This story appears in the Spring 2024 Issue of Revolver, available for purchase here.
For Maynard James Keenan, time is both a friend and the enemy. He's never been busier, filling his days, months and years as frontman and creative force for TOOL, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer — all wildly diverse, ambitious musical operations. There's also the winery at the center of his life back home in Jerome, Arizona, plus his ongoing practice as a newly minted black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, not to mention the wife and kids, and beloved Yorkie by his side.
In 2024, Keenan turns 60, a number that can sometimes startle the still-vibrant singer and family man — but isn't slowing him down in the least. He has chosen to confront the milestone head-on, with a multi-date birthday tour called Sessanta, gathering some of the finest creative forces at his disposal: his bands Puscifer and A Perfect Circle, and, as the wild card on the bill, his friends in Primus. The U.S. tour also arrives with a special three-song Sessanta E.P.P.P., featuring one new song from each act (and all three tracks co-written by Keenan).
A decade earlier, Keenan celebrated his 50th birthday with Cinquanta, a two-night stand at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, with Puscifer and A Perfect Circle sharing the stage with a reunited Failure. (The show was immortalized earlier this year with the release of the live album Cinquanta: A 50th Birthday Celebration for Maynard James Keenan - Live.) Like that event, Sessanta puts all three acts onstage at the same time, leading to serendipitous sparks of inspiation and amusement.
It just opens up a whole set of doors for keeping the knife sharp," Keenan says of these collaborations, "but also you never know what's going to come out of it."
To pull off Sessanta, Keenan once again enlisted his main collaborators (outside of TOOL): A Perfect Circle guitarist-producer Billy Howerdel and his Puscifer partners Mat Mitchell and Carina Round. Joining them on the EP and tour is Primus, led by singer-bassist Les Claypool, who Keenan first met on the 1993 Lollapalooza tour. For Sessanta E.P.P.P., Maynard and Primus created a track of weird thundering funk about the wayward hippos once owned by the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
To discuss Sessanta and their three-decade meeting of the minds, Keenan and Claypool have agreed to a joint interview with Revolver via Zoom, which happened to land on Valentine's Day. Claypool drops in from his home in the wine country of Sonoma County, California, where he has his own Purple Pachyderm winery. And Keenan calls from Los Angeles, where TOOL is performing the first of two sold-out nights. As always, Keenan is keeping busy and has already spent the morning shooting promos for the Sessanta tour. Wandering behind him on the Zoom feed is Shoresy — his little Yorkie (named after the fan-favorite Letterkenny character) — whose presence on the road "keeps me even," he says.
Claypool, who also just turned 60, notes that he had a similar experience to Sessanta in 2022 during a pair of concerts at Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver that collided Primus and Ween to mark the 25th anniversary of South Park. (Primus created the show's long-running theme song). "That's right in the Ween wheelhouse," Keenan agrees with a nod. For the Sessanta tour, Keenan's APC and Puscifer collaborators will be joined onstage by Claypool and long-serving Primus band members, guitarist Larry "Ler" LaLonde and drummer Tim Alexander.
For an artist as creatively restless as Keenan, navigating the calculated chaos of Sessanta is a fitting response as he stares down 60. It's sure to be a good time, but it's only a temporary diversion from the clock — and the ongoing mission at hand. After that, the singer notes, there's no time to waste. He has three groups going, and he expects all of them will soon be in the process of creating new music. Over the coming year and a half, he says, "I've got three bands that need to write songs — so I'm going to be doing that."
DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF EACH OTHER AND HOW YOU MET?
MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN We don't do impressions. [Wags finger at camera]
LES CLAYPOOL Yes, there's this app called Grindr. That's where we first found each other. [Laughs]
WHEN WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN?
KEENAN Lollapalooza '93.
CLAYPOOL I remember Maynard was working out a lot. But my first impression of Maynard was when he invited me to his house to meet his turkeys, which I found very odd. I never did actually meet the turkeys, but that was my very first encounter with Maynard. I imagine that was a substantial ice-breaking element.
KEENAN We had a friend who had turkeys. I'm going to get his name wrong, but from Leave It to Beaver, the kind of annoying neighbor kid? What was his name?
CLAYPOOL Old Turkey Joe.
