Art Appreciation: A candid interview with Everclear’s Art Alexakis

Art Alexakis, lead singer and founder of the alternative rock band Everclear, is having a banner year. This summer, he launched a ’90s retrospective festival with Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray. The Summerland tour takes Everclear and Sugary Ray around the nation, along with Marcy Playground (“Sex and Candy”), Lit (“My Own Worst Enemy”) and Gin Blossoms (“Hey Jealousy”). Everclear is alos celebrating the recent release of its latest studio album Invisible Stars, one of the first collection of original songs from the band in several years.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox talked with Alexakis about the tour, the album and what fans can expect from Everclear in the future. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

How did Summerland begin?

It started with me getting tired of people not doing this. It seems like it’s a thing that needs to happen. So, when I decided we should do it, I knew I needed a partner, and I knew Mark McGrath was the guy. So I called him, and he had been talking about it for years. Everybody’s been talking about it, but no one was doing it.

So I called Mark and I said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s get it going.’ From then on, it’s a partnership. We’ve done everything together. That’s the way it’ll be. It’s fun. At the show, we do everything together. We introduce all the bands. This is our tour, man.

We’re paying attention to the bottom line on everything, even though we have management and agents helping do it. At the end of the day, it’s our names up there. We’re the guys that are going either benefit from it or fail miserably. (laughs) Generally, there’s no middle ground. Right now, it’s looking pretty great. So, we’re doing OK.

Has the tour lived up to your expectations?

In many ways it has, and in many ways it hasn’t. … There’s going to be changes next year. It’s just one of those things, man. Even Lollapalooza was not a hit the first year or wildly successful. It just takes time to build something like this. I think it builds time for people to understand what Summerland is, and I think next year it’s going to kick in really hard. But this year, we’re not getting rich, but we’re not going to lose money. How many people can say they don’t lose money their first year out? That’s pretty great.

How did the new album come about?

The last record we put out was a record called Welcome to the Drama Club about six years ago. And I just haven’t been really compelled to make a new album. We did a covers record. We did an acoustic record of old songs and stuff like that. But I hadn’t really felt inspired to write songs. And then about two years ago, I started writing songs. And it started sounding like a record. So we started working toward making a record. … No budget or any money. So when people would come up with ideas to do stuff, I’d get the studio time here and we’d record some tracks there, and do it kind of piecemeal through the last year.

I’m hungry again. I’ve got the fire in my belly. … At the same time, I haven’t been this happy in a long time. I’ve had a lot more money that’s for sure, but I’m doing exactly what I want to do right now. And it just feels great.

Where were you in your life that these songs came to you?

I think I’m in a place of just really being humble and grateful for what I got in life. I got a lot of great things. I think everybody at one time in their life, if not many times in their life, complain about what they don’t have. Me, like everybody else, I’ve been there, even when I’ve had things that other people would kill for.

I’m in that place right now. I have a wonderful family. No one’s sick. I make a decent living from playing guitar in a rock band. I got great friends. I got great people I play with in my band. And I got this tour. I got all sorts of things going on.

I think the place that I’ve been in is a place of being grateful, a place of being realistic about it. I mean there’s darkness everywhere. There’s darkness in “Be Careful What You Ask For” (a new song). You know, what if you achieve your dreams, then what? Where do you go from there? Be careful what you ask for, you might get it. Then what do you do with it.

We’re living longer. People having one career their whole life, that’s not a sustainable model these days. To me, instead of that being a bad thing, that’s exciting. You make your own ticket. Figure it out. If you want it bad enough, you go for it. That’s what I’ve always done in life, and that’s what I’m doing now.

There’s maybe one autobiographical song on the record, a song called “Rock It for the Girl,” that I wrote for my wife. And it all comes from somewhere very personal, like “Santa Ana Winds”. That’s building a character around me and other people I know, just experiences. And just moving back to L.A. after 25 years, and being really happy about it. And finding salt with the sugar, sugar with the salt. It’s just kind of life.

Would you like to play the new stuff over the old stuff?

I like both. This tour is short sets, 40 to 45 minutes. So it’s primarily about playing the old hits and a couple of the older songs and one new song. That’s what this is about. I knew that’s what this tour was going to be about. It is for everybody. Look at Sugar Ray. They’re playing three or four of their hits … and then it’s all covers. That’s not what we do. We’ve got a lot more hits, I think, and songs that we can play, fan favorites.

When we tour in Novemeber … it’ll be a lot more album tracks, all the hits still. But we’ll play a bunch of new songs off the new record. I always look forward to playing three or four songs off the new record. I’d love to play “Tiger in a Burning Tree”. That’s a fun song to play. We’ll see.

The plan is for Summerland to come back next summer?

That’s the idea. Not with any of these bands, persay, but with other bands. We’ve already got inquiries from probably four or five other bands that want to do this. And there’s bands that we looked at too this year, but they couldn’t do it. But they want to do it next year. I don’t think we’re going to have any problem building a hell of a roster for next year.

Are you fans of these other bands on this year’s Summerland?

Absolutely. I’ve always been a huge fan of Lit. And Marcy Playground, I mean, I took those guys on tour in ’98 with Everclear. And I think John Wozniak is so, so unbelievably talented. I think all of them are. I think the guys in the Gin Blossoms are super-talented. Beautiful songs.

And Sugar Ray is just awesome. I’ve always loved Sugar Ray. Mark’s a knucklehead, and such a talent, and such personality. It’s funny because every band on here is pretty different. I think the closest would probably be us and Lit. We’re very different, but the cool thing about it is back in the late ‘90s, you could listen to the radio for an hour and hear all five of these bands at that time. I think that says a lot. I think that’s what ties us together.

Could you talk about Everclear’s audiences? You really try to give back to the audiences.

I’ve always felt like that. I’ve always been grateful for our fans, and now with social media, it’s much easier to connect to people. … I’m just really grateful for people coming to Summerland. I just want people to feel like it’s a place they can go to to just enjoy themselves and have fun and hear music they know and be around other people that like the same kind of music they do. That’s fun. That’s just fun. And get value for it. As far as Everclear goes, we’ve always been an interactive show and having people be involved. Because to me, that’s more fun.

Have you ever thought of hanging up the guitar and giving it up?

It is a dream job, man. I’ve got a great job. I don’t know. I joke about it just because I have two daughters who are going to very expensive schools. One is 20 and one is 5. I’m going to be singing these damn songs until I’m 90. And I joke about it, but at the same time, if I can, why not? Why wouldn’t I? I still enjoy it. If I stopped enjoying it, then I won’t do it. I think that’s the right answer. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, then you should be doing something else.

And the audiences, there’s the people who grew up with these songs and brand-new fans.

It’s bizarre to see the range of ages that are coming out to these shows that know the songs. I’m seeing kids 15 years old who know all the words to all the songs. … When I meet them and they have their whole family up there, I feel sorry for the kids, because they have been indoctrinated into Everclear.

They chose to do this, and I want them to have as much entertainment and enjoyment as possible so they will come back again. It’s the old school business model. Give value, and people will come back.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

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