Jerry Cantrell’s signature stylings persistently land him close to the highest of “best guitarist” polls. His heavy, nuanced songs and private lyrics — from Alice in Chains’ “Rooster” to “Cut You in” and his 4 solo data— are multilayered, typically willfully opaque and at all times highly effective. But he typically finds that solely a German phrase will get the purpose throughout.
Within the opening strains of “Vilified,” the primary observe of his newest album, “I Want Blood,” he sings, “Simulate the feel / Of all that’s true and real / Hey-a schadenfreude crescendo / Hey-a skew the innuendo.”
“Yeah, you don’t get to use ‘schadenfreude’ in a lyric very often, so I was kind of happy to check that one off the list,” Cantrell says with a hearty chuckle.
“At different times, [people] seem to take a little bit more pleasure in creating chaos and pointing fingers at each other,” he furthers of the track’s topical gist. “It seems like we’ve kind of been living through that, one of those periods where it’s a little more prevalent, in your face. That word gets thrown around, and I think it’s an appropriate descriptor.”
It may be exhausting to search out an acceptable descriptor for Cantrell. Since 1990, he’s come throughout as prickly, goofy (proof constructive: Nineties shenanigans clad in a blue Speedo at New Jersey’s Motion Park on MTV’s “Headbanger’s Ball”), considerate, severe, wasted, and now, fortunately, 20 years sober. Born in Tacoma, Wash., the one-time highschool choir president was an aspiring rock star who hung round at a Weapons N’ Roses live performance at hand a demo tape to Axl Rose. Which, the story goes, the red-headed stranger promptly tossed into a close-by trash bin. Sans an Axl help, Alice in Chains nonetheless emerged from a crowded Seattle grunge scene and located deserved fame due to a number of timeless, hit-laden studio albums and EPs within the early to mid ’90s.
Habit additionally discovered the band, ending the lives of half its members, singer Layne Staley in 2002 and ex-bassist Mike Starr in 2011. Cantrell relocated part-time to L.A. the place he discovered a robust neighborhood of sober creatives, and he’s now thrived substance-free for 20 years. Cantrell, 58, explains, “I still live in the Seattle area as well, but L.A. kind of became my adopted sober home, and my Bermuda Triangle is basically Seattle, Oklahoma and L.A.”
Which makes his gig on the Tulsa Theater a hometown present, along with his dad’s aspect of the household primarily based in Oklahoma “for generations.” Talking by telephone forward of his live performance, Cantrell has already had a full day. After soundcheck, a day meet-and-greet and interview, he’ll “jump in the shower, get my body working and do a rock show.” Oh, and his youthful brother [David] might be ready for him to get off the telephone, he says.
“When I’m writing songs, I try to put multiple meanings of certain phrases or lines. My job is to take my experience in the world and spit it back at itself,” Cantrell stated.
(Darren Craig)
Life appears pretty much as good because the music he’s making, but no scarcity of Cantrell lyrics delve right into a drug-pervasive darkness. “I Want Blood” appears rife with double meanings and entendres, with titles and lyrics like “Off the Rails” or “Throw Me a Line” that might confer with battling need and substances or in search of salvation. Which had been as soon as perhaps the identical factor.
“That’s a part of who I am,” Cantrell explains. “I’m a sober alcoholic, so that’s always going to be in there. But I wouldn’t say that any particular song or the whole record is geared toward that. It’s a thread in the tapestry. When I’m writing songs, I try to put multiple meanings of certain phrases or lines. My job is to take my experience in the world and spit it back at itself. And do it in some sort of fashion that feels authentic and honest to [me],” Cantrell says.
Profitable touring and data with each Alice in Chains (that includes singer William DuVall since 2006) and solo — amongst myriad different tasks — can by no means ease the trauma of shedding so many associates within the Seattle scene. And extra pointedly, the dying of Cantrell’s mom Gloria from most cancers when he was simply 21. However the singer-songwriter is adept at funneling previous ache into the current, and appears pushed and stable in his creativity and life.
“Records for me are a lot of hard work,” Cantrell says. “You have to maintain a lot of focus over a period of time, and be able to keep your vision intact through all the turbulence. Making a record is [seriously] turbulent as hell,” he says. “You’re bringing something that does not exist out of the f— darkness into being.”
