Before the call is connected to Maynard James Keenan, one of heavy music’s most well-respected yet seemingly enigmatic vocalists, there’s comes a precaution.
No questions about Tool. No questions about A Perfect Circle.
Disappointing for those keen to know more about either’s future plans, and though both are due in Australia for an April tour and the imminent Soundwave Festival respectively – Keenan’s here strictly to discuss a personal concern, his solo project Puscifer.
Besides, aside from establishing his own little haven from the ground up in Arizona as an underdog in the winemaker industry, Puscifer is what’s taking up most of the singer’s time.
Crossing his professional request to veto inquiries into Tool or otherwise is to court a fool’s errand, and as the music media has painted him, Maynard James Keenan is a man who does not suffer fools lightly.
Speaking on the morning that news of Puscifer’s next release, the ‘colourfully’ titled Donkey Punch The Night, it quickly becomes clear that Keenan is not a difficult customer – you just can not ask dumb questions.
When it’s pointed out the EP is officially released just days before Puscifer touch down for three headlining Australia concerts, he drawls sardonically, “it’s almost like it was meant to be – the whole timing thing. Like we planned it – what do you think?” Keenan challenges.
He’s sparring. “It’s mere days before the shows, who would have thought?” comes the sarcastic yet nervous reply.
The hearty chuckle from Keenan that follows is ambiguous enough to suggest either passing his litmus test, or failing spectacularly.
You can almost picture him on his Merkin Vineyards estate: cowboy hat atop a shave dome, brandishing a knuckleduster-come-corkscrew; dressed as he’s seen in Blood Into Wine – the documentary about his grape-growing enterprise.
“No underwriters, no record label, no publisher handing out money, no sponsorship – we’re pretty much on our own.”Caduceus Cellars, which Keenan almost singlehandedly maintains (“it’s basically my wife and I. So I am the cellar rat”), is also the space where the rotating cast of Puscifer recorded Donkey Punch The Night.
“We have a little space that’s in the new bunker portion that we wanted to try it out and see how it sounded,” Keenan explains plainly of the new release, the ‘we’ being the same list of close musical friends and collaborators that worked on Donkey Punch’s full-length predecessor, Conditions Of My Parole.
“The cornerstones of the project – Mat Mitchell, Josh Eustis, Carina Round, Jeff Friedl and Matt McJunkin,” lists Keenan. “Anyone generally comes in and does a little bit pieces on it, they’re not necessarily involved in the whole project,” he says of Puscifer’s malleable lineup.
“And of course – you get on a roll and all of a sudden you’ve got two new tunes and you figure ‘ahhh, I’ve always wanted to cover these two tunes and that should do it’.”
Those covers being a version of Accept’s ‘Balls To The Wall’, and front and centre, none other than Queen’s multi-tracked masterpiece, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
Unlike previous covers that Keenan has tackled – including a host for A Perfect Circle’s eMotive (“don’t mention the war!”) – the singer notes that rather than “dancing around the melodies and coming up with a brand new song, we actually treated it exactly like the original.”
No mean feat. “There’s a few extra bibs and bobs that we’ve put in, but for the most part… It’s a nod to the original.” As for bringing their ‘O.G. mix’ (as the EP calls it) to the live setting, Keenan notes that even when Queen performed it “the whole ‘judge and jury section’… was all just a recorded video of all the harmonies.”
But adds teasingly, “it’s going to be quite a challenge… but we’d like to, we’ll see.”
The song’s theatrics would also slot in nicely with Puscifer’s multimedia enhanced live show, noted for its dimension of drama, complete with costumed characters and wardrobe changes. Well, at home in America at least.“It’s a challenge. We like a challenge, when’s something’s pushing back that’s when you get stronger.”
“The full show we do here, we normally do it right down the street so we can bring all of our toys and make it work,” says Keenan. “[but]when you’re travelling internationally there might not be as much of the theatrics going on.”
“We’ve actually tried to drag down some of our video,” proffers the musician, “but just financially we can’t afford to bring everything down there.”
It also provides Keenan the opportunity to stress that Puscifer is a completely independent venture: “no underwriters, no record label, no publisher handing out money, no sponsorship – we’re pretty much on our own.”
