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| Mike Watt is a Singing-Bassist who played in/with The Minutemen, fiREHOSE, Porno for Pyros, and plenty of Projects. |
Here are some of my favorite anecdotes from my conversation with Mike Watt, which you can find here in the subscriber’s section:
If the bass-player knows the song well enough, then any musician can jump in.
Most people look at the tiles in a bathroom, but I look at the grout. That’s the role of the bass-player, like the grout, he holds it all together.
A bass-player leads by promoting and supporting his own band-members.
(Woodshedding as a singing-bassist) is like skateboard school. You stumble and stumble until you get it right.
Both the singing and the playing can’t be in the ‘wonder’ or the ‘dream’ or the consciousness or the decision-making part of the brain, it has to go right into the hardware. It has to be hardwired.
We’re all really jealous of the drummer, (because he’s in true control), and so we make fun of him, put him way in the back. I’ve stopped that, I put my drummers way up front now.
A bassist-songwriter who writes on a bass-guitar outlines a song enough to give the rest of the band enough room to be all the guitar they can be, be all the drums they can be.
The bass-player has a lot of power because he’s little bit of drummer, a little bit of guitar, a lot about mystery.”
I like to record with full-scale basses and perform on 3/4 scale basses.
In performance, eye-contact is very important for us. I have the organ-guitar player across from me, the drummer is 30-40 degrees to my left, and I am angled in towards them. I like the way it looks like a prac more. That way, we only need to have the vocals in the monitors.
Keeping time during pauses is the hardest thing to keeping a groove.
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