KEENAN After Leave It to Beaver, he became a cop in the Valley.
CLAYPOOL Wait a minute. You're not talking about "Eddie Haskell"?
KEENAN Yes, Eddie Haskell [played by Ken Osmond] was a cop in the San Fernando Valley. He had a couple of rentals, and [TOOL's] Adam [Jones] rented from Eddie Haskell, and he had turkeys for some reason. He had too many, so I ended up with Eddie Haskell's extra turkey.
CLAYPOOL See, now that's the title of a song right there: "Eddie Haskell's Extra Turkey." I'm impressed. I've never met anyone who knew Eddie Haskell, let alone inherited turkeys from Eddie Haskell.
KEENAN Our life is a weird thing.
LES, LAST YEAR YOU PLAYED A BENEFIT IN L.A. WITH TOOL'S JUSTIN CHANCELLOR AND DANNY CAREY, AND TROY VAN LEEUWEN, WHO WAS IN THE ORIGINAL A PERFECT CIRCLE LINEUP AND NOW PLAYS WITH QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE. YOU PERFORMED TOOL'S "ÆNIMA." WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE MAYNARD FOR A FEW MINUTES?
KEENAN He had to scrunch down a little bit.
CLAYPOOL I was doing some scrunching. I was doing some hand movements. I very much enjoyed that. I'm not good at getting on the microphone unless I have a hunk of wood with some strings on it between me and the audience. And it was one of the very rare times that I actually stood in front of a crowd without that electric hunk of furniture strapped to me. And it was actually exciting and a bit liberating.
MAYNARD, THIS SESSANTA TOUR MARKS A BIG BIRTHDAY FOR YOU, AS YOU DID 10 YEARS AGO WITH YOUR CINQUANTA SHOWS AT THE GREEK THEATRE IN LOS ANGELES. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THESE LIFE MARKERS THAT YOU WANT TO CELEBRATE?
KEENAN It's just pure panic. It's pure fear of death. Let's just celebrate this absolutely terrifying marker. I had this idea years ago — back when we did Lollapalooza, when everybody was jamming with each other onstage in '93 — I always wanted to do something like this. I was actually going to do six [bands]. That just was a train wreck of an idea — so it's three bands playing. There is no headliner. There is no opener. We don't ever really leave the stage. We have some couches on the stage. You're just kind of hanging out. But that way you're going back and forth a couple moments where you're playing on each other's songs. And from the EP we just did, we do the three songs and then close with something like…
CLAYPOOL "(Don't Fear) the Reaper"! Isn't that what this is really all about? I just turned 60. You just turned 60. We do all these songs together. We have this big Shambhala on stage, and then at the end we say, "Don't fear the reaper!" [Laughs]
HOW DID THE SESSANTA E.P.P.P. COME TOGETHER?
KEENAN I always leave the Pro Tools and Logic stuff up to Mat Mitchell or Billy [Howerdel], and [producer] Joe Barresi a little bit. I finally dove in about a year and a half ago, where I wouldn't let myself have my morning coffee until I at least figured out a beat, maybe a piano melody. So I had this little folder of stuff. When this tour was coming up, I was like, I'm going to take three of these songs and farm it out: I'll send one to Billy, I'll send one to Mat and Carina, and I'll send one to Les, Larry and Tim to see what comes out of it. We actually did a little EP — three songs for commemorating the Sessanta.
THIS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION LANDS DURING A PERIOD WHEN YOU'RE BUSIER THAN EVER. ALL THREE OF YOUR BANDS ARE PRETTY ACTIVE. IS THIS AN INTERESTING TIME FOR YOU, OR A CRISIS?
KEENAN Crisis, man. What the hell? I don't know what I was thinking. I'm an idiot. And with all the restaurant stuff going on and winery things going on in Arizona, and then three bands, I think it's time to go to law school.
EVEN SO, YOU'RE DOING GREAT WORK WITH ALL THREE BANDS. DID YOU FIGURE SOMETHING OUT ABOUT HOW TO BALANCE EVERYTHING?
