Photo by Dirk Vandenberg
Long ago in a world not so far away independent music was regularly printed on vinyl and promoted through passionate word-of-mouth, stapled-together fanzines and concerts set up on a previously unchartered national routing.
In the early ‘80s that’s where the minutemen fit in until the trio of guitarist d. boon, bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley came to a sudden halt following the death of boon in a car accident.
From those ashes rose fIREHOSE, which featured Watt, Hurley and Ed “fROMOHIO” Crawford, a massive minutemen fan who auditioned for the guitar vacancy in the group’s hometown of San Pedro, California. Following three releases on the iconic indie label, SST, fIREHOSE moved on to the majors, putting out “Flyin’ the Flannel” and “Mr. Machinery Operator” on Columbia Records over a two-year period before disbanding in 1994.
Since that time Watt has produced a multitude of solo, duo and group albums including joining punk icons, the Stooges. Occasionally, he’s been joined by Hurley.
As for Crawford, he moved to Pittsburgh, a short distance from his Toronto, Ohio childhood home. In Here, he’s played solo acoustic gigs, started Grand National and toured as a second guitarist with Ryan Adams in Whiskeytown as well as with Southern Culture on the Skids. An EP, Four Pieces from Candyland, by his latest band, FOOD, an acronym for “Far Out Old Dudes,” came out this month.
With Watt finding a break in his unending schedule, fIREHOSE will finally reunite for a two weeks of dates in April, including appearances at Coachella. The release of the two-CD set lowFLOWs: the Columbia anthology (‘91 – ’93) coincides with the shows and re-establishes the trio’s combination of punk, funk and free jazz.
The interview with Crawford starts later than scheduled due to a rehearsal that ran late. Crawford relates that the blue collar work ethic that marked life in the minutemen and fIREHOSE still holds true today. “We practice every day, two, three hours a day. We don’t mess around. We take care of business.”
JPG: Now, I’m talking to the infamous Ed from Ohio. One of the band’s albums is named that. So, how did you end up in Pittsburgh? I mean, what the hell, you’re Ed from Ohio…
EC: (laughs) Pittsburgh is only 40 miles away as the crow flies from where I grew up. I didn’t really move back to Ohio, but pretty close.
JPG: Going back in your history and the band’s history, you went to Ohio State University. What was your major?
EC: I started out as a Music Major, as a trumpet player. Then I discovered punk rock and that went out the window. Then, I was undeclared for awhile and just taking classes. Eventually, I lost interest in it. I was way more interested in music directly, going to see bands like the minutemen. Once I saw that I was, ‘Okay, that’s it. That’s what I want to do for a living.’ It was just like that, man. The start of that ethos of start your own band, punk rock, do it yourself philosophy. That whole thing. And I bought it, hook, line and sinker. And I made it my fuckin’ life.
JPG: Do you recall where and when you saw minutemen?
EC: Sure. A little punk rock club, dive bar in Columbus at the time called Stache’s. He eventually moved it down to midtown. Got much bigger. Back then, it was a little tiny dive bar where you could get right up five feet away from the guys singing.
JPG: Do you remember the year when you first saw the minutemen?
EC: I saw minutemen twice before d. boon got killed. The last time they were opening up for R.E.M. I think it was when R.E.M. was breaking large. They had just hit the big time. They took the minutemen to open up for them. Before that I saw the minutemen at Stache’s, so that would have been ’85.
JPG. And d. boon passed away later that year.
EC: Yeah. I saw them live at Stache’s probably early in the year and then a little bit later in the year when they came back with the R.E.M. tour. Sure enough like three months later d. boon’s dead. It’s like, ‘What?’ It was really, really trippy. Really sad.
JPG: His passing leads to this — the great punk rock myth — was it the insanity and hubris of youth or overwhelming passion that you thought, ‘Hey! I’m going to be able to convince Mike Watt to start another band with me in it.’
