JERRY'S 'BRAVE WORDS RADIO' INTERVIEW
Interviewed by Martin Popoff
Produced by Brave Words Radio, a part of Virtually Canadian Broadcasting Network • February 24, 1998
Martin: Give me a bit of a description of the new solo album.
Jerry: Well it was really of fun to do. It was a lot of work... I was stepping into roles, which, although I am very familiar with, were more demandable... personally. It was interesting. It was really great playing with all the different musicians we used on the record. It was just a really cool vibe and... I had fun time making it.
Martin: How does it work working with these musicians? Let's talk about Pantera guy, first of all... Does he come to your place? Do you guys hang out or do you do this long distance or..?
Jerry: I've known all these guys for years... we've played and toured together, so when it came down to do this, they were really the guys I thought of using. I had to make a few calls, because everybody had their own records and tours going on. I made a few calls with an intention of, you know, if somebody couldn't do it then maybe somebody else could, but they all ended up wanting to do it. So we worked around that... when somebody was available, we would work with them, try to schedule around that.
Martin: Did you just jump on a plain and fly to where they were?..
Jerry: No, we were in Sausalito, doing this record, and they flew out there. We cut the basic tracks there and finished it up in Seattle.
Martin: What are some of your favorite tracks on the album and why? Both lyrically and musically.
Jerry: I think it's really hard to say. I'd say the whole record is a really good piece of work. I have a certain standard that I have in my mind that I hear, and this record definitely lives up to that.
Martin: What are some of the lyrical themes on the record?
Jerry: I don't know... just a slice of a couple of years in my life, I guess... life around me as I saw it. It's really hard to sit down and read, dissect or explain a lyric. I laid it down how it meant something to me. It's really open for your interpretation.
Martin: How much of this, if any, goes back to songs that could have been onto a next Alice In Chains record?
Jerry: I would say not much. Maybe two... we tried them out, but we had plenty of other songs going at the time. But Hurt A Long Time and Settling Down have been around for about two years or so, the rest of them have been written up till now... or until we finished the record, anyway.
Martin: What is the state of Alice In Chains right now?
Jerry: Well, it's about the same as it was; we really have nothing planned on the Alice front and probably not for quite some time. We've been together for eleven years now and put out a lot of great records, had a good time and I think it's just time to do other things for a while.
Martin: The state of Layne?.. What is he at these days?
Jerry: He's fine. He's doing fine.
Martin: What about the other guys?
Jerry: Well Sean is working with me, on this record, and Mike's been keeping busy doing things. He's got a studio thing, he's also doing an Ozzy tour. We've all been doing stuff.
Martin: Word has it you're going to work on getting a tour together. Do you think, down the road, or even with this coming up, that you might want to be called a band again? Or do you want to go on as a solo artist?
Jerry: That's how it is right now... with this record, I'm gonna tour to support it and... we never publicly stated that Alice In Chains was over and won't do it now.
Martin: I know one of the things with Alice In Chains that probably has been bothering you, is the fact that you haven't been able to do enough touring over the years. What has the extent of the touring been? What have you done in the last five years tour-wise?
Jerry: We haven't done much touring in the last four years. We've done a little bit of stuff... we've done the MTV show, we've done a few shows with Kiss... a few things like that. But we've been slowly moving towards where we're at right now.
Martin: So you won't get together and write anything in the near future, even just...
Jerry: ...I didn't say that!
Martin: Do you have any tunes kicking around that would be on the shelf for an Alice In Chains project?
Jerry: No, I used them all up on this record. I'll have to create a whole new batch... but that's no problem [laughs].
Martin: Give me some background of calling the album 'Boggy Depot'.
Jerry: [Boggy Depot] is in south-east Oklahoma and it's near where my fathers family is from, and that river there is the Boggy River; there's a Clear Boggy and a Muddy Boggy. Boggy Depot... there's a state park there and a cemetery, a very old cemetery, back from seventeen and eighteen hundreds. It's a pretty historical place... it's a former capital of the Chocktaw Nation, there's a lot of Civil War history there. I actually spend time there. My father and I are building a horse and cattle ranch there sometime this summer... and I wrote a lot of the lyrics while I was down there. It just kind of fit the vibe; I had a strong idea about the artwork and there it is, all near the Boggy Depot.
Martin: There is a bit of a southern vibe on three or four of the tracks...
Jerry: Yeah, yeah...
Martin: Do you live in the country now?
Jerry: I've lived out there for about four or five years now... it's just a lot cooler. I like to be able to be out in a kind of a more peaceful, open setting, yet not too far away from the city, from the buzz... where to have some fun.
Martin: So would you say that you want to be a solo guy or do you want to be a part of a band concept again, even if that isn't Alice In Chains?
Jerry: Well it's under my name, but I'd say that it's pretty unfair to say that I don't have like a band type situation... Listen to the record, it's got a pretty good vibe going and I tribute that to the players; and the songs themselves, they are well written to jam and... we jammed them well [laughs].
Martin: Who seems probable to be on the tour with you?
Jerry: Nobody on the record except for Sean... everybody else who played on it really got their own thing going on so... We're going to an audition process when I get back from this week of press and we'll be starting on that next week.
Martin: Do you find yourself in a group of people from any of these other big Seattle bands? Are you friends with anyone or two of these people, or lots of them?
Jerry: Sure, all of them... in one form or another...
