Editing Mike Watt (section)

===Solo career===
After working with Firehose, Watt began a solo career. His first album, ''[[Ball-Hog or Tugboat?]]'', featured appearances from dozens of musicians (many were Watt's peers from the 1980s SST era), including [[Henry Rollins]], [[Eddie Vedder]], [[J Mascis]], [[Carla Bozulich]], [[Evan Dando]], members of [[Sonic Youth]], [[Red Hot Chili Peppers]], [[Frank Black]], [[Nirvana (band)|Nirvana]], [[Soul Asylum]], [[Jane's Addiction]], the [[Beastie Boys]] and the [[Screaming Trees]]. The album and its supporting tour were Watt's first taste of mainstream fame, when Vedder and [[Dave Grohl]] of [[Nirvana (band)|Nirvana]] were part of his touring group. After Vedder returned to his [[Pearl Jam]] commitments and Grohl began working with his new band [[Foo Fighters]], Watt formed his only four-piece touring group to date, [[The Crew Of The Flying Saucer]], featuring guitarist [[Nels Cline]] and two drummers.

In 1996, Watt contributed bass guitar on two songs for [[Porno for Pyros]]' second album, ''[[Good God's Urge]]'', filling in for [[Martyn LeNoble]] who quit the band during recording sessions. Watt subsequently ended up being the bassist for the band's tour that followed the release of the album.

He made an appearance in an episode of [[Cartoon Network]]'s ''[[Space Ghost Coast to Coast]]''.

In 1997, Watt released ''[[Contemplating the Engine Room]]'', a punk rock [[song cycle]] using naval life as an extended [[metaphor]] for both Watt's family history (the album has a picture of his father in his Navy uniform on the cover) and the Minutemen. The album, which was critically well received, features the trio of musicians [[Nels Cline]] on guitar, [[Stephen Hodges]] on drums, and Watt as the only singer.

Watt went on to play in such groups as [[Banyan (band)|Banyan]] (with [[Stephen Perkins]] and Nels Cline) and [[Hellride]], a sometime live outfit that plays cover versions of [[The Stooges|Stooges]] songs. He also played in [[Wylde Ratttz]] with Sonic Youth's [[Thurston Moore]] and The Stooges' [[Ron Asheton]], recording a song for the film ''[[Velvet Goldmine]]''.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Bennett|first=James|title=Becoming a Stooge: an Interview with Mike Watt|url=https://www.slugmag.com/music-features/becoming-a-stooge-an-interview-with-mike-watt/|publisher=[[SLUG Magazine]]|date=February 28, 2007|access-date=March 23, 2019|archive-date=March 23, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190323180817/https://www.slugmag.com/music-features/becoming-a-stooge-an-interview-with-mike-watt/|url-status=live}}</ref> Watt also recorded a bass line to send to the [[Pennsylvania]] space-folk band The Clubber Lang Gang for their record ''Now Here This'', on the track "For the Broken People". Starting in mid-2011, Watt began playing bass for a psychedelic/progressive rock band called [[Anywhere (band)|Anywhere]] with the [[Mars Volta]]'s [[Cedric Bixler-Zavala]] and Christian Eric Beaulieu of [[Triclops (band)|Triclops!]] In 2015 Mike Watt joined the [[Waywords and Meansigns]] project, a collaborative project setting James Joyce's [[Finnegans Wake]] to music.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.punknews.org/article/57550/mike-watt-part-of-project-setting-finnegans-wake-to-music|title=Press release at Punk News|date=April 10, 2015|access-date=April 10, 2015|archive-date=April 16, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150416004451/http://www.punknews.org/article/57550/mike-watt-part-of-project-setting-finnegans-wake-to-music|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite tweet |author=Mike Watt |user=wattfrompedro |number=585929337909579777 |date=April 8, 2015 |title=RT @waywrdsmeansgns: '...M Watt... S Underwood (The Pop Group) both join our 2nd ed.: Finnegans Wake set to music' glad to be on board!" |access-date=April 28, 2015}}</ref>