Chris Corsano / Joe Baiza / Mike Watt

 

Corsano Baiza Watt Trio

A new trio to deliver a mix of free improvisation and punk, all of it wild-eyed and fierce as hell.  Guitarist Joe Baiza (Saccharine Trust, Universal Congress Of) and bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Stooges) both need no introduction, but if you insist: They’re defining figures of the 1980’s California hardcore/post-punk scene and did as much as anyone to expand the music into something beyond categorization, pulling things in from all over the imaginary genre-map, including free jazz’s improvisation and exploratory fervor.  Drummer Chris Corsano (Rangda, Björk, Bill Orcutt) came up in a world heavily indebted to Baiza and Watt, fully embracing the ethos of “Punk is whatever we made it to be.”  He’s brought that approach to free improvisation since he came on the scene in the late ’90s.

In late 2023 the trio first met out in the Mojave Desert, and have gone on to release two albums, followed by several tours.  Together they produce a blast of jangly, abstract, moody and rhythmic explorations.

“While SST bands like the Minutemen or Joe Baiza’s Saccharine Trust brought a jazz influence into punk, a full-on plunge into free jazz is uncharted territory for Watt.  But you’d be hard pressed to find a better docent than drummer Chris Corsano, a free-jazz virtuoso who’s played with just about everyone.  The trio’s album of noisy, all-improvised music is an exercise in aural communication. Watt’s bass playing is pliant; he stumbles upon themes but isn’t arrogantly wedded to them, ceding space for Corsano to ramp up the action or reset the pace.  Joe Baiza’s glassy guitar chords and irksome string scrapes sound like a bizarro Wes Montgomery.  The resulting improvisations feel at once oddly retro and unnervingly futuristic.”

 

Joe Baiza

Joe Baiza (1952) is a punk rock and improvising guitarist whom Eugene Chadbourne cites as one of the most noteworthy guitarists to emerge from the Southern California punk rock milieu.  Baiza is a founding member of the bands Saccharine Trust, Universal Congress Of, and The Mecolodiacs. He also performed guest guitar spots on several Minutemen tracks and played alongside Black Flag’s Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski in the SST all-star jam band October Faction, recording two albums with them.  Baiza substituted for Nels Cline during Mike Watt’s European and American tours behind his second solo album, Contemplating the Engine Room, in 1997 and 1998.  Currently, Baiza plays with Saccharine Trust as well as the improvisational unit Unknown Instructors with former Minutemen Mike Watt and George Hurley.  Baiza is also an accomplished visual artist.  In 1983 he illustrated the cover of the Minutemen’s record Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat.  The illustration depicts the faces of D. Boon and Mike Watt engaged in heated dialogue as they so often did as friends and musical collaborators.  In late 2013 The Cornelius Projects in San Pedro hosted The Mind of Joe Baiza – Paintings, Drawings, Photographs & Artifacts.

Mike Watt

Mike Watt is a living legend, rightly hailed for his definitive bass playing in the singular SST band the Minutemen.  Watt’s approach reimagined the tone and timbre of the bass in punk. Eschewing a pick, he gravitated towards the funky and the percussive, seamlessly blending scene-stealing licks with a water-tight rhythm.  Watt established a new paradigm of punk bass as a surgical instrument rather than a blunt object.

After D. Boon’s untimely death in 1985, Watt expanded his horizons as a player and collaborator.  He closed out the ‘80s with fIREHOSE, spent the aughts gigging with the Stooges, and his 1995 solo debut, Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, is populated by a who’s who of ’90s alternative musicians.  Of recent, Watt is more active than ever: According to his personal “hootpage,” Watt has played on over 22 releases in just the past 24 months.  This output is unrivaled in its diversity and consistency.  He’s mastered a startling range of genres and cast his lot with an impressive array of collaborators.

Chris Corsano

Chris Corsano is a drummer who has been working at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and noise musics since the late 1990s.  His work incorporates spontaneously composed amalgams of extended techniques for drum set and non-percussion instruments of his own making that are incorporated into his kit.  Examples of these invented instruments include violin strings stretched across drum heads, and modified reed instruments that transform the drums into resonators which can, in turn, be used to incite strips of metal to react to the drum membranes’ Chladni-plate-like modes of vibration.

Corsano’s solo recordings include The Young Cricketer (2006), Another Dull Dawn (2009), Cut (2012), and the 2024 Drag City release, The Key (Became the Important Thing [& Then Just Faded Away]).

Corsano’s dedication to collective improvisation has resulted in his appearance on over 140 records and over 1000 live performances.  He has collaborated with, among others, Björk (Volta world tour), Bill Nace, Joe McPhee, Mette Rasmussen, John Edwards,  Sylvie Courvoisier,  Nate Wooley, Jim O’Rourke & Akira Sakata, Darin Gray (as Chikamorachi), Nels Cline, Heather Leigh, Zoh Ambra, and many many others.

 
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Damon Smith

Double bassist Damon Smith (STL), a hardcore punk rock disciple turned free improvisational titan is fully in his element, helping unleash an impossible firestorm of loud noise. Other noise musicians have their “noise tables,” an arrangement of synths and other machinery they use to produce their crushing sound; Smith, on the other hand, towers over a sheet music stand stocked with a junkyard’s worth of miscellaneous contraptions—bows, drumsticks, clothespins, and chains—all ready to be rammed, prodded, poked, and spun into his bass strings.

Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon’s explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson’s Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Jaap Blonk,Roscoe Mitchell, Weasel Walter, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Weasel Walter, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and six great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, Thomas Helton, David Dove & Chris Cogburn. Damon moved to the Boston area in the fall of 2016 and began working with Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Joe McPhee and Ra-Kalam Bob Moses and many others. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians.

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Alex Cunningham

Alex Cunningham is a violinist, improviser, and visual artist based in St. Louis, MO. His recorded output spans free improvisation, drone, noise, and minimalist composition. Cunningham has recorded with Lisa Cameron, Damon Smith, claire rousay, Chris Trull (under the Apathist! moniker), Mark Shippy, Thom Nguyen, Patrick Shiroishi, Jessica Ackerley, Seth Andrew Davis, Sandy Ewen, Weasel Walter, Eli Wallace, Jaap Blonk, Kevin Cheli, and K. Curtis Lyle. Cunningham has released music on Close/Far Recordings, Personal Archives, Already Dead Tapes and Records, Fort Evil Fruit, Working Man Lay Down, Orb Tapes, Astral Editions, Infrequent Seams, Industrial Coast, Balance Point Acoustics, Waveform Alphabet, Flat Plastic Home Media, Profane Illuminations, and Astral Spirits.

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