Mike Watt is talking about the van: the van as metaphor for the bassist's entire life, his day-to-day existence on the road and his new album, "Contemplating the Engine Room." The gear is unloaded from his Ford Econoline and ready to go for the San Francisco performance of the "punk rock opera," the second date of a seven-week tour. But right now, Watt is sitting in the dressing room talking -- "spieling," as he puts it. To his mind, his road experience puts him in a long line of real and literary passengers, from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to Dante's "Inferno" to his own father, who served in the Navy. "When I was reading about Jim and Huck on that raft, that was the van. My father was in the van. Dante with Virgil in that boat with Charon, he was in the van. We're all in the van. The only thing new is you, finding out about it."

"Contemplating the Engine Room" is, among other things, the story of what he discovered, a document of his experiences with the Minutemen, the band he formed with his best friend, guitarist D. Boon, and drummer George Hurley. Part of a vibrant punk scene on the deeply influential SST label, the Minutemen helped define American independent rock in the 1980s. But six years after the Minutemen began a series of brilliant albums that limned the middle ground between jazz and punk, the van exacted its revenge, with Boon dying in a wreck on an Arizona highway in 1985.

Watt says he was frightened to make a record so personal, but to his mind he had no choice. "I just had to get it out. I owed it to D. Boon, the Minutemen, Georgie, all the SST cats. Because it's sad what happened to the Minutemen. Fucking fucked up. But the work we did is why I get to make these records. I wanted to make a big valentine to that, to say, 'Thank you.'"

The results are jaw-dropping. Recruiting Nels Cline guitarist of the Geraldine Fibbers and drummer Steve Hodges ("In order to celebrate the Minutemen, it had to be three guys," Watt says), Watt has recorded a post-punk "Ulysses." From the fist-pumping hardcore of "The Bluejackets' Manual" to the twisted pop of "Fireman Hurley" to the avant-funk of "Black Gang Coffee" and "Liberty Calls!" "Engine Room" spills over with a spirit of invention that's invigorating, easily the finest work he's done since the Minutemen (he'd since marked time in the disappointing Firehose and recorded "Ball-Hog or Tugboat?" with a slew of alternarockers, an album that suffered from too-many-cooks syndrome). As the titles suggest, nautical themes abound, befitting a man who grew up in the Navy town of San Pedro, Calif.

While the album's inspiration is Watt's past, the album is hardly a nostalgia trip, musically or spiritually. "I'm not building tract homes," says Watt. "I'm not hiding in the past. Though I'm using parts of my past, I'm in real time, dealing with real problems." The method Watt used to make the record was one he learned during a stint touring with Perry Farrell's band Porno for Pyros. "The way Perry talks about music, he speaks in stories," Watt recalls. "Perry would say to me, 'You're in a field, it's green, it's waving, you're a bird.'" Watt used a similar method to get the songs across to Cline and Hodges. He describes how it worked with "In the Engine Room," which opens the album: "Here we are. It's right before dawn. This song is purple. And it's like right when you're waking up from a dreamy state, unconscious, subconscious. Here's the lick, now what're you gonna do? OK, let's go to tape."

Talking about the unusual recording method, Watt celebrates its spirit. "Perry hit on something. It's like punk rock. In the early days, we didn't know how to play, we had to get above that. Getting over the notes, getting over the technique." That in many ways describes the spirit behind the dazzling and diverse roster of bands on SST as well, which he name-checks on "Topsiders": Black Flag, Sonic Youth, the Meat Puppets, Husker D| and even the artist Raymond Pettibon, whose iconoclastic drawings, flyers and album covers defined the SST era as much as Henry Rollins' growl or Bob Mould's guitar. "The weird thing about SST, we didn't really have a 'sound,'" Watt says. "I liked that. It was autonomous. That's what I try to talk about in 'Topsiders.' We're all in the same boat, but in different rooms."

Watt bemoans the fact that many have forgotten the work that SST did in building the underground scene and paving the way for the "alternative" acts of today. "It's funny how for a lot of writers, it's the Sex Pistols" -- Watt draws a straight line in the air with his finger -- "Nirvana. You got little kids doing Buzzcocks songs, they don't even know what the Buzzcocks are. In fact, if the Buzzcocks come to play, they don't even go to the gig. They go to the Green Day gig." But Watt isn't just some grumpy old punk whining about how much better the good old days were: "There was the Knack and the Cars and shit like that in them days too," he notes. Watt is still a fervent supporter of the music and bands of today, a proud evangelist of the riot grrrl scene, as well as the possibilities of the Internet, which he likens to fanzines. He proudly notes that he keeps his own "Mike Watt's Hoot Page" updated regularly. "Why should Spin broker us? Why don't we just reach each other and cut out the middleman?"

Even if he believes that today's alternative scene is "co-opted and part of a Gap ad," he's rightfully proud of the work that he did, and which he still continues to do. Whether the demi-Buzzcocks bands of today know it or not, Watt helped blaze the trail that the vans of today's punk and underground bands get to drive on. "I think the ideas really did get around. The guy in the Town Car doesn't really know what's going on in the van. But," he adds pointedly, "I think there's more vans now."