Mike Watt is a songwriter/ bassist and has wielded the thud staff for Minutemen, Dos, and Firehose to name a few. Watt always has some sort of new proj on the go though (proj being short for project). Over the last few decades, Watt has always found a way to keep it DIY and always jam econo. The Pedro native continues to do his radio show, is an avid kayaker, and has been touring with the Missingmen as of late. Mike Watt said, “Watt from Pedro Show. Eighteen years now. Over six hundred shows. They’re all archived at TWFPS.com.” Watt has been active online with his fans for a number of years now. LM2’s Dylan Bowker once again had the pleasure to get in touch with Mike Watt and got the latest from the prolific bassist.
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From the nascent days of playing music to what he does presently, Watt never slotted himself in some role as being a supporting member. Watt said, “Ever since the D Boon days, I used the bass as a composition tool. Of course, we grew up together. I didn’t have to show him anything or he didn’t have to show me to start playing. After I lost him, I still sometimes did guitar composition but mainly on the bass. It was kind of interesting to see how people would respond with it. People like Nels Cline loved it because he’s into improv.”
Mike Watt and Todd Congelliere comprise The Jumpstarted Plowhards. One of many bands that Watt is a part of. Watt continued, “I just thought, I wonder what Todd would do with something like this……What if some guy wrote him fifteen songs that was just bass. Asked him to play guitar and sing all over it. The only stipulation I made was, I’d like you to find a different drummer for each tune. Even though I wrote the whole songs…..I still didn’t have them fully realized. I think with a bass guitar, there’s not as much harmonic content as maybe a guitar or keyboard.”
The history with Congelliere dates back a little while now. Watt stated, “In the Minutemen days, the only punk rockers in Pedro were pretty much us. But by the nineties, there was people actually moving to Pedro to get in the music scene. Todd Congelliere was one of these guys that came from a couple towns over. Couple houses next to each other on fourth street..they called it porch-core and they were actually having gigs in the living room and stuff; touring bands.”
The Wattplower
Mike Watt now has a signature bass guitar on the market. The influential player has a boomstick known as The Wattplower. He outlined to me during our talk the timeline for creating it as well as exciting future plans.
Watt quipped, “Last time we were talking, it was still kind of in the prototype phase. When we did bring it out, people liked it. Maybe like seven, eight prototypes. Actually we’re working on a mark two right now. That’s what I’ll be playing on tour…Which has got a couple more pickups to give a little more vocabulary. I just felt like if my name was going to be on it, it would have to be something that I would play. So yeah, I just kept asking them to make changes. They’re such good people. I thought they were going to go ‘man this guy is a picky asshole’ and give up on me. They didn’t, they stuck with me.”
There’s a true symbiotic relationship with bass guitar and the rest of the instrumentation at play. Watt said, “Bass is kind of like glue and if you ain’t got stuff to stick to, you’re just a puddle. So you need the other cats.”
Mike Watt
Kayaking is an activity that’s physically agreeable for the Pedro musician nowadays but it’s also spiritually nourishing. Mike Watt stated, “You know I’ve got a bad knee. It doesn’t matter in the kayak….There’s something about being at sea too. It’s a trippy view. It’s a trippy connect. Compared to all the other ways you connect in your life. There’s something about having the paddle in your hand, it’s very quiet. There’s pelicans, dolphins, sea lions.”
Watt continued, “If you hold onto the paddle, its kind of a balance bar. But you do have to keep your nerves…There are certain rhythms. Actually I’ve got a shorter one. It’s only a nine footer so you have to keep the momentum up or you get dead in the water.”
History has an odd way of turning musicians you listen to/ have performed on bills with into fellow bandmates. Watt said “Yeah, Flipper. Minutemen opened for them 38 years ago. Never would’ve imagined I’d be playing bass for them. Great guys. That was a really interesting tour. It was overseas in Europe. The bass parts are pretty iconic. I even used a fuzz pedal which is kind of different for me.”
This idea extends beyond playing with fellow bands of your generation but also jamming with some of your big inspirations as a young musician. An instance of this for Mike Watt was his time playing with The Stooges. Watt stated, “I never had older brothers or knew older guys like that. That was a trippy thing. They were all ten, eleven years older than me….The other thing is I love Stooges music. You couldn’t believe what kind of experience that was for me, Dylan. Incredible.”
Mike Watt and The Missingmen
Watt noticed a trend as a younger man where younger music fans were averse to learning about music before their time. He was shown the follies of this partly through the influence of Black Flag’s infamous artist. Watt said, “Raymond Pettibon used to take me to these old jazz guy gigs in the late 80’s….They were always playing with younger people.”
Watt continued, “When I was a younger man, music was more divided up like that. We didn’t listen to Little Richard. Listened to T-Rex, we listened to Blue Oyster Cult. We don’t listen to Little Richard. Why? There’s some expiration date?…You could talk to a young man in his twenties now, he knows about music thirty years before he was born.”
It bothers Watt to hear people lament about things where they’re obliviously imposing limits on themselves. Watt said, “The worst thing to hear from a young person is ‘everything’s been done’. They’ll say this. ‘I was born in the wrong time’. You’re born when you’re born.”
Tobacco, Mars Volta, and Cynic
Mike Watt seems to prefer the company of free-thinking people like the enigmatic individual that’s behind Tobacco. Watt stated, “I’ve done a couple…I did a thing with him (Tobacco), me, Flea, and K. Then I did a thing with just me and him. A thing called Black Soaker. Maybe he was called Black Moth Super Rainbow then. He goes between different names but yeah I love that guy’s work. He’s got a soul that’s older than mine even though chronologically he’s a little bit younger. But man, that cat is hip to a lot of stuff. He is very cool people.”
Wat has also jammed with Cedric Bixler-Zavala from Mars Volta and Paul Masvidal from Cynic. Though he wasn’t privvy to this as the record was coming together. Watt quipped, “I’ve made whole albums. There’s a guy in Montreal. What’s his name? Steve? When I did that, I think the proj was called Anywhere. It was actually a drummer man, who wanted to play twelve-string guitars. ‘I had somebody else do the drums but will you do the bass, Watt?’ I did it. Then I found out the drummer was Cedric. I didn’t even know it at the time.”
Collaborating online is a long way from mailing four tracks to Kira to compile the first Dos record. Watt stated, “The time lag, not as good fidelity. But you know what, the ethic is still the same. We’re not going to let distance get in the way of us trying to do a proj.”
Mike Watt had an interesting parting thought as we were wrapping up our talk. Watt quipped, “I heard that NoMeansNo broke up. I heard the Wright brothers ain’t going to do it anymore. And man those cats, us Minutemen were really inspired by them. So I’ll always think of Rob and John and Mr Wrong. Even the trippy thing they had, The Hanson brothers.”
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