![Rig Rundown: mssv's Mike Watt & Mike Baggetta [2024]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/rig-rundown-mssv-2024.jpg?id=50992017&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0)
The trio mssv is an underground supergroup. They’re not playing the local enormodome, but each musician has a storied career and the ability to leap musical conventions in a single bound, even while rocking like hell … or playing compositions with sections that ricochet from Coltrane to Martian terrain.
The group sprung from guitarist Mike Baggetta’s dream of an ideal, omnivorous band—one that could navigate any kind of musical or sonic path, much as Baggetta has done himself, whether playing with other artists or solo. His first choice of bassist was Mike Watt, a legendary indie music figure who has been releasing daring rock and improv albums for decades, starting with the highly influential ’80s and ’90s outfits the Minutemen and fIREHOSE. And while mssv’s debut album, 2019’s Wall of Flowers, was recorded with the foundational rock drummer Jim Keltner, Keltner’s disinterest in touring caused Baggetta to seek a replacement in Stephen Hodges, one of the few sticks players who can match Keltner’s intention and a brilliant artist in his own right, with decades supporting Tom Waits, Mavis Staple, and other legends.
On the road behind their latest recording, Human Reaction (one of my picks for best albums of 2023), mssv stopped at the Blue Room in Nashville’s Third Man Records complex in late October, where their wily creativity ignited the place. But at soundcheck, Baggetta and Watt explained to the PG team exactly why they dig their rigs.
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King Koll
This custom guitar by Saul Koll—a variation on the Tornado model Koll first built for David Torn—is perfect for Baggetta’s whammy-heavy approach, which makes his playing sound more vocal. It’s one of three Kolls he owns. It’s got cylindrical Hipshot locking tuners, a 25 1/2" neck, a Strat-like bridge, master tone and master volume dials, a 3-way switch for its Curtis Novak single-coils, and a mute switch, too. Middle position is his favorite spot. His strings: D’Addario XT’s, .010 to .046.
Ring o' Fuzz
Here’s a Creepy Fingers Hold Tight fuzz (“I like how it kind of folds over on itself when you dig in on it,” Baggetta says.) and an EHX Ring Thing, which digitally creates the greatest hits sounds of ring modulation as well as weirder, fractured tones and pitch shifting. Baggetta sometimes stomps through all of the Ring Thing’s presets for solos, constantly changing tones and pitches as he rips.
Say Wah?
At Mike Watt’s request—and for playing the Stooges’ “1969”—Baggetta got a Wilson Effects Freaker Wah V2. The guitarist explains that he’s not a big wah fan, but this model has synth-filter-like qualities that are perfect for his sonic playground, creating overtones that some somewhat like Tuvan throat singing at times.
Detour, Amp Ahead!
From there, Baggetta takes the line out to the dirt channel of his amp, a Benson Vincent, made in Portland, Oregon, by Chris Benson. “I think of it as the world’s greatest Fuzz Face,” he says. It’s got 30 watts of output power and loads of character. The amp blends two Benson circuits: the 1-watt Vinny and the 30-watt Chimera. The power tubes in the Chimera are EL84s and the Vinny side is a single EL84, and there is a 6L6, but Baggetta says, “I don't know what that does.” The preamp tubes are 12AX7s.
Remember the Panda!
The final entries in Baggetta’s pedal line-up are an Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man and a Red Panda Tensor. The signal flows from the Benson into the Tensor, which he uses for glitch sounds, harmonizing, and overdub mode, among other feats. His Memory Man adds space—the final frontier.
Wattplower Power
For this tour, the legendary bassist is playing his new signature Wattplower Mark II bass, built by Reverend, in root beer sparkle. This 4-string for a king has one-and-a-half more pickups than the first, single-pickup version of the Wattplower, Watt explains. He went to short-scale basses in the ’90s, and his faithful Gibson EB-3 inspired the Wattplower’s neck. It’s got extra grind thanks to P-Blade bridge and Rio Grande Pitbull pickups. The neck is 3-piece korina, and the body is also korina, and it's got volume, tone, and 3-way controls, of course. It’s also got Hipshot Ultralight tuners, a 30" scale, and a rosewood fretboard. The bridge is also Hipshot, and Watt’s is a top-loader.
