The quiet American

J Mascis has a reputation as a man of very, very few words and it doesn't take long for The Week to notice this reserve. He's laconic to the point of making Sooty seem like a chatterbox. But who cares? The guitar God may come across as quiet, but his music is anything but.

His best-known band, Dinosaur Jr, were the grunge heroes who preceded Nirvana and paved the way for slacker rock in the late 80s. After three classic albums and a lot of inter-band bitching, they disbanded in 1997.

Four years ago, they came back from the brink of extinction, releasing a further two albums, including this year's Farm.

Mascis now tours with Dinosaur Jr as well as his post-Dinosaur act, J Mascis and the Fog.

He's on his way to the airport in the US as we speak, heading here to Blighty for a few Fog gigs.

"It should be cool," he drawls. Then there's a pause. There are a lot of these.

"I'm looking forward to it, yeah. I've just done a long Dinosaur tour, so that's playing the same things every night. It's fun to mix things up."

More light

Mascis will be playing guitar and singing for six gigs with the Fog.

"I'll be over for 10 days or something," he says.

It will be something of a change from when he played all the instruments and sang on the first Fog album, More Light, which was recorded in his home studio and released in 2000.

When it was time to tour, he enlisted the help of legendary bassist Mike Watt (Firehose, The Minutemen and now The Stooges) and Dinosaur Jr drummer George Berz.

The Fog line-up consists of bassist Dave Schools (Widespread Panic, Stockholm Syndrome) and Kyle Spence (Harvey Milk, Fiddlehead, The Tom Collins).

In a musical climate where bands crash and burn after one record, Mascis, a forefather of the US grunge movement who has rocked for a quarter of a decade, is a bit of a legend.

And he's not past it yet.

"There seemed to be a lot of younger people," he says of fans at his last Dinosaur tour. "There was some slam dancing and stuff. All our old fans are probably staying at home now with their kids so no-one would be there if the young people didn't come."

The Fog gigs are "more stretched out" than Dinosaur gigs, he explains.

"We tend to jam a bit more than with Dinosaur. I don't know – it's just something I like to do that I don't do that much with Dinosaur."

It's as chatty as he is likely to get.

Info

J Mascis and the Fog play at Leicester University on Thursday, December 10.

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