AUSTIN, TX - This interview with Black Pistol Fire's guitar player and singer Kevin McKeown was originally published on Scream & Yell in PT-BR. You can read it below in English. 

Yeah, we were supposed to be on the road for the better part of this year. I think we were supposed to be in Europe right now doing festivals. And we were supposed to release our album this year as well, but we’ve had to postpone that. The last few months and the better part of this year have been spent at home, which has been good, being able to spend time with family. But other than that, we’ve been working from home, writing and recording and trying to take advantage of the creative time to work on things from home. I love being on the road, touring and playing for people, but I find it difficult to write music on the road. So, when I’m home, I try to take advantage of that.

Yeah, it was written almost two years ago now. And it was written mostly out of personal experience, having to deal with a tough time and personal decisions that needed to be made, and the risks and consequences of those decisions that were made, but yeah, it had stayed on the shelf for a while. We didn’t know if we were gonna release it in an album or such. But when we started making the new album that song definitely fit in thematically and vibe-wise with the rest of the material. We didn’t exactly know what to do with it, but when the pandemic came about, we decided, wow, this song really resonates quite a bit with what’s going on in the world right now.

We have plans to release it early next year. We’re excited, and we’ve been wanting to release the album for quite some time. This is definitely the album that’s taken the longest for us to make and record, so I hope it shows a lot of different sides of the band, where we’re at musically.

Well, yeah, all of the above almost. A lot of different genres and styles of music. For this album I didn’t want to restrain ourselves to recording music that could only be played live with two people. I wanted to do what was best for the songs. So, if it needed extra instrumentation and bigger arrangements, that was something I didn’t want to shy away from. I wanted to just best serve the songs for the album. As far as guest musicians go, we’ve had some back-up vocal singers to help us on a few tracks, some lead guitar guest appearances on a track or two, and on keyboards, on Hammond organ, we’ve had somebody as well. So, yeah, we’ve definitely moved more out of our comfort zone with this album. It was recorded in many different studios in Nashville and here in Austin. And during the pandemic, we’ve been able to round out the album with a few extra last-minute songs that were recorded from home, and kind of, work some of that stuff out. It was the first time I had to do that, work and record from home, with no people at a studio to help out.

Some of the guests are friends that we know in town, not people from a level of notoriety that the public might know about. I really wanted to collaborate because, sometimes, when you work with just two people for so many years, it’s great because you develop such a strong chemistry and bond musically, but at times you need other people to come into your circle to shake things up in terms of, you know, make sure you don’t fall into a very predictable outcome with the creative and recording processes. I really wanted to seek that out, having someone to play guitar on a track, or keyboards, and create a different dynamic with the sound. That’s really in only a few songs, but I think it definitely brings new life to the tracks.

Yes, we do. It’s called Look Alive. It’s funny, again, we’ve had the title for this album for quite some time now, because it related a lot to me on a personal level. But then the pandemic came, and the title seemed even more appropriate. All these things related to the album were decided before the pandemic, and it’s strange, because it all resonates with what’s going on in the world right now. It’s a big coincidence really.

Yes, a few of them will be on the album. The intent with these singles last year was to have them compiled in a bigger album. So, another four unreleased songs will be included to complete the album as well.

We started working with Jacob on our fourth LP and also with another good friend and engineer, our co-producer, Nick Joswick, who works at 5th Street studios here in Austin. We worked with him on most of the album, but with other people as well, and we also went to Nashville to record with Vance Powell, who has previously recorded The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, Chris Stapleton, among others. He’s a great engineer, I loved to work with him. So, it was kind of all over the place. And when you continue to work with the same people, it’s because of who you develop a musical relationship with. ‘Oh, I know what you are going for with this vocal sound or with this guitar sound’. Or because they’re there to stay, ‘oh, you’ve done this before, let’s try going in a different direction’. For me, I like to lean on people that I have a history with, so I know how to get to results a little bit quicker, or someone who pulls your back to let you know that you’re repeating yourself or going on the same path you’ve gone before. So yeah, it’s a very interesting album considering how many different people were involved in it. And it’s a very special record for us, we’re excited to get it out.

