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This Week's Issue. Do Not Sell My Info. All rights reserved. A Perfect Circle last released an album in , and that hardly counted — it was an album of mostly covers. But Puscifer has bucked the snail's pace associated with Keenan's other projects. The band has released two albums and four EPs since and is gearing up to release its third, Money Shot , on October Once the lights are ready, he goes into the back office once again and re-emerges wearing what he calls his "merkin.
As the shutter starts snapping and the subsequent banter ensues, holding a shovel like a baseball bat, he quietly asks the photographer if he has a lens that will make him look like Johnny Depp. He laughs. It's only partially accurate. After all, as a frontman whose job requires he perform before of tens of thousands of people dozens of nights each year, he repeatedly finds himself the center of attention.
In reality, Keenan really only hates talking about Tool. The impression that he's angrily aloof probably stems from the fact that as Los Angeles-based Tool rose to a star-studded echelon in the music industry, Keenan notoriously would perform from the side of the stage, hidden in the background, as his bandmates occupied the stage space normally reserved for the lead singer. Keenan very much dislikes interview questions about Tool these days partially because lawsuits and a nondisclosure agreement have prevented him from fully addressing the band's long-delayed follow-up to 's 10, Days.
It probably didn't help also that in , he ditched L. But as much as Keenan might have wished to lay low, in his 20 years as an Arizonan, he has left his imprint on the area he calls home. Only about people live in Jerome, a former copper-mining town nestled into the Black Hills. The town stacks on a series of switchback roads, with a small central space offering a "haunted" hotel and typical mountain-town fare, like candy stores and souvenir shops hawking colorful stones and shot glasses.
But on any given weekend, and even some weekdays, the two blocks or so that could be considered Jerome's "downtown" bustle with tourists. The main attraction isn't just quaint mountain kitsch but wine. The Verde Valley has a burgeoning wine industry, and Keenan's fingerprints are everywhere. Spend a weekend wine-tasting there and it seems every brand-new winery is either owned or staffed by former employees of one of Keenan's various wine properties.
Two prominently placed stores in old-town Jerome bear the fruits of Keenan's labor. The first is Puscifer the Store, a spacious gift shop selling all sorts of Puscifer-branded merchandise, from T-shirts to signed albums to jewelry shaped in the band's logo. There are even a few hairdressers operating in the shop's downstairs level, coyly named "Barbifer. On a recent Saturday evening, two Caduceus wine experts field questions from wine drinkers and pour tiny tasters of the current stock.
Keenan's celebrity is milked for maximum effect. Digital picture frames display a slideshow of photos of the wine-making process, many starring the owner. Puscifer's second album, Conditions of My Parole , plays in the background. Keenan's music doesn't make up the entirety of the playlist, which an employee behind the counter says the boss curated himself, but it's still very present.
Employees used to be able to play their own music, until Keenan walked in once and heard a Robin Thicke song playing over the speakers. He banned all other iPods but his on the spot. It's a fairly busy night, and when prompted, an employee conducts an informal survey by shouting over the din — how many people in the tasting room have seen a Tool concert? People turn their heads, and most raise their hands. Ten of the 16 customers had seen Tool perform, and two more had seen A Perfect Circle.
Keenan might be focused on wine these days, but it's his music that keeps drawing people into his world. Though he spends most of his time absorbed with the day-to-day tasks of viniculture, his reputation as an artist precedes him.
Keenan is He planted his first vines in , and since then, his musical life has orbited around his wine making. However, just as grape harvest ends, it's time for Keenan to shift back into musical mode. Arizona is a good place to be a Maynard aficionado, to adopt the first-name familiarity the hardcore fans use.
Soon after, the band joined the Monster Mash lineup, scheduled to play two days later, November 1. Part of Tool's reputation and enormous success Grammys, four platinum albums, sold-out shows for decades stems from a fanatical devotion from the band's followers, who have chopped Tool's infamously limited output, which reaches back to , into bits and analyzed the tiny, at times unrecognizable, pieces.
There are some who blame Keenan's time-consuming wine ventures and forays with other bands as the reason for the lack of a Tool album. But as New Times learned from Keenan on a hot morning in Clarkdale, there no longer is any separation between the wine and the music.
Maynard seems to approach wine and music in a similar way. Maynard the vintner is Maynard the musician, and vice-versa. The photo shoot ends, and Keenan begins to talk about Money Shot. Except the conversation doesn't go there right away. Turns out, it's almost impossible to talk to Keenan about music without the topics of location and wine fermenting their way to the surface. For Keenan, wine making and music are two spirals on the same corkscrew. If it's a melody, how are we going to put the rhythms on that melody?
How do we tell the story around this thing? How do we make people believe that vines grow in the desert? It's the same approach. Just solving puzzles. Four Eight Wineworks is housed in a turn-of-the-century bank building in Clarkdale. When Keenan re-fitted the building to its current state, he kept many of the old touches. The original teller windows line one side of the wall, with wine bottles where there would have been deposit slips.
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