Art Alexakis And Everclear: 'I've Still Got A Lot of Rage in Me'
If you were anywhere near a radio anywhere during the 1990s, you heard the Portland, Oregon, band Everclear. Singer Art Alexakis and his group scored hit after hit with songs like "Santa Monica," "Everything to Everyone," and "I Will Buy You a New Life." Alexakis struck an alt-rock nerve by mining his own biography and addressing themes like sexual abuse, estrangement from his father, and longtime drug addiction, all delivered with earsplitting crunch.
This week, Everclear returns with a crowd-funded set of full-frontal rock tunes with introspective themes, Black Is The New Black. Alexakis brings longtime guitarist Davy French to visit the Soundcheck studio, and talks about songwriting as catharsis, fatherhood, and why satisfying rock riffs will never die.
Interview Highlights:
Alexakis, on fans not knowing their song was called “Santa Monica”:
I got into screaming matches with Capitol. "You can’t call it Santa Monica it’s nowhere in the title. What is this 1957?" "No, it’s called Santa Monica. It’s about comfort zones, my comfort zone, that’s where I grew up." And there was no place to put it in the song and it just seemed that it didn’t need to be there.
On who Alexakis writes songs for:
I write the songs for me. But when we get into arranging it, I know how these guys play, they know how I write songs. And it changes it, it evolves a little bit but that’s the exciting part, what comes out in the end.
On Black is the new Black:
Everything is the same. Faces change, names change, styles change, but rock n’ roll is rock n’ roll.
On “The Man Who Broke His Own Heart”
I think all of our songs have light at the end of the tunnel. This guy is figuring it out. He’s honest about it. He’s being present.The scary thing, there’s a song I wrote about a guy on the record who isn’t present called “Complacent.” He doesn’t get it and he’s never going to get it.
On coming from a family that yells:
It scared my wife. I see people from different ethnicities and places and stuff that everybody yells. Our family was like that, we were yellers. I had to learn to yell to get over this one who was trying to get over that one and get heard by my mom. She yell at us for yelling. It was a never ending cycle. I don’t talk to my family like that now. I try not to. It’s scary. I can be very scary. I’m a skinny, middle aged man but I got a lot of rage in me. You can tell by the record. I’m learning along with dealing with my disease of addiction, almost 26 years sober but I’m still recovering, almost for the rest of my life and I learned to be present and to be able to look and see how that’s affecting people in my life.
On singing emotionally painful songs on tour:
My songs aren’t songs you can phone in. That’s draining to do that every night. To go back to that eight year old who got abused every night. That’s rough. That’s rough to pull that person out of you.
