Very Human: Meat Puppets, @ Club Congress (Part of HoCo) Saturday 8/30 (extended version)
Posted by Tucson Weekly on August 26, 2008 at 5:39pm
That a somewhat legendary and notorious musician from Phoenix was inspired to begin playing music after seeing the movie Deliverance is somewhat remarkable on its own. But given the life Meat Puppets bassist Cris Kirkwood has led, the words "phoenix" and "deliverance" in this equation don't seem like mere coincidence.
Cris was 12 when he saw that film in 1972 and was immediately drawn to the banjo, which he started playing soon after. His mom encouraged music lessons, for both him and his older brother, Curt. Eventually, Curt took up the guitar, and Cris the bass. As teenagers, the pair really weren’t all that close, but they always had music in common, sharing a fondness for old country songs, bluegrass and jazz, as well as the usual rock stuff kids their age were into.
After Curt graduated from high school, he moved to Tucson to take classes at the UA, and lasted exactly one semester. “I think he ended up with like a 0.0 GPA,” says Cris, “but when he came back, he was a hell of a lot better at the guitar.”
The Kirkwoods bought some drums and started hanging out with a group of friends who would jam with each other in various combinations. But it wasn’t long before they realized that the combination of Curt on vocals and guitar, Cris on bass and vocals, and their punk-rock friend Derrick Bostrom on drums, was the combo that was really starting to gel.
“Derrick was more into the art side of things,” says Cris. “He was the record collector, one who thought of music more cerebrally and about its cultural effect. We were more just into the music side of it, for the pure creation and the playing. I just liked the instruments, the way they looked and felt, the wood and the steel. And the sounds they could make.
“We were just goofballs,” Cris says—but they were goofballs blessed with an unusual musical background for kids playing punk rock, a proficiency on their instruments that few punk bands could match, and the sort of communicational shorthand that comes easily to siblings.
It wasn’t long before Greg Ginn found them. As the de facto A&R guy for the Long Beach-based label he owned, SST Records, Ginn had a discerning ear, releasing records by bands that played fast and hard, but also had a unique sound and aesthetic. His own group, Black Flag, provided the blueprint for a whole generation of hardcore bands; Minutemen were arty funk-punk; Husker Du played breakneck-speed pop songs coated in a sheet of noise.
And then there were the Meat Puppets.
The Kirkwoods drew heavily from the complicated timing and structures of jazz and the Grateful Dead, who also provided country and psychedelic elements; they also drew from the straightforward, driving, shit-kicking blues-rock of ZZ Top. (Cris cites Dead bassist Phil Lesh and ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill as huge influences). Meanwhile, Bostrom brought in a DIY ethos and punk spirit. In fashioning these seemingly disparate sources into some twisted hybrid, the Meat Puppets in the end sounded unlike anything else.
While their first two SST releases—the In a Car EP from 1981 and 1982’s self-titled album—played up the noisy, punk side of the band, on Meat Puppets II, released in 1984, those other facets—particularly country—that made the band unique came to the fore. The latter was a breakthrough both stylistically and in terms of garnering them attention, and has rightfully since become regarded as a classic.
From there, they progressed further, emphasizing the spidery guitar runs and interlocking, wandering bass—check out the frenetic, intricate guitar/bass interplay on “Maiden’s Milk” and “Enchanted Pork Fist,” from 1985’s Up on the Sun—and Texas-size blues-rock (Huevos, from 1987, is a clear homage to ZZ Top). By the early ’90s, when bands were routinely graduating from micro-indies to major labels, the Meat Puppets followed suit, signing with London.
Their first real foray into the mainstream public’s consciousness came in 1993, when Kurt Cobain, in a generous salute to a relatively unknown band who had influenced him, invited the Kirkwoods to join Nirvana to perform three songs from Meat Puppets II during their appearance on MTV Unplugged. The Puppets’ “Lake of Fire,” given a dramatic reading by Cobain, became one of the highlights of that session. That exposure, along with the single “Backwater,” helped propel sales of the Meat Puppets’ next album, 1994’s Too High to Die, into gold status.
