by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Lou Barlow - Gravitate (MP3)

Dinosaur Jr. is playing the last free show of the season at the Central Park SummerStage on Sunday, August 16th with The Walkmen and somewhat newly added opener Saviours (who recently played Union Pool).

Dinosaur Jr.'s Lou Barlow will be heading out with the Missingmen (guitarist Tom Watson and drummer Raul Morales of Mike Watt's band) this fall in support of Goodnight Unknown, his forthcoming solo album on Merge. Most of the dates on that tour will be with Dinosaur Jr. as well. That includes Lou's Pop Montreal performance, but not his NYC stop at the Mercury Lounge on Tuesday, October 6th (the same day the album comes out) (and a mysterious gap in Dinosaur Jr's touring schedule). Tickets for that show go on sale Friday, August 7th at noon.

About the new album, the label writes...

In the four years since his career-redefining, mostly acoustic record Emoh, Lou Barlow has reunited with Dinosaur Jr. and reissued three of Sebadoh's classic albums. But as the brilliant new Goodnight Unknown illustrates, he's hardly living in the past. Borrowing the live-band energy of Dinosaur Jr. and the stylistic reach of Sebadoh, Barlow has built on Emoh's full production and written a set of immediate, melodic pop songs that Lou describes as, "a cross between my later work with Folk Implosion and my earlier work with Sebadoh...to my ears, anyway."

From the surging opening track "Sharing" to the surprisingly soulful performances on "The Right," Goodnight Unknown benefits from Barlow's tunefulness and his decision to record the record relatively quickly, with old friends and new. The Melvins' Dale Crover adds inspired drum work throughout, and Goodnight Unknown's urgent sound owes just as much to frequent Barlow collaborator Imaad Wasif (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, alaska!). The record's considerable power also stems from the new talents on board, including producer Andrew Murdock and Lisa Germano.

"Gravitate" and artwork from the record are posted above; its tracklist is below. Lou recently played XX Merge.

J Mascis will depart from Dino Jr. to play sets at the MBV-curated ATP Nightmare Before Christmas on December 4th-6th in Minehead, UK. For that fest, he'll join Witch (where he plays drums) and perform as J Mascis & The Fog, a group that features Dave Schools and Kyle Spence. Other bands on the fest's stellar lineup are Sonic Youth, De La Soul, Sun Ra Arkestra, Fucked Up and Yo La Tengo, to just name a few. Though tickets are sold out, you should really ogle at the fest so-far lineup (still more to come...), with all tour dates, below...

Continue reading "Lou Barlow - new album, MP3 & 2009 tour dates (NYC show)"

by Andrew Frisicano

Dinosaur Jr. @ ATP NY 2008 (more by Abbey Braden)

Dinosaur Jr.'s ninth LP, Farm, is out today (as is the new record by their Jagjaguwar label-mates Sunset Rubdown). In support of that record, the band has a nearly-two-month North American tour planned for the fall. That includes a show at Pop Montreal among many other places. No NYC date has been announced as part of that tour, but that's probably because of Dino Jr.'s free Summerstage show with the Walkmen on August 16th, not to mention the sold out show at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn happening this Thursday (6/25) with Screaming Females.

Joining Dinosaur Jr. on their October dates will be Lou Barlow + the Missingmen, a group that is, as speculated, Lou with Tom Watson and Raul Morales, the crew that toured with Mike Watt a few months ago (including dates supporting Dinosaur Jr.).

The Missingmen will continue to play with Mike Watt too, with scattered shows along the West Coast scheduled (see full dates below).

Watt is also gigging with his other groups. He'll play in August with the Secondmen (with that group's original members, organist Pete Mazich and drummer Jerry Trebotic).

Before that, Watt'll debut a new band at the August 1st Central Park Summerstage show. That group, Floored by Four, also includes Nels Cline, Yuka Honda and Dougie Bowne. M. Ward headlines the show.

Floored by Four has plans to record in the days leading up to the Summerstage show. To tally up Watt's recording projects, his forthcoming records include Hyphenated Man (w/ the Missingmen), a Black Gang (w/ Nels Cline) record, a new Secondmen disc and probably others.

One of Watt's finest records, the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime, will be recognized at the Bowery Poetry Club for a 25th anniversary celebration of the album on Saturday, July 25th. The plans for the party are as follows...

Be prepared for the extreme unusual, with spoken word renditions of songs on the album, musical tributes, rare videos and recordings, and special musical guest stars, including the bassist for the Minutemen, Mike Watt.

Performers confirmed so far include Michael T. Fournier (author of Double Nickels on the Dime (33-1/3 press), New Jersey experimental indie rock band Twede Kamer, Worcester, MA Minutemen cover band Pillowman, mystery punk bassist The Bass Player from Hand Job, electro-poetic mistress Jackie Sheeler, Jazz piano cabaret duo Peter Carlaftes & Kayo, Warhol scenester Ronnie Norpel and punkster poet Kat Georges (author of Punk Rock Journal).

Mike Watt is ALSO playing with Jim O'Rourke, among others, in Japan this September, AND Mike Watt even makes an appearance in the new Dinosaur Jr. video, "Over It," posted below with all Dinosaur Jr. and Mike Watt tour dates...