KEENAN It really is time management that it comes down to. Being in a successful band, time gets away from you because you get super lazy. There are times during the day to do things. But it's also important to leave space in there to get your head straight. I really admire Les with his absolute: "I'm gonna go fishing." And back on Lollapalooza '93, that to me was like, "Holy fuck, he found the thing that gets his head straight [from] all this rock madness." You are dealing with people almost dying from drug overdoses over here and crazy bickering and weird rock shit over there. And then this guy's over by that pond fishing, going, "You guys are idiots." I thought that was great.
HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT ATTITUDE, LES?
CLAYPOOL Maynard and I are kindred spirits. We have a lot of shit going on. I attribute all my shit going on to boredom. If I'm not doing something, it makes me depressed. If I'm not turning over a new rock, I go into a funk. So I have a little winery, I have a few bands and I still have time to go fishing. And nowadays I've been flying. I'm a pilot now. I feel like you have to do these things to maintain your sanity.
YOU BOTH SHARE A PASSION FOR WINEMAKING. WAS THERE SOMETHING FROM MUSIC THAT LED YOU NATURALLY IN THAT DIRECTION?
CLAYPOOL For me it's coincidence. I just happen to live in the mecca of California Pinot Noir, which is West Sonoma County. If you live in Hollywood, who comes to your barbecues? It's people that are in the entertainment industry. Where I live, people that come to your barbecues bring a bottle of wine, because they're working for a cooperage or they're a vineyard manager. But I'm a charlatan. Maynard's actually a winemaker. I write a check every year to a winemaker to make our wine. I used to be involved in the process much more, but our guy is just amazing. So I step back and play the bass and design the labels. For us, it's a lifestyle thing more than anything.
IS THERE ANYTHING MAYNARD DOES AS A WINEMAKER THAT YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN CURIOUS ABOUT?
CLAYPOOL How do you keep your sanity? I've been to Maynard's place and it's amazing. I love his setup. I find it very interesting the way you've designed your fermenting vats and whatnot. It's very cool. It's much different than what I've seen around here. I am not so much involved in that process anymore, but I admire what Maynard does because it's a shitload of work. I don't see how you can pull it all off and do three bands and be a father and have your restaurants and your jiu-jitsu facilities and whatnot. And this is coming from a guy that people think that about me. [Laughs]
KEENAN That's why we consider each other kindred spirits. There's no excuse to not do some stuff and get some things done, just because you can, and you should. Whatever magic box we opened up back in the day to where we were on that tour to begin with, I feel like we kind of owe it to ourselves and our family and the world. If you can do, you should do.
YOU BOTH ALSO HAVE A REPUTATION FOR HAVING A CERTAIN KIND OF SENSE OF HUMOR. HAS THAT BEEN HELPFUL IN DEALING WITH MUSIC OR WINEMAKING?
KEENAN Absolutely. You kind of wonder what you're going to put on your tombstone, and I narrowed it down to several. But the one that should go on there is "Comedy first. Always."
CLAYPOOL I like that.
KEENAN For me, that's driving the comedy/tragedy. We're already living the tragedy. We already had whatever tragedies we had in our past. It's all about blending the comedy in the tragedy. I gave this set of riffs and stuff over to [Primus], and they completely reinvented it. I'm like, "So what do you think this song's about, Les?" He is like, "Pablo Escobar's hippos." "OK, well, you're fucked now because that's what it's about." [Laughs] So I wrote "Pablo's Hippos," because that's what gets me up in the morning — silly shit like that.
CLAYPOOL He sent me this track and he said, "This sounds Primus-y to me." And the first thing I thought was, it was like a weird, bent version of "My Sharona." Then we did our Primus thing to it, but it has this lofty "Pink Elephants on Parade" vibe to it. And so he's like, "I'm gonna write the lyrics now. What does this song sound like to you?" And it just popped in my head. I go, "Well, it sounds like Pablo Escobar's hippos," because I'd just seen this program on Pablo's hippos, so away he went. Now we have this song, and it's very cool. When do you get to write a song about Pablo Escobar's hippos?
KEENAN The music has to be there first. But if you don't have a little bit of a sense of humor and if you take yourself too seriously, it's not going to be any fun. Even if it's a technically perfect song.
MAYNARD, YOU'VE ACTUALLY WORKED WITH COMEDY AND COMEDIANS AND IMPROV. HOW HAS THAT FED INTO YOUR MUSIC?
