Cue the press release:

Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam has assembled a notable line up of Northwest singers and musicians for a special night of music as The HankKhoir. The HankKhoir features Vince Mira, Shawn Smith, Pete Droge, Barb Ireland, Dejha Colantuono, Elaine Summers, Lonnie Marshall, Scribes and Stone Gossard with musical arrangements by Teatro Zinzanni’s own Hans Teuber plus Seattle instrumental giants, including Keith Lowe, Branden Harper, DJ Bean, D’Vonne Lewis, Jeff Felder, Regan Hagar, Skerik and Steve Moore. Comedy and cirque performances by Teatro ZinZanni’s own Peter Pitofsky and Vertical Tango will be woven into the two-hour evening and round out the Mirror Tent Music experience.

In addition to covers inspired by the likes of the legendary Hank Williams and others, HankKhoir artists will also perform a selection of his or her own original tracks. Rounding out the evening’s playlist will be a couple of rare tracks from Brad, one of Gossard’s side projects, including “Buttercup” and “Day Brings.”

“Over the past several years, I’ve either been playing with or wanting to play with this wonderful group of talented singers and musicians,” said Gossard. “All of us share a deep reverence for the music of Hank Williams, and many of us have some new original work we’re ready to perform. Teatro ZinZanni’s spiegeltent is a great intimate setting for exploring these new musical landscapes.”

That’s right, Gossard, Smith and Hagar will perform as Brad. Presumably, bassist Mike Berg will be on hand as well.

Tickets for the Wednesday, September 16 show are $40. Facing your fears to witness amazing music being made by a host of amazing artists is, yes, priceless.

Duff McKagan’s supergroup Loaded

As Duff noted this week, Dave Ravenscroft “has been suffering through Squamous-cell Carcinoma, a cancer of the tonsils that has spread to the nodes in his throat. Absolutely brutal.” You don’t need to hear another story about our current health care system to know Ravenscroft must be keeping a wary eye on his checkbook. On top of that, “Dave has not been able to work for the last 12 months while going through multiple surgeries and chemotherapy.”

Tickets for this special, 21+ show are $95. All proceeds will go directly to Ravenscroft.

If you’re having a hard time making ends meet yourself, contributions of any amount can be made at any local Chase branch.

Want to know how Ravenscroft is progressing? Go here and search for DaveRave1.

Photo: Loaded at the Sunset, by Dean Karr.

Pearl Jam

The Seattle shows open a nine-date, four-city tour that’s sandwiched between previously announced shows in Canada, Europe, Chicago, Austin, and San Francisco. As usual, Pearl Jam’s Ten Club members get first crack at KeyArena tickets (next Monday and Tuesday).

From the press release, more on Backspacer:

Scheduled for release in the U.S. on Sunday, September 20, 2009, the album will be released in the U.S. through Target, the exclusive mass retail partner, Pearl Jam’s own Ten Club and independent retailers, as well as online through digital, and gaming platforms yet to be announced. Internationally, the album will be available beginning on September 21, 2009 via Universal/Island Records.

If you missed Pearl Jam’s performance of “Got Some” on Conan O’Brien’s inaugural Tonight Show episode, your next chance to hear new music will come July 20, when the first Backspacer single, “The Fixer,” will hit the radio.

If you aren’t already a Ten Club member, you’ll want to fire up the Internet first thing on Saturday, July 18. The band’s KeyArena shows will sell out in minutes. Seattle fans have been waiting for this for a long, long time.

Mudhoney isn’t the only notable local act billed for the three-day fest; also scheduled to play are Mark Pickerel & His Praying Hands, Hurricane Chaser, Kim Virant, Kristen Ward and many others. (Mudhoney’s own Mark Arm will be in the street crowd for the Black Panties, the Tripwires, Thee Sgt Major III, McTuff, etc.) And you can see any or all of them—including Mudhoney—for free.

This lineup and price tag (and the multiple beer gardens, vendors, food court and easy parking) should be enough to get even the most entrenched in-city-dwellers over the bridge.

SOUND: What’s going on with Brad?
SS: We did an album over five years ago, and I don’t really understand why we haven’t put it out. It’s mixed and everything.

SOUND: Is it a label issue?
SS: It’s not in my hands, I’ll just say that. I just want to put it out—put it on iTunes or something. It’s been so long. I started saying something about it a couple of years ago on Myspace, and fans were just like, “Whatever.” [Laughs] Now they don’t even ask me anymore. “I don’t know” is all I could say. Now that the business has changed so much, I’d just as soon give the fucker away. You know what I mean? Just get it out there, so the fans and people who want to hear it can hear it.

SOUND: Any chance Pigeonhed could be reborn?
SS: Steve [Fisk] and I did a record—partially did a record—in early 2000. It didn’t really work out that well, but but we’ve been talking. He found the tape. It was done on some kind of computer system he had that went away, so all we have are these roughs. But he found some program that can recapture it or whatever. So we might remix that stuff and throw it out there. And we’ve been talking about getting together and doing another record.