Wattplower II
Here’s a close-up look at the Wattplower Mark II’s headstock and tuners.
Wattplower ID
Here’s how you know you’re playing a genuine Reverend Wattplower!
Wattplower, the Sequel
And here’s a look at the bridge, which comes in optional through-loading and top-loading styles.
Amp-phigory
“These days,” Watt says, “class D is the way to go.” And so, he plays a Bergantino Forte rated at 800 watts, into a Bergantino with two 12" neodymium speakers and a horn.
Stomp to Romp
Broughton Audio makes the high-pass filter loaded atop Watt’s board, which also has a EarthQuaker Devices The Warden optical compressor and a Sushi Box Effects Finally tube DI that functions as a preamp. Simple, but deadly. Oh, and there’s also a TC Electronic Polytune!
Lately, Baggetta's explorations have taken him down the highways of improvisation to the intersection of rock, jazz, and textural music, with his band MSSV, an abbreviation for Main Steam Stop Valve. Think pressure, combustion, power, and hissing clouds of sonic poetry, and you're in the right pipeline.
The group's new album, which shares their name, is a playground for the temporal lobe. As his collaborators, bass and drum legends Mike Watt and Stephen Hodges, lay down plump grooves, Baggetta slathers on melodies that can evolve into whirling tornadoes, like the tail of “The Mystery Of," or sound like sprinkled fairy dust, in the lovely and sparkling notes that open “Every Growing Thing." He's also an empathetic accompanist, echoing between stately and squallingly fuzz-toned in “Nine Twenty December," respectfully coloring in the lyric sketches of Watt as the bassist pays tribute to his late mother. Main Steam Stop Valve features another Watt tune, the contemplative “June 16th," which was originally part of the Minutemen's 1984 epic Double Nickels on the Dime, and it's a bit slower here, with more meat on its bones. Watt also has the album's literal final word in “The Eureka Moment," where his flashcard lyrics transform a scene from the 1966 film classic The Sand Pebbles into a kind of roaring, joyful theme song for the group.
Baggetta's blend of technique and intuition make him an exceptional collaborator, which also shows in his earlier recordings with saxists Doug Mosher and Jason Rigby, trumpeter Kris Tiner, bassist Jerome Harris, drummer Billy Mintz, and his mentor and friend, the great 6-string adventurer David Torn. Onstage, his partners have included Nels Cline, Harris, Torn, and other notables. Torn, in particular, has opened several important windows for the 41-year-old Baggetta, who earned his bones in the New York City jazz and improvised music scene before moving to the more serene and affordable Knoxville, Tennessee, about five years ago.
Thanks to the presence of Watt and Hodges, and to his own kaleidoscopic playing, MSSV is taking Baggetta to a new level of recognition. And that's ultimately a testament to the power of wishful thinking. Baggetta had been doing some recording with engineer/producer and Big Ego label chief Chris Schlarb at Schlarb's studio in Long Beach, California. They were having a conversation about Torn's touchstone album, Cloud About Mercury, when Baggetta mentioned that Torn had simply cold-called the all-star cast of musicians on that recording, which captured the first time Torn, horn player Mark Isham, Chapman Stick virtuoso Tony Levin, and drummer Bill Bruford played together. Baggetta joked that maybe Schlarb could call Watt—whose 1997 album Contemplating the Engine Room inspired the guitarist as a youngster—and Jim Keltner, a foundational figure in rock drumming, to make an album with him. As luck had it, Schlarb knew Watt and was able to contact Keltner, and the result was 2019's Wall of Flowers, a largely improvised, highly colorful album that was mastered by Torn.
Keltner, who, at age 78, still plays like King Kong, no longer tours, so when it was time to hit the road, Baggetta made another wish. “I thought playing with Stephen Hodges would be great," he says. And yes, Schlarb also knew Hodges, who played on Contemplating the Engine Room and has a cornucopia of rock and blues credentials, from Tom Waits to Dave Alvin to Charlie Musselwhite. So it was on, and with some fuel from Watt, they named their triumvirate MSSV and cut Live Flowers on tour in 2019, as a precursor to Main Steam Stop Valve.
