12.25.05 - Volume 2, Episode #1 - Length 35:29
Many people may think of him as a rockstar because he has created some of the most popular songs in the world. However, Art is more real than any other rockstar could ever be. Listen to discover about Everclear’s new album, Art’s life , and what the future holds for this amazing band.
AAC 33 MB
MP3 32.6 MB
( ♪ Fade Away – Recorded by BSB ♪ )
Art: I feel hungry again. I feel a lot of juice in me, as far as, just vitality goes. I’m actually doing the best I think I’ve done in many, many years.
( ♪ All Fucked Up ♪ )
Art: I’m not necessarily starting an independent venture. I’m making a record on my own. I don’t want people to think that this is going to be an independent venture and then I end up on a major label, because I could very well end up on a major label. I know there’s a lot of interest, like I told you today when we were talking. It depends on the deal, how much freedom I feel, the people and how excited they are about it. For someone with clout, a major label in some ways can be a really good thing. In some ways for someone with a little clout, by clout I mean, I’ve got a background, I’ve got a following, I’ve got name recognition, face recognition, and notoriety. Some good, some bad, but when it comes to notoriety any press is good press, I guess. That’s what they say. I don’t necessarily think that’s true, but that’s what they say.
( ♪ All Fucked Up ♪ )
Art: The last record that we did, Slow Motion Daydream, I felt kinda’ confined, but not by the label, but by the guys that were in my band at the time. They wanted to make, well, one of the guys wanted to make a certain kind of record, a really heavy rock record. Since I write all the songs and produce all the music it was up to me to do that, but he didn’t want to make a record unless it was like that. I wanted to make more of a record somewhat akin to what I’m doing now. Lot’s of keyboards, acoustic guitars, a lot more groove, a lot more swing, not so much white-boy rock. I feel that record was really, I think there’s some really good songs on it and some really great moments, but I don’t think it really is a record that I’ll ever love. I’ll love moments of it, definitely. Yeah, I do have more freedom now, but not because of the label end of it. I think that’s a fallacy. Labels don’t really care. They just want something they can sell and they want something that’s not made to sell. They want something that sounds unique, and great, and wonderful, and they can sell it. So, it’s kind of a catch twenty-two situation. If you don’t have that hit single, and right now if you are on a major label and you don’t have a hit single, and you don’t have some sort of following or background, that’s a scary proposition. I think this record I’m making right now is the best record I’ve ever made in so many ways. We’ll see how it flies. It’s a little different. Not huge, but some ways huge. I guess I’m not the most the most objective person to talk about what I do. It’s kinda’ hard to talk about yourself and think, “Oh, I’m doing this, and this, and this”. To other people it might look like you are doing the same thing that you always done. Some people it might look like you’re doing something totally different. I’m excited about getting towards the end of this project. I want to move on and get on with something else in my life; do something else. Not being in music, I’m just saying, I want to get down with this record and then focus on whatever the next step is. You know, touring, possible going to the Middle East and touring military bases there, there’s been talk of that. I’ve been working on a screenplay for a long time and a cookbook and I want to get those done. I’m writing a book, actually, about sexual addiction and narcissism; kind of an autobiography, but just a certain part of my life.
( ♪ Father of Mine ♪ )
Art: Absolutely. I went through a pretty devastating divorce last year and a large part of it was because of my behavior and my belief system and I’ve gone through the last year-and-a-half, almost two years, of changing that and learning to be a single dad, learning to be more of a dad. My daughter is now a teenager. I’ve gone through a lot of changes and this album, this new album we are working on, is going to reflect a lot more of an autobiographical bent than any record we’ve done. That’s just what’s in my right now. That’s what needs to come out. The name of the new record is probably going to be, it might change, but I don’t think so. It’s called Welcome to the Drama Club. It kinda’ encapsulates it just in that title. Relationships are drama. Relationships with anyone, whether it’s your friends, or a lover, or a wife, or an ex-wife, or your daughter, friends there’s a lot of drama there. I don’t know, we spent the last six months working on this record. We’re almost done. It should be done right around Thanksgiving time, maybe a little after. I don’t know how to not encapsulate my life into what I write about. It wouldn’t feel honest if I didn’t. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily autobiographical. It really hasn’t been that much in the past and then there’s been a few songs, Father of Mine, definitely is. There’s still things from my past that will probably come out in my writing someday. I don’t really think about it too much, I just think about what needs to be written about at the time I write about it.
