Curt Kirkwood's New Meat
Former Puppet readying debut solo album
Former Meat Puppets frontman Curt Kirkwood plans to release his first solo album early next year. The currently untitled work features the singer/guitarist backed by the Texas version of the Puppets (guitarist Kyle Ellison, drummer Shandon Sahm, and bassist Andrew DuPlantis) assembled for 2000's Golden Lies, and many of the tracks began as outtakes of that record. "I went back and listened to [the tracks] and liked them more than the last Meat Puppets record," Kirkwood says. "I didn't want to continue calling it 'Meat Puppets.' It's kind of a hodgepodge of different recordings -- some that I did in my living room -- so I figured I'd better just call it a 'solo record.'"
Among the tracks slated for the record are "Enemy Love Song," "Nursery Rhyme," "I'm Not You" and Golden Lies' aborted title track. "It actually sounds a little more like the old Meat Puppets," Kirkwood says. "[This lineup] likes to play the more straightforward rock."
Kirkwood has also re-teamed with ex-Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh (the two were bandmates in the short-lived Eyes Adrift) to form a new band called Volcano. "[The producer] says it sounds a lot like Eighties, SST-era, Up On the Sun Meat Puppets. But there's more bouncy rhythms -- we do a lot more stuff that was inspired by the Selecter, the Specials and Bob Marley." The band plans to tour the West Coast in early August.
Missing from Kirkwood's projects is his brother Cris, who co-founded the Meat Puppets with him in 1980 before falling out of the band amid drug problems in the late Nineties. Cris is serving jail time after a violent encounter with a post office security guard. "He got shot in the back, so that ****ed him up really good," Curt says. "He has to pay restitution to this guy and he has to serve twenty-eight months. I was telling the guy who is doing the evaluation, 'He is not a criminal, he fell through the cracks, it's your fault, you guys ****ed up, you don't take care of your mentally ill,' but ultimately he has to be responsible. And I think he understands that this is a good chance for him."
GREG PRATO
(Posted Jun 28, 2004)
