Interview: Mike Baggetta (mssv)

The band mssv creates music that sounds like a science experiment gone awry, as if a machine designed to create perpetual motion instead produces jagged, insistent, and undeniably fun music. And appropriately enough, mechanics are at the heart of the trio’s name. mssv (pronounced “em; ess; ess; vee”) is an abbreviation for “main steam stop valve,” ensuring that steampunk language will be used when characterizing the band's music. 

The ensemble emerged in the wake of guitarist Mike Baggetta’s solo album Wall of Flowers when drummer Stephen Hodges (Tom Waits; David Lynch) joined Baggetta and legendary bass player Mike Watt (The Minutemen; Firehose) on the road. After touring extensively, recording one full length album, and putting out a few 7” releases, mssv shared Human Reaction on Sept. 1. 

The new album includes even more of mssv’s instrumental experiments while also allowing space forBaggetta’s vocals. But throughout Human Reaction, mssv remains committed to a resounding, all-important groove above all else. 

Prior to the band’s Oct. 18 headlining show at The Grey Eagle, Asheville Stages talked to Baggetta about genre and music, how he approaches writing music and now lyrics for mssv, returning to singing, and building the band’s setlist.

Scott Bunn: The three of you in mssv are in the midst of a massive tour to promote Human Reaction. How are you holding up?

Mike Baggetta: It's really going great. We just started the second leg last night in Joshua Tree, Calif. That was great. Those were the last California shows until we get back home on Nov. 4 for the last show in L.A. We've done 14 shows so far, and we have 45 left after [Las] Vegas tonight.

SB Forty-five left! Keep going. I’ve heard mssv describes yourselves in other interviews and liner notes as “post genre.” It reminds me of something that the songwriter and artist Terry Allen said whenever someone described him as being a “country” artist, he would always respond, “Which country?” Did you all come up with the idea “post genre” as a goal before you started playing together or from reading what people like me wrote about your music? 

MB It wasn't an intentional thing, but, from what I notice, every great musician isn't really concerned with that. Like your Terry Allen quote, rightly so, he shouldn't just be categorized as a singular thing. He contains a myriad of different types of music and things he's listened to and things that inspire him just like everybody else on the planet. 

For me, I think about music as an extension of one's life. If you think about what you do throughout the course of the day, you're not just one thing. You're not just a dishwasher or a partner or a son or a father or a musician or a cook, but you do all these things, some days more than other days. If you like all kinds of music and you're not limited in what you listen to and what you take in and what inspires you, what comes out of you is not set to the same kind of prescribed notions. 

So, in a way, it's a little bit offensive to pigeonhole somebody like that. But I'm also not totally naive. I live in society like everybody else and people want to have things to call things, so I just came up with that tongue-in-cheek term to make people think about why they're calling this thing this other ridiculous thing, and luckily it stuck.

SB: You recorded Human Reaction in 2022 immediately after the previous tour. Was that a way of capturing the live feel from that tour?

MB: It was a way of doing something that I've always thought should be done earlier in my music playing days. I would get to be a part of other people's bands and they write a bunch of music and we’d practice it for a while and then we’d record it. Then 12 months later, the record would come out and we put a little tour around the record and we'd all have to re-learn the music. And then at the end of the tour, you play music eight, nine, 10 days in a row, or whatever it would be. Music always sounded so much better than when we just rehearsed it a year ago and didn't play any shows. So, in my mind, it was always like, “Oh, we should have made the record now.” 

For my own music, when it came time to think about how to record that stuff, this was always the way I wanted to do it. I've been doing it that way with my different projects for a long, long time now. I'm going back to some of the Fresh Sound records that I made over a decade ago. For this band, it just seemed like a logical way to do it. You get to things when you play the music every day with people — you allow them a chance to get to know the music. You allow them to get inside the music, make it their own, put their own signature things on it, which is hopefully why you asked those people to play with your music in the first place. 

Or, in this case, actually write the music, essentially thinking about the sound of Hodges and Watt, and give them time to get to know it and get to live inside the music and really personalize it as much as possible. I mean, you can't really practice that and you can't really write it into a part. The only way to do it, I think, is to do it. And so we get to do it a lot, and then we make the record right after. So, Human Reaction was days 49 and 50 after a 48-day tour last spring. Then, after this tour, which is 58 shows, we're making the new record with all new music on days 59 and 60.