That’s one of those things where—for the initial record, there was an innocence there. It was my first making of a record. Steve had a place down here on Western, and I would just go in the afternoons from like three to six. We’d smoke tons of weed, he’d have beats, and I’d play things over them. It’s something we can’t recapture, you know. I can’t go get stoned every day. [Laughs] But we’ve been talking. It would be so great if we could go somewhere for two weeks and work. Go somewhere where we’re away from everything. We’d need to be really focused in the studio. I would like to make another Piegonhed record with Steve.

SOUND: How’d your band All Hail the Crown come together?
SS: I really like the band. It started when Kevin [Wood], the guitar player, left me an email that said, “I’m in the studio tomorrow with Regan [Hagar] and I’ve got some lyrics. Would you sing my stuff?” I was free, so “Yeah!” I get down there and I was ready to sing Kevin’s lyrics, but it turns out they were Andy Wood’s lyrics from when he was young. And they were great. So the first record, I just used all these stacks of Andy’s lyrics. And all those songs are really good.

One thing led to another, and we got a different drummer. It sort of moved off to be a new band. Still doing the stuff with Andy’s lyrics, but we’re working on a new record with my lyrics. We’ve been doing it for almost two years as this new band. It’s still Kevin, and our new bass player Rob Day has brought in some riffs, too. The cool thing is I don’t even have to go to practice—they’ve recorded the music already, and I just go in and sing.

SOUND: How do you write lyrics for those songs?
SS: I’ve been going in by myself, whenever we have a place to record. I just start singing and writing right there. It’s kind of like three or four hours a song. I’m excited about the new stuff. I still have about five songs to finish, but all the music [for the new album] is recorded.

SOUND: And you’re self-producing?
SS: Yeah. We have this guy Don Gunn who’s been cutting the band, and I think he’s going to mix it. It’s taking time because of the lack of money. We squeeze it in when we can.

SOUND: I assume you’ll keep playing around town.
SS: Yeah. It’s really fun. Satchel was a rock band that was more of a psychedelic kind of thing. But this is like hard rock. [Laughs]

SOUND: Kevin gets into it, too.
SS: You gotta reign him in—sometimes it’s a little too crazy. [Laughs] He will solo forever. But it’s awesome. The riffs he comes up with are just wicked. I just keep thinking guitar magazine would love him. They’d eat him up. Just need to get us out there.

SOUND: You’ve been in so many acts and bands. Everybody should know your stuff.
SS: I’m not dead yet. [Laughs] It’s frustrating. But it’s a lot of my doing, through inaction. But I really feel like it’s turning a corner. I feel like a have a focus, even though I’m doing so many things. I have a new understanding of what I really want.

SOUND: And what is that?
SS: To really be in control of my vision. There’s always been compromise through the years. I started out as a solo artist, then I worked with people. And I just like to control … you know, how the website works, stuff like that. It’s not fun for me when I let things go. I like to sort of take control of those things. But everyone I’ve been playing with, they’re really mellow. There’s just little things that I’m learning I like to do.

SOUND: Sound vs. Silence picked up your previous albums. Will you stick with them?
SS: Well, that’s basically this guy Aaron in town, who wrote me a year ago. He just wanted to put out the records. Nobody cared whether they made money or anything. That was really cool. They put out my two solo albums and my live album.

SOUND: You mentioned websites, and yours changed recently.
SS: Yeah, like the other one [before it], it’s a fan site. My other guy walked away, and we’re in the process of redoing it and changing the domain name. I think it’s gonna be shawnsmithsinger.com. I’m going to try and offer a whole bunch of stuff for free. I’m really excited about it. I didn’t play that much of a role in the other one, but for this one, I’m going to play a bigger role. It’s been nice to do the Myspace thing, but I don’t even know if people pay attention to Myspace anymore.

SOUND: And what about solo shows?
SS: If you live in Ohio, you can jump in your car and play all around—you could play New York and Philly. But here, you go to Portland and then it’s a day drive anywhere. Last time I did a west coast tour with friends, I lost whatever money I had. On the hotels and the drive. The crowds weren’t big enough to pay for it, either.

I really need to get a touring thing happening. I played England and that went really well. And played with Arsenal—they’re kind of strictly Belgium. I guess Satchel’s The Family was successful there. Specifically. So I was actually well-known there. It was super fun. I sang on Arsenal’s single. The crowds were like [throws up hands]. Yeah! I played one solo show over there and got like five grand. They have high taxes, but I guess the state pays for stuff like that.

SOUND: What do you think of this Seattle City of Music thing?
SS: What’s that?

SOUND: Greg Nickels declared this major musical movement in the city.
SS: You mean after he tried to shut everything down? [Laughs] I’m confused. He came down on the clubs for noise or whatever. I don’t know a whole lot about it. But I was in an elevator with him, at the opening of that sculpture park thing. I just had that moment where I wanted to say something: “What the fuck, why are you messing with the community so much?” But I didn’t. It was weird. [Laughs]

SOUND: What’s this I hear about a dance record?
SS: It’s a record I’ve been making for about a year. It’s not disco. It’s just funky. I’ve been working with this guy Joe Veneziani. It’s all synth-based. I started it in December, and some of the tracks are older than that. If we had money, we could focus for two weeks and nail it down. But on some level, it’s getting better and better, so maybe it’s a good thing.