Uh, it’s a very tricky thing for us to come into, because we are Canadian, and we cannot vote in the United States. We live in Austin, but we can’t vote, so that’s very frustrating considering this is where we live and that we would like to have a say in how our country is going to be shaped and run. So, it becomes difficult for us to want to speak up about any kind of political issues about this country when we don’t have much of a say. But we do encourage everybody to vote, because if you don’t, you don’t have a voice. You can’t make a difference without speaking up. Just because we can’t vote, we would love to have the opportunity to do that. It’s a very important time right now in the history of America and the world, with everything that’s going on in the world. I just encourage people to get out there and vote, that would be my comment on political issues.

Well, this is something that I personally feel very passionate about and I’ve been trying to figure out how to help and contribute to this movement. We’ve been trying to raise awareness as much as we can, using social media as a tool to repost and other things. I want to take actions about issues, and on a much smaller scale than Jeff Tweedy, Gibson guitars (which is my sponsor) donated a Les Paul guitar to me, which I have been hand-painting, and we’re working towards doing a live stream, where all the proceeds and donations will go to the Black Live Matters movement, and also to the frontline healthcare workers. These are all very important issues to us, these are all things that we’ve been trying to find the best avenue… It’s just very hard to navigate through anything during the pandemic: trying to get together to rehearse, or put together a live stream, or do things to raise money. I’m also a father to a two-year-old. At home, sometimes the days can go by like a blink of an eye. 

(Laughs) So, I constantly wrestle with the idea of like, ‘oh, man, I’ve been working on this for two months and I still need to get around to this, and I need to get around to that’, so I’ve been trying to give myself a little bit of grace, like, ‘ok, so I’m slowly chipping away when I get some time to work on music, or finish projects…’ But back to what you were saying, yes, those types of issues and movements are extremely important to us, because what’s happening right now is what is going to spark change. I think what Jeff Tweedy is doing is amazing work and we are hopefully going to be able to contribute more soon.

It’s hard to know what is gonna happen. We have shows on the books for the next year and we hope to go on tour. But I don’t know if that’s really going to happen. We are going to hopefully release this album early next year, and we would love to get on the road and perform in front of fans and play in places that we’ve never been before. But right now we’re at the mercy of what lies ahead of how venues are going to continue, and even if people will want to go to shows again, due to the fact of how severe things progress or start to subside. Right now, the only thing we can do is stay safe and stay sane, working on music as much as we can from home, so when the gates open up again we’ll have plenty of new material to give fans.

Yes, me too. We would love to get to Brazil, that’s definitely on our bucket list. We hope to see you guys soon.

Cercada de polêmicas, a autobiografia do diretor americano Woody Allen foi lançada nos Estados Unidos em maio de 2020 e tem previsão de chegar ao mercado brasileiro nos próximos meses. Escrevi sobre o livro para o Scream & Yell. Leia um trecho da resenha abaixo.

Para conferir a versão integral da resenha, acesse o texto no Scream & Yell.

SAN PEDRO, CA — Mike Watt is one of the world's greatest all-time bassists. In this interview, originally published on Scream & Yell, he discusses his first solo record, "Ball-Hog or Tugboat?", released in 1995. He also talks about Eddie Vedder, Nels Cline, Jeff Tweedy and Bob Pollard, among others.

So, I wanted to discuss with you the 25th anniversary of your debut solo album “Ball-Hog or Tugboat?”, which was released on February 28, 1995. Does it feel like it’s been that long?

Well, I’ 62 years old. I was in my late thirties. So, I wasn’t that young… But yeah, I do remember it. When I think back about this record, it definitely feels like it was kind of a sea change in my life. Before that album I mainly had done Minutemen and fIREHOSE. So, when I go do this record, which is really funny that it’s called a solo record, cause there’s 48 people on it, but… I’m not working on the trio anymore. There’s 17 different bands on the record. With D Boon I would bring all my music to him, and with Edward I did that too. I remember bringing Edward “Piss-Bottle Man” and he thought, “well, maybe this isn’t a song for this band”. So that’s when I started thinking about “Ball-Hog or Tugboat”. Just the idea of the bass player knowing the song and having other people come in. Traditionally the bass player is the last to be brought on except maybe in R&B and funk music. So, that’s where the title comes from. Am I gonna be the guy that brings this together, or is it gonna be just, you know what I mean, like a “fake lead guitar bass”, which I don’t really think is what bass is. Bass is not really guitar, it’s got strings like a guitar, but it’s more like a drum set, in my opinion. Specially the notes, they are down there with the kickdrum and the toms. So I used the metaphor of wrestling, like the studio was kind of a wrestling ring, and I called my friends up, see if they wanted to come play with me and do this record. It was three different towns, pretty spontaneous, it was done really quick. I wanted it to be a record that stand on its own. I didn’t want it to be so much hype, or people making a big deal about names of some of these people. I didn’t use managers or anything, I just called people up and did this for a little bit. And it got me to what I am doing nowadays. So, looking back, it was a really important record for me.