SB: I was going to ask if that was the goal for this tour. 

MB: Of course, yeah.

SB: I know there were some lyrics on your first album, courtesy of Mike Watt. Human Reaction includes your own first bit of lyric writing for mssv. Was there any kind of trepidation about asking Mike Watt and Stephen Hodges about inserting lyrics into the songs? 

MB: No. In fact, I felt like it was kind of their idea, in a way. Over [the COVID-19 pandemic] lockdown, we did a number of 7” [records] together, kind of trading files, recording separately. But one of the 7” we made was called The Scott Aicher EP, and it was four new songs based on four panels of artwork our friend Scott Aicher gave us to use. I did some music because I imagined these four characters in a storyline, like a movie kind of thing. So, I wrote a little script just for myself, and then I scored the movie that I wrote. 

At a certain point I asked Watt, “Maybe two of these would be good with words. What do you think?” And he said, “No problem. Just send me what the stories are about that you came up with.” So, I sent him my little stories for these two characters. Then he sent me back the recording of his words. It was pretty much just the words that I sent. He edited them [and] finessed them a little bit. On listening back to that, I was like, “Oh, whoa, I just wrote some lyrics. I guess it's kind of that easy.”

But for me, it was always harder because, when I was in my teens, I had a guitar teacher who did a little concert thing. I was trying to play guitar and sing probably for the first time and I'm sure it sucked. It was terrible. But I remember I asked him afterwards, “So what did you think?” And he was like, “Oh, your guitar playing sounded good, but maybe no more singing.” For teenage Mike, I was like, “OK, yeah, I'll never sing again.” So, it's been kind of a lifetime of dealing with that little weird shutdown in my younger days. 

I've always loved words and always felt like I wanted to try to do it again someday. When I heard that recording from Watt, I said, “OK, well maybe I can just write words.” He and I had talked about it a bunch on the previous tour as I was writing some of the songs for Human Reaction. [He and Stephen] were both totally supportive and there was never any question. I think at one point I asked them, “Would you guys mind if I try singing?” Both of them were like, “No, of course not. Why would we mind?” There was never really a question that needed to be asked, so I'm really thankful for them.

SB: I'm glad you got over that little bit of trauma.

MB: Took like 35 years. (laughs)

SB: Back to genre and descriptors: there are hints of surf music in your guitar playing, particularly in the song “Pity Parody” off of Human Reaction as well as "The Mystery Of” from the first album. Is that a conscious approach on your part or has it all sunk into your playing and writing?  

MB: I kind of never listened to surf music and a lot of people have told me that since the first mssv record came out, even since the Wall of Flowers record came out before that. But first thing I'll say is that when people offer descriptors, it says a lot about what they listen to, and I think that's cool because it's not something I'm familiar with. It gives me something to listen to and see what it is they're hearing. So, I never really checked it out that much until people kept saying that. But I think a lot of it is a little kind of a twangy guitar sound and I use the whammy bar a bunch, so I definitely can hear it and I did start listening to a bunch after that. There's a lot of great music in that plane, for sure, and I think I can hear what people are hearing.

SB: I love the song “Junk Haiku” from the new release. It includes sounds that, to me, could be someone pushing buttons on a panel in a 1950s sci-fi movie. Also, the song "Human Reaction" sounds like a bunch of snarling snakes. Are you always seeking new guitar effects like that to push a specific feel in a song? 

MB: I feel like I'm lucky enough to be at a point with music where I'm not thinking about it that much. But I do think what you say is probably true, to some extent. I want to have variety on an album. But I also want to play things that are honest to the song. I’m not trying to shoehorn. Like, “OK, I gotta make sure I put this little sound trick on this record.” I'm not doing that. 

But it is sort of in the moment thinking, “OK, here comes the guitar solo. Maybe I'll try this right now and see what happens” — pretty much that simple at this point. Which isn't to say that it's an easy thing because it is also terrifying to go into things without a plan. But I tend to think if you can commit to trusting yourself with music and trusting the people you're playing with that you always end up with something greater than if you were able to really plan it out. I think that's how it works for me.

