The music industry is an odd construct in the human universe in which people sometimes generate as much interest for the things they don’t do as for the things that get done. Look at Axl Rose and Chinese Democracy. Maynard James Keenan hasn’t begun to approach that Zen level of non-accomplishment. He’s pathologically busy with his third band, Puscifer, and its excellent new album, Money Shot, as well as his award-winning Caduceus Cellars winery (where some of Money Shot was recorded) and the clothing line/store that Keenan has assembled around Puscifer in Jerome, Ariz. Still, the compelling frontman is continually asked to address the status of his other bands, the largely dormant Tool and A Perfect Circle.“It’s the kind of movement they’re comfortable with making,” says Keenan about his other creative outlets. “It’ll shine when it shines.”
As Keenan deflects attention from the bands that thrust him into a spotlight he’s never truly embraced, he focuses that
spotlight on Puscifer. In Money Shot’s press
materials, Keenan describes the album as
a benchmark of his present spiritual, emo
tional and physical condition, but also as
almost a lack-of-progress report on humanity that will hopefully help reset the species’
course. His response to his own press release is par for Keenan’s purposefully dog-legged course.
“God, I sound pompous as fuck if that’s what I said,” he says, laughing. “ ‘I’m just here to save you. Everybody, put your spoons and forks down, I’m here. Help has arrived.’ God, what an asshole. If I came off like that, that’s not really what I meant. As an artist, you observe, interpret and report, and that’s kind of where I’m at. I’ve observed quite a bit, I’m trying to report a little bit of it, and hopefully some of those seeds find purchase.”
Keenan may desire glints of enlightenment to result from Money Shot, but that doesn’t mean he’ll enhance the possibility
by overanalyzing his process or illuminating his songs.
“It really is a matter of clearing your head,” he says. “Overthinking anything is a bad path. When you’re in that emotional space, you can engage your intellect on occasion to keep it focused, but as far as what sparks ignite those fires, you have to rely on intuition to clear out your space and let it happen. Something will show itself to you. Music first, rhythms first, mood first, then some of the words will come, and it will end up forming a cornerstone line that will happen to be in relation to something in the immediate vicinity. Then you build on that.”As far as meaning and intention are concerned, Keenan keeps that under wraps. Case in point: “Simultaneous,” a short story with a swirling, trippy soundtrack, is a captivating and often hilarious account of meeting an unnamed Rock star of mystical persuasion. When queried as to the story’s nature — fictional or biographical — Keenan says, “That’s a good question,” which is ultimately his full response. In Keenan’s constructed reality, no answer is often the only answer.For Keenan’s legion of fans, it’s no surprise that
Money Shot stands with his best work out of all of his various projects. Puscifer’s rotating cast, with Keenan as its consistent center point, makes it logical to consider the band his solo domain, but he credits his collaborators as essential to the outcome.
“I’m blessed. I have access to some pretty amazing people,” he says of his Puscifer cohorts. “Of course, it was me and Mat (Mitchell, guitarist and producer) writing; he’ll change things completely and it’ll change the entire song. We had a couple with a particular vibe and I wasn’t feeling it. Mat presented this other thing a couple months later, and it just inspired a whole other set of thoughts.”
For a band that started as part of a comedic sketch on the first Mr. Show episode in 1995, Puscifer has solidified into a well-defined statement of Keenan’s nebulous yet unceasing creative pursuits over the past decade. It’s also the only musical project occupying his full attention; the last Tool and A Perfect Circle albums were released in 2006 and 2004 respectively, while Puscifer has produced three full albums — 2007’s “V” is for Vagina, 2011’s Conditions of My Parole and the just-released Money Shot, as well as a pair of live albums and a brace of EPs, remix albums and singles.
As Keenan notes with blithe acidity in Money Shot’s electronic press kit, “For those people who think that this is some kind of a side project, they need to pull their fucking heads out of their asses, because this isn’t going away, clearly.”
Still, prospects seem good on Tool’s horizon. The band has toured infrequently but
just announced plans for 2016 dates , the news coming after the group dressed up as Led Zeppelin and performed Zep songs for its Halloween-night set at the Monster Mash Music Festival in Tempe, Ariz. A Perfect Circle’s future seems slightly dimmer, although Keenan and co-founder Billy Howerdel have reportedly jammed and written new songs.
To date, Puscifer represents Keenan’s most concentrated and consistent creative endeavor; he’s working on the band’s ever-present storyline and the accompanying video “Rockumentary” about his Billy Dee character with actress/producer Laura Milligan (who portrays Hildy in Puscifer’s passion play).“The filming we do for those things is always guerilla,” Keenan says. “Whenever the spirit moves us, we try to get footage and capture the idea. The hard part is when we get cool ideas and paint ourselves into a corner and then can’t find a way out of the story.”Or maybe, like everything else in Maynard James Keenan’s magnificently twisted workshop of the mind, that’s when the magic happens.
PUSCIFER plays Friday at Taft Theatre. Tickets/more info: tafttheatre.org.
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2015.