mike watt + the secondmen

   one more tour of this opera for watt, "the secondman's middle stand", which was released august 24, 2004 on columbia/red ink. as I explained last tour, it's one piece split into three sections of three songs each dealing w/ that illness that almost took me at the beginning of 2000 and left an intense/profound impression on both my body and mind. it loosely parallels dante's "il commedia" in ways - I loved that epic as a teenager and re-read soon after surviving that hellride the sickness laid on me. ("in the hand of dante" by nick tosches had a profound influence as well). this is the bass-organ-drums trio project I've been talking about. to help me out, I had madonnabe pete mazich on organ/singing and wegospeedro/jom & terry show/madonnabe jerry trebotic on drums as the secondmen. both these cats are from and live in pedro so I had an all-pedro band to help me tell my tale of hurtin', healin', pluckin' and pedalin'. to help spread the word about this new release and also to carry on the sally forth! tradition I treasure so dearly since embarking on that in the early 80s w/my fellow minutemen d. boon and george hurley (this'll be my fiftythird tour), I'm setting out in the boat for yet another go around of the u.s. and canada - "el mar cura todo" tour 2004. we'll be playing the piece in its entirety (about fiftythree minutes) plus we've worked up some encore stuff too if you want to hear more of us. by the way, there's a european release of "...middle stand" real soon on easy action so if you're overseas from here, it'll be much easier to get. also, there's also an extra dvd included w/videos for "tied a reed 'round my waist" (by lance bangs) and "beltsandedman" (by mike muscarella).

   some of this spiel reads much like what I wrote for the last tour in some ways, huh? trippy about life. look, it's unfortunate that me and raul won't have pete w/us this tour cuz the docks have dibs (both him and jer are longshoremen besides musical machinery operators) and he's gotta stay in pedro. fortunately though, we have another cat to organ it up for us and his name is paul roessler. the first keyboard band I ever had was a duo I formed w/paul in 1986 called crimony (he's also been in the screamers, twisted roots, 45 grave and many others - right now he's playing again w/nina hagen) and our debut single ("reverence"/"st. pete") and six song 12" ep were some of the last releases for the new alliance records label I ran after starting it w/d. boon and martin tamburovich in 1980. however, the only tune I wrote in that band was "st. pete" w/paul writing all the others. this time he's learning all watt stuff and he's doing really good at prac, pete helping him out w/little things (just like jer did for raul) so I know it'll be a good tour. teaching someone something always brings out something in yourself so it's no bother, really. I'm so grateful to have all the enthusiasm these four cats (pete, jer, raul and paul) have brought to this "sickness piece" - I couldn't be a luckier man, truly. I'm also kind of excited for this tour cuz it's been seven years since my last watt euro tour. about fucking time, huh? sorry. I'm gonna be more regular about that and w/recording too - that's why this is that last go for this album so I can't start work on a new one.

   oh, here's something regarding this album I'm touring which was posted to the mike watt list back in september:

people,

   I've been doing interviews and now I'm trying to explain something when they want to talk about this new record. sure, it's got literal lyrical references to that illness that almost took me but when I hear it and do it w/my guys, it does have an allegorical aspect to it - it's kind of like more about this punk rocker just coming into middle-age and that sickness stuff was the "catalyst" or whatever that got me thinking about things. like "...engine room" wasn't just about the minutemen, or the navy or my pop or whatever - it was about watt and what's in his head when he wrote it, remembering back and looking at himself in the moment. well, the sickness shook me up and 'pert-near killed me, yes. but you don't plant things in dirt just to grow more dirt, right? it's a riff on what makes me me in these days I find myself in. it's supposed to be open-ended enough too (in some weird way) where you can figure whatever you want out of it. that's ok too.

   you know, I almost was killed by pneumonia when I was twentytwo (the week darby killed himself and john lennon was shot to death) and I never wanted to write even a song, let alone a whole piece about that. more than twenty years later, this time I do. life's a trip that way - you're on a journey w/strange roads about that can take you to unexpected places and you can get to thinking about that sometimes...

               on bass, watt