TIDBIT: Always defying convention, MSSV's new album is the trio's first studio recording, while their 2019 debut, Live Flowers, was cut onstage while touring.
“Playing with them is totally insane," Baggetta attests. “It's like a train going by at full speed, and you decide to grab it and hold on until it stops, so you don't die. They are totally fearless and committed to making this music."
Defying death onstage requires some specialized gear. In addition to a carefully curated pedalboard, Baggetta plays a pair of customized guitars made by Saul Koll, who he met through Torn, of course, as well as a Fender Strat, which Baggetta reconfigured along the lines of Torn's. It has Lindy Fralin Big Single pickups, a kill switch, a master volume, a master tone control, treble bleed, and a two-post Hipshot tremolo bridge. “A two-post is more sensitive than the 6-screw," he says. “That's also something I learned from Torn." And Baggetta does not spare the whammy. (See sidebar, “Living in Distress.")
Another key piece is the Steven Fryette-built Valvulator GP/DI Direct Recording Amplifier. The lightweight, tube-driven, 1-watt amp-in-a-box has become an MVP for Baggetta, and can be heard on Live Flowers. “From the very first MSSV gig, I had it with me and used it in a variety of ways to get a good sound," Baggetta explains. “We were using backline amps, so there were a few Twins and Marshalls along the way, and a couple spots where there were no amps. In that case, I took a line out into the front of the house. I've also used it with a DAW and went direct into Logic. For a modern Marshall, I took a line out into the effects loop, and with a Fender Twin, I plugged it into the input for the amp, almost like it's the last pedal in my chain, and it sounded fantastic."
While having world-class ability and gear is never a bad thing, what's left hanging in the air after hearing MSSV live or recorded is a cosmos of impressions, ideas, remembrances, and emotions evoked by the collective's painterly explorations of melody and sound. Baggetta knows that this is where the magic lives.
“Music needs to be tied to emotion," he says. “I understood this by the time I was 8. My dad is a guitarist, and would come home after gigs, and I wouldn't see him until morning, but his amp would be in the kitchen. I'd wake up and smell the smoke from the club he'd played, and I knew the amp was there. So I'd bug him to play me something. He would get his Les Paul out and plug it into the JC-120. What I remember most is he would say, 'this is a spooky song,' and I would feel afraid because of the sound of the minor chords. And then he'd play something happy, and I'd laugh. That's everything."
Baggetta plays two custom Kolls—a Tornado and a Superior—and his current favorite amp is this Fryette Aether combo, with the amp's power section on top.
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STRINGS, PICKS & SLIDES
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Karma—despite the John Lennon song—isn’t always instant, or as Mike Watt (Minutemen, Firehose, Stooges) says, paraphrasing Orson Welles, “No wine before its time.”
Some things take a while.
Watt’s most recent project, Big Walnuts Yonder, is a case in point. The ensemble—an alternative supergroup of sorts—features Watt on bass, Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos) and Nels Cline (Wilco) on guitars, and Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) on drums. The project was years in the making, from inception to realization, and given the busy touring and recording schedules of the parties involved, it’s amazing it ever came together at all.
But it did, and praise the heavens, what a joyful noise it is. From the faux James Brown guitar breaks of the album’s opener, to the free sounds of “Flare Star Phantom,” to Cline’s righteous Beatles’ Revolver-era solo at the end of “I Got Marty Feldman Eyes,” Big Walnuts Yonder is a feast for the ears. For pedal geeks, it’s even better. Reinhart and Cline had about 70 pedals between them, according to Watt. (On the other hand, he plugged straight into an amp.)
The project started with a conversation between Watt and Reinhart while on tour. “My band, Tera Melos, crossed paths with Watt and his band, the Missing Men, in Ireland,” Reinhart says. “We were playing a show together in Dublin and were hanging out backstage. Whenever you’re sitting around with Watt, you just have questions for the guy. He’s a legend. He told us Black Flag stories from the SST days. Hearing about the Minutemen and that whole world is really exciting for guys my age, in our mid-30s, who grew up on that stuff. I asked him about his record, Contemplating the Engine Room, which Nels plays on. I mentioned the song ‘The Boilerman’ because the guitar in that song is so ripping and crazy. I’d never heard guitar like that over that kind of music. I said, ‘Man that must have been crazy, Nels ripping over that.’ And Watt’s response was, ‘You want to know Nels? You’ve got to play with Nels.’ Then he said, ‘Let’s start a proj.’’’
