Eyes Adrift

Eyes Adrift was a three-piece band that Krist played in from the end of 2001 until the summer of 2003. The lineup was:

• Curt Kirkwood (Meat Puppets): guitar and lead vocals
• Krist Novoselic: bass and vocals
• Bud Gaugh (Sublime, Long Beach Dub Allstars): drums and percussion

How the band came together

This was Krist’s first full band since Sweet 75. The connection to Curt went back a long way: when Nirvana taped MTV Unplugged in 1993, Curt and his brother Cris came on stage to play three Meat Puppets songs with them, “Plateau,” “Oh, Me” and “Lake of Fire.” According to Pitchfork, Krist and Bud each phoned Curt, separately and unannounced, while he was on his first solo tour and asked to jam before he left town (Pitchfork). Our old page said Krist reached out after catching Curt’s solo show in Seattle and that the three started playing together around December 2001. Curt, speaking from his home in Austin, was quick to tell interviewers that this was not a supergroup (Westword).

The album and the tour

The self-titled album came out on September 24, 2002, on SpinART Records (Wikipedia). In Australia a different band already owned the name, so the record was sold there as Bud, Curt & Krist. Curt wrote and sang most of it, and Krist took the lead vocal on a few songs, including the rockabilly romp “Dottie Dawn & Julie Jewel” (Austin Chronicle). The record closes with “Pasted,” a jam that runs about 15 minutes.

Critics were split. Pitchfork panned it and felt Krist’s bass was buried behind Curt’s guitar (Pitchfork). The Austin Chronicle called “Alaska” the one song where everything clicked (Austin Chronicle). Reviewing a November 2002 club show at Spaceland in Los Angeles, Variety called the band capable but unremarkable and said Bud was the standout on stage (Variety). We thought, and still think, that it’s a really good record.

The band toured the U.S. in 2002, starting months before the album was out. I caught them at the Middle East Downstairs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 21, 2002; my photos from that night are at the bottom of this page.

The end of the band

In the summer of 2003 Krist posted a long note saying he was done with the music business, though not with music. He called Eyes Adrift an artistic success and a commercial failure: the band was on an independent label with little promotion money, and club shows with uneven crowds had put the tour in the red. Billboard reported that the album had sold about 9,000 copies in the U.S. at that point (Billboard, Rolling Stone). He said he still wanted to play with Curt and Bud, and he turned his attention to politics for the next few years.

What happened next

• Curt and Bud kept playing together in a band called Volcano (Wikipedia). In 2006 Curt reunited the Meat Puppets with his brother Cris, and that band is still going (Wikipedia).
• Bud rejoined Sublime with bassist Eric Wilson and singer Jakob Nowell, the son of the late Bradley Nowell. Their album Until the Sun Explodes came out on June 12, 2026, the band’s first new record in 30 years (NPR).
• Krist went on to play in Flipper, Giants in the Trees and 3rd Secret, and in 2024 he started the Bona Fide Band (see Krist’s side projects).

Discography

Eyes Adrift (SpinART, September 24, 2002)

Released in Australia as Bud, Curt & Krist. The album has been out of print for years (Wikipedia).

• Sleight of Hand
• Alaska
• Inquiring Minds
• Untried
• Blind Me
• Dottie Dawn & Julie Jewel
• Solid
• Pyramids
• Telescope
• Slow Race
• What I Said
• Pasted

Credits (from the CD booklet): Curt Kirkwood, guitar and lead vocals; Krist Novoselic, bass and vocals; Bud Gaugh, drums and percussion. Recorded by Stuart Sullivan at Wire Recording in Austin, Texas. Mixed by John Plymale at Overdub Lane in Durham, North Carolina. Mastered by Brent Lambert at Kitchen Mastering in Carrboro, North Carolina. Photography by Michael Halsband; art direction and typography by Richard Luckett. Management: Cory L. Moore, Luther Wolf Agency, Austin.

“Alaska” (single)

“Alaska” was the only single from the album. Wikipedia gives a UK release date of March 3, 2003 (Wikipedia).

Unreleased songs

“The Jerk” and “The Cup and the Lip” never made it onto a record. For a while the band offered them as free MP3s on eyesadrift.com, but that site is long gone.

Audio and video

• Interview with Krist and Bud (MP3, about 4.5 minutes, hosted on this site).
• The band’s website used to stream a RealAudio clip of every song on the album, and also carried the “Alaska” video. An acoustic session that Krist and Curt recorded for AOL was shared in a Yahoo! fan group. All of these went offline when those sites closed, so the old links have been removed.

Press archive

We saved a stack of 2002 and 2003 articles about the band. A few to start with:

• Music: Nirvana bassist, Puppet master form new band
• Eyes Adrift: Not just another supergroup
• Rockers put tragedies behind them
• The Beat: Rock refugees create musical lifeboat called Eyes Adrift
• Curt Kirkwood of Eyes Adrift
• Wanderin’ Eyes

My photos: Middle East Downstairs, April 21, 2002

I took these at the Cambridge show. Along with the band shots there’s my ticket, one of Bud’s drumsticks (he threw it into the crowd and I grabbed it), and a picture of me and my roommate Kelvin hanging out with Krist on the tour bus.

A note on dates. Sources disagree on when the band started. Our old page said December 2001, while Rolling Stone and Wikipedia say 2002. Since the band was already on tour in April 2002, late 2001 is probably right for the first rehearsals. Wikipedia’s infobox also dates the “Alaska” single to March 2002, although its main text says March 2003.

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Last updated October 2026.