One Big Reservoir

Mike Watt on books, kayaking, lighthouses, sunrises, reincarnation, oil slicks, the Stooges, Sun Ra, John Coltrane and some semi-pointyhead stuff about creating your own damn symmetry –– in life, art and whatever else you’re into

The idea is that sometimes, if you want to know a little bit more about a musician and the whys and wherefores of his art ‘n’ craft, well then it helps to listen to him talk about all kinds of other things that may or may be not even related to music at all. And: ‘twas ever thus about Mike Watt.

Mike Watt is a bass player, for one thing, and he’s pretty well known as a founding member of the late, great arty punk trio the Minutemen of San Pedro, CA, along with the late D Boon and drummer George Hurley. Watt has played with approximately 400,000 other bands since then, like Firehose, and his Material Girl tribute band the Madonnabes, Hellride, Li'l Pit, Pair of Pliers, the Jom & Terry Show, Crimony and the original Punk Rock Karaoke with Eric Melvin of NOFX and Greg Hetson of Bad Religion. Watt’s got his Missingmen and Secondmen bands going off and on, too, loads of worthy others, and did we mention that’s been thumpin’ bass with Iggy and the Stooges?

Watt’s got a weekly web radio program, too, called The Watt From Pedro Show (twfps.com), and his hootpage.com blog, and many, many other things far too numerous to cram into this space right here. You need to check in at those places to get the latest poop on everything Wattworld. (And/or check out the box at the bottom of the page for a fairly updated list of his solo and collaborative projects.)

Mike Watt is constantly on the move, even with a bum knee: Let’s cut to the chase now with some talk about Watt’s recent photo/essay book On and Off Bass (Three Rooms Press):

BLUEFAT: I got your photo book. It’s beautiful. I didn’t know you were a photographer, truth be told. Though I’m not surprised…

MIKE WATT: Y’know, a couple things happened at the same time. These digital cameras came out. With old cameras there was the film and the developing, and then Instamatics. It was when I was making the first opera [Contemplating the Engine Room, 1997], my record label, Columbia, was part of Sony, so they gave me this Sony camera that wrote pics to floppy disc, to take on tour. At the same time, I had started riding a bike, and this cat was moving to Atlanta and he sold me a 10-speed for five bucks.

I got cholera when I was 15 and I stopped riding bikes. Anyway, I was 38 years old, and I’d never seen people around that age riding bikes. [laughs] I was starting to get up early anyway, and I figured if get up at the crack of dawn, less people would see me. And I kind of liked being out here riding around on my bike. It’s just this town, San Pedro. I came here from Virginia when I was 10, ‘cause my pop was a sailor, and San Pedro, it’s the harbor, also the end of the land, and the freeway. It’s a weird mix.

I was seeing this shit that I didn’t even notice driving around in my car, and I was trippin’. But I have bad knees –– I had surgery in my 20s, and in fact I hurt my knee at a Stooges gig a couple of years ago. So peddling every day was hurting. So I got this idea: Get a kayak, and give my fuckin’ knees a break.

But the same thing happened –– I’m seein’ this shit. It’s different than writing songs, and putting things together. I mean, some licks will come to you by accident, but when you’re out there by the water, you can’t put together these scenes, like some guy with a tripod and his lights. I mean, nature just puts it together, and if you’ve got it kind of together you can capture it.

And that’s what happened. And I started floatin’ this shit on the ‘puter list to my buddies, y’know, not bragging or tryin’ to say they’re better, but with a thought toward an album cover. Then last year this gallery in Santa Monica called Track 16 asked if these pics had been used, and they set up this show.

The way San Pedro curves on the west coast there is interesting. Where you’re situated, you’re actually facing east.

On the peninsula, that’s right. It blocks the sunset. It’s like San Francisco, where the people face Oakland and Alameda.

So with my pics, it was the idea of the morning, and thinking like James Joyce, y’know, What’s gonna be done? What can you do in the day? What’s the word? Potential. But you know at sunset there’s about 20 minutes of that orange-yellow light, too. It’s a tricky light. A real camera man could tell you about this. But there is that special light.

That “everything is seen through a dusty orange filter”-type feeling.

Ain’t that a trip? Mr. Whitman would call it a “rarified light.”

