Born in Chicago, Weiss spent most of his youth growing up in central New Jersey where he later started playing bass with local bands while attending Princeton High School. In 1982 he teamed up with
William Tucker (guitar) and high school buddy
Sim Cain (drums) to form
Regressive Aid, an instrumental new wave band that released a 4-song EP in 1983 and a 6-song LP the following year. Around this time, Weiss began his experimentations with electronic music and recording. This led to a collaboration with his friend Jeff Rusnack, partnersinWonder, and together they founded Bird'o'Pray Records, a cassette only label that featured electronic and alternative music, including the first releases by the New Hope, Pennsylvania duo
Ween. In 1985,
Regressive Aid caught the attention of
Black Flag founder/guitarist
Greg Ginn who then recruited Weiss and Sim to travel to Los Angeles and form
Gone, an instrumental punk/jazz power trio. In 1986
Gone recorded 3 albums for
SST Records and played over 500 gigs throughout the USA touring in support of
Black Flag as well as performing guerrilla type shows in record stores. The end of the year saw the demise of both
Gone and
Black Flag, at which point Weiss and Sim teamed up with
Black Flag vocalist
Henry Rollins and Washington DC guitarist
Chris Haskett to form the
Rollins Band. It was also around this time that Weiss began to further pursue adventures in music production and engineering, enlisting
Ween and local NJ act
Skunk as guinea pigs. In 1989, he produced and engineered albums for both bands which were subsequently snatched up by the Minneapolis indie label
Twin Tone. Soon thereafter, he also produced a duo project with
Rollins for
Chrysalis Records, dubbed Wartime, on which Weiss wrote, played, and recorded all the music himself while Henry wrote the lyrics and performed the vocals. From 1987 through 1992, Weiss toured the world and recorded 7 albums with the
Rollins Band acting not only as their bassist, but writing much of the music as well. During this period he also produced four albums for
Ween, two for
Skunk, and participated in 3 tours and 4 albums as bassist and songwriter for the industrial all-star supergroup
Pigface. In 1992, Weiss departed the
Rollins Band to devote more time to
Ween (as their live bassist) and
Pigface projects. The years since have found him recording and playing bass with, among others, the
Butthole Surfers,
Chris Harford and
Yoko Ono (with whom he did a world tour in 1996), while continuing his production/engineering work with
Ween (six more releases), a collaboration with the premier Japanese band
Boredoms (
Z-Rock Hawaii), the 'P' album (featuring
Johnny Depp,
Gibby Haynes,
Flea,
Steve Jones, & others),
Yoko Ono, and
Akron/Family. Weiss has also been a producer and engineer of albums for a number of Central and South American bands including six albums with
Babasónicos from Argentina, four with Mexican band Liquits, and the Grammy winning 2003 album from
Café Tacvba Cuatro Caminos. In 2000, Weiss started spending time in Haiti recording and performing with Port-au-Prince post-racine band RAM. Around this time he also began composing music for television and film, most notably scoring music for a multitude of shows on the
Sundance Channel. Weiss' most recent work was being the bassist with
Jello Biafra and the
Guantanamo School of Medicine. Weiss is still maintaining his Zion House'o'Flesh studio in New Jersey. ==Partial discography==