So I’ve got the dance record and the hard rock record, and I’ve got all these songs for what I’m calling “the hillbilly record.”

SOUND: What’s that?
SS: I’m doing it with this friend of mine in Los Angeles. It might be one of those things where fans pay to help me record it. I just need plane fare and food and lodging. I might do that. I don’t know what I think about getting fans to pay first and then giving them stuff. [Laughs] We’ll see.

SOUND: Wow. You always have a lot going on, but—
SS: More than ever. I want this stuff to work. I want to go do it. I’m excited.

See Shawn at the Crocodile on Thursday, 6/25, with Jon Auer and Lorelei. $12. Doors at 8pm.

Per the press release:

“ALICE IN CHAINS have revealed the title of their highly anticipated upcoming album and confirmed its release date. The record, titled BLACK GIVES WAY TO BLUE (Virgin/EMI) will arrive in stores on September 29th.

BLACK GIVES WAY TO BLUE is the band’s first new studio release in more than 10 years. The quartet (vocalist/guitarist Jerry Cantrell, drummer Sean Kinney, bassist Mike Inez and vocalist/guitarist William DuVall) recorded the album with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Rush, Foo Fighters) at Studio 606 in Northridge, CA and Henson Studios in Hollywood.”

Will the classic Seattle band show their native city some love to commemorate the release? No word yet, but the guys are playing elsewhere between now and then.

“On July 18th, Alice In Chains will be sharing the stage with Kid Rock at Comerica Park in Detroit, to be followed by festival shows with Metallica overseas, including an August 1 date at Marlay Park in Dublin and an August 2 show at the Sonisphere Festival at Knebworth. They’ll wrap up the European trip with a string of headlining shows (dates listed below). This marks the band’s first appearance in Europe since the summer of ’06.”

Lest you forget AIC’s place in music history, the band “sold more than 17 million albums worldwide, wrote and recorded 11 top 10 hit singles and stood atop Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart with two No. 1 records.” They produced two of the best records of their era, too—1992’s polar opposites Dirt (crunchy, heavy, dark) and Sap (acoustic, beautiful, dark). And they were fronted by one of the most enigmatic and talented singers to ever grab a mic.

It’s not hard to understand why Layne Staley’s remaining bandmates would want to continue making music together, but it is difficult to see a news blast about Alice in Chains that doesn’t mention his name. And it will be odd to hear William DuVall’s vaguely Staley-like vocals on Black Gives Way to Blue. Still, it has potential to be a decent, if not great, rock album.

Here’s more of it—the first of three segments where Cornell talks about the making of his Timba-produced new record, Scream, Soundgarden’s catalog, returning to the city where he became famous and more.

SOUND: You were thinking about someone remixing your work, and Timbaland was thinking of working with a rock musician …
CHRIS CORNELL:  Yeah. [Timbaland] didn’t want to do remixes, he wanted to do original material. I thought, well, that would be an interesting thing. But what would I do with it, really, if we went in and did two or three songs? It wouldn’t make a lot of sense. And everyone had told me that he makes albums in three weeks. I thought, well, why not make a whole album? I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I would get. And the reaction was, “Yeah, I’d love that.” And that was it. [Laughs]

So we just did it. I was on the road—I canceled the European leg of a tour I was going to do. And we went in and in six weeks we had, like, 20 songs. And the environment was really good and relaxed, so it turned into this really long project. It became a little more adventurous, an hour-long continuous thing. It became a more ambitious thing musically than it started out to be. So it became like a six month project.

SOUND: What was your lyric-writing process?
CC: I would just kind of run at it. I came up with ideas based on what I was hearing. What was the atmosphere? Who is the person that’s singing? Who’s the character? That’s sort of typical of me. There are some songs where it just comes straight out as me, I guess, but there a lot of songs, more often than not, where there’s a character that’s living within the atmosphere of the music. Who is that guy and what does he have to say?

SOUND: How much Chris Cornell is in these songs?
CC: With this record, there’s always a little bit. But because of the influences and the different genres that I got into, I’m kind of exercising R&B and soul influences that aren’t modern. They’re what I listened to when I was a kid. Or what I listened to in my 20s, when I was sort of going backward to what was going on in soul music in the ’60s and ’70s. That’s what my soul
and R&B influence is. So my character that’s living in that music is that guy. It’s the version of me that always loved that kind of music, and it’s sort of finding the bridge between those influences and what I’m listening to [now]. And that’s where I think the record got sort of eclectic and a little more original.

I didn’t really have any idea what it would sound like going in. It was just an exciting, interesting, fun thing to try to do. Another thing that came out of it, I suppose, that I didn’t really think about, but that’s inspiring when I look back—is the trust part.

SOUND: Trusting Timbaland?
CC: Him trusting me. He let me do what I do, and I let him do what he does. I didn’t try to customize his approach to what he does to fit me. To me that didn’t make any sense. Then I wouldn’t really need to be making an album with him. Why should I go make an album with Timbaland and tell him how to do what he does? ‘Cause I’m good at that. I can tell anybody how to—I’ve done it my whole life. My entire career with Soundgarden, including producers, we never let anybody do anything. I produced all my own vocals from 1994 until the third Audioslave record with Brendan O’Brien. That record was the first time I actually let anybody in the studio record me. Otherwise it was just me behind the board, producing my own vocals. And I would tell everyone when I was done.