EC: I think it was a little bit of both. Absolutely. At 22 you don’t think anything’s not possible. You think everything’s possible. But I really had no expectations. That really wasn’t my goal. I just heard he was auditioning guitar players. I was going to go out and see what he thought of me ‘cause I was wanting to start a band and do the whole music trip. I thought, ‘Well, this is a good place to start out. At least, he’ll tell me if I suck or not.’ That was my expectation when I went out there. I was, ‘Oh, let’s just see. This would be a cool experience. I could just say that I played with Mike Watt.’
It turned out, ‘When can you move out here?’ ‘Okay, alright, I will. I’ll do it.’ I was totally shocked. I had no…not what I came out to do. I came out to see how I measured up. Next thing I know, I’m okay, I’m on board. Let’s do this!
JPG: Was your playing style based on d. boon or because you had a school background and a punk background that you were able to travel in a lot of different places and Mike appreciated that?
EC: I think when it comes to my guitar style…I played acoustic guitar up until about a year before I moved out to California. I didn’t even own an amplifier, tell you the truth. I had just bought an electric guitar. I was playing along with minutemen records and R.E.M. or the Clash, the Who.
The minutemen, they were so stylistically diverse. They would come at you from so many different influences and angles. I was like, ‘Yeah, you know music should be like that!’ You shouldn’t have to do one style. Take some chances! Do a little experimenting! Challenge yourself! That’s what I really got from their approach to music. That’s what I hooked into, not playing like d. boon. I’m sure I had some influence from him, for sure. It wasn’t like playing like someone, like finding your influences and making them into your style. It wasn’t so much, ‘I don’t want to play like this guy. I want to play like a lot of different guys.’
JPG: Not meaning to get negative but I remember when fIREHOSE broke up, it was sudden and I don’t recall an announcement. After two albums on Columbia Records it was announced that Mike’s doing a solo album with just about everybody in alternative rock. Was it just a matter that you guys got sick of being in the boat (Mike Watt Pedro slang for ‘tour van’) together or Mike didn’t like the idea of being in a threesome anymore? What was it that separated you at that point in 1994?
EC: I tell you, it’s just not that simple. It was just a perfect storm of a lot of different things in what was going on in the three of our lives at the time. Plus, we had really worked it for seven years. We didn’t take any time off. There were no vacations. It was really intense. We didn’t take days off. When we toured, crap, the only time we took a day off was if we couldn’t get from one gig to the other in less than 12 hours. That’s when you had a day off and that’s not a day off. You’re driving, all day.
There was that and a lot of different things. And I couldn’t really point to one of ‘em and say, ‘This is why,’ or ‘That’s why.’ There were a lot of different things going on.
It turns out I think we stopped at just about the right time ‘cause I think the music has stood the test of time. I don’t know what we would have been doing for the last 18 years, tell you the truth. Honestly. We could have made some more records. Would have been good? Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe not. Watt also needed to grow as an artist. He’s not just a freakin’ bass player. He’s a real cat. He’s a real deal artist. Artists need to grow. They can’t do the same thing all the time. Have you heard (his 2011 album) Hyphenated-Man ?”
JPG: Oh, yeah. (Watt discussed the album with me during a Jambands interview that ran last April)
EC: To me that is in the league of the minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime. It’s that good. And Watt would have never got to do that if he was doing fIREHOSE. He made something like, maybe, his life’s journey led him to make that record. Sometimes, that’s just the way it’s supposed to be. You know what I mean? I don’t look at it negative. There was never any hard feelings or anything. It’s like we needed to stop. Didn’t know for how long. There wasn’t any plan. It wasn’t, ‘Let’s take a year off.’ There wasn’t any talk of that. It was, ‘We’re done. See ya.’
JPG: It’s kind of beautiful hearing that from you because you took it as an artist as well as a fan. Usually when a band breaks up there’s animosity; so-and-so hated this person and now they’re friends, so the band reunited. It’s nice to hear that support towards Mike’s artistic ambitions.