Martin: Even Eddie Vedder?...
Jerry: Yes I do... [laughs], yeah, I'm proud to say, I know him [laughs]...
Martin: Can I ask you a few things just going back; maybe twenty, twenty-five words on each of the Alice In Chains albums. Your impressions of them after all these years, what you like what you dislike... I guess starting with the first one.
Jerry: Well I can just encompass them all, because I feel pretty much the same about them all. I'm very proud of each one and I think we grew as a band with every record and I think our songwriting grew and we had a hell of a lot of fun doing it; and for them to go on, be as successful as they were and have people enjoy them as much as they do, that's really all you can ask for... I'd say we've surpassed any goal that we might have had for ourselves early on. You have to be happy with that fact, and I certainly am.
Martin: What about the last one? I loved it, I gave it a ten out of ten, I thought it was a great album, but there were a lot of bad reviews of it too. Did you find that is was raw and spontaneous, in a way?
Jerry: I thought so, I think that if there was any negativity viewed about the record, it's probably because we didn't tour on it [laughs]... Well I mean, that situation has been the case for a while and I think people haven't been able to find much weakness with the music, so they tried to stir shit elsewhere; but then again, who knows what people think... I think it's one of our best records and I think it's very far reaching, and I think it's very dark and heavy... all the things that I dig in an Alice In Chains record [laughs].
Martin: It's true, people will associate... they want to hear the song live, they'll go back and play the record; it'll cement that symbiotic relationship between the two and they'll start liking the record more, it's true, so if they haven't seen these songs live it's kind of different.
Jerry: Yeah, well it's definitely different in a press type situation as well, than the kid sitting in his room with a record. It's much different. A lot of different factors come in to help people view you, the slant they like to take on you. We've taken our shots and we've chosen not to play the game to rebut against that. That's our choice... basically I really don't give a rats ass about what anybody thinks about us... outside of the folks that get it and understand, and that's cool, not everybody is asked to like it... it's all cool.
Martin: With the new album, we mentioned maybe a bit of a southern vibe, has there been music that you've been listening to recently that might have been influencing you?
Jerry: I dig listening to all kinds of music... The last couple of years I guess I probably bought more country tapes than I'd bought in quite a while, but I was raised on country music, my mother and father really enjoyed it... I spent a lot of time listening to Hank Williams and Merle Haggard and stuff, but I always do, as well as AC/DC or Iron Maiden, for that matter... But I would say Between has that kind of a vibe... maybe same as some of the stuff that I dig.
Martin: Do have any Jerry Cantrell basement tapes that are more in that direction?
Jerry: No, that's it so far, we'll see what we come up with next...
Martin: Would you like to do some acoustic stuff?
Jerry: Well we've done plenty of acoustic stuff. I think, if anything, you can look back at the work that we've done and see that we're not too afraid to try anything... as long as it works in the context of the band and we all dig it.
Martin: Do you pull any lyrical ideas from any of the other art forms, like are you a big reader or movie watcher... poetry or artwork or..?
Jerry: I kind of just draw in what I see, what I hear, feel... more immediate to my person, I guess.
Martin: The scene around Seattle right now, is anybody still doing this kind of music, are there good bands coming out, playing... heavy, you know 'grunge' music, what is it in bars around there these days?
Jerry: You know, I haven't really been spending a lot of time down there, I spend a lot of time out in the country... There's some good bands around and a lot of the bands from the 'Seattle era' are still being very creative, even the ones who have disbanded or, in our situation, are on hiatus type deal. We're doing things in other formations... doing new things and looking for new challenges. I think it still remains a productive thing and there's still good tunes coming out.
Martin: Do you have much of a studio set up at home?
Jerry: Sure, I think it's really important for anybody who jams and writes to have some sort of a little home studio.
Martin: Could you easily make full albums there?
Jerry: Oh... I don't think so... I mean, people do, but I basically just have some ADATs and a Mackie board. I mean, unless you're like stupidly rich, it's insane to buy a bunch of studio gear, because of the upkeep and the personnel who run it... You have to build a special room to put it into... For my purposes, what I have is cool, I'm happy to kind of get it together and then move it into a bigger room and cut it.
Martin: What do you do when to try to get away from music?
Jerry: Probably same stuff you do... anything.
Martin: Are into many different sports? Do you ski?
Jerry: Yeah, I ski.
Martin: In the future, has there been anybody that you haven't been able to collaborate with that you would really like to, that you've been pursuing and it just hasn't been working out or you might think of pursuing?
Jerry: Well, you know, you have thoughts... jamming with people... We'll see what happens on the next record. This record, I definitely had some people in mind, and it's pretty cool that they all showed up.
Martin: Can you think of anything else career-wise, even outside of music, you'd like to get into? Are you going crazy on the computer, would you like to produce or..?
Jerry: I'm not much of a computer guy... I've always enjoyed, with Alice, and also myself individually, working on soundtracks, movies and stuff, maybe scoring... something that would be kind of an interesting thing to get into... we'll see... I'm up for anything.
Martin: Are you still quite fanatical about playing your instrument; like, do you watch videos?.. Are you still much of a practicer or is it now just down the field kind of thing at this point?
Jerry: I kind of do it the way I've always done it, which is, when it moves you, you play.
Note: This interview was a real pain to transcribe, so if you decide that you MUST have it for your own page, please credit it to 'Jerry Depot'.