SOUND: Did anything scare you about the collaboration?
CC: The first couple of days, I was kind of finding my bearings. Trying to find out what the process was going to be like. And I asked the question a lot—how do you guys normally go about making records? Because this wasn’t, you come in with your 20 songs or 50 songs depending on who the producer is and figure out which ones you’re going to prioritize and then rehearse and record them. This was, you come in with nothing. He had nothing. I had nothing. So the first couple of days, I was kind of waiting for him to bring in something he felt would be a good starting point. A good beat that would be a good starting point.

I remember that when he started playing the first thing, “Long Gone,” it had this trippy quality to it, but also this somber quality to it. It was very different from anything I’d ever done. As soon as I heard it, I realized that he had a pretty good understanding of who I was and how there could be some kind of bridge between what he does and what I do. Before it was even a third of the way through, the engineer of the demo handed me a pad of paper and a pencil—that sort of answered the question. I was like, “That’s how this works. We don’t sit around and talk about it. We don’t try to do different things and see which is the best thing. We just go at it.”

SOUND: And you were okay with that?
CC: I love to do that, but I guess I spent years and years and years in basements and warehouses and different places in Seattle, working on songwriting and song crafting. Trying to approach it from every different angle. Eventually I realized that there was no particular method that I had. Sleep or no sleep. Concentrated efforts, writing with an instrument, writing in my head. Anything I would try, I would have failures and successes. Learning how to be me, and be somebody who’s not afraid to write whatever I want musically or lyrically. That took a long time. And by the time I’m sitting in a studio with Timbaland writing songs, I’ve got a lot of that experience. So no matter how different it was, I really liked the focus part. I don’t really know how to describe it. There’s no time to second-guess yourself. There’s no leeway to go away for a month. It’s not like a Peter Gabriel record where you do a couple of hours every day, and 200 of those days might actually have been the wrong idea. [Laughs]

There were a lot of years where I would just be drinking and smoking a lot because I was just sitting in the studio and waiting for stuff to happen. And I don’t do very well in that environment. I do much better just focusing and working. And this whole process was like that.

SOUND: Given that process, was it easier to nail your vocals?
CC: [It] was in a sense a little more like demo-ing, like if I was writing a song for a band or a solo record. It’s similar in that I’m sort of recording and writing at the same time. Some of the musical ideas and arrangements are coming from my head. Some are coming from a weird sound that I can make, the production value of some weird thing that I know I can do. That becomes integral to the song. And then the vocal takes being fresh.

Rick Rubin has said a bunch of times that the vocal takes of mine from my earliest Soundgarden demos are sometimes better than the ones on the records. When I’m singing a song for the first time, I haven’t made any decisions about it yet. I’m not really sure how I want to sing it, to make it the best it can possibly be. Maybe there’s a certain amount of vulnerability there; the brain’s not getting in the way so much. I noticed that happened a few times, where I would do a demo and feel like, okay now I know how to do it. Then I go into the studio thinking I’m going to do the real version, but never quite get that original feeling.

SOUND: Is it hard to hear people say that Chris Cornell sold out?
CC: I think that’s sort of a script. That’s something I predicted literally when I hung up the phone with the concept of going in to make the album. I knew that would happen. It’s more a reaction—it’s the first thing that will come out of someone’s mouth. It’s completely expected. But you know, I get so much positive support for it, too. It also becomes sort of a sociological experiment. Who is it that’s saying that? Nowadays, you can sort of track that—who was saying what and why. It tends to be older people, and it tends to be men, and it tends to be from where people are least tolerant, least willing to accept this type of genre-mixing.

In terms of the idea of “selling out,” someone with my background doing an album like this—as far as commercial success goes, I don’t think you would get ahead from any angle. Is that my best move if I want to make money? All the reformation phone calls that I get constantly—the money is in the Genesis angle or the Police angle. [Laughs] Doing something that’s completely out of what you’ve been known for is not going to be the money-making angle.

SOUND: That’s a hard argument to make with some people.
CC: There’s a lot in this that reminds me of the late ’80s with Soundgarden. There is controversy surrounding what it is, and the crossing of two genres, which is exactly what Soundgarden was going through. For me, it’s a personal feeling. When I go out and perform these songs—particularly when I came through and did the album from beginning to end [in late 2008]—rather than releasing something that’s completely different and then allowing fans to hear it on the web or buy it, then gauging their reaction, then go perform it if the reaction is good, I’m out there and it’s the first time they’re hearing any of it. It is completely different than anything I’ve ever done, and it’s my hardcore fans I’m right there with the first time that they’re hearing it. There’s something really exciting about that.

Check back on Monday for “More Chris Cornell, Part 2.”

This Friday, that early punk band, defunct for 25 years, will reunite for one Seattle show. Fittingly, Deranged Diction’s reunion set will take place at the recently un-defunct Crocodile.

