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Mike Watt and the Secondmen hone new material on tour
Mike Watt will work the kinks out of material for his forthcoming album, "The Secondman's Middle Stand," by storming through more than 50 cities over the next two months.
According to Watt's official website, he and his group the Secondmen will return to their home base of San Pedro, Calif., to record the album about a month after the tour ends, and the CD should be in stores by October.
In a recent posting on his site, Watt terms the new album his "illness piece," documenting his bout with a painful internal abscess a few years back.
"Last tour we did the first three tunes from my illness piece," he writes. "This time we will do the whole thing. The piece concerns the hellride the illness took me on starting Jan. 25, 2000 and lasted for many months including 38 days of intense fever, violent tremors, bone-shaking chills, constant vomiting, losing almost all my red blood cells, an infection growing inside me like a baby that eventually exploded, almost dying, emergency surgery and long painful recovery."
Watt recently issued a bilingual (English/French) book titled "Spiels of a Minuteman," which features all of the lyrics that he wrote for the Minutemen from 1980 to 1985. It also includes Watt's tour diary from a 1983 tour of Europe by the Minutemen and Black Flag, as well as Raymond Pettibon's drawings for the Minutemen covers. More details are posted at Watt's website.
Watt's most recent album is 1997's "Contemplating the Engine Room." He was a key figure in the '80s post-punk movement as a member of the Minutemen.
The tour opens on April 1, the birthday of his late Minutemen bandmate D. Boon. Boon died in a traffic accident in 1985.
