Last Updated on July 3, 2026 by Christian Adams
Mike Watt is best known for co-founding the rock bands Minutemen and fIREHOSE. He was also the bassist for the reunited Stooges and a member of the art rock/jazz/punk/improv group Banyan. He maintains a healthy web presence, posting regularly on Facebook, writing Mike Watt’s Hoot Page and hosting The Watt from Pedro Show on Apple Music. His tour journals are great reading.1
CMJ New Music called Watt a “seminal post-punk bass player.” In November 2008, Watt received the Bass Player Magazine lifetime achievement award, presented by Flea. In addition to being one of the best bass players I’ve ever heard, Mike Watt represents the quintessence of punk rock. At 68 in 2026, Watt is consistently rocking as a member of numerous bands including (but not limited to): Mike Watt + the Secondmen, Jumpstarted Plowhards, Baiza Crane Watt Trio, and Casa Sueño (featuring John Herndon of Tortoise).
After a decade of loving Minutemen and fIREHOSE, I first met Mike Watt at Double Door in Chicago while he was touring on his punk rock opera, Contemplating the Engine Room, around 1996-’97. The second meeting happened at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco in 2003, when my band, Henry Miller Sextet, opened for Mike Watt + the Secondmen.2 And then, I had the good fortune to interview Watt in 2013.
Minutemen
When browsing my record collection, even if I’m not listening to Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, I never fail to pick up the record and hold it in my hands, giving it at least due respect. Every Watt-related record in my collection gets the same treatment, hell, it’s almost sacrilegious to say, but I like fIREHOSE as much, if not a little more, than Minutemen.
Other than owning Minutemen records, there is no better source of information than this 2005 documentary, We Jam Econo. Watch it.
fIREHOSE
fIREHOSE, on the other hand, is one of my favorite 80s rock bands that almost nobody remembers or still listens to. They didn’t have any hits. They made a few videos, but hardly ever(?) appeared on MTV. When they disbanded in 1994, nobody except the skateboarders noticed. This is a travesty that continues to bother me, but you know, there’s no accounting for taste.
Here are some of my favorite fIREHOSE songs.
This is an ‘official’ video of “Sometimes.” Actually, I don’t know where it came from but it’s AWESOME.
“Losers, Boozers, and Heroes” might be my all-time favorite fIREHOSE song.
Three cuts and a documentary isn’t even scratching the surface. At the end of the day, when I think about the musicians who have contributed so much to my education and experience, no one has given as much and asked for so little in return as Mike Watt. Forever in his debt, I gotta say, “Much respect.”
Footnotes
- From the hoot page: there’s a mike watt reddit page, a mike watt bluesky page, a mike watt archive.org page, a mike watt discogs page, a mike watt youtube page, a mike watt soundcloud page, a mike watt instagram page and a mike watt facebook page (don’t forget the mike watt wikipedia page). ↩︎
- June 7, 2003, with the Heavenly States, too. ↩︎
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