Mike Watt

Mike Watt doesn't need prompting. Without much provocation he'll elaborate on the current state of music, his views on society, his goals and virtues, famous work with prior bands The Minutemen and fIREHOSE, his work as a "side mouse," backing up people such as J Mascis and Perry Farrell, or anything else that happens to be crossing the busy street of his mind at the time. With dusty voice and calm demeanor, he makes the quintessential storyteller; like the Garrison Keillor of punk rock. Watt called the Synthesis from a stop in Vancouver, Canada last week and had a few things say. What follows is a brief transcription of the beginning stages of our conversation. If only this feature could be five pages long…

So they held you up at the border?
Yeah, there was a little problem, 'cause I had to switch the organ player for a guitar player half way through the tour. The first five weeks I had an organ / bass / drums setup, and now I have a guitar / bass / drums setup.

Why'd you make the switch?
Because the organ player (Pete Mavich) could only get five weeks off from work. His boss…works at a pet food lab, made him come home. Now I got Tom Watson. That's why the last four weeks have been the Jom and Terry show and not the Secondmen.

So I got a story for you. A friend of mine, he has a cousin in New York named, I believe Karen or Katherine Schoemer…
Karen Schoemer.

My friend was saying how one night you stayed on her couch and you puked in the night and left a giant stain on the couch, and she told my friend that the stain is still there and it's becoming like an alter, a shrine to Mike Watt.
To Jim Beam or Wild Turkey or some kind of Bourbon. Uhh, that was very embarrassing yeah. They got me going.

You remember that?
Oh yeah, we were talking and talking. That was with The Black Gang, with Nels Cline and Bob Lee and…I stopped drinking about a few years ago, so you won't have to worry about that in Chico.

So can you tell me about your seasonal touring schedule?
Yeah, this is my 49th tour. In fact, yesterday was the only day off on the tour, it's the 53rd gig tonight but I had 52 in a row. What I do is, in the Spring I go counter-clockwise from [where] I live in the harbor of L.A., San Pedro. I go counter-clockwise and want to get out South before it gets too sweaty. In the Fall I go clockwise because you want to get out of the North before it's too cold. After a while you start noticing patterns and it's easier to go with the flow. I don't like touring in the winter because the roads are icy, and I don't like touring in the summer because you're too sweaty and hot.

How long ago did you come up with this pattern?
About late-eighties I started figuring it out. I mean the Vaudeville people figured it out before me, I'm just a slow learner. I figure myself as part of that tradition much more than rock 'n' roll or something like that. People in rock 'n' roll, I like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, but what it turned into is pretty gross. I don't know why, either the Nuremberg Rally aspect or too much conformity, not enough individuality, not enough wildness. It's cliché to say, but it's a marketing kind of thing to target young people with disposable income, and it's not a vehicle anymore for rebellious ideas like I think it once was.
A lot of these things, if they were just physical it'd be such an easier job, but because they are mental and people - a lot of conditioning and stuff has convinced people that they don't have power over their destiny or the way things are run, [and] the hurt mentality prevails. It's stuff I'm trying to work against. [That's] why I do tour so much... I am trying to make things a little safe to be crazy with art forms and expression. I figure if people see me doing what I'm doing, and I'm not just talking about music, I'm talking about painting or writing, all the arts.

Who are some of the bands that are new to the scene that are pushing the envelope, really visceral?
Unfortunately, my Alzheimer-prone memory fucks things up and I can't remember a lot of people's names. Folks doing stuff…the Kill Rock Stars people up here in Olympia. That's a great label. There's Mac with his Merge [Records] in North Carolina. There's a lot more going on now than in the old days to be honest with you, so I don't think that pop music lost its edge. I don't know that it ever really had an edge. That's why it's called pop music. They don't even have enough respect. They're trying to say that people are already going to like it, that it's already popular without even asking them. It's kind of an arrogance. Again, it's a human kind of thing, this is a problem all over the world and always has been, but I don't mean to sound cynical by this. There's an old saying that farmers use: If you want a good crop, use a lot of manure. It seems a lot of advancements that humanity makes is in spite of itself, because of friction and stuff like this. I'd rather have in some ways, a little more dynamic, a little more polemic than a lot of gray and fuzziness because it's easier to see where you stand. And that goes for people like me. Time goes on and you don't want to be doing reruns, you want to be vital and in the moment. It's not just an us-and-them kind of situation so much; everybody has these kind of traits. It's more of a question of giving in to them. Like obesity, I mean you cannot outlaw food. The rerun mode is a pretty easy thing to get into, especially if you're gonna talk this kind of talk I'm talking. You have to walk that walk. So I put myself in situations where I have to be intense 'cause I wouldn't want to ask someone to do something I wouldn't want to do myself. The goose for the gander, whatever. It's true. So if I'm asking people to be intense with the art forms, I gotta be the same way with myself. I can't be just old weird uncle punk rock Mike and just rest on them laurels. I want to be in this moment and with these cats. I'm learning from everyone.

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