Maynard James Keenan on his elaborate Sessanta birthday tour ahead of April 30 stop at Azura
A Perfect Circle. // photo credit Paul Harries
Musician Maynard James Keenan ought to need no introduction, given that he’s been making music with the difficult-to-pigeonhole but definitely heavy band Tool, the more melodic A Perfect Circle, and experimental rock act Puscifer for over three decades now.
You’ve heard the singer’s distinct voice ringing out on your radio in some fashion and definitely wondered what’s going on in those music videos over the years.
This year, Keenan turns 60 and to celebrate, he’s recreating a pair of shows he did in Los Angeles for his 50th—and taking it on the road.
Called Sessanta, the tour features A Perfect Circle, Puscifer, and Primus. All three bands are playing each other’s songs and rotating band members throughout the performances. The evenings culminate with A Perfect Circle’s set, and all musicians from the assorted groups taking the stage to perform in unison.
It’s going to be one hell of a time when it hits Azura Amphitheater on Tuesday, April 30, so we hopped on the phone with Maynard James Keenan from his home in Arizona to discuss the tour and how it came to be.
The Pitch: What’s the process of preparing for something like this?
Maynard James Keenan: Well, first and foremost, you have to get to pick bands that are open to this kind of a concept. The first one we did was we did two shows 10 years ago with A Perfect Circle, Puscifer, and Failure and we know those guys so it went pretty smoothly. But it does require each band, during their own rehearsals, to kind of get their stuff together and then we have to rehearse together to feel the transitions, figure out who’s going to guest on what song. When it comes to some cities, there’ll be special guests. Trying to figure out what those special guests are going to fit in.
It can be a little logistically challenging and until we’re all in the same room working on the same stage for rehearsals, it can be a little daunting, but once we start doing it, it all falls into place.
Does it help that you are in two of the three bands and have toured with the third?
Yeah, but I mean, you know, it could be, as long as the other bands understand the concept and understand the transition and making sure they’re on their mark. When it comes to their turn to play, you just have to have an open-minded band. I have bands that aren’t super egomaniacs.
That original set of shows, Cinquanta, is out as an album. What was it like revisiting those shows from 10 years ago to put together that album?
Well, you know, it’s been kind of in the works forever. We just kind of put it on the back burner with everything else going on. Finally listening to it, of course, always, you go, “Oh man, I wish it would have done that better,” constantly looking back and trying to but can’t fix it. So you just move on. But it’s pretty fun to remember what was happening. We managed to pull it off. It’s a good bookmark.
In terms of listening to it and going back and thinking of things that you would have done differently, did you apply any of those things to the upcoming tour?
Oh no. The logistics and the performances were great. It’s just, it’s when you hear yourself doing a thing, you go, “Oh man.” You always feel like you can do better. It’s just second-guessing everything, but overall, it’s great. It’s amazing. It’s great. It captured the energy.
Puscifer. // photo credit Travis Shinn
Given how busy you are not just musically, but with your vineyards and things like that, I have to imagine that balancing all those things takes some work.
Yeah. But you have to trust people. You have to delegate. Matt Mitchell from Puscifer, he’s basically the music director. So he’s kind of coordinating everything, coordinating everybody, getting them all in the right space, heading up all of it, working with the LD. Working with the backline crew. He’s kind of the one that’s orchestrating the whole thing. He really is the puppet master. You have to just trust somebody to kind of handle some of those things.
How do you find these people that you trust to get involved in the various projects that you have?
Well, I’ve been working with Matt since 2003. We’ve built a trust over the years. I guess, like anything, you just have, you have relationships, and you just have to be conscious and aware of what you bring to the table and what they bring to the table and go forward. We’re really efficient workers.
I guess it’s like any relationship. You just have to take time and get to know each other.
Are there any of your myriad projects that you find yourself devoting yourself to the most, or is it as necessary?
Well, it’s more about planning, right? You have to have a plan and you have to have a vision of where that plan is going to go. I just opened a fried chicken place in Cottonwood, but I didn’t just open it. I’ve been working on that recipe for four years. I’ve been working on some of the other recipes my whole life. And it’s just about planning and execution.