When you wrote songs like “Against the 70s”, for example, did you write it with Eddie Vedder in mind to be the singer on the record? Or “Chinese Firedrill”, for that matter, did you write it thinking of adding Frank Black’s vocals to it?

No, of course not. I didn’t know who was gonna be available for this. There wasn’t hardly any practice, all this stuff was done very spontaneously in the studio. I did have a few songs, but I felt if the bass player knew how to play them, anyone could come and play drums or guitar or sing. So I showed it to them right there in the studio. Nels Cline, I did a little practice with him. There’s a song on the record, “Coincidence is Either Hit or Miss”, that’s kind of what it was, you know?

How did the idea of reuniting so many different musicians come together? Did you invite them or they were the ones who approached you to record together? I imagine many, if not all of them, were big fans of your previous work on the Minutemen and fIREHOSE.

No, it was my idea, my record. I asked them. The only one who approached me was Kathleen Hannah, when it was almost done. She heard about it and asked to be on it. Like I said, I wrote “Piss-Bottle Man” and brought it to Edward, in fIREHOSE. There’s no way I wrote that for Evan Dando. But I thought Evan would be kind of good to do that tune. You know, that was a strange year, 1994. fIREHOSE broke up, the first week or two of the year, and I did not tour, the first year I did not tour since the Minutemen days, so, it was kind of unusual. So I thought of doing the record, but I never thought about touring. Cause there was too many people on it. That was David’s (Grohl) idea, he called me up, he said he and Ed (Vedder) would be my band, they had their own bands who could open the show, it was all very spontaneous, there was no strategy behind it, or plans… I thought of it as the old bebop days, when people just jammed together, no big stuff, setting it all up, and no expectations, no preconceptions of the way it should be, just let the freak flag fly.

So, you guys were travelling on a van and playing every night, which was the punk thing to do. However, many of your fans didn’t really appreciate you playing with rock stars. People were throwing coins and all kinds of things at you, specially Eddie, right? How did you guys deal with that situation back then?

I’ve gotten stuff thrown at me a lot of times before, when the Minutemen open up for Black Flag and then when I opened up for Primus. But I think what you are talking about is… Eddie got money thrown at him. Those weren’t my fans, those were Pearl Jam fans! You know about this shit. Who’s the guy who shot John Lennon?

Mark David Chapman.

Yeah, he’s wearing a fucking name tag! These guys are like this. It’s this love/hate thing. That was so fucking weird. When I saw this teenager throwing money at Ed, and his t-shirt said “Fuck you, Eddie”, I just thought, “what’s wrong with you?”. You’ve never been to a Mike Watt gig, you’re not a Mike Watt supporter. You just want to tell your friend the next day in school that you did this stupid shit. That was something I never had to deal with in tours before, cause I come from the underground and a small scene. But what can I do about that? They just come to the gig, they’re assholes.

It’s interesting to hear this, because I always thought it was your fans reacting to you playing with these famous guys from mainstream bands.

