“Alexa, play upbeat songs about terrible life events.”
“Playing: Everclear.”
We’ve all heard the modern pop rock songs with cheery melodies and insidious undertones. “Pumped Up Kicks”? Man, I used to jam that song on repeat because it was so catchy. One day, curious about the meaning behind the weird lyrics, I looked closer only to realize I was bopping to a song about a school shooting. Not a great look.
Nineties rock band Everclear was one of the first to do it, and over thirty years later I still crank “Father of Mine” every time it comes on SXM Pop Rocks. Like many songs on the 1997 album So Much for The Afterglow, “Father of Mine” explores a sad narrative in a cheery manner. Weaving through narratives of an absent father, suicide, addiction, relapse, and childhood tragedy, vocalist and founding member of Everclear Art Alexakis’ music could be described as cathartic by many. Few artists find success in music for decades, but Alexakis’ honesty and songwriting finesse have kept him relevant well after others have fallen off. Although the band has seen member changes over the years, Alexakis has remained a constant. Currently, Everclear is playing one-off shows ahead of the release of their live album Live At The Whisky a Go Go in September and a national tour this fall. I sat down with Art ahead of his Sunday show at the Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood for their Pig & Whiskey Festival (more details below) to talk all things Everclear, modern rock, and addiction.
The Arts STL: Hey Art! You are a busy man; I appreciate you taking a few minutes to catch us up on everything Everclear. Where are you at now?
Art Alexakis: Glad we could make it happen. I’m in Arizona right now, the average temperature is like 112° and it’s just no good for anybody except maybe Gila monsters. No humidity, people think “Oh so it’s just a dry heat,” but man, pizza ovens are dry heat too and I don’t want to be in a pizza oven either, you know.
I bet you’re looking forward to some of these fall tour dates then.
I love the fact that were doing a fall tour. It’s going to be cooler temperature-wise and it’s hard for a guy with MS in the hot summer. We’re heading out with the Ataris so that will be a fun tour. We have a lot of dates on the tour, by the end of the year it’s something like 95 dates.
That is a ton of shows. How are you feeling physically?
I feel great, but at the same time its challenging. We’re all a little bit older and we have to work harder to do it. Plus, you know, I got diagnosed with MS [multiple sclerosis] about three years ago. It makes everything a little harder. I do have it at bay with the medication I’m taking and my diet and the protocol I’m on, I just have to work harder. It is what it is, man. I’m grateful to have all the shows. We’ve been around for 31 years and people still care enough to want to come see us, so that’s really cool.
Thirty-one years, that’s an impressive amount of time to be in music. I was born the year your band formed; I’ve listened to Everclear my entire life. I think it speaks volumes that your music has been able to stay relevant so long.
I think that’s really cool, you’re just a little older than my oldest daughter. You know what’s crazy? I’d say 20 to 25% of our audience since covid are people your age or younger. Like, teens and kids who weren’t even born when we were having success back in the day. We played a show the other day, two to three thousand people, and a lot of them were kids my youngest daughter’s age and they had signs and they were singing words, not just to the hits but to the smaller songs. I was I just blown away by that. I think that’s a testament to rock and roll more than a testament to us. A lot of them were turned onto it by their parents in the back of a car, but a lot are just unhappy with music today. There’s not any real rock and roll anymore, the ‘90s saw the last of that guitar-based rock.
I was actually listening to “Year of the Tiger” before this call. It’s somehow modern but still true to Everclear, I hope we get that on a record. It was an immediate add to playlist.
Thanks a lot, that’s actually on the [Live at the Whisky A Go Go] album. There are two bonus tracks, that song and also a song we’re getting ready to do a video for, a song called “Sing Away.” It’s originally more of an acoustic song on my solo record in 2019, but we recorded it for this record and [now] it’s old school balls-to-the-wall Everclear.
We definitely seem a bit more reliant on back tracking now, what are your thoughts on that?
We have a live album coming out in September, two days after the tour starts, Live at the Whisky a Go Go. It’s loose and rough and not tuned or overly Pro Tooled, it sounds like it did when we played the show. It’s just mixed and pressed; it sounds good and the levels are great, but there’s nothing there that wasn’t there when we played. It’s exciting to me, I look forward to people hearing it when it comes out. Bands today, they’re playing with prerecorded cuts and recorded drums, guitars. I gotta say, man, that’s not rock and roll, that’s the antithesis of rock and roll. I don’t care if you’re a little out of tune or make mistakes, if you’re up there having a great time and playing your ass off, putting it out there—that’s what I want to see. That’s entertainment to me. Seeing you like basically lip sync to a record, I don’t want to see that.
Rock looks a bit different now, but we’ve always seen the pop elements. Everclear was one of the first to do it really well.
I love power pop. I love some of the punk pop stuff, late ‘90s, early 2000s. We’re touring in the fall with The Ataris, they are that pop punk. I always loved bands like Cheap Trick, bands that had elements of new wave and pop. I like when things are noisy and kind of dissonant too, why can’t you have both? I think bands today that are making music are not looking deeper than bands to the left or the right of them; it’s a shallow pool.