I would love to know more about this.
Yeah. Four 8 Fried Chicken. Cottonwood, Arizona. It’s about making sure that you have a vision for what it is and hiring the right people. You know, I have to hire the right chef. I have to have to hire the right sous chef. I have to have the correct front-of-house manager. All those things just have to be correct. On the road, you have to have the right tour manager, the right production manager. It’s a lot of planning but a lot of delegating, so I’m not going to be on the phone with each venue trying to figure it out.
I thought spending two years, getting biscuits down was a really long time, but four years on a recipe is a level of devotion I can’t conceive of. How did that process even work? Was it an on-and-off thing?
Yeah, because you’re on the road. I’m not going to bring a 240 single phase set of fryers out on the road. So, when I’m home, during harvest, you’re a captive audience because I’m on the forklift. So when I’m not on the forklift and we’re having breaks, I’ll fire up the fried chicken recipe. On a special Friday I’ll get everything brined the night before and fire things up for a Friday thing, if we think we got the time and there’s not a lot of fruit coming in.
So you just work on it as you can. So that’s probably why it took four years, but as far as diligently diving in on it and really honing it in probably a solid six months.
I was going to ask if it was deep-fried or if it was pan-fried because those are two totally different things.
Deep fryer. Can we get back to saying something about the tour?
Yeah, sorry about that. You had alluded to the fact that you will have special guests. Is there anything you can speak to on that, or is this a sort of a hush-hush situation?
It’s not really a hush-hush. It’s about flaky musicians not showing up. So, I can say it, but then, if they don’t show up, then everybody’s mad. So we just have to see how it goes to see who shows up because we do have quite a few people that want to come down and play and like “Oh, yeah, man. I want to do that song.” Great! So show up.
In your career, you have played with so many different musicians and worked with so many different tours, I have to imagine that the number of people who want to help you celebrate your 60th is a pretty good number.
Yeah, but you know, it’s just a matter of the people that want to do it, but then the people that are available to do it, those are two different conversations. A lot of people that I know that are still making music are on tour, so they’re still working, so it’s kind of hard to get them to come down.
This is in celebration of your 60th birthday, and you’ve got this album out that celebrates your 50th birthday. How have things changed in the last decade for you?
My back hurts more. I think I might have dislocated my knee this morning, but, you know, other than that, just older and creakier, but you end up finding ways to be more efficient with your day-to-day life. And I think also I’ve learned how to organize things. So just the logistics of getting things done, I’m just more efficient with it.
Because again, I know how to set a goal and work toward it. If you have to make adjustments along the way to extend the deadline, then you extend the deadline—but just understand that you have to take the steps, make the plan and take the steps, and forgive yourself if you don’t quite hit the date.
Do you have a process which you use to organize everything?
Yes. It’s called coffee.
No, I put it in spreadsheets. I wrote it right in a notebook. Notebooks are fine, but you need to transfer that to some form with email chain with somebody and just move that direction. Writing, it used to be that you’d all get together in a room, and we still kind of do that, but I think the initial seeds of those ideas can now start in Pro Tools or Logic and just kind of get the ideas back and forth. So when you’re actually meeting up, you have just some napkin sketches, and that’s how this EP that’s coming out–I basically was messing around on the computer.
I would deny myself my coffee, and I’m not allowed to have my coffee until I come up with at least a drum beat or a riff or something in Logic and then develop that.
I passed off one to Billy one off to Matt, one off to to Les, and each one turned into a song for the EP.
That sounds like a much more efficient way of doing it rather than having to wait for everybody to be able to be in that same room. Is it as enjoyable for you or is it just different?
Absolutely. No, it’s fun to do it this way because, eventually, we have to get in the same room. I have to actually physically track the songs, so it’s fun. And it’s fun to see what somebody’s going to do with the idea, whether or not you’re in the room. Rather than sitting and listening to someone tune the guitar for an hour, I can just go do what I do and then come back and there’s a file and you can listen to it and then eventually get together and bang it out. It evolves over time like anything else would.
Sessanta, featuring A Perfect Circle, Puscifer, and Primus, his Azura Amphitheater on Tuesday, April 30. Details on that show here.