From the press release, in Ament’s own words, a brief history of the brief life of the band:

“Jon Donahue and I met Bruce Fairweather skateboarding the brick banks at the University of Montana in September of 1981. Within a month, we were rehearsing as Deranged Diction with Bill the drummer, playing songs by Black Flag, 999, the Dead Kennedys, the Ramones and the Clash. We played a half dozen shows that school year, mostly with new drummer Sergio Avenia, with a summer assignment to write some of our own songs. Fall quarter 1982, Jon moved back to California, so we needed a new singer. Tom Kipp approached us and we wrote and recorded our first batch of songs which included “Pruning” which ended up on a compilation called “We Got Power” and the Flipper-inspired “Periscope.” Tim Healy took over vocals in March of 1983 and we wrote and recorded six new songs, including “Only” and “I’m an Amerikan.” We put these songs on a cassette called “No Art, No Cowboys, No Rules” and sold and traded them through fanzines like Maximum Rock and Roll and Flipside.

Sergio, Bruce and I decided to move to Seattle in May of 1983 with the idea of finding a new singer for our band. We put a “singer wanted” ad in the Rocket and our first tryout with Rod Moody was a great fit, and he played guitar which gave us a bigger heavier sound. We wrote 10 new songs with Rod and played shows at the Metropolis with the Butthole Surfers, Husker Du, Ill Repute, Stalag 13 and local Seattle bands the Accused, Malfunkshun, the Rejectors and the Silly Killers. In early 1984, I quit the band to start Green River with Mark, Steve and Alex. Unfortunately, we never recorded a song.

I ran into Rod at Easy Street Records [in 2008] and reminisced about our days in Deranged Diction and he mentioned having a rehearsal tape of the songs we wrote together. I listened and we thought it was a shame that we never recorded them. Rod and I approached Bruce and Sergio about recording those songs. We went into Avast studios and recorded and mixed it in 4 days in the spirit of how we might have done it 24 years earlier. It was a blast playing with my old friends again and it’s sounds pretty damn good, if I say so myself.”

$10 gets you in to catch this historic show. Two bucks more gets you a double-disc set of rapid-fire Deranged Diction tunes. “The set features a re-release of the band’s original cassette-only 1983 debut No Art, No Cowboys, No Rules on the first disc. The second disc documents a reunion where 10 songs come to life after 25 years.”

Check out Lamestain for more on Ament’s punk band, including an interview with vocalist/guitarist Rod Moody. And let me know if you see the Deranged Diction show. In the greatest of injustices, I’ll be out of town.

SOUND: It was cool to see you and [Brad bassist] Mike Berg on stage with Stone.
REGAN HAGAR: I thought Stone’s band was just fantastic. He’s been kind of doing a lot of recording and leaning that way for years. I’m glad he’s bringing that out to people now.

SOUND: Does the reunion mean anything for Brad?
RH: Brad has an unreleased record recorded four or five years ago at this point. [Best Buy imprint] Redline put out our last record, Welcome to Discovery Park, then decided they weren’t interested in being a record company, so they paid for the recording but didn’t release it. Shawn’s been making records, Stone’s been making records. We’ve done this before, where we’ve recorded a record and sat on it for sometimes years, [until] there’s an opening on everyone’s schedule. I hope Brad will put that record out and do some dates to promote it. Never say never. Brad seems to be this group of old friends that get together when there’s an opportunity.

SOUND: Who else are you playing with these days?
RH: I’ve been playing in a group that’s been going under the name EOC—Extraordinary Ordinary Canary. That is Rich DeChurch from Sore Jackson, a group in the ’90s that was doing a lot of shows around town. We’ve been friends for years. And there’s Rebecca Young, who plays [bass and sings] in North Twin. The three of us have been getting together once a week for three years, so we’ve got quite a collection of songs. We do it for fun. We did do one show which was a lot of fun. We might do another one. We kind of record songs as a garage band, but who knows where that will go.

I’ve been so busy in my new gig as assistant tour manager with Neil [Young] that this is the longest I’ve been home since last June. That’s been a great experience.

SOUND: How did you score that gig?
RH: Well, Eric Johnson is the proper tour manager. He’s been with Neil for 15 years. He’s an old Ballard guy. I’ve known him for 20-some years. He started with Soundgarden and was their road guy, then he met Pearl Jam and was their guy for quite a few years. And when they did gigs with Neil, Neil found [Johnson] and loved him. I was just having a conversation with him and he said, “I’ve lost my assistant that I’ve had for the last eight years, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have to go to Europe in a few weeks.” And I said, “I’ll go.” It was kind of casual. He said, “You’ll have to think about that, because you have a family.”

SOUND: That could be tough.
RH: I’ve been freelancing graphic design and raising my kids at home ever since [Stone Gossard’s] Loosegroove [Records] shut down [in 2000]. It’s been great. I was able to dedicate a lot of time to their elementary school. I got Brad and Critters Buggin to play at their school.

SOUND: That explains why you’re credited with a lot of album artwork.
RH: Yeah, I do a lot of that with people around town. It’s really a joy for me. I tend to do it because I like it more than [it being] a necessity. My wife went to full-time work when I started to work at home and she’s been the breadwinner ever since.