I’ve said this over and over, I get really frustrated with artists for a couple reasons. The ones who don’t play their hits because they think they’re too cool to play their hits, that they’re defined by their hits. Play the fucking song, man. And then bands that take themselves too seriously onstage—look, if you’re not having fun onstage, the people in the audience aren’t having fun. To me if you’re playing in a rock and roll band and not having fun, you need to get a new job that pays better.
I think that’s a common misconception in music, if you have a song on the radio, you are raking it in.
Contrary to popular opinion, very few people get rich playing in the music business. Someone’s making money off it, not you. I’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars, literally, for the record companies and other people. Now we have to tour to make our living. We sing for our supper, it’s what we do. I’m grateful for that, but I’m 61, I’ve got MS, I’ve been clean and sober for 34 years, I still gotta go out and work constantly. I have to leave here in 2.5 hours to catch a plane for a show tomorrow. It’s exhausting sometimes, but I’ve gotta tell you I wouldn’t change a thing.
Thirty-four years sober, that’s incredible. What advice would you give other artists who are living out of a bus and away from their families for months at a time while trying to stay sober?
If you’re getting into dugs these days that aren’t coming from a dispensary, it’s probably laced with fentanyl. It’s scary. When you get into the drug and alcohol recovery like this, they tell you buy a suit because you’re going to be going to funerals, and that’s been true for me. I’m almost finished with my two-year alcohol and drug certification and I’m a certified master sobriety life coach. I work as a virtual life coach also and almost exclusively work with creative people in the industry.
To answer the question, I would just say what I say to anybody: if you have a problem, if you’re powerless over alcohol, you don’t ever have to drink again. You have to do the work, follow the literature, but rarely have we seen anyone fail when they follow the program. It’s been really true for me, I’ve seen this miracle happen, it happened to a really great friend of mine that I had to fire. He worked for me for years, it got so bad, it was like firing my brother. He bottomed out for three months after that then—and I don’t know how but somehow—we got him on a plane to treatment. He stayed in treatment and sober living for the next nine months and now he’s just killing it. They have to be ready, that’s the thing.
I appreciate that so much. You’re a huge voice for sobriety in the music industry. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat ahead of the St Louis show, I can’t wait to catch the set! | Erica Vining
Everclear will be performing Sunday, July 30th, at the Schlafly Bottleworks (7260 Southwest Ave.) as part of the annual Pig & Whiskey Festival, which runs Friday July 28th through Sunday July 30th. Other music acts include Murphy Lee & Kyjuan of the St. Lunatics, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Grace Potter, and the Sublime tribute band 40 Oz. to Freedom, plus local acts to be announced. Admission is free. For more information visit https://www.schlafly.com/events/pig-whiskey/.
Everclear on tour:
07.27.23 | Kegs @ 5:30pm | Jordan, NY
07.28.23 | NJ Lottery Festival of Ballooning @ 7:30pm | Readington Township, NJ w/ Lit
07.29.23 | Dennis F. Smith Ampitheater @ 6:30pm | La Porte, IN (FREE)
07.30.23 | Pig & Whiskey Festival 2023 @ 6:00pm | Maplewood, MO (FREE)
08.05.23 | Brawls and Kickstart Days @ 8:30pm | Butte, MT
08.17.23 | Academy Center of the Arts @ 7:00pm | Lynchburg, VA
08.18.23 | Paramount Center for the Arts @ 7:00pm | Bristol, TN
08.19.23 | Fayetteville Amphitheater @ 7:00pm | Fayetteville, GA
08.26.23 | Ho Chunk Gaming @ 7:00pm | Wittenberg, WI
09.02.23 | Albany Downtown Block Party @ 8:30pm | Albany, OR (FREE)
09.06.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:30pm w/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Lexington, KY
09.07.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Nashville, IN
09.08.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 6:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Lemont, IL
09.09.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:30pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Fort Wayne, IN
09.11.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Cleveland, OH
09.12.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Buffalo, NY
09.13.34 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Silver Spring, MD
09.15.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 8:00pm The Ataris | Philadelphia, PA
09.16.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:30pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Westbury, NY
09.17.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:30pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Boston, MA
09.18.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | New York, NY
09.20.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Raleigh, NC
09.21.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Nashville, TN
09.22.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:30pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Mount Vernon, IL
09.23.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Waterloo, IA
09.27.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Omaha, NE
09.28.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Englewood, CO
09.29.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:30pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Kamas, UT
09.30.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:30am W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Cheyenne, WY
10.01.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Great Falls, MT
10.04.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Seattle, WA
10.06.23 | Rock The Locks 2023 @ 12:00pm w/ Tonic, Collective Soul, ZZ Top, Night Ranger | Umatilla, OR
10.07.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 8:00pm | Elko, NV
10.09.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 7:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Los Angeles, CA
10.10.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 6:30pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | San Francisco, CA
10.13.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 6:45pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Rocklin, CA
10.15.23 | Everclear Tour 2023 @ 6:00pm W/ The Pink Spiders & The Ataris | Pioneertown, CA
10.27.23 | Jack-O-Lantern Jubilee @ 7:00pm | North Augusta, SC
11.04.23 | Tybee Post Music Festival 2023 @ 5:00pm w/ Spin Doctors | Tybee Island, GA
01.27.24 | Grand Falls Casino & Golf Resort® @ 7:00pm | Larchwood, IA
