Mike Watt's New Solo Album Examines His Life as a Middle-Aged Punk-Rocker by George Varga on Creators.com

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Mike Watt's New Solo Album Examines His Life as a Middle-Aged Punk-Rocker

The worlds of punk-rock, opera, Renaissance painting and cutting-edge jazz happily merge with bicycling and kayaking in the heady music of Mike Watt.

A major creative force since rising to prominence in the 1980s with the San Pedro, Calif., punk power-trio The Minutemen, the maverick bassist, singer and artistic instigator is 53-going-on-18. On April 30, he completed a 51-date national concert tour that saw him crisscrossing the nation in a van, much as he did in his late teens. Vital music, not fame or luxury, is still his goal.

The tour was in support of his new solo album, "Hyphenated-Man." It's an opera of sorts — albeit with Watt, 53, as the sole vocalist and without a conventional libretto. Its lyrics address his life as a middle-aged punk-rock veteran, with an oblique nod to Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz." Also inspired by the other-worldly paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, the album features 30 songs that reflect 30 characters from six Bosch works, including "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and "The Temptation of St. Anthony."

What results is wildly ambitious, certainly, but concision is the key. As an homage to The Minutemen, whose songs often lasted just one minute apiece, the "Hyphenated-Man" album is only 47 minutes in its entirety.

"When we do it live on stage, it's 45 minutes, but nothing gets edited out," said Watt, who comes up with his musical ideas while engaged in his daily bicycling and kayaking sessions. "Most albums are collections of songs, and this isn't. It's one (expansive) tune."

A dedicated workaholic, Watt completed a tour of Australia with The Stooges early this year, the pioneering Detroit punk-rock band he joined when the group reunited in 2002 after a 28-year hiatus.

He wrote all of "Hyphenated-Man's" songs on the Fender Telecaster guitar of former Minuteman mainstay D. Boone (who died in a 1985 van crash). Watt then taught the 30 songs to his current band mates, drummer Raul Morales and guitarist Tom Watson.

"Some people have asked me if we'll play these songs live in the same order as on the album, and I have to tell them it is (only) one order. There is no iPod shuffle on this thing!" Watt said.

"I wanted to make it just in the moment. I think it's a trippy place to be — a 53-year-old punk rocker — that's why I wanted to write about it."

While "Hyphenated-Man" sounds unmistakably Watt-like, it also references the music of everyone from English prog-rock icons King Crimson and the Neil Young-led Crazy Horse to the recently deceased Captain Beefheart.

"D. Boone and me were very much into Crazy Horse, as well as John Coltrane," Watt said.

"Captain Beefheart? We thought him and The Stooges were doing punk before anyone called it that. And we liked King Crimson's (1969 album) 'In The Court of the Crimson King,' maybe because it had all these different parts. But what we really liked, and what led me to the opera form, was The Who's (1966 mini-rock-opera album) 'A Quick One.' That's when I realized you can have a bunch of (musical) stuff to make one whole."

To find out more about George Varga and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.