Imagine, imagine for a second that your entire
life's work, your passion, your very identity
is suddenly just gone. Yeah, wiped out in an
absolute instant. just completely erased by a
tragedy you never saw coming. How do you rebuild
your life after a devastating loss like that?
And I mean, maybe more importantly, what role
does sheer unadulterated audacity play in that
process of starting over? It is the ultimate
human question, isn't it? I mean, when the foundation
completely crumbles beneath your feet. Do you
walk away forever or do you let someone completely
unexpected help you lay a new one? Which is exactly
what we are exploring today on this deep dive.
We're looking at a stack of historical notes,
articles, and retrospectives on the alternative
rock band Firehouse. And look, even if you have
never listened to a single punk or alt rock album
in your life, you really need to stick with us
here. Oh, absolutely, because their story isn't
just music trivia. It is a masterclass for you
sitting there right now on persistence. It's
about building this relentless this blue collar
work ethic in a creative field. And it is about
the absolute magic that happens when you ignore
the odds and just show up. To really understand
the weight of the story, we have to set the historical
stage first. So we are looking at the mid 1980s
alternative rock scene. Right, specifically the
Southern California park movement. Exactly. And
our inciting incident is, well, it's deeply tragic.
The source material centers on the accidental
death of Dee Boon in December of 1985. Right.
He was the front man and guitarist for the legendary,
wildly influential punk band the Minutemen. In
his death in a van crash, it abruptly ended the
band and left their bassist, Mike Watt, completely
shattered. He was deeply mourning the loss of
his best friend. And as the text note, he had
lost pretty much all of his desire to ever play
music again. He was just done. The music had
stopped for him completely. But, you know, this
is where the history takes a wild turn. It really
does. We move from the tragic, sudden end of
the Minutemen to this incredibly unlikely catalyst
that pulled Mike Watt back into the world of
the living. Enter a 21 -year -old Ohio State
student named Ed Crawford. A fan. Basically just
a kid from Ohio who deeply loved the Minutemen.
Yeah, and the sequence of events here is almost
unbelievable. It's crazy. It's early 1986. And
according to the history, Crawford is in Columbus,
Ohio, and he ends up hanging out on the roof
of a van. Of course he is. Right. A van belonging
to the indie band Camper Van Beethoven. And up
on this roof, Camper Van Beethoven's Victor Kremenacher
tells Crawford a rumor. A rumor that changes
everything. Exactly. He says Mike Watt and drummer
George Hurley are... auditioning guitarists for
a new band. Which was just a rumor, a complete
fabrication. Totally made up. Watt wasn't looking
for anyone. He was sitting in his apartment in
San Pedro, grieving. But Crawford doesn't know
that. Or maybe he just doesn't care. So he goes
and finds Mike Watt's phone number in a literal
physical phone book. Which is wild. Think about
the analog friction of that in 1986. He calls
him up from across the country and says, I want
to come out to California and play with you guys.
And Watt, who is still deep in mourning and thoroughly
confused, just shoots him down. He tells him
no. Yeah. And realistically, most people would
hang up the phone, feel a little embarrassed
about bothering their grieving hero, and just
go back to class at Ohio State. But not Ed Crawford.
His persistence kicks into overdrive. Oh, big
time. He travels all the way to San Pedro, California,
and shows up completely unannounced. Wait he
just showed up. Literally just showed up. He
essentially demands the chance to come over and
play for Watt and Watt perhaps out of sheer exhaustion
or bewilderment finally caves. He lets him come
over. He does and Crawford auditions for him
by playing the song I'm One by The Who along
with a few Minutemen tracks. Okay let's unpack
this for a second. Imagine the audacity here.
Right. It's like walking onto a high stakes construction
site where the foreman just lost his best architect
in a terrible accident and handing him a plastic
toy hammer and saying, I'm ready to build the
next skyscraper with you. It borders on delusional.
It completely borders on delusional. But what's
fascinating here is analyzing exactly why Mike
Watt and George Hurley actually gave this inexperienced
kid from Ohio a shot. Yeah, why did they? Well,
the source material explicitly notes that Watt
was impressed with Crawford's passion and his
relentless enthusiasm. They agreed to form the
band with him because of that raw energy. And
there is a profound lesson there for any career
or creative pursuit you might be undertaking
right now. Oh, absolutely. Raw passion, unbridled
enthusiasm and the audacity to just physically
put yourself in the room. Yeah. Those things
often Trump polished. theoretical expertise.
Crawford wasn't a seasoned pro with a massive
resume of bands behind him. No, not at all. He
was just the guy who cared enough to cross the
country and knock on the door. He forced his
way into the narrative through sheer willpower.