You’ve got a few nice pics of the oil derricks, too.

Those are cranes that take the cans off the boats. You know, this port is the biggest in the U.S. and third biggest in the world, after Singapore and Hong Kong. Between Long Beach and Pedro there’s Terminal Island, and that’s where the Navy Base was. They closed that down after the war, and it turned into a can terminal, that’s the way things were going. And this crane thing, when I came here in ‘67 there were two of 'em, and we have over 300 now.

That terminal area is where all the animal hides used to get stored. I think the only thing we sent back in quantity was hides, ‘cause we used a lot of cows for purses and shoes. [laughs] They stink, too. That was the days of the cows and the warehouses. But that’s all gone, the cans changed all that.

How did you get these shots where the sun is so huge? You can zoom right into the sun like that?

I do. And dig, cameras have their own way of reacting to that, it’s not like film. It’s kinda weird, it’s what you call pixilation, the way things can get blocky that way; it also fucks with the colors. Not like nature.

Then you’ve got this incredible shot of the old lighthouse.

Yeah, it’s at the Angel’s Gate. Because Long Beach is the home of what they call the Queen’s Gate, well, we only got a fuckin’ beacon on a goddamn pole. But understand that in L.A., we’re not like San Francisco, we don’t have a natural bay, so what they had to do was get some rocks from Catalina and take a bend in the land –– in fact it almost was gonna be Santa Monica, because there’s a bend in the land there at Malibu, right? But they wanted too much money, and Pedro said, Look, you can annex us –– this was about 1911 –– and they fuckin’ built a railroad track on that fuckin’ breakwater and it ended up where they put that lighthouse.

Now that lighthouse just got restored, since I took this picture. That thing was hit by a battleship in the fog [laughs], I think it was the USS Tennessee or something, it ran into it.

Just looking at it makes you wonder what goes on inside.

Lighthouses always fascinated me. Like, the parallel is a van while on tour. You’re in your own world, you know? In fact, I fantasized about it. The oldest building in Pedro is the Point Fermin lighthouse, but it’s up on a cliff, so we could be just a cab with a beacon on top. That thing had to be built all solid, because actually there’s five holes that were punched through the breakwater, they had to pile in boulders from the sea. Especially in ‘83 there were some big storms.

But yeah, can you imagine. They had to make those things big. They’re all along PCH [Pacific Coast Highway], up to Big Sur and all that, and you’ll see some of these guys out there. And they take blows.

What about this photo of a bird? Is it a turkey?

There’s a children’s zoo here in Pedro for like Compton and city kids who never get to see that shit. There’s a pony, there’s a pig, a lotta chickens. They bring in the bus and the kids get to see the animals. I think it’s a bitchin thing. And it’s funny ‘cause they didn’t have turkeys over there so we called it “The Bird With the Seven Legs.” His name is Valentina. But aren’t they trippy? The colors! That’s when they’re excited, you can see his feathers puff, ‘cause he has his lady nearby. I was getting a little close and he was like, Stand back there! [laughs]

The thing about the pelicans, it’s not just the confidence in how they fly an inch above the water without flapping their wings, but they have a little song. How many birds are like that? In fact I used them at the end of the second opera, and I’m like, I can’t write any more, there’s no words. So I thought, maybe some truths are beyond words.

They got a hospital for when the birds get oil on them and caught up in six-pak holders and shit. They also get cataracts and go blind from all the diving. There’s a society in Orange County that tries to help them.

The water down there is pretty filthy, though.

It’s a harbor, man. You wanna talk about heartbreak, when you’re paddlin’ and there’s brown foam, and when you see them sea lions and dolphins…it’s a trip. The thing about a kayak is you’re so low, even a one-foot wave is fucked [laughs]. I start off inside the harbor, do about two miles of that, past the opening to Angel’s Gate and the breakwater. But watch out if someone flushed the toilet…

On the other side up by Bolsa Chica there’s Huntington Harbor, and they’ve got three phony islands there, and no tides get in there –– and I’ve never paddled in a bigger toilet in my fuckin’ life.

Tell me something about kayaking technique.

You gotta do some kind of Eskimo roll. [laughs] It’s not like a canoe, you just hold on to that thing, and you’ll stay up.