SOUND: What interested you in the touring job?
RH: The biggest interest was a selfish one—I really wanted to spend a summer in Europe. I thought it was going to be a job for about a month. And after about eight months, I thought, “Wow, this is going to keep going.” My kids aren’t that happy about it, understandably. But they’re older now, 13 and 11, and it works out in this time of need for work. [Young and his crew] have been so warm to me, and they are such a family, I can’t imagine not going out with them. I feel really fortunate to be around such an incredible artist. Seeing him work firsthand has been quite an experience.

SOUND: What’s a day on the road like?
RH: It’s pretty routine. My boss and I are tour managers, but we’re also valets and concierges to people. We logistically get them from A to B, but beyond that, we’re trying to keep them as comfortable as possible. Keep them happy, keep them healthy, keep the shows rolling without any stress on them.

SOUND: Has the economy affected Young’s touring?
RH: It has. You notice it when you’re out there. He’s still able to fill these arenas. But when you’re in these different towns, you can tell—by empty restaurants and empty streets—that things are hard out there. They just dropped the ticket prices on our next trip to become a secondary market in Canada. They’re much smaller towns, which I think will be much harder hit than the metropolises we’ve already [played]. You find that the metropolises have the money. They still seem pretty healthy. It’s the worker bees who are the hardest hit.

SOUND: Neil wrote and recorded Fork in the Road while on tour.
RH: He did. He’s done that over the last few months. It’s been such a joy for me to witness. We’ll be on the plane and he’ll have his little guitar—it’s like a backpacker’s guitar—and he’ll be sitting there riffing on something. And the next day, he’s in soundcheck showing it to his band. And in a couple days, they’ll play it live on stage. As a musician, it’s incredible that he has the strength to do that, to allow it to be what it is. We stopped in London after a European leg, and he recorded about half the record. And the North American leg, we stopped in New York and did the same thing. A three-day stint there. We’d just gone to Australia and were going to stop in Hawaii to record, and he listened to everything and said, “No, we don’t need to. I’ve got my record done.” That was jaw-dropping to me. They worked it out right in front of audiences. From a musician’s standpoint, it’s totally honest. He does what he does, and it’s incredible.

SOUND: What have you learned from Neil?
RH: Being true to yourself. He is extremely that. It shows in making the Fork in the Road record. And the videos he’s made for it. He’s been making those on his laptop, by himself. It’s amazing. Then he releases them on the Internet himself. His record company just freaks out. Of course they want to control this stuff, and he just wants to get it out quick. I love how he wants to express himself in real time to people. His M.O. is just to do it, get it out there, and move on.

It’s impressive to me that he’s as healthy as he is. I believe he’s 63, and he eats well, exercises every day, and when he does his concerts it’s two hours of non-stop rock. He’s sweating from head to toe. I can only hope that I can be like that at his age. You see people in the audience with their jaws dropped, staring at him in disbelief.

It’s kind of what I’m experiencing, too. He started doing a Beatles cover, “A Day in the Life,” which the Beatles never actually played live because it’s so orchestrated. Paul McCartney heard he was doing it, and I remember being on the bus with Neil one night after a show. McCartney calls Neil on the phone to talk about [Neil] doing the cover. I’m watching Mr. Neil Young talk to Sir Paul McCartney. It’s surreal to me.

SOUND: Are you happier behind the stage or on it?
RH: When I’m out with him, I miss and really want to be performing. Hearing him go through new songs, I want to be involved in the process. I want to pick up sticks and play with him. I thirst for it when I get home. I definitely play as much as I can when I’m back. I was excited to do Stone’s shows, but I was nervous because I hadn’t played in months.

SOUND: Your daughter Chase is playing a lot.
RH: Yeah. I’m very moved by that. I’ve always encouraged my kids to appreciate music, but I’ve learned as a parent that I can’t force them to do anything that they’re not interested in. I’ve really held back with music and let them find it on their own.

SOUND: You didn’t steer her interest at all?
RH: I don’t believe I did. I came home from a leg with Neil, and Chase had seen a classmate perform in a [School of Rock] Sex Pistols/Ramones concert. She was just like, “I’ve got to do this. It’s incredible.” We went out [to the school] and spoke to the program director. I loved everything they had to say, so we put her in. They split the kids into two groups—and her first experience was Black Sabbath or the Monkees. We thought she’d try out and be in the Monkees program because it’s more cutesy, a little lighter. [But] they asked if she could be in the Black Sabbath show. I was thrilled. And she ended up singing like eight songs. It was a thrill. And now she’s doing Devo and playing guitar.

My son [Shade] loves seeing Chase on stage. So he signed up to play drums, and he’s going to play a couple of AC/DC songs. That’s gonna be a thrill. I get the feeling he really wants to play guitar, though. We’ll see where that goes.

SOUND: Do you jam with them?
RH: Not yet, and I really want to. But I’m not that cool with my kids. It’s that stage that we’re at. They don’t want me hanging around their band practices or anything, which is right where they should be. I’m not offended by that. But I can see playing with them in the future, even if it’s sitting around a campfire on the beach somewhere. That sounds lovely.