Which is entirely deliberate, a cottage industry being the preferred business model for a man who’s been in and out of courts many times in disputes with record labels (especially over Tool’s Volcano Records fallout).
Nestled in the bunker of Caduceus Cellars, Puscifer is far from the prying eyes and interfering hands of anyone but the artist and his close circle of collaborators.
Keenan self-funds the entire operation, from the cost of touring right down to the costs of manufacturing the CDs, vinyl, merchandise and memorabilia available exclusively at the Puscifer Store in the mountain town of Jerome.
“Every dime we spend comes right out of our pocket,” he emphasises, as a point of pride.
It’s the same labour of love he pours into Merkin Vineyards, which first had winemakers sneering down their flutes at Keenan’s attempts to cultivate grapes in the arid Verde Valley in Arizona, but eight years on is now a producer of award-winning stock.
Including a batch of medals he and sister company Arizona Stronghold won at the San Francisco International Wine Competition, one “that normally has never had any Arizona wines win,” Keenan notes.
“So to have two separate winemakers actually win Gold… in the same year, is quite telling about how things are coming along,” he adds.
Congratulating him on overcoming his underdog status he replies, “uphill struggle all the way.” Surely that’s the way he likes it?
“It’s a challenge. We like a challenge, when’s something’s pushing back that’s when you get stronger.”
The vineyard and Caduceus Cellars studios also had a marked effect on the character of the Puscifer recordings.
“Just having that setting there is so much different than some weird studio in the middle of North Hollywood where there’s no daylight in there, and you walk out and what you see is a convenience store and a Starbucks,” he rattles.
“But here, there’s not that, here there’s a beautiful view.”
Its most noticeable in the transition from the Puscifer debut, ‘V’ Is For Vagina, its claustrophobic feel a result of being pieced together on tour, and subsequent work at the cellars – sounding more relaxed and spacious. “Absolutely,” Keenan commends, “good assessment.”
“That entire first record, as much as we love what we did with it… You can tell where we were,” he says, slowing deliberately, “we were in an enclosed space. We were city to city. In a different rat-hole.”“I do what I have to do to get a job done… I’m not lazy – read between the lines.”
Playing the older material live however, he explains, brings it ‘out of the box’; “you can feel what life could have been on those tracks had we recorded them in this setting.”
Between writing, recording, and moonlighting as an actor (he’s had bit parts in cult film and television), it’s a wonder Keenan finds the time to upkeep an award-winning winery.
“I’m not going to be able to dedicate twelve months out of the year toward the project (Puscifer)” he concedes, but as “anyone who works in the wine industry [knows], there’s a window of time where you have to be in there doing that, and so as long as my bandmates understand that, we can completely work around that schedule. There’s plenty of time in the year.”
Still, that’s the beauty of Puscifer’s flexibility and independence, beholden to no contracts or restrictions but their own – and as Keenan notes, he’s no tyrant.
The “rotating door works”, because of its dynamic agreement. A member departing for other commitments is fine; “as long as you’re not gonna get mad when I hire this other guy,” he confers.
After all, as the voice of a few other high-profile projects of his own, Keenan knows the conditions of multi-tasking. Though it’s a little easier when neither have released new albums in over half-a-decade.
A Perfect Circle appears to be an-off touring concern these days, and the progress of Tool’s illusive fifth record remains off public record.
Whoops, we’ve breached the no-go zone. “I guess the biggest thing to remember is that I’m not lazy, and I am a responsible person that is there when I’m called on,” says Keenan teasingly. “I do what I have to do to get a job done.”
Hardly confirmation of new material, but in his own cryptic way, not exactly a denial either. “I’m not lazy – read between the lines.”
Donkey Punch The Night is out now. Puscifer’s Australian Tour kicks off tomorrow night at The Tivoli in Brisbane, full dates and details below, and this morning they were added to the Sydney and Adelaide legs of Soundwave 2013. Full details here.
Puscifer 2013 Australian Tour
FRIDAY 22 FEBRUARY BRISBANE, THE TIVOLI – 18+
www.ticketek.com.au
TUESDAY 26 FEBRUARY SYDNEY, ENMORE THEATRE – Lic A/A
www.ticketek.com.au
THURSDAY 28 FEBRUARY MELBOURNE, PALAIS THEATRE – All Ages
www.ticketmaster.com.au