You wear a vest, though, right?

Every time. The law says you’ve got to. The thing about the sea: big respect, ‘cause when things go bad, they go bad quick. You heard about this yacht race last week? They say it looked like the sailboat got put in a blender.

Kayaking must be good exercise, too. Does it hurt your knees?

Maybe getting out is tough. Mine is only a nine-and-a-half footer, and the shorter your kayak, the more you have to work at it. But you don’t have to go deep with the paddle, you just gotta keep going, and actually the motion is like a boxer kind of thing, a figure eight. It ain’t anything like a canoe or an outrigger.

Plus there’s the good feeling of being down there by the water, all those negative ions stimulating your mind.

For all that heaviness about it, it’s also just righteous, man, there’s a rhythm and there’s a power that you feel that you don’t get anywhere on the land. It is a sensation.

So yeah, The Sea: big respect.

Big time. My pop made me learn how to sail a sailboat when I was a teenager. He had a thing about, try to learn while there’s still oceans. He told me once, Never again volunteer yourself, at least not for the Navy. [laughs]

You lived in Navy housing when you were a kid, right?

The project I lived in was on Western Avenue right across from the graveyard, where Bukowski is buried. There were three different housing projects. Actually the proj D Boon was in was Navy housing during the Second War; afterward they decided to rent ‘em out to poor people. And I moved into the proj next to that, that’s how I met him. There was a park there, and he jumped out of a tree on me. [laughs]

I wanted to give an overview of all your latest musical projects, but you’re too prolific, I couldn’t keep up, sorry bro. One thing I wanted to hear about was this Hand to Man Band album called You Are Always On Our Minds (Post Consumer Records), which is sensational. It’s all over the extreme-jazz-funky-dirge-rock map.

I’m proud of being part of that. We did that in Austin, TX. That’s kind of a Nels Cline thing where you don’t know what it is when you go into it. There’s no songs, right? There’s John Dieterich from Deerhoof and a piano man named Thollem McDonas who’s played with William Parker and Nels Cline, and drummer Tim Barnes, who was in Silver Jews and involved with the lower East Side thing with John Zorn and all those people.

There were no songs, you say. So what was the process?

We were all in the room at the same time. I had just hurt my knee, and it was all sweaty outside, lotsa bugs, so I just stayed in there and they all worked with me, and some things were like, Here, I’ve got a lick, you wanna try this? And other things were just, Turn on the tape recorder and start playing. Then John the guitar man mixed the whole thing. It’s like there’s a lot of source material, event-driven stuff, and then they cull from it. It’s a very interesting way of playing, but the mixing is almost as important as the playing. It’s sort of like photography: I can’t tell the sun where to be, right, so I get a second opinion after the situation has happened.

If you’re working with people you trust, that’s fine.

[Guffaws] Yeah, you’re a writer, so this happens to you all the time. I remember reading something from Mr. Faulkner how he hated editors! But now, like the book: I didn’t pick those pictures, I didn’t pick those diary excerpts. I was very insecure. I’m more of a bass player, so I said, I’ll give you a bunch, you pick from them. You’d call that a kind of collaboration.

In the book you reference John Coltrane a lot. You talk about his idea of one big reservoir we can all add to. That sounds so much like where your music is going, where you are going.

Raymond Pettibon turned me onto Coltrane. You know, I grew up in Navy housing and I didn’t know about jazz, it was Buck Owens where I was living. When I met D Boon he only knew Creedence! He didn’t know Cream or the Who or any of that stuff. That’s why I wear flannels! I didn’t know that was like a lumberjack thing. You know, Marc Bolan had a boa, I didn’t know what those things were, I thought a flannel shirt was a rock & roll outfit!

Then Raymond turns me on to Coltrane. You know, those cool people in the ‘70s, they were the glam and glitter and artist people, fuck, they blew my mind, those people. Raymond talking about Dada and Coltrane. I actually thought Coltrane was playing punk, too, I didn’t know he was dead. I knew he was a little older, but I didn’t know that shit started in the late '40s. [laughs] He was already dead.

