fIREHOSE hits the road

fIREHOSE is back together again for a limited, West Coast only tour that will end up at Coachcella...Simultaneously Legacy is reissuing the two Columbia records, Flyin' the Flannel from 1991 and Mr. Machinery Operator from 1993, along with assorted live tracks, outtracks and other extras aimed at encouraging a second purchase. I've been listening to the first disc all week, and it's pretty fantastic...two versions of "Down with the Bass," one with singing, the other instrumental, and a whole string of live covers at the end, Wire's "Mannequin," Superchunk's "Slack Motherfucker" and Public Enemy's "Sophisticated Bitch" ...excellent stuff.



Here are the dates...but don't get excited unless you can see the Pacific Ocean from your window (or live in Arizona). Weirdly, they are opening for M. Ward on several occasions, two in Arizona and one in Santa Cruz.

04-05 Sacramento, CA - Harlow's
04-06 Portland, OR - Doug Fir
04-07 Seattle, WA - Neumos
04-09 Bellingham, WA - Wild Buffalo House of Music
04-10 Eugene, OR - WOW Hall
04-11 San Francisco, CA - Slim's
04-12 Santa Cruz, CA - Historic Coconut Grove Ballroom
04-13 Fresno, CA - Fulton 55
04-14 Indio, CA - Coachella Music Festival
04-17 Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom
04-18 Flagstaff, AZ - Orpheum Theatre
04-19 Tucson, AZ - Plush
04-21 Indio, CA - Coachella Music Festival

Dos

Two characters out of Our Band Could Be Your Life have, unexpectedly, waltzed off the page and into my promo pile lately. That would be Mike Watt of the Minutemen and Kira Roessler of Black Flag, both bassists, once married and, for a long time but not continuously, engaged in the offbeat project known as Dos. Dos means "two" in Spanish, obviously, and that's what it is, two bass players, engaged in intricated, almost baroque interplay that sounds more like Sandy Bull or Peter Walker than, oh let's say, Bootsie Collins. There's a new album out on Original Records (also Watt's own Clenchedwrench label) in June, and no one seems to be doing the usual things to promote it. (Maybe if you're Watt, you don't need to distribute free mp3s or film conceptual videos for Youtube.) However, I did find some footage of Watt and Roessler performing together late last year...



The album's really good, did I mention that?

Watt and friends

Mike Watt has an album out with kind of an all-star back-up band – Nels Cline to start, but also Yuka Honda and Dougie Bowne. It’s called Floored by Four, and I have a review of it up at Dusted today.

Floored By Four is a one-off collaboration between a quartet of musicians, each with at least one foot in conventional rock, the other in more experimental jazz and improv. Mike Watt, who started the project, splits his time between playing bass for The Stooges and Porno for Pyros on the mainstream side, while also working with people like Elliott Sharp and Nels Cline. The latter, too, has a rock day job with Wilco, in addition to more eccentric outlets via his own solo work, the Nels Cline Singers and numerous jazz and improv collaborations. Yuka Honda made her name in Cibo Matto, but also partners with Boredoms percussionist Yoshimi Pe-Wei and has three records on Tzadzik. She used to be married to Dougie Bowne, the Lounge Lizards drummer, who has himself collaborated with John Cale, Arto Lindsay and many others. Now Honda is engaged to Nels Cline. It’s an interesting collection of talents, to say the least, and connected to one another with varying degrees of history, mutual understanding and past collaboration.

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At Summerstage last summer…