Meat Puppets

Tightly Knit
The Meat Puppets Sew Up Their Reunion with a New Album
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Cleveland Scene, June 2009



It’s not unusual that a reunion album is marketed as a “return to the glory days,” but in the case of the new Meat Puppets CD Sewn Together, it’s high praise that also begs an important question. If you’re a grizzled cult band that’s slogged through a cartoonishly tumultuous thirty-year career, what exactly qualifies as your “glory days?”

“The glory days? Jeez, I don’t know,” answers Curt Kirkwood, who formed the Puppets with his brother Cris in a Phoenix suburb back in 1980. “That would probably be when we were still living with our parents and playing in the living room—before anyone ever really addressed exactly what we were. But, you know, I’m not the judge of that kind of thing. I’m convinced that I’m only as good as my last gig, and my glory days are the ones that I’m in now.”

Kirkwood doesn’t feel like Sewn Together particularly resembles the sound of his band’s critical peak (the mid ‘80s) or its commercial breakthrough (the mid ‘90s). To his credit, though, he has never been one to linger too much in the past, even if a band reunion would tend to indicate the contrary. In truth, getting back with the Meat Puppets was more about continuing a book that had never really been closed in the first place.

“I did a lot of solo projects, and it was good,” Kirkwood says, “but Meat Puppets is Meat Puppets. I never intended for it to be broken up. I never said it was. It’s frustrating now for it to seem like we’ve ‘reformed.’ It’s mental to me. I’m still in denial about it.”

Indeed, the Puppets’ long hiatus was never announced so much as forced, thanks to the group’s infamous drug problems and the eventual imprisonment of bassist Cris Kirkwood. When the Kirkwood brothers finally reunited for 2007’s Rise To Your Knees (their first record together in 12 years), the album suffered from some understandable rustiness and the lack of original drummer Derrick Bostrom, who declined the Kirkwoods’ offer to return to the fold. Addressing these issues with consistent touring and the hiring of talented new drummer Ted Marcus, the Meat Puppets truly do sound back at full force on Sewn Together—a tightly devised but quickly recorded LP that celebrates the band in its raw state.

“I like the idea of actually getting the real version of what we are,” Curt Kirkwood says. “I don’t like the enhancements of the digital age. I knew I wanted to set up the band and play the songs live, because I like the way we sound, just like that. And that’s what you get here. You know, there are some guitar overdubs and some vocal multi-tracking, but overall, it’s pretty real.”

Along with guest musicians William Joseph (piano) and Kevin Bowe (guitar, dulcimer, and percussion), Sewn Together benefits from the presence of Curt’s son Elmo—a talented guitarist and budding producer in his own right.

“Well, Elmo’s just got a different perspective,” Curt says. “He’s more of a hard-ass in a way. You know, he’s my son, so nobody can get too pissed off at him-- everybody likes him. But he’s also the kind of person who will tell you that you totally suck, and it doesn’t matter what you think of what you’ve done. If he’s not into it, he’s going to say something. Now he doesn’t hold any sway, of course, but it’s still really fun to have somebody like that in there for that outside pair of ears.”

Perhaps as a testament to Elmo’s insights, Sewn Together doesn’t sound like an album made by aging rockers past their prime. It’s an energized, eclectic effort that-- while not quite as charming as the now 25 year-old classic Meat Puppets II—wouldn’t sound out of place as that record’s immediate follow-up (particularly tracks like “I’m Not You” and “The Monkey & The Snake”).

All things told, Sewn Together is a record Puppets fans can be proud of, even if the road that led to it was a lot bumpier that it could have been.

“There’s no model for this stuff,” Kirkwood says. “It’s not like we decided one day, ‘oh, let’s be the totally fucking insane Meat Puppets!’ It just happened. I mean, we could have done better in some ways, but I don’t know. There are only so many options I had. I’m from Phoenix, I’m not that talented, and I’m pretty lazy. So I had to let a lot ride on this life. And I don’t really think I’d do anything differently.”