Reunited Meat Puppets plugging along

After hearing your song on the radio, sitting in with Nirvana during its most famous performance and having run-ins with drugs and the law, it might seem like time to hang up the guitars.

For the Meat Puppets, there was still more music to make.

The group was at the height of its fame back in 1993, helped along by a little band called Nirvana. At a time when they were on top of the music world, Nirvana and its frontman, Kurt Cobain, chose three Meat Puppets songs to perform on the band’s MTV “Unplugged” episode: “Plateau,” “Oh Me” and “Lake of Fire.”

Curt and Cris Kirkwood joined Nirvana on the “Unplugged” performance, which was one of the last that Cobain would do. “Lake of Fire” eventually became a fan favorite.

After that came the radio hit “Backwater,” but drug use, especially by Cris, caused the band to fragment and break up.

“I didn’t think Cris would come back around. I thought he was kinda done for, especially when he got put in prison,” Curt Kirkwood said. “There was a long time when I didn’t think he would be playing in the band.”

In 2006, Kirkwood reunited with his brother and released an album. The band has been on the road since and took time to record and release another album, “Sewn Together.”

“I kinda wanted it to be like folk songs. But then I kinda got a few twists and turns in it,” Kirkwood said. “I wanted it to be electric folk songs, not like the Byrds, but sing-along-type stuff.”

Kirkwood said he’s always been interested in lots of music, starting with the records his mother listened to. He mentioned the Beatles, the Monkees, the Banana Splits, Bobby Sherman, the Grassroots, Johnny Cash, Roy Clark, Glen Campbell and Hank Williams.

As a child, Kirkwood played clarinet until his mother allowed him to switch over to guitar. Now 50 years old, he never imagined that he would make music for a living.

“I just didn’t think about it very much. I really didn’t. I always stuck to what was at hand,” he said. “A lot of it boils down to luck.”

Contact the writer:

444-1557, kevin.coffey@owh.com