And it worked. The band is officially formed
in the spring of 1986. OK, so Crawford kicks
the door down and gets the gig. But getting the
job and doing the job are two entirely different
things. Very different. How does a 21 -year -old
kid with barely any experience step into a room
with two grieving punk legends and actually contribute
something new? Rather than just becoming a human
jukebox for Minutemen covers, you mean? Exactly.
Yeah. I mean, Crawford is sleeping under a desk
for nine months in Watt's one -bedroom apartment.
Yeah, the desk. He literally earns the moniker
Ed from Ohio. Yeah. Because that's all he is
to the local scene, just the kid from Ohio. How
do they step out of the shadow of these massive
musical giants? They did it by forging a completely
new identity while honoring the past, and it
comes down to the mechanics of their sound. They
didn't try to replicate the Minutemen. The Minutemen
were famous for these jagged angular... hyper
short bursts of music. Right, those 45 second
songs that sounded like political panic attacks.
Exactly. If Crawford had tried to mimic Dee Boon's
wildly treble heavy frantic guitar style, it
would have been a disaster. It would have felt
like a cheap imitation. Totally. Instead, they
developed a dynamic synthesis of punk, funk,
and free jazz by letting Crawford be Crawford.
Meaning he brought a more traditional, almost
earnest rock and roll phrasing to the table.
Precisely. Crawford had a meatier, more straightforward
guitar tone, and that actually grounded the band.
Because of how Watt plays the bass, right? Yeah,
you have to remember how Mike Watt plays. He
doesn't just keep time in the background. He
plays the bass like a lead instrument, driving
the melody. While George Hurley's drumming is
incredibly frantic and jazz -influenced. Right,
so Crawford's solid, earnest rhythm playing became
the anchor that allowed Watt and Hurley to go
completely wild without the song falling apart.
They let the songs breathe a bit more than the
Minutemen did. They created their own sonic fingerprint.
And even their name reflects that balance of
humor, humility, and moving forward. The name
Fire Host comes from a Bob Dylan short film.
Ah, the famous promo for subterranean homesick
blues. Yeah, Dylan is dropping those cue cards
with the lyrics, and Watt thought it was funny
when Dylan held up a card that just randomly
said, Firehose. But the stylization of the name
is where the real meaning lies, though. A lowercase
f, followed by all caps. Eiderhose. Firehose.
Right. The source points out this was a deliberate,
subtle tribute to the Minutemen. whose logo was
always written in all caps visually that lowercase
f is doing so much heavy lifting it really is
it's like they were visually telling their audience
we are born from that massive all caps legacy
but we are a little off center We are something
new, and we are humbled by what came before.
And part of being something new meant finding
a new audience. They couldn't just rely on leftover
Minutemen fans. Many of whom were highly skeptical
of this new kid from Ohio anyway. Exactly. They
aggressively sought out their own crowd, and
they found a massive, fiercely loyal fan base
in a very specific subculture. Which was the
underground skateboarding scene, right? Skateboarding
crowd, yeah. This is such a cool detail from
the deep dive. Their music became the absolute
soundtrack to a whole generation of skaters.
Oh, completely. By the late 1980s, their early
material was being included in heavily circulated
skateboarding videos. Tracks like Brave Captain
from their 1986 debut album on SST Records, raging
full on. Great record. And their sophomore release
at Fullman had songs like sometimes Hear Me and
Windmilling featured prominently in the legendary
Santa Cruz skateboards video series Streets on
Fire. Yeah, that was huge for them. But why them?
Assuming, you know, the basic ethos of 80s street
skating, you know, hitting the concrete, pushing
boundaries outside the mainstream, why with Firehose
the perfect fit musically? It comes back to those
time signatures and rhythms we were just talking
about. OK, how so? Well, standard 44 punk rock
is fast, but it's very predictable. Firehose
played with odd time signatures, maybe dropping
into 78 time with sudden stops, starts and funky
bouncing bass lines. Right. Musically, that actually
mimics the physical rhythm of street skating.
Think about setting up a trick. The sudden snap
of an ollie, hitting the concrete, recovering
your balance, and pushing forward again. Oh wow.
The music wasn't just fast, it was kinetic, unpredictable,
and rhythmic in a way that perfectly matched
the physical act of skating. That makes total
sense. You have a band formed by a kid who threw
himself across the country on a crazy risk, playing
music for kids who are throwing themselves down
concrete staircases on pieces of wood. It's a
perfect cultural marriage. It really is. And
that kinetic energy translated directly into
how they approach their actual job as a band.
This wasn't some delicate, studio -obsessed art
project. Yo, not at all. This was a blue -collar
creative grind. Let's look at the sheer volume
of work they produced over just seven and a half
years. It's staggering. They released five full
-length studio albums. We're talking Raging,
Full On, If in Vano, Fly in the Flannel, and
Mr. Machinery Operator. Plus two EPs. Right,
sometimes, almost always. And Live Totem Pole.