Well, not really. I guess, yeah, they were more mainstream than me at the time, but they were not New Kids on the Block. And Dave was just starting his new band at the time, and Eddie was playing with this weird, experimental band, where he was playing drums. He wasn’t doing what he was known for. And even when playing with me, he was mostly playing guitar. So these guys weren’t doing what they regularly do. It was kind of different, it wasn’t so mainstream, but what happened is that mainstream attitude came in, all this hype and phony shit, yeah that was terrible. But, you know, Dave was in a band called Scream. And Eddie had played in a band before called Bad Radio. So they knew about all these stuff, but you’re right, there was some popularity right? But that shit’s terrible, come on, it’s fucking Hitler shit. But it was something I didn’t really foresee, cause I never had to deal with that kind of fame before. That was no Mike Watt fan! I hope no Mike Watt fan ever does stupid shit like that. But that shit happens, there’s this mentality, when you get kind of popular, the scene becomes different, people like things because other people like things, they don’t trust their own judgement. So you’re not dealing with open minded people, you’re dealing with a herd, or a bunch of cows. People are not in their best moment. So that was not a good part of the tour. But playing with those guys, we only had a couple days of practice. And I thought that was pretty amazing to pull that off. And Pat Smear, I mean, Jesus Christ. Pat Smear was a hero of Minutemen, he was in The Germs. That’s what I found interesting, these guys could fucking play their asses off. In just a couple days we put together a whole fucking tour, did this thing, even though there were some problems with this phoniness and hype shit, as far as playing together, you know, getting together songs and making a gig, I thought it was pretty successful. And I was pretty amazed, specially coming from where I did, where I never… This was kind of a different thing for me. It was scary, exciting scary. I don’t look back on the other stuff, I can only imagine what Ed felt. I hope those guys grew out of that stuff. And also there was this sickness that came around, a flu. We were travelling on a van, but that’s what we always do. I had my van, the other bands had their vans, maybe that’s why I didn’t get sick. But anyway, they were champions, they were soldiers, they played so fucking good. Actually, a few years ago we released one of the shows from this tour as a live record. The Chicago one. Man, that tape had been around, cause the Chicago Metro always record their gigs. So, when the record company asked me about it I said, well, I’ll ask Dave and Ed and Pat. When I listened to it, I thought there were going to be a lot more mistakes. I’m really grateful to them guys.

You have a few covers on the record as well, such as Sonic Youth’s “Tuff Gnarl”, where you actually had most of the band to play it with you on your record. Why did you choose that specific Sonic Youth song to cover?

Cause I like it! You need a better reason? I think the words for that song are some of Thurston’s (Moore) best words. I got J. (Mascis) to play drums on that song, but J. jumped off in the middle. That’s why you don’t hear any drums in the middle. So Steve (Shelley) was there and he jumped on. I picked that song, also to me the music is kind of symphonic, and Nels Cline… I actually did it for Nels Cline and Carla Bozulich, who always wanted to sing it. I thought we could do a great version and make it justice, give it a new meaning. But I think J. did really good too, kind of Keith Moon drums. Until the jumped off of it. (laughs)

What’s the story behind “Hearbeat”, specially the lyrics?

This song was going to be an instrumental. But it was like 45 guys on the record and I thought, “man, I gotta have more women on this”. So I got Carla. Petra and her sisters did some singing, played some violin… I asked Tifanny, a friend of J. Mascis, if she would sing. Actually, this song is made up of a Dos song, and a song I’ve written for the Minutemen, I put them up together. Anyway, the one person who asked to be part of this project was Kathleen Hannah. So, on this song, Tifanny sings the words that I wrote, and the words that Kathleen Hannah, I guess, recited, those are her words. I was in New York City, and I was already down with the studio. Thurston was with us. And he said: “You know what, we can use my answering machine, from the studio”. So, he had Kathleen call him up and leave the message you can hear in the song. So, that’s the recording. It’s not a real message, she makes up this… Some of that stuff is very real, but some of that is made up, for sure. That’s the way Kathleen is, she mixes up things together, but the impression you get by listening to that, is like she doesn’t want to be on the record. But that’s the complete opposite of the reality, she wanted to be on the record, she asked me to. But that’s what you can do with records, you can mess up with reality. I have been asked a lot about that. That’s the story. Kathleen wanted to be on the record, she was. You know, her husband’s on there. Mike D. They’ve been married 26 years, she told me that I had something to do with it. But come on, I was just trying to make a record. The same thing happened to Nels Cline and Yuka Honda. I made a record, you know, usually when I make projects, people don’t marry each other, but sometimes it happens. (laughs)

One of the musician’s that has the most presence on the record is Nels Cline. He probably wasn’t one of the more well-known guys back then, but after he joined Wilco, certainly a more mainstream audience was able to get to know him better. He also played with you on the second leg of that tour. Do you still play with him often?

I gotta tell you, Jeff Tweedy is the boss of Wilco. He played bass in a band from St. Louis, it was called…

Uncle Tupelo.

