There’s no telling exactly what you’ll experience if you come out to see the Meat Puppets perform at the High Noon Saloon this Wednesday, Oct. 22 with tour-mate Cass McCombs. In fact, they don’t even know themselves. “I think we’re gonna wait until we get to the venue, and then put some thought into it,” says guitarist, vocalist and primary songwriter Curt Kirkwood. “We got a few different ideas we’re messing around with. We brought acoustic guitars, we might try to hook that up. We’re just playing it by ear.”
That laid-back, open-minded approach is part of what, for the past 34 years, has given the Meat Puppets the unique magic that has caused ripples through the music community among both fans and critics. Since being formed in 1980 by Kirkwood, his brother Cris and original drummer Derrick Bostrom, the Meat Puppets have been characterized by their impressive chops, “unabashed stoniness” (to quote Bostrom), and—perhaps most importantly—their penchant for absorbing any musical style and experience that drifts by and catches their interest, no matter how eclectic.
How would one describe such a mellifluous band? Though in their early days they were a part of the then-burgeoning hardcore punk scene, Kirkwood never considered the Meat Puppets a punk band. “I was never one to label us,” he said. “We liked to play punk music because it was fun. You get to play real fast and not think about it.” They were popular, however, and quickly signed with SST Records, where they were close-knit label-mates with other groundbreaking bands of the time, such as the Minutemen, Black Flag and Hüsker Dü. “We were all friends,” Kirkwood said. “I still see all those guys.”
But the Puppets weren’t interested in limiting themselves, and they soon began peppering their sets with music not anticipated by their hardcore audiences—country standards, Grateful Dead covers, and the theme from “The King and I,” among many others.
The variety was not often received peacefully. “You’re gonna get a bunch of shit thrown at you if you start playing some kinda ‘hippie crap’ or whatever,” says Kirkwood. “And I thought, ‘Well, that’s pretty punk rock. I like to have stuff thrown at me, and I definitely like to see these assholes pissed off.’”
Was defiance the main motivator for their unconventional tendencies? “It played into it a little bit,” said Kirkwood. “But it was never the intention to hurt people’s feelings or make them upset.” It was more about reminding punks what the scene was supposed to stand for. “Freedom is a big word,” said Kirkwood. “Before you start going around, saying you’re free, you should look in the mirror.”
But despite the fun of angering a hypocritical audience and getting beer cans rained on their heads, the main source of the Meat Puppets’ unique playing was their desire to express all facets of their love for music without restriction. “It just always seemed to me that the fun of having a band from the get-go with us was, ‘let’s play some of this.’ We used to play a lot of covers when we were kids. We’d get songbooks and play all through an Elvis songbook or a Beatles songbook or a Glen Campbell songbook. Then just sticking with one style seems to be kind of counter to what I thought about art in the first place.”
“Genres tend to melt away if you’re playing for a while. And you know you’re playing a country sounding thing, or whatever, but it’s still all just playing... You can have brown gravy, or country gravy, any gravy right? We tend to go for a large gravy boat, the sloop-sized gravy boat of crap. It’s always been fair, whatever we wanna do.”
The Meat Puppets have never stopped absorbing and evolving, from those early days all the way up to their most recent release, 2013’s Rat Farm. There have, of course, been plenty of ups and downs along the way. The Puppets shot to minor mainstream fame after a big fan of theirs, Kurt Cobain, invited them to play a few songs from their second album with Nirvana on their “MTV Unplugged” performance in 1993. Their next album, Too High to Die, was subsequently a mild mainstream hit, but their new-found trajectory was cut short when the unprecedented access to drugs brought about by fame led Kirkwood’s brother Cris to spiral down a path of addiction, jail, and getting shot that didn’t end until 2006, when he miraculously got clean and the Puppets reunited. They’ve been back touring together and making music ever since.
Despite this amazing rock ’n’ roll legacy, Kirkwood still takes a humble approach. “It’s just what I do. It’s fun, it’s an artistic outlet, and it’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve been doing it since I was a teenager… There’s nothing like playing live, touring. It has a lot to offer that you just can’t get your head around if you’re just sitting around. You have to get out and do shows to let the stuff be what it can really be.”
