Mike Watt

Mike Watt has a distinct bass style and a gruffly unique singing voice, but he's arguably as admired for his approach to music-making as he is for the music he makes. Along with a slew of like-minded indie rockers in the early 1980s (many of them labelmates on SST), Watt helped define not just an aesthetic, but an entire DIY lifestyle. He co-founded the seminal punk/indie rock trio the Minutemen with his high school pal D. Boon in 1980. After Boon's tragic death in a 1985 van crash, a guitarist from Ohio named Ed Crawford convinced Watt (and Minutemen drummer George Hurley) to form a new trio called fIREHOSE. That band released five records between 1986 and 1994. Since then, Watt has mixed solo releases and side projects with touring/recording gigs, serving as a hired hand for a variety of high-profile (by indie rock standards, anyway) musicians, including J. Mascis, Perry Farrell and Iggy Pop.