It’s part of the anti-hierarchy. And you know, it happens. Sometimes you’re not going to have the most popular thing going. Can you still play it? Can you still work it? It’s a test, and it’s hard.

John Fogerty wrote me this thing after D. Boon got killed, he wrote me, “Keep on keeping on.” I thought that was pretty econo. You don’t even have to bring in another word.

Who knew he was so wise?

I just liked his shirts. [Laughs] I told D. Boon I couldn’t even hear the bass lines on the Creedence songs, and I thought if I wore these shirts, he’d still like me. When I met D. Boon, that was the only rock band he knew. We were 12, you know? We only listened to Creedence. D. Boon’s mom said, “You’re going to be the bass player.” We had to put five or six quarters on the record to keep if from skipping, I couldn’t hear what the guy was playing, but I saw the singer’s shirt. That’s how I got into flannel. I didn’t know lumberjacks or farmers, I just thought that was a rock n’ roll shirt.

There’s that song, “Against the ‘70s,” it actually came from that Creedence song, “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” I found out later he wrote that for his kid and it was all nonsense, but my take on it was that phony sentimental thing.

That’s the thing about expression, you never know. You’re in with the written word, it’s a very private form of expression. It’s just the reader, the writer, and the little black scribbles in between.

And after you write it and put it out there, it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It belongs to the reader.

That can be happening, though. I read this thing, “A Light in August,” I read it in a day and a half. It just grabbed me. And I still couldn’t figure it out, in a way. It’s a very private thing, there’s no peer pressure. I guess you get taught in school what you’re supposed to like, but still, the experience is so personal.

I use the written word to inspire me. It’s a lot harder to rip off the licks, too. There’s a layer of abstraction there, for the writers. But this thing about letting it go, you’re bringing something to life. It’s art and expression, it’s the interesting fabric between humans. Better than those corny red baseball hats.

You know you want one of those corny red baseball hats.

[Laughing] No.

But you’d look like such a big man in one.

[Laughs] You know, when you get to the short and curlies, it really is just about that shit. You don’t want to dive too deep into that pool. There is no deep end, you’ll hit your head.

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Back to the music — Let me ask you about Camper Van Beethoven and Ed fROMOHIO.

Oh yeah, when Edward wanted to play with us, he found out about us from their bass player, I think his name is Victor [Krummenacher]. They came and played and Victor talked to Edward and said “Watt’s looking for a guy.” [Laughs] It wasn’t true, but that was before I knew you had to pay to keep your number out of the phone book. So that’s what got him going. He called me up and said this Victor guy told him I was looking for someone. And I met Victor, he’s a nice guy, I think they’re from — where are they from? So Cal, but not the bay. Anyway, that’s what Edward told me, that he heard about me from the bass man from Camper Van Beethoven.

Did you ever end up working with any of those guys?

I shared some bills with them. The one guy made a band called Cracker, he moved to Virginia, right?

Yeah, David Lowery.

Yeah, the main man, and the other guys went and did their own thing. I heard that Camper Van did a re-do, is that right?

Yeah, they’ve been playing together again for years. Cracker and Camper Van do a thing together every year called the Campout.

Okay, David’s still doing both then, that’s cool. I owe Victor a big thank you for that, because Edward came along at a time when I really needed help.

He was pretty persistent, wasn’t he

I couldn’t get him out! He said “I’m coming over,” and I’m like, “What?” And here’s this guy, he’s got bleached hair, he’s into U2 and REM, he’s a trumpet player. His parents sent him to Ohio State to play trumpet and he wanted to play rock n’ roll guitar. He had a buddy who played him some Double Nickels. He didn’t really know the Minutemen that much, and then he heard from Victor.

Edward lives in Pittsburgh now, taking care of his mother. His pop died. When I come through, I always have him come on and do the Blue Oyster Cult song or something. We played together 7 ½ years, 20 tours.

[When I met Edward] I was not in a good place. I never planned on D. Boon getting killed. He was too strong. We were young, our bodies were so resilient. You just don’t think about that shit.

When you’re young, sometimes you feel like you’re in this perpetual state of impermanence. You can’t die tomorrow because there is no tomorrow, life is still pretty abstract.

That’s a good way to put it. So when it hit me, I didn’t even want to play. But Edward coming over, Georgie said “Are you sure?” I told Georgie, “He seems pretty into it, man.” [Laughs]

It’s great that he got you through that.

I’m very indebted to him for that. That band came together pretty out of the blue — like this tour, like a lot of the things I do. Like getting that phone call from Ig [ about joining the Stooges]. I couldn’t believe that.

Tell me more about that.

I was on tour with my second band, I was in Tallahassee, and it’s Ig, he says “Hey, Ronnie [Asheton] says you’re the man.” I was like, “Whoa.” I had just helped J. Mascis with a tour and we got Ronnie on board. And Ig goes, “Would you do me a favor? Would you wear a tee shirt instead of a flannel?” I said “What about Levi’s and Converse?” He said “That’s strong.” [Laughs] I mean it was surreal, I couldn’t believe it. And then I leave my guys in Memphis, go to Coachella, and I did it. 125 months [with the Stooges]. I know that helped me be a better bass player.

I mean, what a thing. Especially our movement, without the Stooges, we wouldn’t have been anything. They were everything. And then to get to play with them, I couldn’t fucking believe it. He’s incredible, and he’s got that midwest thing. He’s not a lot of front. I love it. Actually, they were all pretty deep: Ronnie with history, Scotty [Asheton] with nature, Steve with politics, Ig with culture… I know the name was Stooges, but they’re actually pretty intelligent cats. There was never a boring second with those guys, they were beautiful.

They’re all gone now. Only Ig is left, and James Williamson from the second — he was very kind to me too.

But yeah, the mortality thing. That just makes me more kind of intense, kind of like what you were talking about with the political situation, you have to make things count, but also, how much time do you have in your shift? Like D. Boon, he didn’t have much time.

So we keep going, until they knock us down.

Pretty much.

Adam Yauch, fuck. I always think of that [Beastie Boys] song, “Sure Shot.” When all my shit got stolen with all the Stooges’ shit, Adam Yauch gave me a bass that afternoon. It weighed about 30 pounds. [Laughs] But he got cut short, he was an incredible cat.

That one hurt. But again, you keep going. What else are you going to do?

Well, doubt. The momentum will get you past that, hopefully. Yeah. Keep going.

What’s next for you? You have a new record coming out, you just finished a tour…

Both my sisters teach school, one high school, one junior high, and the junior high one wants me to talk on career day, talk about being in a band. I got invited to China so I’m going to take my Missingmen there for ten gigs and next September I do another Europe tour with the Italian guys to hit the towns we missed last time. The Meat Puppets asked me to open for them in May, so that’s my upcoming plans. Playing music, keep going.

Mike Watt’s new album, “Ring Spiel” Tour ‘95, is out November 11.

April Fox is a freelance music journalist and the co-owner of GoodFlow Productions, a full-service recording studio in Asheville, NC. She is the author of Chicken Soup for the Fuck You, an eclectic collection of essays on politics, parenting, and perverted televangelists. For more, find her at aprilfox.net, and follow her on Facebook.

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