They supported Sonic Youth on the Flaming Telepaths
Tour. And, most mind -blowing of all, they played
980 gigs before their final show at the Warner
Grand Theater in San Pedro on February 12, 1994.
980 gigs in seven and a half years? Wait, hold
on. A show every two to three days, constantly,
for almost a decade? Pretty much. I hear that,
and I don't think inspiring work ethic, I think
recipe for complete mental breakdown. It sounds
exhausting. How do they survive that pace without
imploding or just hating each other? Especially
when they made the jump to Columbia Records in
1991. Right, the major label jump. You have this
fiercely independent DIY punk band suddenly adapting
to a major corporate label right as the alternative
rock boom is starting. How did that friction
not destroy them. Because they never abandoned
the Jama Kano philosophy. Jama Kano. Yeah, Jama
Kano was a term coined by the Minutemen, meaning
you do everything as economically as possible.
Keep it cheap. Exactly. You book your own tours.
You sleep in the van. You haul your own gear.
You don't waste money on fancy hotels or massive
studio budgets. So even on Columbia, they kept
that. When Firehouse signed to Columbia, they
didn't suddenly start acting like rock stars.
They took the major label money and used it to
fund their endless touring. Oh, that makes sense.
Their first major label album was literally called
Fly in the Flannel, a nod to their working class
flannel wearing aesthetic. They maintained their
survival by treating the band like a blue collar
trade. You wake up, you get in the van, you go
to the job site, you play the show. Here's where
it gets really interesting, though. There is
a quote in the source material. from an interview
Mike Watt gave to Billboard magazine that completely
reframes this entire work ethic. I love this
quote. Watt declared, most bands tour to promote
records. We make records to promote tours. It
is a complete inversion of the traditional music
industry model. It really is. It's like flipping
a modern business model upside down. How do you
mean? Well, imagine a major software company
treating their flagship, incredibly expensive
app as just a giant break -even loss leader,
just so they can justify sending their developers
out to deliver incredible face -to -face in -person
customer service to every single user, every
single night. That is a brilliant way to conceptualize
it. Right. The product isn't the plastic disk
or the digital file you buy. The product is the
sweat, the volume, and the energy in the room.
It completely reframes the value of creative
work. For Firehose, it wasn't about the static
product, you know, the vinyl record or the CD
sitting on a shelf. Right. The record was just
a flyer. An excuse to gather people together.
The actual value, the art itself, was the active
experience of the tour. It was the communion
between the band and the audience on gig number
400 or gig number 800. Wow. And I think that
raises an important question for you listening
right now. In your own professional life, in
your own creative pursuits, what is your record
and what is your tour? That's a great question.
Are you obsessing over perfecting a static document,
like a resume, a report, a portfolio, an Instagram
post, when you should be using that document
merely as a ticket to get out there and actually
interact with the physical world? Are you making
records to promote tours, or are you just sitting
in the studio endlessly tweaking the record while
life passes you by? Exactly. The fire hose is
always out on the road. But of course, The human
body and mind have limits. Yeah, they do. A relentless
pace of nearly a thousand gigs takes a physical
and emotional toll. It leads inevitably to the
band amicably disbanding in 1994, which brings
us to an incredibly poignant part of this history.
What happens to that blue collar creative drive
after a massive consuming project finally comes
to an end? Well, the drive doesn't disappear.
It mutates. It scatters into a dozen new directions.
The post -Firehose landscape is incredibly busy
for all three of them. Ugh. Mike Watt goes on
an absolute tear. Oh, yeah. He releases four
solo albums, including his famous Ball Hog or
Tug Boat record, which featured pretty much everyone
in Alternative Rock. Everyone. He gets involved
in a dizzying array of collaborations. The dual
bass project Dose. with his ex -wife Kira Rustler,
fitted with Wires Graham Lewis playing with Jay
Mashi's In the Fog. And officially joining the
Stooges to play bass for Iggy Pod. Right. And
even hosting his own internet radio show, The
Watt from Pedro Show, all while still living
in San Pedro, where he's been anchored since
1967. And George Hurley didn't stop either. He
stayed in the San Pedro scene as well, lending
his frantic drum style to bands like Vida, Red
Crayola, Tripod. And eventually reuniting with
Watt in an improvisational group called the Unknown
Instructors. Right. Even Ed Crawford, our audacious
kid from Ohio, keeps moving. He relocates to
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He fronts the trio
Grand National, plays guitar, and tours with
Ryan Adams in the alt -country band Whiskey Town,
and fronts the alt -rock trio Effude. They all
keep their heads down, they keep their flannel
on, and they keep working. But then... 18 years
later, in early 2012, we get a massive surprise.