It was the emotion. In fact, the Minutemen, when we toured, we played “Ascension” before every gig. We just thought, y’know, punk wasn’t a style of music for us, it was a kind of vibe. For these cats like the Screamers and Nervous Gender, punk was anything you wanted it to be. That’s what those fuckin’ beboppers were saying. Or like with bands like Dred Scott, they didn’t fit into any genre. To me they were like my view of punk bands, that you had to make up your own mind in the moment, and you couldn’t be referencing shit.

And then I started collecting interviews with Coltrane, and man, this cat is after Truth. And man, that’s what D Boon was about. It was a trip. It resonated. And with Trane, this thing about 10 to 12 hours of practice every day –– y’know, we came from arena rock, which is basically a Nuremburg rally, and this is a whole different side. It’s a very personal trip that’s still about sharing with other humans, and he just turned us all the way around.

I love that idea, that his music and yours and all these punk rock types and anybody else who just want to make some kind of personal sound: It’s all one big reservoir you’re adding to.

You know where that came from, it was that Bukowski interview when Bukowski quotes somebody telling Coltrane, “Sun Ra says you’re ripping him off.” And Trane says, “You know, I listened to his tenor man John Gilmore a lot, there might be something to that. Music’s a big reservoir.”

Yeah, Coltrane you couldn’t get mad, it seemed. Like in that interview when they asked him what classical music is, and he says, “Well, I could be wrong, but maybe that's what you do when you’re sitting down.” [laughs]

Say, Mike, what’s it all about? Where are you headed? Does it matter?

I got the Stooges, and that’s an interesting classroom. Yeah, Ig, he taught me a lot as a bass man. He don’t work a machine, y’know? In a way he’s kind of a bridge to the rest of us, the gig-goers. He’s also from the ‘60s, that’s trippy about him. I mean, you would not have a punk scene without that band, it ain’t punk rock before that. So there’s a sensibility, they come from another world. But Iggy’s very hip, like, he knows, he digs the culture, man, he knows everything going on.

Iggy’s an interesting guy. I talked to him once, and he was really kinda refined. All he wanted to talk about was books.

Oh yeah, yeah. In fact, when I finish a book, I usually hand it over to him. And he’s turned me on to some good books, too, like this one by this French guy where a Samadhi comes back as a dog. Ronny told me he was the valedictorian, too. Also captain of the swim team.

The thing about Iggy Pop is, he’s not operating the machine; he’s not caught up in minutiae, he’s a big-picture man. I remember when I got the call in Tallahasee, I was with the Secondmen at a place called the Townhouse, and I get the phone and it’s Iggy, and he says, “Mike, Ronny says you’re the Man.” I almost had a heart attack and fell over! [laughs] He says, “Would you do me a favor and wear a T-shirt instead of flannel?” [laughs] I said, Fuck yeah! It was John Fogerty’s idea anyway. He said, “What about Levi’s and Converse?” I said, That’s strong.

And he talked to me the longest time about the lights, and him having a nightmare where the drummer came on in lime green and the bass player was in bright orange, and then finally he got to the music part and he said, “Look, however we end the song, that’s how we end it.” [laughs] And then two weeks later, I left my Secondmen guys in Memphis and I went and did that Coachella gig with the Stooges, and I was sick as a dog…but I didn’t tell Iggy. No, I went and did 35 straight gigs, and them gigs burned that fever right out of me.

It’s a weird trip. I could never imagine that happening in my life, playing bass with Iggy Pop and the Stooges. I know D Boon’s laughing his fuckin’ brains out.

Super-selected semi-recent Watt discography: 1995 Ball-Hog or Tugboat? (Columbia) 1997 Contemplating the Engine Room (Columbia) 2004 The Secondman's Middle Stand (Columbia) 2010/2011 Hyphenated-man (clenchedwrench) 2010 With Floored by Four | Floored by Four (Chimera Music) 2012 Mike Watt, Richard Meltzer, Yuko Araki, Shimmy Shimizu | Spielgusher (clenchedwrench) 2012 With The Hand to Man Band | You Are Always on Our Minds (Post-Consumer) 2012 With Anywhere | Anywhere (ATP Recordings) 2012 With Mi-Gu / Choose the Light (Chimera Music) 2013 With Il Sogno di Marinaio | La Busta Gialla (clenchedwrench) 2013 New Stooges record coming out, supposedly, fingers crossed