Mike Watt

 ( Official Website ) 

In 1984, Watt met Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler during a Black Flag/Minutemen tour. They soon became romantically involved, and subsequently began collaborating on songs, including material on Minutemen's final album 3-Way Tie (For Last). They also formed a two-bass duo, Dos, and have since recorded and released three records.

Minutemen ended tragically on December 22, 1985, when Boon was killed in an automobile crash at the age of 27 while driving to Arizona with his girlfriend. Their fifth full-length album, 3-Way Tie (For Last), had already been scheduled for release at the time of the accident. In the documentary film We Jam Econo, Watt mentioned that the last time he saw Boon, he had received lyrics for 10 songs from critic and songwriter Richard Meltzer for a planned collaboration with Minutemen. Minutemen were also planning to record a triple album with the working title 3 Dudes, 6 Sides, 3 Studio, 3 Live as way to counteract bootleggers.

Subsequently, Ed Crawford, a Minutemen fan who drove to San Pedro from Ohio, persuaded the Watt/Hurley rhythm section to continue playing music. Firehose was formed soon after. Following three releases on SST Records, Firehose was signed to Columbia Records by A&R man Jim Dunbar. Shortly after the release of 1993's Mr. Machinery Operator, the band decided to call it quits.

Watt and Kira married in 1987, but their marriage ended not long after Firehose's break-up. However, both their friendship and Dos have remained intact; they even recorded their third album, Justamente Tres, not long after their divorce.

In 1996, Watt contributed bass guitar on two songs for Porno for Pyros' second album, Good God's Urge, filling in for Martyn LeNoble who quit the band during recording sessions. Watt subsequently ended up being the bassist for the band's tour that followed the release of the album.

He made an appearance in an episode of Cartoon Network's Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

In 1997, Watt released Contemplating the Engine Room, a punk rock song cycle using naval life as an extended metaphor for both Watt's family history (the album has a picture of his father in his Navy uniform on the cover) and the Minutemen. The album, which was critically well received, features the trio of musicians Nels Cline on guitar, Stephen Hodges on drums, and Watt as the only singer.

Watt went on to play in such groups as Banyan (with Stephen Perkins and Nels Cline) and Hellride, a sometime live outfit that plays cover versions of The Stooges songs. He also played in Wylde Ratttz with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and The Stooges' Ron Asheton, recording a song for the film Velvet Goldmine. Watt also recorded a bass line to send to the Pennsylvania space-folk band The Clubber Lang Gang for their record Now Here This, on the track "For the Broken People". Starting in mid-2011, Watt began playing bass for a psychedelic/progressive rock band called Anywhere with the Mars Volta's Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Christian Eric Beaulieu of Triclops! In 2015 Mike Watt joined the Waywords and Meansigns project, a collaborative project setting James Joyce's Finnegans Wake to music.

In 2000, Mascis asked Watt to participate in a world tour behind Mascis' first post-Dinosaur Jr. release, J Mascis and the Fog's More Light. At several of the shows, Ron Asheton formerly of The Stooges joined Mascis and Watt onstage, wherein the group would play entire sets of Stooges songs. Watt and Mascis later joined Asheton and his brother, Stooges drummer Scott Asheton, for a one-time-only performance at a Belgian festival under the name Asheton, Asheton, Mascis & Watt. In 2001, Watt was one of several bassists invited to participate in the sessions for Gov't Mule's The Deep End, partly on the recommendation of Primus' Les Claypool. Watt and Gov't Mule recorded a cover version of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Effigy" for the album. The sessions were immortalized in the documentary feature film Rising Low.

In 2002, Watt, along with Pete Yorn and members of The Hives, backed Iggy Pop for a short set of Stooges songs at that year's Shortlist Music Prize ceremony, after which Watt was asked to play bass in the reunited Stooges lineup in 2003. The reunited Stooges played their first show in almost 20 years at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in May 2003.

While promoting and touring behind The Secondman's Middle Stand, Watt announced plans for future recordings, stating that he intended to record as frequently as he did in the Minutemen days for as long as he could.

Watt would part amicably with Columbia/Sony BMG in 2005, after 14 years as both a solo artist and as one-third of Firehose.

Watt would further his interest in improvised music by forming a trio, Los Pumpkinheads, with former Beastie Boys keyboardist Money Mark and Caroline Bermudez.

On December 14, 2005, the McNally-Smith College of Music in Saint Paul, Minnesota announced the formation of the Mike Watt Bass Guitar Scholarship, which is to be awarded annually to a bass major starting in the Fall of 2006.

In March 2006, Watt took part in the performance at Disney Hall, Los Angeles, of Glenn Branca's "Hallucination City" Symphony #13.

Watt also worked on two other projects during this time period: Funanori, a musical collaboration with Kaori Tsuchida, guitarist of The Go! Team, on shamisen and other instruments, and Pelicanman (named after the closing track on The Secondman's Middle Stand) with Petra Haden. Pitchfork: Mike Watt Collab Fever: Petra Haden, Go! Team's Kaori The first three songs recorded by Watt and Tsuchida as Funanori were released on a split EP with Tokyo band LITE in the summer of 2007 by Transduction Records. Watt also contributed a cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Burning For You", recorded with Haden, Nels Cline, Money Mark Nishita, and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, to the all-star compilation album Guilt by Association, released in August by the independent label Engine Room Recordings.

On June 9, 2007, Watt was the live narrator for the silent movie Brand Upon the Brain! at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, California.

Continuing his exploration of both improvised music and the Japanese independent music scene, Watt, along with Nels Cline and producer Kramer, formed Brother's Sister's Daughter with mi-gu members Shimizu "Shimmy" Hirotaka and Yuko Araki to do a two-week tour of the country in late 2008 and record an album afterward. The album was mixed down by Hirotake but has not lined up a label or release date yet. Since then, two more albums by the band have been recorded but have yet

Watt and Cline teamed up in New York to form Floored by Four with ex-Cibo Matto keyboardist Yuka Honda and Lounge Lizards drummer Dougie Bowne. The group debuted at Central Park Summerstage on August 1, and recorded their first self-titled album right afterward. The album was released in late September 2010 on Sean Lennon's Chimera Music label. Honda would later rejoin Watt and Cline for a second Brother's Sister's Daughter tour and album session in Japan (Cline and Honda became romantically involved – and subsequently engaged to be married – during the course of these projects).

Watt is interviewed in the 2009 documentary film Live House, about the underground music scene in Japan.

Watt is using his clenchedwrench label to put out some other long-awaited recording projects from the stockpile he has accumulated over the past few years, starting with the fourth Dos album ( Dos y Dos, released July 16, 2011), followed by the Spielgusher project with Richard Meltzer and mi-gu's Shimizu "Shimmy" Hirotaka and Yuko Araki ( Spielgusher, released January 17, 2012) and two Il Sogno del Marinaio albums. Watt chose to start clenchedwrench after returning from his Japanese Hyphenated-man tour because "I've got so many projects in the pipeline... and I want no hiccups with getting them out, so up goes my own freak flag flying."

Firehose's reunion was formally announced as part of the lineup of the 2012 Coachella Festival. The band underwent a short tour in April centered around both Coachella dates.

The band is an experimental music trio consisting of Watt on vocals and bass guitar, Stefano Pilla on guitar and vocals, and Andrea Belfi on drums and vocals. The band has released two studio albums on clenchedwrench: La busta gialla (2013) and Canto Secondo (2014).