EC: And that’s not to say that there wasn’t any ‘cause it was really out of the blue. George and I didn’t have any idea that Mike was going to just walk away from it. It was out of the blue, really. There was some, initially, ‘What the fuck?!?!’ ‘cause you’re family at this point. You’re living together for seven freakin’ years. You’re family and you let your family know what’s going on. That’s just where he was at the time. There was a lot of shit going on in our personal lives and whatnot. We got over that shit years ago. We’ve been friends. I go see him whenever he’s in town. Never been any belligerence. We’re still brothers. Always will be.
JPG: Was the idea of having a reunion something that came up every so often or was it just that matters came into place so you’re doing it now?
EC: I don’t know. Like I said, I would go see Watt every time he came through town but you only get to spend maybe an hour or two after the gig and talk, and then he’s gone. We really had a long phone conversation. I called him up one night, probably had a couple of beers. We just sat there and we talked two to three hours. We just talked out everything. Got to know each other again on a different level. It was getting to know each other on a more personal level like, ‘What have you been through? What am I up to?’ Stuff like that. And then it started and we were like, ‘We should probably think about it.’
So, we were talking about it and then these people that put on Coachella heard somewhere through the grapevine we were thinking about maybe doing something. They literally, out of the blue, offered us a show. Not this year, but last year. But Watt already had a tour booked for the missingmen and the Hyphenated-Man tour. And he had Stooges stuff. He really didn’t have time to do it last year. This year was different. He called me up and said, ‘Are you up for this?’ and I said, ‘Fuck yeah! I’m up for that and I’ll do it.’ George’s up for it and here we are.
JPG: From interviewing Mike last year and knowing of him going through his health problems years ago and rethinking about things in life, I would think he would have a deeper conversation with you more so recently than in the past.
EC: Absolutely. It’s weird. All three of us, within about a week of each other had near death experience, and I think it mellowed all of us in a lot of different ways, Michael especially. He’s a different man than I knew 18 years ago. Completely. He’s like Mr. Fuckin’ Mellow. Still intense, don’t get me wrong. As intense, if not more than ever. He’s just got a much more philosophical way of looking at life and what’s important and what’s not. Picking your battles. He’s definitely mellowed from that experience. No question about it in a very positive way. He is a lot easier to be around.
Photo by Joey Lin
JPG: Speaking of health, just out of curiosity, how is his knee? (Watt was dealing with an injured knee last year.)
EC: He’s still a little hobbled. Not too bad. He’s up and around. He can walk and everything. He just has to take it easier. We’re all getting older. (laughs)
JPG: I understand that.
EC: The body only takes so much.
JPG: As I like to say it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.
EC: That’s the damn truth, man. I’m 48 and I still feel like I’m in my late 20s, early 30s. Mentally, I’m still in that time frame. I got to realize I’m 48. I can’t do shit I used to. I just have to dial it back a little bit. You make little concessions to the age war.
JPG: The reunion coincides with fIREHOSE’s Coachella appearances on April 14 and 20. Did the dates come first followed by the idea for the lowFLOWs compilation from Legacy or the other way around?
EC: Frankly, I haven’t asked Mike about that ‘cause I didn’t even know that Columbia was doing this until like about a week before I came out here. I was talking to Watt and giving him the setlist and he goes, ‘Oh, by the way, Edward. Columbia’s putting out our catalog again.’ And I was like, ‘Really?’ I don’t know that it was coincidental or they caught wind of it that we were going to do it. They can put shit out in a month’s time. It doesn’t take them long. It’s already recorded. All they had to do was remix it and repackage it. I don’t know the answer to that question.
JPG: I know that besides the two albums there’s the “Live Totem Pole” EP on the set plus a promo EP and some unreleased, out-of-print stuff. One of the cool things on there is the unreleased instrumental version of “Down with the Bass.”
EC: It doesn’t really need lyrics. Thing is by itself.
JPG: Going through the songs, “Flyin’ the Flannel” sounds different than the follow up, “Mr. Machinery Operator,” especially your guitars. Is that because J Mascis (of Dinosaur Jr.) was involved on “Operator” and your guitar had more of a loud roar heard on his records?