SOUND: Are you encouraging them to pursue careers in music?
RH: No. That would be fine if that happened. My daughter has been doing drama as well, and has been acting in a production each summer with Seattle Children’s Theatre. It’s even more mind-boggling to see her on stage acting. I think she’s very natural at that. It’s hard to figure out what her passion is. Music has always been there on some level, and the process is rolling, but I don’t know where it’s going to take her. She wants to be a soccer player and a writer. She thinks soccer will get her into college on the cheap, which makes Mom and Dad smile. [Laughs] That’s what she says at 11, and I don’t think I knew what I wanted to do at 11. She seems way more focused than I’ve ever been.

SOUND: Did you take drum lessons growing up?
RH: I didn’t. I played the snare drum in elementary school, back when everyone had to pick an instrument. Back when schools had arts. In high school I met Andy Wood and really started playing a drum kit. Punk rock was what opened the door for me. Seeing the bands taught me that I didn’t have to be great in order to enjoy doing it. So we bashed it out in our parent’s basements.

At 14 I went to the Showbox to see a concert with another friend from Bainbridge High or eighth grade. A guy asked me if I wanted to come to the next show free by hanging flyers. I was like, “Yeah! Of course!” He gave me a stack of flyers, I got into the next week’s show, and that was it. From that point on, I worked at the Showbox and tore tickets. And there was a room at the back where all the kids started to play a little bit. Poorly. I did a couple of shows with this band called Maggot Brains, which was officially my first band. Andy asked me to join Malfunkshun, which had a different drummer and different bass player at that time. That was it. Everything changed from that point on. That was all I did, all I cared about.

SOUND: You came up with a bunch of guys who still seem like a family today.
RH: I think so. Seattle was such a small town in the beginning. We’ve maintained those connections, which is really important to me. And bands are difficult. It is like a marriage. I feel fortunate that I’ve been able to maintain steady relationships with people that I’ve played music with basically from the beginning.

SOUND Do you see Seattle’s School of Rock forming a new music community?
RH: I do. I was kind of hesitant at the beginning, because I thought, “Who’s this guy? What’s going on?” There are like 40 of the schools across the country. But when you go there, you see these kids having three-hour band practices that are just like I would have had as a kid. And they really play well. Undoubtedly, it’s gonna spawn a bunch of bands. Kids are gonna meet each other there. They’ll end up in the parents’ basements–a guitar player meets a bass player meets a drummer and they’re done with school and have a band. It’s already happened once that I’ve seen since Chase has been involved. She’s in her second quarter. I’m hoping Chase will find future bandmates and be playing in my basement sometime soon.

SOUND: What would you like to see her doing in her 20s? Her 40s?
RH: I’d like to see her entertaining on some level. I know that’s kind of strange for a parent. But I see the joy that she has doing it. She reads incessantly, and she enjoys writing and reading. So that would be great if she could write books. But utlimately I think she’ll be doing some kind of entertainment. She acts, she sings, she dances. She’s a triple threat. And she’s dragging my wife and I through this. We don’t push any of it.

I want to support and encourage. I’m not really concerned which path she ends up on. I hope she’s true and natural, whatever she wants to do. I don’t want to see her do something for me or anyone else. She’s such an extrovert and my son’s such an introvert. It’s interesting. They’re opposites, which has been a really great lesson for me about people. Working for Neil has taught me a lot about people, too. Being ultimately a babysitter or a tour guide for people. Making sure everyone’s happy and tucked in and well-fed. I just want to do that for her. I’ll be there for whatever she wants to do. I think she’ll always play music on some level.

SOUND: What else musically do you have planned for 2009?
RH: I do sort of pine away for the Brad record to come out. It’s a great record that should be shared. And I’d love to get some dates. Being out on the road with Neil makes me want to go on the road as a musician. I’d love to have a month with Brad on the road. I learned from Rick Rosas, Neil’s current bass player, that he didn’t start touring and playing until he was in his 40s, which I now am. In the back of my mind, I thought, “I’ve given it my go, but it’s over.” I’ve learned to never say it’s over. I’d love to be in some band in the future with people I haven’t met yet. I hope to never quit.

It’s come back full circle now to where I play for pure pleasure. There was a time when I was a professional musician, where there was more pressure to be signed by a record company and having people expecting certain things. It’s nice to have that away. It’s all scrubbed off. The instrument is sitting there, and I can play it or not. For some reason, I have almost more desire now to play than ever. It’s really fun again. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t fun at any point, but I do realize that I had pressure before, and now I don’t have any. It’s nice.

 Photo: Hagar playing (behind Barb Ireland) with Stone Gossard’s band, March 8, 2009. By Karen Loria, from Pearl Jam’s Flickr photostream.

Shortly after its April 1 release, I spoke with Prato about his favorite grunge band, how his indispensable, fascinating book came together, and what he learned in the process. And then transcribed.

SOUND: What drew you to put together such a comprehensive history of Seattle’s grunge era?
GREG PRATO: I’ve been a long-time fan of all the grunge bands, with Soundgarden being top dog for me. I write for a bunch of magazines and web sites, and for one of the magazines, Classic Rock, I did a Soundgarden feature a few years ago. I interviewed about four or five people for that, and I realized I had a pretty good head start for a book, if I wanted to go about it.

