INTERVIEW: ART ALEXAKIS (EVERCLEAR)

Everclear is returning to House of Blues Cleveland on September 11, 2013! One of the kings of FM radio in the 90s, Art Alexakis & CO, was an unassuming soundtrack to this writer’s formative years. I played the hell out of their 1997 LP, ‘So Much for the Afterglow.’ As a rich kid from a two-parent home in an almost all-white suburb, hit songs from the record such as “Father of Mine” and “I Will Buy You a New Life” still resonated with me; if nothing else, as a way for me to realize how fortunate I am and empathize with folks with more challenging lots in life.

When that record came out, I was 14 years old. I was an aspiring music journalist, and if somebody had told me that I would one day interview frontman Art Alexakis, I would have known that I would live out my dream.

And it happened! No, Art isn’t the most famous person I have interviewed, but one of the most meaningful to me. Here we are in 2023, 26 years after the album I cherished so much was released, and Everclear is still selling out clubs across the country. Impressive.

Alexakis has been leading the band for far longer than that, but never imagined he would still be doing this today.

” I didn’t think when I’m a 60 that I was going to still be playing in Everclear. I would’ve said that’s not going to happen. I probably won’t make it through my 40s, but life happens, man, and I love doing it, and people want me to do it,” Alexakis told CleveRock in a recent phone interview. “I make a decent living. My boys make a decent living. We all own houses, and no one has a day job, so why wouldn’t we want to do this? I’d say 20% or more, depending on the show, are kids young enough that they weren’t even born when we were making records back in the day, or young enough to be in diapers or something. Their love of the band is no less valid than anyone who’s been following us for 30 to 40 years that grew up with us back in the day. It’s just as valid and visceral. And these kids know all the lyrics to all the songs, not just the hits, and they’re just in it, man. It’s kind of hard to not be overtaken by that kind of enthusiasm. It’s contagious, for sure.”

One awesome thing about bands that reigned supreme in the 90s that are still on the road today is that OG fans are now bringing their young adult children to the shows. It’s so fun to see the connection that children have to the music their parents grew up on; enjoying it equally. It’s a band that can’t me matched!

“That is the case a lot of the time, and that’s always fun. And a lot of these kids, I’ve known their parents, their parents have been coming to show since they were kids, and now they’re bringing their kids out, and we’re still going. And it wasn’t like that when we were younger,” Alexakis confirmed. “I’m in my 60s. But even when you were a kid, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like this generational thing for rock and roll, and maybe it was for the Beatles and Stones and supergroups like that. But as a rule, you didn’t see that whole generational divide at rock shows back in the 90s. You do see it now and it’s really great, but what’s interesting, a lot of the kids who are coming to the shows are not being turned down by their parents or their uncles or siblings, uncles, aunts or whatever family or even family friends. They’re just looking for rock and roll, and they’re not finding it. That’s what they’re telling me. A large percentage of them are just drawn to the 90s. It’s 90s rock, and then they start going through 90s rock, listening to different bands, and finding the ones they like. And a lot of them were clinging on to Everclear. I think because of the lyrical content, I think it connects with a lot of them.”

Indeed, Art. The 90s were a special time for music! But why is is that so much timeless alt-rock was put out during that decade?

“Well, my take on it is that all of us that were in bands in the 90s, we all grew up in the seventies with the late 60s and 70s and early 80s with some of the best rock and roll music ever made. Zeppelin, Aerosmith, punk rock, Sex Pistols, Clash, X, New Wave, hip-hop, Jane’s Addiction, Pixies, The Replacements. I think we bridged a lot of that as adolescents, which inspired us,” Alexakis said. “I grew up poor, so I wasn’t able to buy records all the time. For me to buy a record, I had to save money, and it was a big deal. So I think that that’s what made 90s music what it is. And there’s so much diversity. Listen to the big bands in the 90s, from Nirvana to Sound Garden to Everclear to Eve 6; there are so many bands that all had a different twist and a different take on it and different sounding voices. And I think that really appeals to a lot of people today. Like I said, there’s not a lot of disingenuous affectation going on there that I think with a lot of 90s rock”

As mentioned at the outside, one didn’t have to have the same upbringing that Alexakis sings about in his songs. Not just the aforementioned songs from ‘So Much for the Afterglow,’ but their hit single from 2000, “Wonderful.” Music makes us all the same.

“You don’t have to be a poor kid from the projects to like music by a poor kid from the projects,” he simplified. “The things that I think you were drawn to are honesty and grittiness. I think there’s not a lot of pretentiousness or precociousness about my music, about me as a person, or even about my band. And some people don’t like that. Some people want the show, they want people to be prepared in life. That’s cool. I get that. Not my thing. And I think a lot of the younger fans that are being drawn to us are drawn to us because it is real and genuine. There’s not a lot of pro tools, not a lot of autotune. We don’t do that. We play without a net man. You get what you get.”

The music business landscape has changed drastically in recent years. When Everclear was getting off the ground, the internet didn’t even exist. Let that sink in. Social media outlets and streaming were nothing but science fiction. Radio, strong public relations teams, magazines, word of mouth, and killer live shows is how fans were exposed to new music. Art was asked if he would rather have come up in the simpler times or have all the technology that exists today at his disposal.

“I wouldn’t change a thing about my life,” he responded. ” I’m not saying this to be obtuse in any way, shape or form, but I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. I love where I’m at now and this isn’t a science fiction movie. Everything happens for a reason. But I enjoyed coming up when we came up because it was like the golden age of the last gaso of the golden age of the record label hierarchy. When money was still shooting out of the ground, I had successful records. I called the president of the label and just say, ‘Hey man, can I get an advance of 400 grand to buy my ex-wife a house?’ It was in my account in two days. Are you kidding me? Those days are over, man. It was really special to have Platinum Records to achieve that. That’s not a thing anymore. Now it’s a different world. I wouldn’t change the world. I’m very happy with the way we came up.”

Finally, with a career that spans three decades, it’s easy for a band to jaded. Everclear remains passionate about their catalog and continue to write and perform new music. How does Art maintain that momentum?

“My songs are not the kind of songs that you can kind of phone in,” he said. “They’re the lyrics. I have to really to play ‘Father of Mine.’ I have to really connect to where I was at when I wrote that song and that character that’s in that song, even though it was me at a younger age, I have to really be present and tapped into that and look in people’s eyes when I sing it. And that’s how I think I keep from phoning it in because our fans are so if you go to a show, you listen to the album, you can hear ’em singing in almost every song. And that’s indicative of, I think, what our fans are like. We’re not the biggest; we’ve never been the biggest band in the world knowing any operations for it, but we have a really great fan base that really keeps things exciting for us, and in turn, we try to make it exciting for them as well.”