by Gordon Downs

Perhaps the most credible forefather of punk rock still actively recording and performing music, Mike Watt is one of the most interesting and talented musicians to lay claim to the bass guitar. Dating back to his days with the seminal Southern California punk outfit the Minutemen, to his recent collaborations with some of the industry’s finest musicians, his life is full of the stuff dreams are made of.

He most recently joined forces with his old friend and former band mate George Hurley along with guitarist Joe Baiza and poet/saxophonist Dan McGuire to form the Unknown Instructors. A strange mash-up of free jazz with a punk sensibility, the Unknown Instructors debut album, “The Way Things Work” was recently released by Smog Veil Records.

After he had just returned from one of his morning kayak runs at his home in San Pedro, Mike Watt speaks.

What time did you wake up today?
Mike Watt: Four thirty. Yeah I wake up early. I only stay up late for gigs.

So how did the Unknown Instructors come about?
Well it was a brainstorm idea from Dan McGuire, this poet from Toledo, Ohio, a guy I met years ago coming to my gigs. Things go on, you don’t wanna end up just doing “I Love Lucy” reruns of yourself. What I’ve tried to do especially since fIREHOSE, is get in situations that are challenging. That way I can keep learning. And an improvised thing especially, you don’t know what’s going to happen. I hadn’t played with Joe Baiza or George Hurley in awhile. Me and George did some Minutemen duet gigs awhile back.

I was fortunate enough to catch one of those sets during the Matt Groening curated ATP Pacific at the Queen Mary a couple years back.
It was trippy to do them songs. I don’t really listen to them a lot, because of sadness, heaviness. I just couldn’t have another guy on guitar to replace D. Boon. Those gigs, they had a big effect on me. My next record’s gonna be little songs. I hadn’t heard those songs in awhile. The Minutemen have been in my mind, just as much as D. Boon, but like the band and the sound and songs. I was kind of afraid to go there, it gave me heavy feelings. Bit to hear it was kind of a neat idea, no filler. These little songs where you get in and get out. For my next project, I got a guitar, bass, drum trio called Mike Watt and The Missing Men, and I’m gonna do little songs. I’m gonna do a tour first and then we’ll record. I wrote thirty seven little songs.

Do you know what label you’ll be releasing this next album on?
I try to do things everywhere I can. Luckily because of the scene there’s lots of opportunity. That’s what kind of weirds me out when I hear people say these are the lame days. I mean, there’s always gonna be some lameness, but in some ways it’s much better than the old days because there’s a lot more resources, people with little labels doing stuff. If you think back, Pat Boone sold more “Tutti Frutti’s” than Little Richard, and that was fifty years ago. So shit is always gonna be co-opted. There’s a herd tendency to get like sheep and stuff, and there are other tendencies that fight that.

When did you start rocking the flannel shirts?
I got it from John Fogerty. When I met D. Boon he was really into Creedence, and I grew up in Navy housing so I didn’t really know it was a farm shirt. I just thought it was John Fogerty’s rock and roll kinda outfit. Marc Bolan had a boa, Fogerty had flannel. I didn’t really know it was a rustic kind of thing, I just really dug them. Pendleton’s are the grail man, those are my favorite flannels. All wool, it would bug D. Boon just to watch me put them on, the itchiness of it.

I’ve heard you say on record that you despise single pocket flannel shirts. Why?
(laughing) Well that’s a personal thing. I also don’t like the little buttons on the collar. I like [dual pockets] because I need places to put my shit. I also like flaps on the pockets so it don’t fall out when you bend over. The thing you gotta watch out is drying them, because they get little. So I let them dry without a dryer. I like a little bit of white in them too. Because if you go into a club with a black light you light up and you look kinda like Madonna.

Speaking of Madonna, do you ever bust out the cover you did of “Burning Up” from the Ciccone Youth album?
Did it last tour with The Secondmen. Right after fIREHOSE, I put together a band that was mainly just for practice so I could stay in shape called The Madonnabees, and we interpreted a lot of her work.

What’s happening with another one of your bands, The Real Oh My?
Oh, Nels Cline and Kevin Fitzgerald doing Stooges. Kevin got real busy with Circle Jerks and Nels with Wilco. So that was a problem. That was during a time when I had four or five Stooges [cover] bands. I still got a couple, I got one with two of the guys from Porno For Pyros. It’s called Hellride, in fact we’re playing in Orange County tomorrow.

Have you heard Tortoise and Will Oldham’s cover of “It’s Expected I’m Gone” yet?
Yeah, somebody played it for me. I liked it. I liked the way it was much different than the original. They did their own take on it. Not just a Top 40 knockoff, they actually bring something to it.

Does Mike Watt have a message for the children?
Gotta find the voice within, don’t wanna be a rubber stamp. Don’t wanna be a Xerox machine. Don’t be a fake, let the freak flag fly,

hootpage.com

2005 “The Way Things Work” (Smog Veil)
2004 “The Secondman’s Middle Stand” (Red Ink)
1997 “Contemplating the Engine Room” (Columbia)
1995 “Ball-Hog or Tugboat?” (Columbia)