Music Preview: Curt Kirkwood puts the meat puppets behind for a solo trek

Thursday, February 23, 2006

In his glorious post-punk heyday, Curt Kirkwood was a frenetic blur of swinging hair, sun-warped melody and spidery psychedelic riffs spun from the Arizona desert.

		Curt Kirkwood With: The Crow Flies. Where: Quiet Storm, Friendship. When: 8 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets: $8; 412-661-9355.

Now, he's a lone Meat Puppet.

On his latest road trip, Kirkwood's hair is clipped and the electric guitar is back at home.

After 20 years fronting the Meat Puppets and then spinning off into two short-lived bands, Eyes Adrift and Volcano, the post-punk pioneer is free and easy with just an acoustic guitar promoting his first solo record, "Snow." Released on his own label, "Snow" is a quieter version of the earthy and off-kilter psychedelic country punk he has always specialized in.

"It's kind of like having a new career, having a solo thing," says Kirkwood, who has relocated from Arizona to Austin, Texas. "Eyes Adrift showed me this is what's it like to start up a new thing, which is kind of massive. It's kind of cool to sneak in and do these things rather than bring a band into a potentially empty club, 'cause sometimes people don't know who I am."

Sad but true. There was a time when it looked like Meat Puppets would actually become a household term. The Arizona trio had started as a thrash band with a slight country flavor, before evolving into a Grateful Dead for the post-punk scene and, ultimately, a more straight-ahead alternative rock band.

They were a favorite of Kurt Cobain, who invited them to the 1993 MTV "Unplugged" session, where Nirvana covered three songs from "Meat Puppets II." The next thing they knew, the Meat Puppets had an alternative radio hit with "Backwater" and were out on tour with the likes of Stone Temple Pilots.

A lot of the time, though, people just didn't get it. "A lot of nights, and I saw this out with STP, people were so dumb. They're like, 'I don't like the Nirvana covers, they're playing covers!' I've had people yelling 'Nirvana wannabes!' and 'Kurt's dead!' "

Around 1995, the Meat Puppets were being groomed by Polygram as the next big alternative act, but Curt's bass-playing brother, Cris, was bottoming out with a heroin addiction.

"We had a huge amount of attention," Curt says, "but it was getting kind of frightening because my brother was completely out of control, and we didn't know what to do. It wasn't like someone has a drug problem and it's cute. We had so much responsibility. We were one of the main focuses at Polygram for that fall. I was so busy watching my brother come unraveled, I didn't even know."

There was always a drug vibe around the Meat Puppets -- you could hear it in the lyrics or see it backstage -- but it seemed like it was more pot, LSD ... desert peyote, perhaps?

"In Arizona, you do have people who are focused on peyote, cultish weird stuff like that," he says. "I've seen that kind of stuff. But the Meat Puppets was not different than a lot of kids are, when they get into [Ecstasy] or whatever. We were more like suburban kids. We were putting high and lonesome country music stuff in punk rock and people were going, 'Oh, that's like the desert, and you write descriptive lyrics ....' If Bob Dylan had been in Arizona, people would have said, 'Oh, you're taking peyote.' There's no more of an influence there for me, than for Paul Simon, or something. I get the feeling Paul Simon smoked some weed some time or another."

At one point, it seemed like the Meat Puppets' take on country and psychedelia would be a better fit for Deadheads than Seattle grungers, but Kirkwood had his suspicions that that wasn't right, either, especially after a tour with Phish. Looking at the crowd, he realized, "These are like Deadheads who had followed the Dead around" -- as opposed to the more eclectic fan -- "and I don't think they're relating to the over-the-top hysteria we're putting in from the punk rock, the Hendrix and the bad-trip Alice Cooper stuff. The bad side. That's important to rock, to the Stones, to Howlin' Wolf, whatever."

Years ago, in a PG interview with Derrick Bostrom, the Meat Puppets drummer acknowledged the musical similarities with the Dead but said, "The Grateful Dead are more about love; the Meat Puppets are more about hate."

Kirkwood laughs at the mention. "I think the Grateful Dead were just as hateful as the Meat Puppets, but they thrived on a love vibe, a happy-go-lucky sunflower-y vibe, and really the musical model didn't change much with the new jam bands."

The Meat Puppets, he says, had a way of scaring the jam crowd. "We played with Blues Traveler in L.A., and my brother ended up flipping off the crowd, saying 'Hee-hee, I hear Jerry is missing this finger.' Just for no reason. I'll tell you this, the Dead's road manager actually contacted us and wanted us to open for the Dead. He wanted tapes, because Jerry was really cool about being open to stuff. It made sense, but in the long run, it was mutual on both sides, 'cause of the extreme fascist element about what the crowd is about: 'If you scare us, we won't come back around. It's peace and love and rainbows.' The [Dead's] drum thing is scary, and that's when everyone goes out and gets a hot dog."

After Cris and Bostrom left, Kirkwood was still under contract and tried to keep the Meat Puppets going with new members up until 2000. Failing that, he formed Eyes Adrift with ex-Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and ex-Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh. When Novoselic left the musical life for a career in politics, Gaugh and Kirkwood formed Volcano, but then Gaugh decided to take a break from music as well.

That's when Kirkwood and former Meat Puppets producer Pete Anderson began working on his solo outing with new songs and some that never made it onto Meat Puppets records.

"I had a lot of them done already," Kirkwood says, "and I always had songs that didn't work out for the band, especially when Cris was gone and I had to narrow things for the new guys. Some of the stuff was left over from that. Like, I had 'Golden Lies,' which was the title track of the last Meat Puppets record, that didn't make it on the record. It's one of those funny Meat Puppets ironies. We called the album 'Golden Lies,' but I put the song on a different record."

For the live shows, like the one at Quiet Storm on Tuesday, Kirkwood is playing the new album and mixing in Meat Puppets classics like "Up on the Sun," "Plateau" and "Lake of Fire."

"I like it as much as before, honestly," he says of playing solo. "There are different aspects to it, but it all falls into performing. You can't compare it to performing with the band. At the same time, sometimes it feels the same in terms of the musical output. You don't think about it while you're up there, 'Oh, I wish I was with a band.' And I didn't think before, 'Oh, I wish I was solo.' "

As for the family issues, there's no communication right now between the Kirkwood brothers. Cris recently served a prison sentence for assaulting a security guard in Phoenix. Curt gave up on him at some point. But he hears that Cris is doing better.

"I leave him to his own devices, largely. But I keep track of him," Curt says.

Does he ever see a day when they could reconcile, maybe even play together again?

"I don't leave things out of the realm of possibility, that's what's fun about this show business thing. I'm allowed to keep an open mind. I'm allowed to believe that weird things can happen."