A follow-up the next year, No Joke!, didn’t do much; and then things turned really ugly, really quickly.
Curt moved from Phoenix to Austin, and Cris moved on from casually using recreational drugs into stuff far more potent and addictive. By the time Cris moved in to take care of his mother, who was suffering from terminal cancer, he was regularly using heroin. Losing his mom exacerbated things, and pretty soon, he and his wife, Michelle Tardif, had holed up in the house together, both full-blown junkies. Just when things seemingly couldn’t get any worse, Tardif died in the house of an overdose.
Although he says more than once that he doesn’t want to dwell in the past, Cris also doesn’t shy away from it. You can hear the pain in his voice as he talks about it, the tragedy and senselessness of it all, losing two of the people he loved most in such quick succession—and how one death never should have happened in the first place.
Tardif’s death also brought another repercussion: Cris was now on the cops’ radar. He went in and out of jail for possession, and during one of those “out” periods, there was the post office incident.
Cris, who normally talks at a rapid pace, quickens the clip as he recounts what happened that day.
There was an argument with a woman over a parking space in the post office lot, and things got heated. There was yelling, and Cris told her to fuck off. “So she went and got the guard, and got him involved, and I told him to fuck off, too. And he pulled out his billy club and started hitting me with it, and I wrestled it away from him, and then I started walking away, and he shot me in the back.”
By the time he began serving his 18 months in prison, Cris had ballooned in weight and lost most of his teeth.
Meanwhile, Curt had remained in Austin, estranged from his brother. He formed a new version of the Meat Puppets without Cris or Derrick. He formed a new band, Eyes Adrift, with former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and former Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh, then another band called Volcano, before releasing a solo album, Snow, in October 2005.
While in prison, Cris lost 150 pounds, and when he was released, his girlfriend and her family welcomed him back with open arms. A local dentist reached out to him “to give me some new chompers”; Cris reached out to Curt’s son, Elmo, who told his father that Cris seemed to be doing pretty well; and before long, Curt reached out to Cris to see if he was interested in playing music again. He, of course, was.
Since then, the Meat Puppets have recorded a new album, 2007’s Rise to Your Knees; gotten a new drummer, Ted Marcus; and have toured all over the United States, and made two trips to Europe.
“We’re not kids anymore,” says Cris, “but you take all that, what we were as a band originally, and who we are as musicians and shit, and you’re helped by the longevity. It actually contributes to it in that way, because it is so much about, you know, music. And maybe there’s not that youthful verve; maybe you lose that with time and experience, but you gain other things.”
I ask him if playing music with his brother again is more gratifying now, after all he’s been through. He says, “Well, it’s definitely pretty amazing, that’s for sure. And then there’s something that resonates with just why I became an artist in the first place, and the kind of art that we’ve always made: very human. Very human. We’re fragile, imperfect little strange, mysterious things, and victims of circumstance largely, yet masters of our own destiny and on and on. But definitely it’s just like, ‘Have I actually managed to fuckin’ not only not die, but actually start playing music again with Curt, and actually playing music that’s just kicking my ass? Is this really going on?’ Yeah, it’s fuckin’ cool. Jesus, it beats the shit outta fuckin’ corpses and pigs and death and the pokey—and getting shot. It definitely beats getting shot.”
We both laugh, and I tell him I imagine most things in life are better than getting shot. Still laughing, he counters with, “It ain’t the Ice Capades.”