That stated, each musically and personally, there’s typically an undercurrent of sarcasm and even some levity in and across the darkness. “You’ve got to be able to have a little bit of a sense of humor about yourself, and also the world in general, you know, or it’s gonna be a [really] long grind.”
A main instance? Spinal Faucet. Not simply the film, however Cantrell’s transient second onstage with the band on the Common Amphitheater, the storied venue whose incarnation since 2016 has been the Faucet-appropriate the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Cantrell’s reminiscence is barely hazy, however he recollects being invited to play, “Christmas With the Devil” with Faucet. Virtuosic Toto guitarist Steve Lukather was on the gig, and “I think Jennifer Batten [of Michael Jackson fame] was there too. You’ve already got two heavy weights. I show up. I don’t have a guitar. I don’t have an amp,” he recollects. “They’ve got all their big Bradshaw systems, aircraft control tower-sized amplifiers set up on stage.”
Harry Shearer and Michael McKean — bassist Derek Smalls and guitarist David St. Hubbins of their metallic alter-egos — approached Cantrell considerably sheepishly. “I know we invited you down, but we’ve got these guys, and we don’t have an amp for you,” they advised the guitarist. “On a counter they had a little battery-powered Marshall, a little mini amp,” Cantrell remembers. “I’m like, ‘Dude, put that on the stage and tape it down and put a big boom mic all the way down to it. That’s [pure] comedy.’ ”
The duo was stunned Cantrell was up for the schtick, Shearer questioning, “You’ll do that?”
“I’m like, ‘Yeah, dude, that’s f— Spinal Tap. I’ll play through that thing.’ They thought it was a great idea, and we did it.” Cantrell acquired his Stonehenge second, and he’s nonetheless stoked by the reminiscence. “I had my own personal Spinal Tap moment, which I helped create with Michael McKean!”
That “making it up as you go along” spirit discovered its approach into the deluxe model of “I Want Blood.” Searching for to create one thing cool for collectors, however with out additional songs to launch, Cantrell thought he’d strive a spoken-word tackle System’s “Vilify.” He felt the outcome wasn’t “quite cool enough.” Luckily, in making “I Want Blood,” Cantrell was “surrounded by a bunch of talented people, and my demo partner, Maxwell Urasky, is a talented musician. I’m like, ‘Hey, man, you want to try to put some music to this? I just wrote a record. I don’t want to write another piece of music.’ ”
Urasky composed a “score,” for a spoken-word model of “Vilify,” and Cantrell confirmed the finished model to “I Want Blood” producer Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Device, Unhealthy Faith), “and I think [collaborators] Greg Puciato and Tyler [Bates, musician/composer] as well.” The consensus? Cantrell wanted to do a spoken-word model of each track on the just-finished album. There was a two-week deadline. And the album’s remaining eight songs new music and soundscapes to go below Cantrell’s recitations. The singer recited the lyrics for every track, then despatched them to his musical allies.
“This is a good record,” Cantell stated of his newest solo effort “I Want Blood.” “It was like, ‘I want to release this, and put my name on it; I stand behind it.’ You throw it out there. I’ve been lucky enough to have people react to it, support it and get it. Get it,”
(Nick Fancher)
“Everybody rallied. I’m just as surprised as anyone at the end of the day,” Cantrell laughs. “Like, holy crap, that’s fucking cool. You never would have got there if you weren’t engaged and in the process and trying to figure it out. It’s always fun to just to see what the hell I can pull off, or be a part of pulling off, or creating.“
He joins the grand tradition of dark artists like Jim Carroll or William Burroughs in the spoken-word world, or as Cantrell quips, “[William] Shatner and [Leonard] Nimoy.” “It was kind of fun to get into that space, that kind of calm, audiobook kind of voice,” he admits, and whereas he’s at the moment studying Cormac McCarthy (which appears the right accompaniment to Cantrell’s songwriting), he’s centered on music somewhat than a profession in audiobooks for the foreseeable future.
Cantrell doesn’t write the only of songs to parse, nevertheless it appears he needs to be seen, in addition to have listeners see elements of themselves in his music. The aural dig is price it for all. Whereas the reward of constructing a report is actually within the creation, it’s additionally within the reception, because the singer-songwriter notes. “This is a good record. It was like, ‘I want to release this, and put my name on it; I stand behind it.’ You throw it out there. I’ve been lucky enough to have people react to it, support it and get it. Get it,” he emphasizes, concluding, “You know, that’s the whole thing.”