Yes, Uncle Tupelo. They even had a song called D. Boon

He’s a big fan of yours.

After D. Boon got killed they wrote a song for him, so I knew him a little bit. But I’m really grateful to him hiring Nels Cline to be in his band, cause Nels has always done experimental wild music, and this way he can still do that, and still make a living working for Mr. Tweedy. So that subsidizes his experimental side, you know? Specially since Nels Cline moved to New York City, after he married Yuka Honda (from the band Cibo Matto). There’s a much more free jazz open experimental scene there. He and his brother Alex tried to get it going here in So Cal for a long time but people wouldn’t support it. There it’s really huge. I do still play with him, but you’re right. He started getting some attention, but the first time he got attention was when he played on my first opera, “Contemplating the Engine Room” (1997), maybe not so much with critics or the press, but other musicians. A lot of people were asking me about this guy playing guitar. And so I ended up making albums with these guys. I said: “You wanna know Nels Cline? Just play with him!” We just set up the project. For years, he just came to the studio and improvised. He’s a great listener. Also, with the internet now we can collaborate more easily than in the old days. Nels has always made himself very available to me. A great guy like that. A very generous, open guy. He’s one of the positive things I like about the music scene. There’s so much phoniness and bullshit, and then you got a guy like Nels Cline, who’s just the opposite of all of that.

Floored by Four: Nels Cline, Dougie Bowne, Mike Watt and Yuka Honda / Howlin' Wuelf Media

There is also a Brazilian connection on the record, since Mario Caldato is on the closing track “Coincidence is Either Hit or Miss”. How did you get to know him?

Well, Mario Caldato, he was sound man for the Beasties. Yeah, that connection was through the Beastie Boys. I opened up for them, Check Your Head Tour, I think in 92. It’s when they started playing their instruments again, really good tour. Horowitz came on stage and played with us, this was fIREHOSE, one of our last tours. We had a problem with people throwing stuff at us. Actually, they had problems too, people wanted them just to rap and not play their instruments. This is the way it gets, things get a little knucklehead, when things get a little “less underground”. It’s pretty fucking stupid.

Are there any leftovers from that recording session? And do you have plans to release a reissue of that album in celebration of its anniversary?

Just the seven inches, the b-sides. We released three seven inches, with b-sides. There are no plans to rerelease the album. I don’t think that would be right. It’s still on sale. I thought the best way to redo it was with the live record we released a few years ago. We ended up doing the vinyl, cause back then we just did the CD. So we did a blue vinyl, it was deluxe enough, I don’t think there’s anything else to do without being exploitive about it.

So, you played with 48 different musicians on this record and a lot more during your career. Is there anyone you still haven’t worked with that you’d like to get together and play?

Yeah, Bob Mould.

Wow.

I’ve always wanted to do something with Bob.

Yeah, that would sound amazing.

There’s another Bob. Bob Pollard.

Wow!

Guided By Voices, right?

That would also be great.

Both of those guys, they got such a vision of their own. I would also like to, instead of repackaging the wrestling record, I would like to do another one, Leonardo.

Yeah, please do.

Only, I would do it in Cleveland. Just with Cleveland musicians. You know, the town where Pere Ubu came from. I really would like to do that. With guys from Pere Ubu, like Tom Herman, Scott Krauss, John Petkovic, from Cobra Verde, there’s quite a few musicians in Cleveland with whom I’d love to do a miniature version of “Ball-Hog or Tugboat?”.

You can make an exception for Bob Pollard, since he’s from the same state…

Yeah, he’d have to come visit. Yeah, I love his genius, he’s so prolific, oh my God.  You know, he just played here in downtown LA in the New Year’s. One hundred songs, a five-hour gig.

He probably played all the songs he wrote that week.

That day! (laughter) He’s amazing.

You came to Brazil in 2005 with Iggy Pop and the Stooges, right? Any memories from that experience that you’d like to share?

Three times in Brazil, two times with The Stooges. One was the James Williamson Stooges and the other was Ron Asheton Stooges. And another time I came to Brazil was with The Missingmen. So, all three times were São Paulo, and two of them also Rio. I liked it a lot. But I still have to know more of the country. Rio and São Paulo are very different towns, but they’re kind of close to each other. (laughs)

Foto: José Reynaldo da Fonseca - REFON