KEENAN TOOL has always been a weird eccentric project. Before we went down a farther path, we used to have a lot of humor in there — but I feel like it kind of disappeared with the growth. So Puscifer came out of my need to express that side of things. All the stuff you see with Puscifer is still serious music, but there is just a natural unforced sense of humor that comes out in it. That stuff's always been in Puscifer because it's such an important outlet for not taking yourself too seriously, although taking the music very seriously.
CLAYPOOL Humor doesn't have to be silly. Stanley Kubrick made some of the most hilarious films ever, but it was very serious. And Terry Gilliam, same way. People think of humor oftentimes in music, and they go, "Oh, it's got to be goofball. It's got to be silly." Well, no, there's quite a bit of satire out there that has nothing to do with silliness — but is very humorous. With Puscifer, there's a lot of irony in there. There's a lot of darkness. There's a lot of that David Lynchian element that I find hilarious but is dark as fuck.
KEENAN Yeah. If you watch the Twin Peaks series and you're not laughing through portions of that in the middle of a murder mystery, you're dead. There's something wrong with you.
PRIMUS AND TOOL TOURED TOGETHER AROUND 2015. DID YOU GUYS SEE EACH OTHER A LOT IN THAT SITUATION?
CLAYPOOL There was a lot of spooning going on. We did some spooning.
KEENAN Or forking, as it were. Don't leave out the fork. The hard part of being out with these bands is that I like to have a little glass of wine, but I can't really do it day of show or before the show, or even the night before. If I know I have a couple days off, I might have something two nights before. I really have to pay attention to that. So it's a little frustrating being out with them. He and I are both making wine, wanting to have wine every night. But I just can't. So you're looking forward to those double-days off so you can actually have a little glass.
CLAYPOOL I have wine every night. [Laughs] Not before the show. I've had wine before a show and it just slows me down. I can't do shit. After the show, I have a little splash of Pinot. Ah, it's so good.
KEENAN Yeah, I agree. A little glass right after the show is fine, but I can't go, "Hey, we're gonna try a bunch of bottles and order some big piles of food." I can't do it on a school night.
I'VE SEEN, MANY TIMES, PERRY FARRELL FROM JANE'S ADDICTION DRINKING WINE FROM THE BOTTLE ONSTAGE.
CLAYPOOL That's cranberry juice.
KEENAN That's Perry. He's right there behind Keith Richards with, "How the fuck is that guy still walking?"
CLAYPOOL I remember going to Monsters of Rock back in the day at the Day on the Green [in Oakland, California], and there's Aerosmith up there chugging bottles of Jack Daniel's onstage. I don't know if that was Jack Daniel's, but it sure was impressive to the 14-year-old kids standing out there in the throngs of people. But if I have a glass of wine before a gig, you're going to get a shitty gig, I'll tell you that. Or if I have a steak before a gig, it's terrible. It's just a lethargic boring-ass gig.
AFTER GROWING UP WATCHING PEOPLE LIKE KEITH RICHARDS IN ACTION, WAS THE ACTUAL REALITY OF BEING A BAND ON THE ROAD WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE LIKE?
KEENAN The "get in the van" phase was the honeymoon phase of touring. I'm very much a homebody, so it is really tough for me to be away from my house. Like everything, there's things that were, Oh, I expected that — and a lot more that I didn't expect. I'm finding now that I've kind of found my groove. Going out and doing theaters with Puscifer and doing large arenas with TOOL, my day doesn't change much — [in terms of] what I have to do to prep for a tour.
There's just things I've got to do to make sure at this age that can happen. But when you're in that van, you just seem invincible. You seem like you can do what-ever you want, and you can still pull off the show. That changed quickly.
CLAYPOOL [Laughs] We were young and full of beans back then. Some of the funnest times I've had in my life were in the Odor Home, pulling a trailer after shows. Ler and I would sit up front with a beatbox between us and headphones listening to Pink Floyd stoned out of our minds. And we loved it. The early days going up the hill, it's so glorious. It's so fun. And then you see behind the scenes at Disneyland, so to speak. And it becomes less of that thing, but it becomes a different thing.