SB: It's obvious that you've got that trust with Mike Watt and Steven Hodges. That actually leads me into something else. You've recorded these mssv albums with Chris Schlarb aka Psychic Temple at Big Ego Studios. You've also recorded plenty of solo albums with him. There's got to be some trust in him as well. It feels as though he might be an unspoken member of the band. Describe your partnership with Chris. 

MB: Oh, yeah. Chris is a really good friend, and definitely there's a lot of trust in that. I really believe in the loyalty of things, too, as people allow you to do something that you haven't been able to do before and they allow you to do it in an honest way. I think that deserves loyalty and respect and trust and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, Chris is a really good friend and I love the sounds that he gets for the records and he's always willing to try new ideas. Or, if I come up with some crazy idea, he’s down to try it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. 

He has really good ears to bounce off, too. I never really got to work with a producer with a capital “P” before him on any of my projects, so I find that it is really helpful when I'm playing or working on something to be able to ask him, “Hey, am I barking up the wrong tree? Am I too inside myself on this or is this an interesting thing?” And I can always trust his ears. He gets great sounds and he's totally great to work with in the studio. He's pretty invaluable.

SB: I know that mssv started as an outgrowth of a solo album you recorded with legendary drummer Jim Keltner and Mike Watt. Last year, you recorded another album with Keltner and Watt before coming back to Stephen Hodges and mssv. What’s the difference between playing with Keltner and Hodges? 

MB: Well, they're different people and they play differently, but they're both completely excellent percussionists, musicians, improvisers, groove builders. They both have a thing where they believe in the way that percussion and drums and cymbals and rhythm can aid every facet of the musicality of a song. It's not just like, “Here's a drum part,” and then that's the end of your thing. It's about really getting up inside the music as one of the main rhythm providers. It's different, but it's not any less exciting to play with either of them, for sure. 

SB: Similarly, do you find that you write differently for mssv than for your solo work? 

MB: Oh, 100%. For mssv, I start the songs by making demos because I don’t live in SoCal with these guys. I live in Gainesville, Fla. I make the little demos, and I come up with the drum parts and the bass parts thinking about the way that Hodges and Watt play themselves, and the sounds that they've come up with themselves over decades of really heavy music. But also the way that now I know how they work together in this band. So, the parts are written specifically with them in mind. 

And then, of course, it's not just a rote thing. They're always welcome to change and come up with better ideas — which, of course, they always do. Then they evolve on the road even further, which is exactly what I want. So, yeah, this is pretty much the only project where I come up with parts for specific people to play. It would be really weird to play these songs with anyone else at this point, I think, because of that.

SB: In previous tours, in addition to the material you have written for mssv, you performed covers from projects that each of you have contributed to, including work that Stephen Hodges did with Lynch and Mike Watt’s album Contemplating the Engine Room. Are you all still performing covers or only pulling from the two mssv full-lengths now?

MB: We're playing two different sets each night. Each set has the full Human Reaction album. It also has one song from the first album. Then, alternating every night, we either do music from the mssv meets Nels Cline 7”, or we do another track from the first mssv record. And then, also alternating every night, we do half of the new songs that we're going to record at the end of this tour. Then the second night, we do the other half of those songs. We do get an encore in there, too.  

SB: So you’ve put the covers behind you?

MB: For this trip, pretty much. We’ve just got so much music to get through. If you’ve got music that you wrote specifically for a project and people are planning to come hear that project, I feel like you play that album. It just seemed like the way to go because we’ve got to record the new stuff and tour for Human Reaction and then we got a couple little bonus past mssv things that we can throw in there. We've recorded a ton of music already in the four years that we've been together. The crazy cover stuff, that was our very first tour when I felt like we didn't have enough music to do even a full set of just originals. So, we've got this large catalog of songs, surprisingly — so why not play them?

IF YOU GO

Who: mssv (Mike Baggetta + Stephen Hodges + Mike Watt) with with Red Zephyr + ¿Watches?
When: Wednesday, Oct. 18, 8 p.m.
Where: The Grey Eagle, 185 Clingman Ave., thegreyeagle.com
Tickets: $17

(Photo by Devin O'Brien)