For a band that’s spent four decades zigzagging through punk, hardcore, country, metal, psychedelia, and whatever else happened to be lying around the room, the most Meat Puppets move imaginable might be to sound this relaxed. Dusty Notes doesn’t announce itself as a comeback. It just sort of wanders in, banjo in hand, keyboards wheezing like an old calliope, acoustic guitars holding everything together with twine and instinct. According to Curt Kirkwood, that looseness wasn’t an accident—it was the whole point.
“Oh, it’s kind of everything,” Kirkwood says of reuniting the original lineup for the first time in about 20 years. “Having Derrick back was just huge. We didn’t rehearse or anything. We just made the thing. That’s kind of how we made some of the best stuff—don’t have too much of an idea what we’re doing.”
That approach carried straight into the sound of Dusty Notes, which leans folkier and dustier than the band’s louder detours, without ever fully committing to being an “acoustic album.” “The whole album is acoustic guitar-based,” Kirkwood explains. “That’s the skeleton. Two acoustic guitars initially, then everything else got sounded on. It doesn’t sound acoustic, but that’s what it is underneath.”
The additions matter. There’s Ron Stabinsky on keyboards—“first album with keyboards in the band”—bringing in carnival wheeze and old steamboat vibes that shouldn’t work with banjo, but do. “You don’t hear calliope with banjo a lot,” Kirkwood laughs. “Chris plays banjo, so he put that on there, and it came out kind of different.”
Different has always been the Meat Puppets’ comfort zone. Kirkwood shrugs at genre labels the way some people shrug at weather. Arizona country? Sure. Bakersfield twang? Why not. “I grew up around the horse racetrack,” he says. “Country music was always playing. I never really thought of myself as a country-western musician, but it’s fun to play.”
That openness bleeds into the writing too, especially on Dusty Notes’ standout single “Warranty,” a song that feels like it’s making peace with being exactly what it is. Kirkwood prefers it that way. “I leave that stuff kind of open,” he says. “If it makes too much sense, I’ll edit that out. I don’t like to spell stuff out so much. I like people to form their own opinions.”
Which makes it tempting—but dangerous—to read too much into recurring ideas like invisibility, something that pops up again here after appearing on earlier tracks like “Disappear” and “We Don’t Exist.” Kirkwood doesn’t exactly shut that down, but he doesn’t chase it either. “I like the idea of somebody being invisible anyway,” he says. “But I also thought it was kind of funny—someone goes, ‘Oh look, it’s the Invisible Man.’ Well, if you can’t see him, how can you say that?”
That sideways humor has always been part of the deal. So has time travel. This year also marked the anniversary of Too High to Die, the album that turned the Meat Puppets into unlikely MTV fixtures thanks to “Backwater,” a hit Kirkwood still seems faintly amused by. “I didn’t think it was my favorite song,” he admits. “I thought it sounded like Atlanta Rhythm Section or something. But it was fun. Having kudos come from the outside—that’s a lot of fun.”
That moment arrived right after their appearance on MTV Unplugged with Nirvana, an association that permanently tied the Meat Puppets to the early-’90s alt-rock explosion, whether they asked for it or not. “Too High to Die was already done when we did Unplugged,” Kirkwood says. “It was just ironic. Those were songs Nirvana was still playing anyway.”
The aftermath was complicated—sudden attention, bigger tours, and then the whiplash of Kurt Cobain’s death. “That put a strange spin on the whole year,” Kirkwood says quietly. “We were floating on a pretty magic time, and then the bad side of it.”
Pressure followed. So did ambivalence. “They want more big,” he says. “And it’s like, I don’t know how to do that. Just make another record.”
Which brings things back to Dusty Notes: a record made without rehearsal, without grand expectations, without trying to outdo the past. It’s the sound of a band that’s been through every version of itself and decided the only way forward is to keep trusting instinct. Or, as Kirkwood puts it, with typical understatement, “Everybody just did their thing. I didn’t say much. I was busy writing lyrics, trying to catch up.”
After four decades, it’s less about chasing the moment than recognizing it when it wanders into the room and sits down with a banjo.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "Warranty" below!