EC: Yeah, J had a lot to do with that. Absolutely, because when he showed up to produce in the studio, he showed up and I brought all my gear. I had a good bit of gear — nice old Fender Tweed amps and vintage guitars, some pretty nice stuff. I get there and J shows up with this amazing ’58 Fender Tweed Bandmaster, which is like one of the rarer models, maybe 22 watts, just a screaming amplifier. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. We’ll be using this.’ ‘That’s why I brought it.’ He had a big influence. He brought that amplifier, which we used almost exclusively. He’s like, ‘Man, you need to turn up the guitars.’ (laughs) ‘Okay. I’m with you J.’
JPG: That’s a lively J Mascis. He usually doesn’t sound that lively.
EC: Exactly. It’s usually more like, (said slowly) ‘You should turn up the guitar.’
JPG: Yeah, that’s about right, which is funny because his music is the total opposite of his personality.
EC: Yep. Weird when he’s producing. He’d be sitting there. At the time, he was wearing prescription glasses, but they were sunglasses, prescription sunglasses. He’d be sitting there with his baseball cap on. You’d think he was asleep, staring at the board. You weren’t sure if he was listening at all, and then all of a sudden, he’d be like, ‘Let’s turn up the kick drum.’ Out of the blue! You turn up the kick drum and suddenly the song is perfect. He’d just sit there and listen, listen, didn’t talk, didn’t say much. But when he did say something it was exactly right. It was really great working with him, man. Loved it.
JPG: Before you moved to Columbia Records, fIREHOSE recorded three albums for SST (label for Black Flag, the minutemen, Meat Puppets, Husker Du). What is your view of the indie label because some bands loved SST, but then others had problems, whether it was accounting or other matters? Then again, some feel that those problems are possible on any label. Did you notice a difference or was it just you guys did what you did, it didn’t matter who put it out?
EC: Well, you’ve got to realize that minutemen, Mike Watt, George, they go back with SST to the very, very beginning. So they had a long relationship with Greg Ginn (owner of SST, leader of Black Flag) and Greg’s been nothing but straight up with us. It did get to a point where there were too many bands and not enough label to go around. You know what I mean? That was just growing pains. It went from a little tiny, punk rock label that was very much a family where everybody knew each other on the label and half the dudes worked there. It was that kind of operation. Then it got bigger, a lot bigger, real fast. Outgrew itself a little bit.
It wasn’t, ‘We have this problem with SST, so we’re…’ It was more, ‘There’s this opportunity [to go to a major label].’ Sonic Youth had done it. Husker Du had done it. Dinosaur Jr. had done it. They all made the leap. There was precedence for it. We didn’t see that it was a whole lot different ‘cause they were doing as good as they possibly could. There were some limitations and with the Columbia deal it was like the biggest label there is. ‘Let’s just try it out and see.’ We were very careful when it came to the contracts. Basically, not give away the house, which is what most bands do when they sign to a major. Careful they wouldn’t spend us into a hole. So, we never went into the red with them. Always in the black, the books. We had a pretty positive experience, actually.
JPG: That’s good. Last thing. At the time fIREHOSE was around there was the hair metal band Firehouse. Were you amused or pissed and frustrated that there was a band so similar to your name around at the time? There’s even a Youtube video taken from MTV where they screwed up and typed in the wrong name.
EC: Yeah, of course we were very aware of it. Oddly enough, I remember one gig, we were in Philly at the Trocadero and we’re sitting in the van in the parking lot, a couple hours before the gig, just chilling out. I see these obvious big hair people, leather head-to-toe, walking back to their cars, cussing up, ‘Goddamnnit! Fuckin’ fIREHOSE!’ They thought it was Firehouse playing at the Trocadero, and they apparently had a little problem with their education and didn’t know how to read. (laughs) They were pissed off walking back to their cars. We were amused by it. What are you gonna do?
JPG: I’m just surprised that bands with such similar names would be on labels owned by same the same company. You were on Columbia, they were on Epic and both owned by Sony. You would think somebody there would have bothered to mentioned that at the time.
EC: It’s a big label. Certain sections of it don’t talk to other sections of it apparently.
JPG: Well, too bad those guys didn’t bother to go inside.
EC: Yeah, right. They might have liked it. Who knows?