I was speaking to Jack Endino, one of the people I spoke to about the Soundgarden article, and he told me there was never really a book about all the Seattle grunge bands told solely by the people who were there. It’s always a writer giving their take of what happened, and most writers weren’t there. I thought, what if I were to do a book in a format that was only quotes from people who were actually there?

I’ve always been a fan of a book that came out in the ’90s called Please Kill Me [The Uncensored Oral History of Punk]. It was focused mostly on ’70s New York punk bands. I always liked the setup of that. So that’s basically how it started. And it took me about three years to complete.

SOUND: How many hours of interviews did you do?
GP: I never actually thought of that, but it has to have been a huge amount. I had to do the interviews, transcribe them, put them on spreadsheets according to category. Then I had to fit them all together. I can’t even begin to think how long. But when I spoke to Eddie Vedder, that was about a two hour interview. I spoke to Kim Thayil from Soundgarden several times, probably about an hour each interview. And I did three or four with him.

SOUND: There are only a few notable people not in the book.
GP: Yeah, I tried to get in contact with Chris Cornell through his label or management, but either they didn’t give him the message or didn’t think it was a good idea. I also tried to get ahold of Krist Novoselic, and I didn’t hear back from him. Those are the two big ones. And Courtney Love—I didn’t even really try to get ahold of her. First of all, she’s not from Seattle. And she’s been quoted numerous times over the years about everything. I felt with this book it should focus on people who were from Seattle and around the scene since the ’80s—people we hadn’t heard from. It’s pretty easy to look [Love] up on the Net and see her quotes.

SOUND: What’s the most interesting thing you learned?
GP: I spoke to Kurt Cobain’s former girlfriend Tracy Marander, and she told me that supposedly Kurt wanted to try out for the bass position in Soundgarden. That was a pretty cool thing. And I heard a lot of really cool stories that I hadn’t heard before.

SOUND: What didn’t make it into the book?
GP: Not really too much. What was kind of tricky was making sure the same thing wasn’t repeated over and over again. There were some things that several people would say, so I had to go with the person who said it the most straightforward and hit the mark. It wasn’t so much that I left out anything that wasn’t pertinent—but there’s one thing that I wish I did leave in. I interviewed Layne Staley’s mother, Nancy McCallum, and she told me that when Layne was older, he wanted to change his middle name to Thomas. Because at the time his favorite drummer was Tommy Lee from Motley Crue. [Laughs] Which I thought was really good. But the book started out really, really long, and I had to get it down to a certain word count. But I was able to include the vast majority of stuff.

SOUND: What’s your favorite quote from all the interviews?
GP: One of the more interesting ones was from Blag Dahlia, the singer from the Dwarves. He made a point that I would have never thought about, but it really made sense to me: There were a lot of similarities between Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana. Even as a fan at time time, I thought they were two totally different bands. I interviewed Duff McKagan for the book, and I told him what [Blag Dahlia] said, and Duff said, yeah, “I always saw Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana as being very similar bands. When we first came out, we were a reaction to what was going on. And when Nirvana came out, they were a reaction.” I’m talking about early Guns N’ Roses, not what they became later.

SOUND: With the industry so much different now, do you think a city’s scene could blow up like that again?
GP: Yeah. I’m always hopeful that there will be another uprising that’s similar to the grunge movement. I always compare the grunge movement to the ’70s punk movement and to the late-’60s hippie movement. You can’t really pinpoint when or where it’s going to happen, but it just has to happen organically. Seattle proved that it could happen anywhere. I’m sure no one would have predicted that Seattle was going to be the next place to spawn all these bands in 1991. That proves that it could happen anywhere. Who’s to say it’s not going to happen again?

SOUND: Did you go through the flannel phase when grunge was big?
GP: [Laughs] Yeah, I did. I’ve always been thankful for this music, because in the late ’80s I was pretty much into bad metal. And discovering all these bands opened my eyes to other styles. That’s when I got into punk bands of the ’70s and ’80s. I’m really thankful that [grunge] bands steered me towards much more interesting and honest music. All my friends and I in 1991 and ‘92 were wearing flannels and Doc Martens.

SOUND: Why the title Grunge is Dead?
GP: It came up because of that shirt that Kurt Cobain wore. There’s a picture of him holding Frances Bean as a little baby and he’s wearing a shirt that says, “grunge is dead.” I decided to go with that partially because of that and because a lot of the grunge bands have a sense of humor. They didn’t take themselves too seriously. It fit in with the whole “loser” thing that Sub Pop had.

SOUND: Were you tempted to put more into your own words?
GP: If it was up to me, I probably would not have even had paragraphs. The book company suggested [that]. Looking back, it’s fine. But I totally wanted it to be the people who were there telling the story, and not have someone giving their thoughts and opinions. “This Nirvana album is better than that one. Pearl Jam is at their peak at this point.” I wanted the reader to get a true first-hand account.

Greg Prato will read from and sign Grunge Is Dead at West Seattle’s Easy Street Records on Saturday at 6pm. Pick up Sound’s May issue for more on Prato and his book.