The rumor mill, fittingly, starts up again, just
like it did back in 1986 on that van roof. A
tip goes to Verbicide magazine about a secret
announcement made at a venue called Harlow's
in Sacramento. And soon after, the rumors are
confirmed. Firehose reunites. Which was huge.
They launch a small West Coast tour, playfully
christened Smokin' on the Old Pink Pole. It kicks
off at Harlow's, covers 14 dates, and includes
two massive, highly publicized stops at the Coachella
Valley Music and Arts Festival. Think about the
contrast there. Right. From 1980s dive bars smelling
of stale beer to the main stage at a massive
modern desert festival. And to coincide with
this, they release Lo Felus, the Columbia Anthology,
which formerly chronicles their major label years.
So they are back in the room together, the three
guys who formed a band out of devastating grief
and a wild leap of faith back on stage playing
the songs that soundtracked a generation of skaters.
But naturally, as soon as they reunite, the press
wants to know what's next. A reporter for Rolling
Stone asks Mike Watt if they were planning to
hit the studio and make a new album. And Watt
gives this very coy, measured response. Yeah,
he notes that Ed Crawford was asking about doing
new gigs and mentioning that he'd been writing
songs for his band, Food. But for the reunion,
Watt says, we're just going to try and play some
of the old ones. So I don't know, maybe down
the road. So what does this all mean? They have
this triumphant return at Coachella. They prove
they can still play the complex music. But there's
no grand promise of of a new era, just maybe
down the road. If we connect this to the bigger
picture, I think it shows a profound maturity.
It is the wisdom of letting a project breathe.
That makes sense. When they were young, they
played 980 shows at breakneck speed because they
had to. They were out running grief. They were
proving themselves to a skeptical punk scene.
And they were literally paying their rent through
sheer volume. Right, they had something to prove.
But 18 years later, they don't have to force
it. It highlights a beautiful truth about creative
partnerships. True collaborations never really
die. They just enter periods of dormancy. I love
that. This 2012 reunion wasn't some desperate
corporate cash grab or a frantic attempt to recapture
their youth. It was just a joyful reconnection.
They showed up to play the songs, feel the kinetic
energy of the room again, and leave the future
wide open. They showed up. That really is the
through line of everything we've synthesized
today from these historical sources. It always
comes back to the physical act of showing up.
Yeah, it's Ed Crawford, a 21 -year -old kid facing
rejection from his absolute hero, but having
the unbelievable persistence to cross the country,
pick up a phone book, and put himself physically
in the room. Or, more accurately, to put himself
physically under a desk for nine months while
he earned his keep. Yeah, exactly. It is the
ultimate testament to the power of physical presence
and undeniable earnest effort. And as Mike wants
entire philosophy of creation, refusing to view
the art as a precious fragile thing to be protected
in a studio, but instead making products merely
to fuel the live experience. Right. Making records
just so you have an excuse to get out on tour,
load the gear and sweat it out with the people
who are actually listening to you. which leaves
us with a final, fascinating parallel to consider
for our modern lives. Think about this. Firehose
existed entirely in an era before digital permanence.
Oh, that's true. They played nearly a thousand
live shows and most of those nights are just
gone. Evaporated into the sweaty air of tiny
clubs living only in the memories of the skaters
and punks who were lucky enough to be there.
Today we live in a world obsessed with creating
permanent digital content. We want every thought,
every project, every moment recorded, perfected
and uploaded to build a static legacy. Right.
Everything has to last forever. What would happen
if you adopted the fire host mentality instead?
What if you stopped viewing your daily work as
a final record to be judged by the internet forever
and started treating it merely as an excuse to
get out there and experience the messy, unpredictable
tour of your own life? That is a phenomenal takeaway.
Treat your life like the tour. But let me leave
you with one more thought to chew on, something
that struck me when reviewing all these sources.
We've talked so much about hustle, touring, and
Crawford's audacity. But think about the deeply
tragic catalyst of all this, grief. Watt was
broken, completely dismantled by the loss of
his best friend. But what if devastating loss
is sometimes the only thing that strips away
our creative ego enough to let a complete stranger
in? If D -Boon hadn't passed, if the Minutemen
were still riding high, would Mike Watt have
ever given an amateur kid from Ohio with a thick
acoustic guitar and a crazy dream a chance? Probably
not. Probably not. Sometimes the destruction
of our old foundation is the only thing that
leaves us vulnerable enough to accept the exact
weird unexpected help we need to build the next
one. That's incredibly powerful. Thank you so
much for joining us on this deep dive. Stay curious,
keep exploring, and we'll catch you next time.