500 words with ... MIKE WATT

[September 15th, 2004] In order to completely understand an interview with former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt, a brief vocabulary lesson is in order. First, when the 46-year-old talks about "jammin' econo," he's talking about living as a punk-rock minimalist. When Watt talks about D. Boon, he's talking about his former bandmate and best friend, whose death in 1985 ended the mythic punk of the Minutemen. And when Watt talks about "the sickness," he's talking about a time in 2000 he was laid up with an abscess in his perineum (or, as it is more popularly known, the taint).

That sickness, which nearly ended Watt's life, is the subject of The Secondman's Middle Stand. Watt's third solo album is his strangest work, employing six-minute songs and a B3 organ to tell the story of the progress of the bassist's illness, his operation and his recovery. He'll be performing with his band, the Second Men, at Berbati's on Sunday, when he sings the entire saga from beginning to end. Watt spoke with WW from his home in San Pedro, Calif., as he was preparing for his 53rd tour.

WW: Putting together The Secondman's Middle Stand, did you know it was going to alienate some people?

Mike Watt: I've never really tried to alienate people on purpose, but I have to admit I don't really think of people. I make my stuff econo. There are people making Hollywood movies for millions of dollars and they're really sitting on eggshells, you know? But I come from a tradition where you kinda jam econo.

So there's not really much at stake?

Not material things. I listen to people and what they say about the record and stuff. I'm not oblivious to that. But this idea where I reached up and made something inaccessible--I mean, Jesus Christ, when have I made something that is accessible? What does that mean anyway? Something people have already heard and like? Well, there are probably people better at that than I am. I want to make it safe to go crazy. This is a scene I come out of. I really feel I owe that movement a debt. It opened up things enough for me and D. Boon to figure out what our inner voice was.

Do you feel like you've still got it figured out?

D. Boon and I were talking about this. "What is the Minutemen? Everyone is going for a style or a sound." And D. Boon goes, "Well, let's do it this way. Whatever we play, people will be able to know it's the Minutemen." As far as our little destiny in music, it was in our hands. You don't have to follow lockstep paradigms, verse-chorus-verse, having a certain manager. Up by you guys, there's Kill Rock Stars. You look at their roster and all those bands sound so much different. It reminds me of the SST days. But to be like SST (Oakland's early '80s DIY label), they didn't copy SST bands' music. There is something else. There is ethic. D. Boon and I were looking for that, some kind of ethics that seemed reasonable to people trying to find out who they are.