( ♪ Santa Monica ♪ )
Art: I don’t necessarily care, to be honest with you, if people like my record or not. If they don’t maybe they don’t understand it. Maybe they just don’t like it. I have a soft spot in my heart for people who get me; get what I do; really get it.
( ♪ Santa Monica ♪ )
Art: If you go to radio without a hit single it will fail. Fail, not in the sense of making a great record, but at the major label standpoint, if you don’t have a record that will sell, that they can work, then they’ll through it against the wall and if it doesn’t stick they’ll move on. There will always be another band. A lot of times when it’s your record, it’s your only shot and people have to treat it that way. And what I would suggest to people is don’t try to write hit songs, but write the best songs you can and keep writing songs and keep recording them until someone goes, “oh, yeah”. Or you go, “oh, yeah this is it” and you play it for people and people just…their head snaps. You get that head snap, like a pretty girl walking down the street. Same thing when you hear a hit song. It’s just like, “okay, I get this. If I get this a lot of people are going to get this.” Usually I write like 14 songs for a record and put 13 on the record. And this time I’ve written and recorded 18, 19 songs and there will be 12 or 13 songs on the record. So, I am picking from the best of that. That’s they way you ought to do it. I read that Rick Rubin said that the bands should record like 20 songs and pick the best 10 or 12 out of them. That’s the way I used to do it years ago. Actually, that’s not true, I’ve never done it like that. I wanted to, but I’ve always like, even back to Colorfinger and Easy Hoes, we had a set amount of songs and we worked them until they sounded great, but this album is a little different. It’s a little bit more freer and it kinda’ bounces around. It’s kinda’ hard for me to talk about, because I am still too close to it, but I’ll have more perspective on it when it’s done and it’s out there.
( ♪ Santa Monica ♪ )
Art: It’s not just talent. It’s drive, it’s ambition, it’s tenacity, some of it’s luck, timing; there’s a lot of things, but I think it’s also commitment and drive. I meet a lot of people who have a lot of talent, lot of capabilities, it just never panes out for them, because they don’t have the drive; they don’t want it bad enough. And I’m not talking about the brass ring necessarily, but they don’t want the music bad enough. I got a thing where I just have to hear the music in the real world as good or better than I hear it in my head. I have that ability to do it. That’s one of my few talents. I think a lot of people just get caught up in the distractions, get caught up in being almost famous.
( ♪ Will Buy You a New Life ♪ )
Art: I spent a lot of money on my ex-wives. I allowed it to happen. Spent huge money on my wedding to my last ex-wife, almost a half-million dollars. Just stupid money here and there. I thought is was being taken care of by my business manager at the time. My personal manager was kinda’, legally and above board, but was just using me and kinda’ bleeding what we did. Putting us on tours that were not good for our career, but good for the immediate short haul. I think I was taking things for granted and it just caught up to me. It happened about the time that I got a divorce. It was just pretty hard last year, going through it. You know, people are always looking for reasons for stuff like that. If I told you the exact reasons of what I spent on this and that it would sound like I was pointing fingers and I don’t want to point fingers. I just want to take the blame for what, because ultimately the blame rests on me. It wasn’t a thing that I was like living this huge lifestyle, because I wasn’t, and I’m still not (laughter). That’s what people have in their mind that people just living way beyond their means and in some ways we were, but in some ways it was just taking things for granted and misappropriation.
( ♪ Will Buy You a New Life ♪ )
Art: I read one thing that said that I didn’t pay my taxes. I owe back taxes, but I never, ever, not paid my taxes. The differentiation is I’ve always continued to pay them something. I just got in over my head and it happens to a lot of people at various levels. You got guys like Paul Allen who file bankruptcy every three years for different companies for millions and millions of dollars. You know, it’s a tool that people use. For me, it was really a way to kinda’ shake off the past and start over, but people have a certain idea about the way things are. I’m going to end up paying most of that money back over a period of time. Most reorganizations are like that. Everybody that I owe money to, which isn’t that many people other than the IRS, will get a percentage of what I make, which is fair. That’s the great thing about bankruptcy is it’s a start over.
