When last we spoke with Curt Kirkwood, in February of 2006, there was no communication between the Kirkwood brothers, but there was word that Cris was coming along in his rehab.

Curt said, "I leave him to his own devices," but added about the possibility of a Meat Puppets reunion one day. "I don't leave things out of the realm of possibility, that's what's fun about this show business thing. I'm allowed to keep an open mind. I'm allowed to believe that weird things can happen."

Well, weird things have happened.

A few months after those comments, Curt, 48, met younger brother Cris, 46, at a mutual friend's house in Tempe, Ariz., to reconcile and now the Meat Puppet brothers are on tour with "Rise to Your Knees," their first album together in 11 years.

For too many years, drugs had gotten in between the Kirkwoods, who formed the Meat Puppets in Tempe back in 1980.

The band's career has been a jagged line from hardcore to the trippy, sunlit country punk to Southern boogie and on to something more streamlined and shiny metallic. The constant has been Curt's surreal imagery, off-kilter harmonies and a wickedly fluid and out-there guitar style that combines the best of Hendrix, Garcia and Billy Gibbons.

After years of being indie darlings and a white-hot club act, the Puppets got a surprise invitation from Kurt Cobain to play on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged session, which included Kirkwood's "Lake of Fire" and two other songs. In the wake of that, the more major-label Puppets had a new young following, a minor radio hit with "Backwater" and a tour with Stone Temple Pilots. Unfortunately, Cris was more immersed in heroin and crack, putting the brakes on the Puppets in 1995. His addiction ultimately came to a head in 2003 when he assaulted a post office security guard and got shot and imprisoned in the process.

As Cris bottomed out, while ballooning to 320 pounds, Curt assembled a different, unremarkable version of the Puppets, took part in the failed Eyes Adrift project with Nirvana's Krist Novoselic and released a moody, downbeat and well-received solo acoustic album called "Snow."

In the spring of 2006, Curt heard from his musician son, Elmo, that Cris had put his life back together.

"Nobody in Phoenix would say that unless it was true," Curt says. "You just couldn't fool anyone. He was a pretty diehard junkie and ne'er-do-well. My son wouldn't have said it. He didn't have any patience for it."

Meanwhile, Curt's daughter sent up a trial balloon of a Meat Puppets reunion on the band's Myspace page and got a huge positive response.

Curt asked Cris -- who was poised to begin working at the Salvation Army warehouse -- if he wanted to put this legendary band back together.

"Cris was all over it, like 'I can't believe you could tell I was ready.' Ha ha," Curt says. "It's more like 'I'm ready, my friend.' He has a more cosmic spin on it. I don't have the same angle on it, like 'Oh, it's such a tragedy.' Cris is a really nice guy and he has a lot more friends than me, 'cause he's a total sweetheart. The thing about him is he didn't get hit by a car or get cancer or something. He [messed] himself really bad. I was like, 'You [stink], dude, more than anyone I've ever dealt with.' The only way I can deal with this is act like the last 12 years didn't exist. That's me. It's easy for me 'cause I'm like a pro bridge-burner. I've been in show business since I was a teenager, so that's the way it goes. I'm also a pro at ignoring people who stab me in the back, and I don't give a [expletive].

"When the Mad Hatter comes up and sticks a knife into you or Alice sticks a knife, they're always smiling and it's hardly ever fatal. It hurts, but it's like, that's show business. And you'll get back in bed with them the next time. It didn't bother me what he did, but it was like when you're done with it, just hop back in and we'll go from there."

Curt also presented the reunion idea to original drummer Derrick Bostrom, who actively runs a Meat Puppets fan site and blogs regularly about the band. He said no.

"I don't know what his deal is," Curt says. "I can't answer for him. You'd think ... He looks at [the band] as a relic. He keeps it alive and it gives him a lot of attention while working at a computer at Whole Foods. He's been there for the longest time. He's a profit-share corporate drone up in Scottsdale working at Whole Foods pricing things. He has had zero involvement in music for the last dozen years, which is partly why he didn't want to do it. He said, 'You wouldn't want to play with me,' and he's probably right because I've been playing all along, and so has Cris, and we're probably better than we've ever been."

Cris was even playing in bands in jail, including one with a former drummer for Steppenwolf, according to Curt. They grabbed drummer Ted Marcus, a New York soundman, and recorded "Rise to Your Knees," from the tons of material Curt had written, including songs from his time living in Venice Beach, L.A., in the '90s.

Although there are a handful of standouts, it's been rightly pointed out that there is a muted quality to the affair. Still, if you had to peg "Rise" to a Meat Puppets era, it would be that mid-'80s period of hazy psychedelia.

"I wasn't trying to capture the past or make a follow-up," he says. "I have a lot for fondness for how I made 'Meat Puppets II' and 'Up on the Sun' -- 'Huevos' as well. 'Huevos' was a little infected by having been too absorbed in ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd as a kid, but who cares. Everybody was too cool. R.E.M. was cool. I loved them at the time, but everybody threw away their ZZ records and their Skynyrd records. To this day, I saw them in '74 and it's still one of the best rock bands I ever saw. Hands down. I'm not one of those who the medium is the message, just 'cause it's Southern rock. That's not the message. That's abstract blues, but its message is more like a follow-up to Roky Erickson and its reverberation and all that stuff. I'm way into like Jimmy Reed and Hound Dog Taylor. So how does that translate to 'Huevos' -- that was like a sidetrack to a degree, and we're talented enough to do that. But 'II' and 'Up on the Son' are very essential Meat Puppets."

Curt puts himself in that class of musician who doesn't go into the studio seeking perfection, but the warped vocals and sometimes haphazard playing is part of the appeal.

"What are we trying to get, a Pavarotti take?" Curt says. "I can do a really insane Elvis voice from the '70s. I can do operatic stuff. I have a big voice. But that's a trick. That's me doing my Rich Little stuff. It's not real. That's why I was like, 'Does Bono really sing like that?' I'd like to hear what he really sounds like."

Curt produced "Rise" how he likes it, without any input or editing from the folks at label Anodyne -- just like in the days of SST records.

"I just know how things are supposed to sound and it's not that hard to do it. I mean, I'd like to make 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' but I'd like to take a day to do it. They took a month on one track. That's cool, that's beautiful, and they're gazillionaires, but you have to be that to begin with. Brian May just got his degree in astrophysics, which he put off to join Queen, so we're talking about rocket scientists and people who have the brains to sit there with that stuff, ad nauseam, and I don't. I'm a very simple person when it gets right down to it. I don't have the patience to sit there."

A few days after playing Mr. Small's, the Meat Puppets will head to Turin, N.Y., to play moe.down in yet another encounter with the jam-band scene, which has always been on the border of embracing them.

"We played shows at one point with Phish and Blues Traveler, but the crowd didn't like us," Curt says. "Phish knew their crowd. They sound like the Grateful Dead. They don't do the Hendrix throwdown to get your brain to melt, and that's our version of psychedelia -- the white noise of The Boredoms, and also we incorporated Captain Beefheart, the Varese, the Stravinsky, the Prokovief's angles and then we get into sculpture. Our improvs to me are magical and people like them but they were based on all of that. We were coming from punk rock, too."

Asked how age is affecting his music, Curt says he thinks he's only gotten better. He says he learned what was "essential about my performances" from doing the solo shows. Anyone who saw the Meat Puppets scorch the Decade one night in the '80s -- with, Curt, refusing to leave, saying, "but there are still a few songs I'm aching to play" -- knows how much passion they have for the music.

Says Curt, "I'm happy we can still catch the end of that kite."