For the past year or so, Everclear has been taking a 30th anniversary lap that included a special remastered deluxe edition of World of Noise, the band’s 1993 full-length debut.
A subsequent tour with ‘90s peers Fastball and The Nixons ensued and before long, the last date wound up in founding member Art Alexakis’ L.A. backyard at the famous Whiskey a Go Go. Right about that time, a friend from Alexakis’ Capitol Records day approached him about recording a new studio album and when the frontman immediately declined, the second option was cutting a live album at this storied Sunset Boulevard venue. The sexagenarian was immediately intrigued.
“I grew up in L.A. but we never played there,” Alexakis explained. “My buddy asked if I thought about doing a live album since we were playing the Whiskey and he said they had a good set-up for recording. I did agree with him about the quality of their gear and I said it wasn’t a horrible idea. It just sounded like a great idea. And I liked the idea of recording one show. If it sucked, I just wasn’t going to give it to him and say we weren’t going to release that album. I paid for the recording, so it’s nice to have that kind of freedom, right?”
And this was how the recently released “Live at the Whiskey A Go Go” was spawned. This 15-song collection also includes a pair of new studio recordings, “Year of the Tiger” and “Sing Away.” And rather than this becoming a standard, greatest hits live album, Alexakis and his mates threw in a few surprises while spanning the band’s canon.
Casual fans will undoubtedly eat up killer readings of hits ranging from “Father of Mine,” “Santa Monica,” and “I Will Buy You a New Life” to “So Much For the Afterglow.”
But diehards will also get their fill via a pair of songs off World of Noise (“Nervous and Weird,” “Fire Maple Song”) along with a cut off the 1996 soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (“Local God”) and a Vaselines cover made famous by Nirvana (“Molly’s Lips”). Best of all, is how is unvarnished and imperfect this release is, a point of pride for Alexakis.
“There were things that didn’t work,” he pointed out. “Freddy [Herrera’s] bass rig didn’t work, so he had to go direct. My guitar tech’s earphones didn’t work, so he had to be on monitors. It wasn’t perfect, but you know what? We’re a rock band. We don’t whine about stuff. That sucks, moving on. We made the record. I thought it came out pretty great. It’s raw. It’s a little sloppy, but you hear the vocals good. There are a few out-of-tune notes here and there. It’s not heavily Pro-Tooled or tuned at all. It sounds like a rock and roll record.”
Even though Everclear’s early music has plenty of punk and grunge overtones, Alexakis is a bit of a throwback whose tastes in live albums run from The Who’s Live at Leeds and Kiss Alive I & II to Rush’s All The World’s a Stage and Cheap Trick’s recently released Live at the Whisky 1977. With three decades under his belt, the California native is unapologetic about his old-school mentality and what people can expect from his band both on stage and in the studio.
“If you’ve never seen Everclear before, live, we’ve never sounded like our pop hits,” he said. “I never thought studio and live were supposed to be the same thing. They’re supposed to have their flavor to it.”
At the age of 62 and having celebrated his band’s 30th anniversary, Alexakis is slowing down but is far from ready to quit, despite getting diagnosed with multiple sclerosis back in 2019 and grappling with a 2021 case of COVID-19 that had him in the hospital for two months. Early 2024 saw him going Down Under for a solo Australian tour. Since returning, he’s been more than content to continue hitting the studio and recently reissued 2000’s Songs From An American Movie Vol. 1 on vinyl for the first time.
“At this point in my life, I’m just stoked to still be making records and going out on tour,” he said. “I still want to make songs a couple of times a year and put them out for the fans—maybe do an EP with a couple of covers every year. Put some vinyl out. That sounds like fun right?”
Everclear will be performing on Oct. 6 with Marcy Playground and Jimmie’s Chicken Shack at The Paramount,370 New York Ave., Huntington. For more information, visit www.theparamountny.com or call 631-673-7300.