( ♪ Everything to Everyone ♪ )
Art: We’re in a dark time. I think we’re in a darker time than people even realize. And after that last election, after trying so hard, and seeing so many people work so hard to make a change and see it just come up empty was very depressing. I went on tour the next day, the day after the election, and people where like, “So, what do you think about the election?” Man, I don’t even want to talk about it. You wanna’ talk about the music, about the band, about the show, okay. I don’t want to talk politics. Just can’t do it. It’s just too painful. I worked my butt off. I was an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention put my whole heart and soul into it and we came up empty. It just wasn’t me. It was millions of people. I really thought we were going to win. I’m not used to not winning. It was hard. It was really hard.
( ♪ El Distorto de Melodica (Instrumental) ♪ )
Art: Oh, I think it’s changed what we do a lot. I think it’s still basically the same thing. You write a song, you record it, you put it out there. I think that stays the same, but I think recording on Pro Tools, releasing things on the Internet, all the technology that’s out there from Pro Tools recording equipment and the ability to do that to how to put music out. I think that there’s going to be a band that’s going to record a song on a computer, put an album out on the Internet only and sell a million records. Hasn’t happened yet, but it’s gonna’ soon. You know, I said it to a friend of mine, he goes, “it might be you, dude.” I’m like, “maybe”. But I was think more like an unknown band is going to come from somewhere, write a song that’s just so great, and people are going to hear it podcasts and different places. It will get that buzz. It will get that word-of-mouth. It will start a career like that. Like the Nirvana of the Internet will come out. I think we’re close. It would be great to be a part of that. That’s going to happen. It’s going to happen once, then twice, and then it’s going to happen a lot. You guys stick with this long enough you’ll have your own successes like that. It’s just a matter of time.
( ♪ El Distorto de Melodica (Instrumental) ♪ )
Art: Our website is down now. We were using a paid website and I wasn’t really happy with the way it was going, they weren’t really happy with the way it was going, and our fans really weren’t happy with the way it was going. So, we’re looking for a way that we can pay for the bandwidth and for the website and still not charge people an arm and a leg, ‘cause, I don’t want to make money off it, I never did make money off of it, but we hope to have a new website up within a month or two. By the first of the year at the latest, I hope. There’s a uber fan site called Hungry and Hollow and that’s probably the best place to go for information. Hungry and Hollow dot com. They’ve been around for a long time. They’re huge fans and they’ve got a huge, almost fanatical following of Everclear fans. We at one time had like 152 fan sites. I don’t think we have that many now, but we still have a lot.
( ♪ My Sexual Life ♪ )
Art: I was really bad for a long time for most of my life and it goes back to abandonment, abuse, and all sorts of things that I just never dealt with, and throw success to a kid who grew up in the housing projects – success, popularity, and beautiful women making themselves available to you – it’s quite a shock to the system. I could give you a hundred reasons why something like that could happen, but basically I allowed it to happen. I made bad choices. You gotta’ own it when you make mistakes. There’s reasons why people have damage that have nothing to do with them sometimes and you gotta’ deal with that, but unless you’re totally sociopathic, where you feel no remorse or regret or shame or guilt, you’re making bad choices, because you know what’s right and wrong. I knew what’s right and wrong I just didn’t make the right choices, but here I am 43 years old, married and divorced three times (laughter). You never see something like that coming. A thirteen year old daughter, good girl. A nice place to live. I gotta’ pain-in-the-ass cat. I got a great band. Got some great friends. I got a great girlfriend. Actually the first woman I’ve ever been faithful to, ever, in my whole life. It’s been a year of changes. Good changes. Growing up. Growing up a little bit.
( ♪ My Sexual Life ♪ )
Art: The screenplay is called, Aiming Low, and it’s set in a week in Portland in modern-day and It’s kinda’ a dark, sexual comedy. It’s gotta’ be shot in the summertime really. I hope I can get it done and get financing by next year. I would like to shoot it. Use Portland people really. Maybe some people out of L.A. Maybe some people out of New York. I just want to find the right people that fit those rolls, that are those people. Not just in looks, but in manner and attitude. I am looking forward to that. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a lot of work, but a lot of fun. I like doing videos. I wrote and directed a lot of our videos and that was a lot of fun. I’ve been talking about it for three or four years I gotta’ get off my butt and do it. But, I’ve got to finish this record and I just finished the words to the last two songs that I wrote for the record. I keep writing new songs and the record keeps kinda’ evolving, but the good news is I got a backlog of songs.
(♪ Rockstar ♪ )
"I got a thing where I just have to hear the music in the real world as good or better than I hear it in my head. " - Art Alexakis, Everclear