Now that we're 60, I find different things to enjoy about it. I remember my father saying when I was young, "Hey, this music thing's great, but learn a trade." I come from a long line of auto mechanics, and I've had a lot of trades and I've had a lot of really cool jobs. This is still the best fucking job I've ever had. It's amazing. But as you move through life, when it doesn't seem as shiny as it did at a certain point, you have to find new shiny elements within that. And one is doing this Triple P tour or the Sessanta. If it's exciting for us, it's going to translate to the audience.
THE IDEA OF HAVING MULTIPLE BANDS ONSTAGE THE WHOLE SHOW, WAS THAT JUST A CRAZY DREAM YOU HAD, MAYNARD?
KEENAN [In 2014] I wanted to do a big thing for my 50th birthday in L.A. with some L.A.-based bands. But I forgot that people have hang-ups and there's ego involved. I reached out to several bands to go, "Hey, let's do this thing," and I got one response from one of the bands and he went, "Why the fuck would you want to do that?" And I'm like, oh, OK. I guess I'll do this with A Perfect Circle, Failure and Puscifer — bands that wanted to do it. I don't know why the hell I wanted to do it, but it just felt like a thing to do.
FOR BOTH OF YOU, IMPROV IS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS. HOW DOES SHARING A STAGE WITH ALL THESE CREATIVE PEOPLE LEAD TO THINGS THAT WOULDN'T OTHERWISE HAPPEN?
KEENAN You're just kind of living in that moment. Those things are happening in real time, and you can't force them. It's no fun to force it. So if it happens, it happens. And if it does happen, then it's probably going to be a pretty cool thing.
CLAYPOOL When we did the thing with Ween, we rehearsed the shit out of that thing. And yet there were still all these moments of spontaneity that were the magic golden nuggets. You're not going to get those every night. The planets are going to align some nights and some nights they aren't. But the talent that's in this one space at this one time is so strong that there's a huge safety net, so that even if we're all having a shitty day and we've all got fricking explosive diarrhea, there's a strong safety net there to be an amazing show.
KEENAN That's why I bring this group of people together because they are open to the spontaneity. They're not this rigid, "This is how I do the song and I have to be up front, or I have to be here." All that rigid shit just doesn't work with it. I have a lot of friends that are in incredible bands, but many of them — God bless 'em — they're rigid. They wouldn't be able to do this thing. So, the spontaneity is built in with this group of people.
YOU EXPRESS A LITTLE BIT OF ALARM AT THE NUMBER 60. BUT THERE'S ARTISTS THAT YOU GREW UP LISTENING TO, LIKE THE ROLLING STONES, NOW WORKING INTO THEIR 80S. HOW DOES THAT FACTOR IN YOUR FUTURE?
KEENAN My father right now is in Helsinki. He's 85. He still cross-country skis competitively over there. It's inspiring to see the Rolling Stones out there still doing it, but it's more inspiring to see my dad getting on a plane and going to Helsinki to ski. That to me is more of an inspiration than Keith Richards getting transfusions.
CLAYPOOL When all is said and done, I'm a fucking bass player. I've been very fortunate to play with some amazing players and one of them being [Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist] Bernie Worrell. He was one of the most amazing musicians I've ever played with and befriended. He just had all this magic and experience — all this salt, I would say — that came out of his fingers on everything that he played. I see these guys, whether it's someone like Bernie or [the Grateful Dead's] Bob Weir, these guys that just go and go and go and they do what they do every day because they love it. I'm going to go do a gig as long as I can go do a gig, just because that's what I'm best at. And it pays the old mortgage.
AFTER THE CELEBRATION OF SESSANTA, WHAT PLANS DO YOU HAVE ON THE HORIZON?
KEENAN I've got three bands that need to write songs, so I'm going to be doing that. But I'm also expanding out in Arizona, opening up a fried chicken place in Cottonwood. When it comes to winemaking and growing our own grapes, we're planting vineyards and strapping in for four or five years of waiting to see what's going to happen there. That's the one that takes the most planning and patience. But other than that, the path is kind of laid out for you. Like Les said, he's a bass player. I'm a singer, I've got to write songs. That's what I do. So the next year and a half to me is writing songs I've got to write.
Photo Assistant: Baby Z; Makeup by Angelina Butera; Props by Jessica Heit
