The lineup will include Keenan's bands A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, as well as Les Claypool-led Primus. But there’s a catch. Although the three bands will be playing individual sets, they will be exchanging musicians throughout the night’s performances. The idea was based on a one-off show in Los Angeles the bands played together a decade ago called Cinquanta, in celebration of Keenan’s 50th birthday.
Fans of the bands will be delighted to know that Sessanta has also announced the release of an accompanying EP titled E.P.P.P. with contributions from the bands in the form of three new songs co-written by Keenan. When putting Sessanta together for his birthday celebration, Keenan may have had something particular in mind.
“I’ve worked with some amazing people,” Keenan says. “It’s really important to pick people that understand the nature of creation and can think outside the box. With Sessanta, it’s more like a circus.”
If anyone knows how to put a band together, it’s Maynard James Keenan. The Tool frontman has collaborated with some of the biggest names in the canon of modern rock through his various projects and three-decade-long career. The new Sessanta EP features Billy Howerdel, Josh Freese and Les Claypool among others, all contributing in co-writership with Keenan.
“It’s just fun to share it when you have someone like Les Claypool,” Keenan says. “It’s nice to see them, the light in their eyes, and it kind of refreshes the way they go about making their own music. It opens up a creative flow.”
The work ethic and musical output of Keenan’s inquisitive mind has become the stuff of legend. Besides actively fronting three different bands, the musician pursues everything — at least, owning and operating his own vineyard, achieving black-belt status in his study of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and opening his own martial arts school. Most recently, we learned that Keenan would be helping train former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson at Keenan’s academy in preparation for Tyson’s upcoming match against Jake Paul at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
“Jiu-Jitsu is puzzle solving,” says Keenan. “The journey from white belt to black belt is about controlling yourself, not others. It’s about self-control, self-awareness and puzzle-solving.”
Just a couple of months after completing a tour with Tool, during which the group completely packed the American Airlines Center from top to bottom, Keenan is back at it. He has the ability to switch musical gears at a moment’s notice, making him possibly one of the most prolific thinkers and doers in modern rock. As technology drastically changes how concertgoers experience live shows, Keenan is also a passionate advocate of keeping musical experiences strictly in the moment, banning the use of smartphones from recording his band's concerts.
Maynard Still Wants To Smash Your Phone
“The narcissism and selfish nature of the phone ... ” Keenan says. “People forget that there is someone behind them and it’s just rude. Also, you’re missing something by fucking with your phone. It’s no different than a play or an opera. I don’t hate phones, there’s just some places that they are inappropriate.”Although many would argue that the convergence of music and technology over the past two decades has been a good thing, advances in technology have made music almost free for fans, greatly hindering record sales. Like many musicians in his position, Keenan fears the homogenization of music through low-cost streaming services may be contributing to changing the way music is being made now and for years to come.
“I think changes occur in time, and the pendulum swings back and forth,” Keenan says. “But it almost feels like music has no value now, so people aren’t making the effort they once were to make great music. The nature of everything now is coupons, a small fee and you get all the songs. But, if there’s no way to make a living making a song, I feel that people aren’t going to be able to make music like they once did.”
Regardless of how people listen to music and at what cost, for the most part, Keenan’s thoughts remain central to his craft and artistic inspiration.
“There are so many nuances and subtle details in art,” Keenan says. “Art is very subjective, and I’d argue Andy Kaufman was pure art, he was just completely immersed. Just as art is subjective, people are subjective too.”
For Keenan, experimenting with emerging art forms has always the dominant focus of his musical career. Starting off in the heyday of hair metal bands of the Sunset Strip, Keenan hung out and performed at the infamous alternative clubs Raji’s and Scream in Los Angeles, along with other heavy alternative contemporaries such as Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More.
The clubs were well known for hosting industrial and goth bands and catered to the latest in experimental music, helping set the stage for these new forms of music to eventually topple the cartoonish glam of the Sunset Strip bands in the early 1990s on MTV and commercial radio.
“That’s where you would play, a handful of names in LA, if you were not a Sunset Strip band,” Keenan says. “For the most part, the punk rockers took it over. It wasn’t hair metal, it was going back to the garage sound, and I think you just wound up there. Back then, everything was new, and you didn’t know what to expect. The fun part was watching those bands succeed and do things differently.”
For Keenan, watching his friends and fellow musicians succeed may be at the root of what Sessanta is all about, and what he’s been about since starting out all those years ago. For one night in Dallas, A Perfect Circle, Puscifer and Primus will come together, share the stage and celebrate what may be considered an apex of musicians enjoying each other’s decades-long careers.
“I want to make sure people show up on time for the show because there is not an opener,” Keenan says. “Be in your seat, ready to go.”
Sessanta may be more than a birthday tour and a new EP. It may be considered a well-earned complex pleasure for these musicians and their tireless leader.
“Art finds a way because it needs to,” Keenan says. “In the future it may not happen in the form of music, but it will find a way if there’s friction. Take a violin, take the bending of the wood creating the body, the tight hairs of the bow. Drag it across the strings. This creates more tension. Art comes out as the release, everything else has a lot of tension. The friction, that’s life and art is the pointing out or celebrating that friction.”