Proj is Wattspeak for project. Other terms include booj for bourgeois, leash for cellphone, and spiel for story. “Watt created this band in front of our very eyes,” Reinhart continues. “He said, ‘You, me, Nels …’ He asked me to find a drummer. I just blurted out, ‘Greg Saunier from Deerhoof would be a really neat addition to that.’ He immediately agreed, emails were sent out, and it basically took—I’m fuzzy on the dates—but it took maybe two years to get everyone’s schedules lined up and for a recording date to be set.”
But the Cline-Saunier connection runs deeper than Reinhart imagined, Watt explains. “Nick said, ‘How about Greg Saunier from Deerhoof?’ Well, that’s a trip because maybe 17 years ago, the first time I saw Deerhoof, it was Nels Cline taking me and introducing me to Greg Saunier. See? It’s all about people. Like most stuff in the world, it’s people. To me, that’s the most genuine connection. Not genre, not names, not all this other stuff that’s kind of surface. It’s people.”
Big Walnuts Yonder was a collaborative effort, though Watt provided most of the material for the band’s eponymous album by circulating rough sketches of his compositions played on bass. “The plan was, I’ll write eight songs, Nels will bring in a song, and Greg will bring in a song,” Watt says. “Now, I’ve done this a bunch of times. Nels loves it because—springboards, launchpads—that’s what he looks at. A lot of people, you give them just the bass and they’re like, ‘What?’ It’s like writing it on cymbals or kick drum. But for Nels, there’s a little direction, but it doesn’t have all that harmonic content that maybe a piano or a guitar has. He digs it, big time.”
What follows is a discussion with Watt and Reinhart about the origins of this project, the gear they used to record Big Walnuts Yonder, über-geeky pedal talk, and a plethora of other fun and interesting nuggets. The interviews were conducted via phone and Skype. Watt was in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with his band, the Jom and Terry Show, finishing up a tour with Meat Puppets. Reinhart was in Northern California visiting family and preparing for an upcoming tour with Tera Melos.
TIDBIT: Watt provided most of the material for the band’s eponymous album by circulating rough sketches of his compositions played on bass. “A lot of people,” says Watt, “you give them just the bass and they’re like, ‘What?’ But for Nels, there’s a little direction, but it doesn’t have all that harmonic content that maybe a piano or a guitar has. He digs it, big time.”
Nick, the point of this project was to get you to play with Nels. What was that like?
Nick Reinhart: Incredible. I mean, that guy, he’s like a wizard. Mike had these compositions that he sent over my way. I sat there and listened to them. I was nervous, like, “What am I going to bring to the table with these three legendary dudes?” Legendary in my book and obviously in a lot of other people’s books, too. I hunkered down and really put all this mental energy into it—not knowing what Nels or Greg would bring to it—and I came up with these guitar parts.
Email chains in this band are so crazy, because these guys riff on each other. Watt will make an obscure reference to some obscure bass player that played on a jazz record in the ’70s. That would get these guys going and it revs up hard. The email chains got really, really long and convoluted. You’re basically deciphering what is happening in this email chain, which makes the communication in this band—for me—a little difficult. I’m like, “Wait. Where is this going right now? This is crazy.”
I didn’t know what was going to happen when we got into the studio. Watt and I had sent over these ideas, these compositions we had. But Greg and Nels are constantly on tour and I don’t know if they ever sat down with the material. I definitely know they checked it out, but I don’t know to what extent. When we got to the studio, Greg and Nels said, “Let’s pick one. You guys show us how it goes and we’ll jam it.” We would play together for 15 minutes and you could see the magic in Nels’ brain and hands working right before your very eyes. That was crazy. The stuff he would come up with was like, “Boom. That’s it.” Right there on the spot. It was incredible just seeing it appear that way.