--Stephen Seigel
Meat Puppets
as part of the HoCo Festival
MIDNIGHT, SATURDAY, AUG. 30
HOTEL CONGRESS
311 E. CONGRESS ST.
$5 DAY OF; FREE ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT BOOKMANS, BUFFALO EXCHANGE, ZIA AND HOTEL CONGRESS
622-8848
Accessed: 9/7/08
http://tammies.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1973216%3ABlogPost%3A9132
Posted by Tucson Weekly on August 26, 2008 at 5:39pm
That a somewhat legendary and notorious musician from Phoenix was inspired to begin playing music after seeing the movie Deliverance is somewhat remarkable on its own. But given the life Meat Puppets bassist Cris Kirkwood has led, the words "phoenix" and "deliverance" in this equation don't seem like mere coincidence.
Cris was 12 when he saw that film in 1972 and was immediately drawn to the banjo, which he started playing soon after. His mom encouraged music lessons, for both him and his older brother, Curt. Eventually, Curt took up the guitar, and Cris the bass. As teenagers, the pair really weren’t all that close, but they always had music in common, sharing a fondness for old country songs, bluegrass and jazz, as well as the usual rock stuff kids their age were into.
After Curt graduated from high school, he moved to Tucson to take classes at the UA, and lasted exactly one semester. “I think he ended up with like a 0.0 GPA,” says Cris, “but when he came back, he was a hell of a lot better at the guitar.”
The Kirkwoods bought some drums and started hanging out with a group of friends who would jam with each other in various combinations. But it wasn’t long before they realized that the combination of Curt on vocals and guitar, Cris on bass and vocals, and their punk-rock friend Derrick Bostrom on drums, was the combo that was really starting to gel.
“Derrick was more into the art side of things,” says Cris. “He was the record collector, one who thought of music more cerebrally and about its cultural effect. We were more just into the music side of it, for the pure creation and the playing. I just liked the instruments, the way they looked and felt, the wood and the steel. And the sounds they could make.
“We were just goofballs,” Cris says—but they were goofballs blessed with an unusual musical background for kids playing punk rock, a proficiency on their instruments that few punk bands could match, and the sort of communicational shorthand that comes easily to siblings.
It wasn’t long before Greg Ginn found them. As the de facto A&R guy for the Long Beach-based label he owned, SST Records, Ginn had a discerning ear, releasing records by bands that played fast and hard, but also had a unique sound and aesthetic. His own group, Black Flag, provided the blueprint for a whole generation of hardcore bands; Minutemen were arty funk-punk; Husker Du played breakneck-speed pop songs coated in a sheet of noise.
And then there were the Meat Puppets.
The Kirkwoods drew heavily from the complicated timing and structures of jazz and the Grateful Dead, who also provided country and psychedelic elements; they also drew from the straightforward, driving, shit-kicking blues-rock of ZZ Top. (Cris cites Dead bassist Phil Lesh and ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill as huge influences). Meanwhile, Bostrom brought in a DIY ethos and punk spirit. In fashioning these seemingly disparate sources into some twisted hybrid, the Meat Puppets in the end sounded unlike anything else.
While their first two SST releases—the In a Car EP from 1981 and 1982’s self-titled album—played up the noisy, punk side of the band, on Meat Puppets II, released in 1984, those other facets—particularly country—that made the band unique came to the fore. The latter was a breakthrough both stylistically and in terms of garnering them attention, and has rightfully since become regarded as a classic.
From there, they progressed further, emphasizing the spidery guitar runs and interlocking, wandering bass—check out the frenetic, intricate guitar/bass interplay on “Maiden’s Milk” and “Enchanted Pork Fist,” from 1985’s Up on the Sun—and Texas-size blues-rock (Huevos, from 1987, is a clear homage to ZZ Top). By the early ’90s, when bands were routinely graduating from micro-indies to major labels, the Meat Puppets followed suit, signing with London.
Their first real foray into the mainstream public’s consciousness came in 1993, when Kurt Cobain, in a generous salute to a relatively unknown band who had influenced him, invited the Kirkwoods to join Nirvana to perform three songs from Meat Puppets II during their appearance on MTV Unplugged. The Puppets’ “Lake of Fire,” given a dramatic reading by Cobain, became one of the highlights of that session. That exposure, along with the single “Backwater,” helped propel sales of the Meat Puppets’ next album, 1994’s Too High to Die, into gold status.