Continue reading "Dinosaur Jr. album out, touring w/ Lou Barlow & the Missingmen (dates) sans Mike Watt who is plenty busy"

The lineup is coming together for Pop Montreal 2009 (September 30th to October 4th). Confirmed acts include Butthole Surfers, Fever Ray, Dinosaur Jr., Lou Barlow + The Missingmen, Loudon Wainwright III, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Thee Oh Sees, tUnE-YaRdS, to name a few.

Those interesting choices (like Lou Barlow with some configuration of Mike Watt's band?) are just part of the fest's usually-strong lineup. Full lineup so far, below...

Continue reading "Pop Montreal 2009 - initial lineup (Fever Ray, Os Mutantes, Butthole Surfers, Lou Barlow + the Missingmen...)"

words by Andrew Frisicano, photos by Lori Baily

Mike Watt and the Missingmen (drummer Raul Morales and guitarist Tom Watson) played the first of two NYC-area shows Thursday, May 7th at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ. Tonight (Friday, May 8th) the group visits the Mercury Lounge.

At Maxwell's, Watt kicked things off with a terse "1-2-Surf's up" before launching into an opening group instrumental. Watson on guitar faced-off against Watt on bass, with Morales pounding out the measures between. But the drum kit was anything but neutral territory: on more than one occasion Watt egged on Morales by crashing the cymbals with his hands, and spent most of the 4-or-so Watson-sung tunes perched behind drum set before stumbling across stage toward his own mic.

Tom Watson's guitar playing was a definite highlight. He spanned a spectrum of styles, from the pop-punk of the band's Roky Erickson cover, "Sweet Honey Pie," to the closely comped funk of the Minutemen numbers (which included Double Nickels tracks "One Reporter's Opinion," "Anxious Mo-fo," and "Toadies"). Watson, like Watt, channels the free-wheeling ideals of punk into a musically divergent direction; most times his sound was more "downtown" guitar than Johnny Ramone. Solos and oblique noises squeaked over Morales' even-handed drums in starts and stops, while across stage Watt ratcheted up the neck of his short-scale bass.

Watt on bass was unhinged but on point as he alternately strummed and slapped through the setlist, which mixed new tunes, older Watt material (Ball Hog b-side "The Big Bang Theory") and copious covers. I didn't catch all the cover songs, but "Ex-Lion Tamer" (Wire) and "Little Johnny Jewel" (Television) were two, with many more tucked in. The band took few breaks, and the vocals came out till Watt was beat red.

In total, the gig was something of a career primer with a definite look toward the future. Watt closed the set with his usual -- an emphatic "start yer own band."

More pictures from the show below...

Continue reading "Mike Watt & the Missingmen @ Maxwell's in NJ - pics"

mike watt & the missingmen

I put the missingmen together in the summer of 2006 in order to bring forth my third punk rock opera "hyphenated-man" (the first two being 1997's "contemplating the engine room" and 2004's "the secondman's middle stand"). whereas "...engine room" dealt w/my pop's life in the navy as a metaphor for the story of the minutemen and "...middle stand" was a parallel to dante's "comedia" dealing w/an illness that almost killed me in 2000, this third opera will be quite different in that it has no standard narrative (libretto!) meaning no regular beginning-middle-end and will be as it were "simultaneous" in the way a mirror from just inside my head - right in this middle-age moment of mine - was then shattered into thirtynine pieces, each showing a piece of my state of mind (or out-of-mind) as of now. "thirty tunes?" yes, they're little ones. too heavy to really hear minutemen stuff for many years, I had to face myself and get the nerve up to hear it again when I agreed to let keith scheiron and tim irwin make the "we jam econo" documentary (many thanks to them and all who helped out on that). I even did a few gigs w/george hurley w/us as a duet doing the old tunes and it was trippy for me, like I was digging on how "econo" those tiny tunes were - no filler, right to point. a big influence was those little creatures in those old hieronymus bosch painting - I read a theory about them maybe being visualizations of proverbs or aphorisms and me, not knowing much about sixteenth century dutch/flemish culture, made up my own meanings! -Mike Watt

Mike Watt (of the Minutemen) has a bunch of shows scheduled over the next few months - some with the Secondmen, and some with the Missingmen.

UPDATE: All upcoming Mike Watt shows are Missingmen dates.

Dates includes May 7th at Maxwell's in Hoboken (tickets on sale now), May 8th at Mercury Lounge in NYC (tickets on sale at noon), a bunch of other headlining dates, and a bunch of shows opening for Dinosaur Jr. (J Mascis and Mike Watt together again).

There's a small gap in Mike's schedule at the beginning of May. I thought maybe new dates would show up, but according to an update I got from Mike himself after I first published this: "in the middle, may 3-4-5 has me three days in the studio w/them to record my third opera at tony maimone's studio in brooklyn (studio g)." Them = the missingmen. Also, Mike's calling the trip "'prac for the 3rd opera' tour 2009."

Dinosaur Jr's. tour starts not long after SXSW..

Having recently signed with Jagjaguwar, Dinosaur Jr will be hitting the road in April to road test new material in a town near you in cozier environs than you might expect. For the fortunate fans who score tickets to these select shows, they will also receive either a limited edition, tour-only 7" or a digital download code with the purchase of a ticket. The songs on this release were recorded live during a Pitchfork.tv feature at J Mascis' own Bisquiteen Studios.

You can watch those and other videos, and see all tour dates, below...

Continue reading "Mike Watt touring with & without Dinosaur Jr. - 2009 dates"