Maynard James Keenan's 60th birthday is coming up on April 17th, and damned if the TOOL, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer singer isn't ready to celebrate with his friends.
As previously announced, the soon-to-be-sexagenarian is taking two of his musical projects, APC and Puscifer, out on the road — accompanied by his long-time pals in Primus — for the Sessanta tour. The uniquely collaborative trek will find all three bands Frankenstein-ing themselves and their catalogs onstage into thrilling new configurations.
Better yet, they'll also be performing a trifecta of fresh songs — all co-written by Keenan — that make up the bite-sized, but conceptually ambitious Sessanta E.P.P.P., which is available digitally now and for pre-order on vinyl here.
"Along with the guidance of [Puscifer guitarist-producer] Mat Mitchell, I had been navigating my way through the daunting gauntlet known as Logic Pro," Keenan tells Revolver of the origins of the EP. "Refusing myself my morning coffee until I had at least captured a new rhythm track or piano melody, I managed to fill a folder of so-called napkin sketches. Rather than just let them collect dust, I approached each project with the idea of seeing one of the sketches through to completion. One for each band. And here we are. Mission accomplished."
In addition to guiding Keenan through Logic Pro and helping him bring his "napkin sketches" to life, Mitchell has also been key in sorting out the logistics of running Sessanta's APC-Primus-Puscifer onstage jam sessions.
Speaking with Revolver, Mitchell explained how Keenan's two-night Cinquanta celebration from 2014 — audio of which was recently pressed onto vinyl — naturally paved the way for Sessanta, how the three-way collaboration came through, and how you'd be best to show up early and expect the unexpected from this spring's most mutated traveling sideshow.
HOW DID THE IDEA OF THE SESSANTA TOUR FIRST COME ABOUT?
For Maynard's 50th birthday, he wanted to do something. He kind of came up with the idea and we did a very similar thing. It was just an L.A. event over the course of two nights called Cinquanta. So he's kind of wanted to do this as a touring thing, and he saw the 60th as an opportunity to turn it into more of a touring event.
So, we wanted it to be just him and his friends playing songs. It was kind of his idea to begin with. Then we just figured out how to turn that into a realistic kind of performance.
HAS SESSANTA BEEN A CHALLENGING AFFAIR TO PUT TOGETHER, IN TERMS OF ALL THE MOVING PARTS?
It was, yeah. It definitely was. Just locking in the very basic [stuff]: scheduling songs so that we end on time and so that we don't run 30, 40, 50 hours late. Some of these venues are outside, so they have curfews. [You're] just making sure that everyone stays on schedule, and that side of things.
Then from a technical point, it's more like an award show and less like a concert. It's just some rethinking of how we deal with inputs, and how we deal with outputs, and having everyone live.
Being able to get to anyone's channels all the time was a bit of a challenge, just technically how to build that. But having done that for his 50th, we had kind of worked through some of those challenges, so we kind of knew what worked, what things we wanted to do a little differently. It was a little easier this go.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN DIFFERENCES THAT AUDIENCES WILL BE ABLE TO PERCEIVE BETWEEN SESSANTA AND CINQUANTA?
Well, we had Failure on that one and this one [has] Primus. The guests will all be different. The production's very different. [Cinquanta] was a different scale, different size venues. This one's a lot more epic, a lot more substantial. Bigger venues. Just the fact that we're touring... gives us the opportunity to have different guests and things like that. If not night-to-night, at least region-to-region.
AS FOR THE GUESTS, SHOULD FANS EXPECT MUSICIANS OR COULD IT BE ANYBODY?
I learned very early on in working with Maynard to not have expectations, [except] to expect anything.
BETWEEN THE THREE BANDS, HOW MUCH REHEARSAL HAS BEEN GOING ON AHEAD OF TIME? OR ARE YOU GUYS JUST IMPROVISING ON THE FIRST NIGHT?
No, it's a pretty substantial rehearsal period, both for the bands to figure out what they're doing, but also to figure out how we integrate [with] each other in songs that might have guest players.
Then also, from a technical point of view, just giving the audio team and the lighting team enough runway to be able to work through any sort of issues. Really feel comfortable with what is kind happening before there's a crowd involved.
ARE PUSCIFER PLANNING TO PLAY SOME SONGS THAT YOU GUYS DON'T USUALLY PULL OUT?
Well, typically when Puscifer tours, it's really heavy on whatever the current record is, and then we'll sprinkle in some older things.
At this point, the catalog's big enough that there's stuff that just hasn't been played in a long time. So, we'll definitely be dragging some of those out — some old favorites. There's [the] new stuff that's going to be happening. Then [it's] seeing where it's appropriate for one of us, or a few of us, to play with other people, and vice versa.
WHAT'S THE ELEMENT OF THE PERFORMANCE THAT YOU'RE MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?
I love the fact that it's not one band, and then another band, and then another band. That's what we do all the time. It's kind of isolating because everyone's kind of hanging out in their dressing rooms, and then they go out and they play their show, and [then] you're hanging out in your dressing room while they're playing so that you're rested.
This is a lot more of a celebratory... there's going to be spaces for us to hang out when we're not performing, so we don't even have to leave [the stage]. We can just kind of hang there. I think it'll be a lot more like one big group of people, instead of two or three separate kind of entities.
WHAT'S SOMETHING YOU WANT PEOPLE TO HAVE IN MIND BEFORE THEY COME TO THESE SHOWS?
Be there early. Be on time. Don't expect to show up late and skip the stuff you don't want [to see] because you're going to be missing stuff.
Leave expectations at the door and have fun. It's a celebration and we're going to be having fun. We hope that everyone will do the same.
SINCE THE TOUR IS A CELEBRATION OF MAYNARD'S 60TH, WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE MAYNARD-RELATED MEMORY FROM OVER THE YEARS?
Oh, boy.
One time we were on tour and there were issues with hotels and such. There were some crew people that ended up not having rooms, [so] we decided to basically have a sleepover — [or] a camp out.
A few of us slept on one of the buses in a field out by a festival ground. There was a grocery store nearby, so we went and stocked up. Then [we] made some food, watched some movies, and kind of had a camp-out, making the best of it. That was a recent fun night.
MAYNARD WAS INTEGRAL TO HOW THAT WENT DOWN?
Yeah. He made fresh bruschetta, and he got some nice cheese. It was fun.
For more Sessanta coverage, pick up Revolver's new Spring Issue featuring Maynard James Keenan on the cover, in conversation with Les Claypool. Order yours here.