A follow-up the next year, No Joke!, didn’t do much; and then things turned really ugly, really quickly.
Curt moved from Phoenix to Austin, and Cris moved on from casually using recreational drugs into stuff far more potent and addictive. By the time Cris moved in to take care of his mother, who was suffering from terminal cancer, he was regularly using heroin. Losing his mom exacerbated things, and pretty soon, he and his wife, Michelle Tardif, had holed up in the house together, both full-blown junkies. Just when things seemingly couldn’t get any worse, Tardif died in the house of an overdose.
Although he says more than once that he doesn’t want to dwell in the past, Cris also doesn’t shy away from it. You can hear the pain in his voice as he talks about it, the tragedy and senselessness of it all, losing two of the people he loved most in such quick succession—and how one death never should have happened in the first place.
Tardif’s death also brought another repercussion: Cris was now on the cops’ radar. He went in and out of jail for possession, and during one of those “out” periods, there was the post office incident.
Cris, who normally talks at a rapid pace, quickens the clip as he recounts what happened that day.
There was an argument with a woman over a parking space in the post office lot, and things got heated. There was yelling, and Cris told her to fuck off. “So she went and got the guard, and got him involved, and I told him to fuck off, too. And he pulled out his billy club and started hitting me with it, and I wrestled it away from him, and then I started walking away, and he shot me in the back.”
By the time he began serving his 18 months in prison, Cris had ballooned in weight and lost most of his teeth.
Meanwhile, Curt had remained in Austin, estranged from his brother. He formed a new version of the Meat Puppets without Cris or Derrick. He formed a new band, Eyes Adrift, with former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and former Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh, then another band called Volcano, before releasing a solo album, Snow, in October 2005.
While in prison, Cris lost 150 pounds, and when he was released, his girlfriend and her family welcomed him back with open arms. A local dentist reached out to him “to give me some new chompers”; Cris reached out to Curt’s son, Elmo, who told his father that Cris seemed to be doing pretty well; and before long, Curt reached out to Cris to see if he was interested in playing music again. He, of course, was.
Since then, the Meat Puppets have recorded a new album, 2007’s Rise to Your Knees; gotten a new drummer, Ted Marcus; and have toured all over the United States, and made two trips to Europe.
“We’re not kids anymore,” says Cris, “but you take all that, what we were as a band originally, and who we are as musicians and shit, and you’re helped by the longevity. It actually contributes to it in that way, because it is so much about, you know, music. And maybe there’s not that youthful verve; maybe you lose that with time and experience, but you gain other things.”
I ask him if playing music with his brother again is more gratifying now, after all he’s been through. He says, “Well, it’s definitely pretty amazing, that’s for sure. And then there’s something that resonates with just why I became an artist in the first place, and the kind of art that we’ve always made: very human. Very human. We’re fragile, imperfect little strange, mysterious things, and victims of circumstance largely, yet masters of our own destiny and on and on. But definitely it’s just like, ‘Have I actually managed to fuckin’ not only not die, but actually start playing music again with Curt, and actually playing music that’s just kicking my ass? Is this really going on?’ Yeah, it’s fuckin’ cool. Jesus, it beats the shit outta fuckin’ corpses and pigs and death and the pokey—and getting shot. It definitely beats getting shot.”
We both laugh, and I tell him I imagine most things in life are better than getting shot. Still laughing, he counters with, “It ain’t the Ice Capades.”
--Stephen Seigel
Meat Puppets
as part of the HoCo Festival
MIDNIGHT, SATURDAY, AUG. 30
HOTEL CONGRESS
311 E. CONGRESS ST.
$5 DAY OF; FREE ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT BOOKMANS, BUFFALO EXCHANGE, ZIA AND HOTEL CONGRESS
622-8848
Accessed: 9/7/08
http://tammies.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1973216%3ABlogPost%3A9132