Everclear (band)
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- For the grain alcohol called Everclear, see Everclear (alcohol).
Template:Infobox band Everclear is a rock band formed in Portland, Oregon, USA, in 1992. For most of its existence, Everclear consisted of Art Alexakis (b. 12 April 1962, Los Angeles, California, USA; vocals, guitar), Craig Montoya (b. 14 September 1970; bass, vocals) and Greg Eklund (b. 18 April 1970; drums). Eklund replaced original drummer Scott Cuthbert in 1994. Montoya and Eklund departed the band in 2003, but Alexakis has continued performing as Everclear with a new lineup.
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Early years
Art Alexakis suffered through a troubled youth, beginning with his father walking out when Alexakis was a child. Financial hardships pushed his family into the slums of Los Angeles, where Alexakis fell to the lure of heavy drug use. During his teenage years, Alexakis was shuttled around the country between various family members (including a brief period in Houston living with his father's new family), but the drug addiction persisted. Eventually, Alexakis suffered a near-fatal cocaine overdose, which finally pushed him to clean up.
In the late 1980s, Alexakis played in a short-lived rock band in Los Angeles called Shakin' Brave, where he began to hone his songwriting skills. Frustrated by the inattention of the L.A. music scene, Art relocated to San Francisco, where he fell into the then-burgeoning cow-punk scene.
Art founded a label called Shindig Records, which attempted to document the SF cow-punk scene. He began recording material of his own for a solo album, but it eventually evolved into a group project called Colorfinger. While involved with Colorfinger, Art wrote several songs which would later become Everclear classics, including "The Twistinside", "Heartspark Dollarsign", and "Why I Don't Believe in God".
In a single month in 1992, Shindig failed (when its distributor went bankrupt), Colorfinger broke up, and Art learned that his girlfriend was pregnant. Seeking a change of location, Art and his girlfriend moved to her hometown, Portland, Oregon. There, he placed an ad in local music weekly The Rocket, which earned two responses: bass player Craig Montoya and drummer Scott Cuthbert.
The new band began recording in a friend's basement, essentially bartering for recording time with musical gear and whatever limited funds they could scrounge up. The sessions culminated in two releases: the Nervous and Weird EP and the band's first full-length release World of Noise, both released by Portland's Tim/Kerr Records in 1993. Frustrated by Tim/Kerr's limited resources, Alexakis hired independent promoters to help push the album. Eventually, it became obvious that Everclear needed to find a bigger player to help them reach their audience.
The Capitol years
Image:Everclear-Sparkle.jpgThe band spent much of 1994 seeking out a major label deal. After a modest bidding war, they were signed to Capitol Records by Gary Gersh, who was responsible for signing Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Counting Crows to DGC Records. Just prior to their signing, Everclear parted ways with drummer Cuthbert, citing personality conflicts, and brought in former Jollymon drummer Greg Eklund. In May of 1995, the band released their first album for the label, Sparkle and Fade.
Initially, the album didn't find an audience. First single "Heroin Girl" received some modest airplay via MTV's 120 Minutes, but was generally missed by the mainstream. However, near the end of 1995, second single "Santa Monica" found a strong audience via the burgeoning alternative radio format, which eventually carried over to mainstream success. The album subsequently was certified platinum. However, two ensuing singles, "Heartspark Dollarsign" and "You Make Me Feel Like a Whore", failed to find a wide audience, and the band ended 1996 fast at work on their third album.
As Sparkle and Fade reached its audience, Everclear had to endure consistent comparisons to Nirvana, particularly given the album's subject matter and drug references. Following a show with the Foo Fighters at the end of 1995, Dave Grohl told MTV News that he genuinely didn't think that Everclear sounded like Nirvana, noting that Bush sounded more like Nirvana than any other band.
Image:Everclear So Much for the Afterglow.jpgBy the end of 1996, the band had nearly completed the album, which they planned to release under the title Pure White Evil. Alexakis, however, was dissatisfied with the results, and decided to work on more songs for the effort, including "One Hit Wonder" and the eventual title-track to the album, So Much for the Afterglow.
So Much for the Afterglow was released in October of 1997. The first two singles from the album, "Everything to Everyone" and "I Will Buy You a New Life" performed modestly, but helped begin a slow build for the album. The band completed a US tour at the end of the year, and started 1998 with a tour of Australia.
The Australian tour, however, was an unexpected disaster. At a show in Wollongong, someone threw a shoe at Alexakis, knocking loose a few of his teeth. Two nights later in Melbourne, someone threw a lit explosive on stage, which exploded and burned a stagehand. Tensions erupted backstage, with touring guitarist Steve Birch refusing to continue, and Montoya getting into a heated argument with Alexakis. In interviews for VH-1's Behind the Music, the band related that they nearly broke up that night. The band decided to cancel the remainder of their tour following a final show in Gold Coast, during which Alexakis was hit with a shoe (while the crowd was singing him "Happy Birthday") and Montoya's acoustic bass guitar was stolen. Montoya declined to join the band for the ensuing tour of the United Kingdom, with then-bass-tech David LoPrinzi filling in.
Following an extensive tour of the United States with Marcy Playground and Fastball, the band released Afterglow's third single, "Father of Mine". The song catapulted the album and the band to mainstream success. The song's autobiographical tale of a child coping from an abandoning father was easily related to amongst a nation of those experiencing the same loss.
Afterglow provided the band their only Grammy nomination to date, a Best Rock Instrumental nod in 1998 for "El Distorto de Melodica". Later that year, the band won Billboard's Modern Rock Band of the Year Award. Though Afterglow never charted higher than #33 on the Billboard album chart, the album reached double-platinum status at the end of the year.
Image:EverclearLearningHowToSmile.jpgFollowing the success of So Much for the Afterglow, Alexakis decided to step back from the Everclear sound and record a solo album of more pop-influenced songs, and brought in Everclear touring musicians David LoPrinzi, Brian Lehfeldt, and James Beaton to perform on the recordings. Unhappy with the results of the initial sessions, Alexakis decided to bring in Montoya and Eklund and transform the effort into an Everclear album. The results were released as Songs from an American Movie, Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile in July of 2000. The album yielded the band's most successful single, "Wonderful", and eventually reached platinum status.
Rather than tour for the release, the band arranged with their label to release a second album in 2000. Alexakis believed he had enough of a catalog of unreleased songs at the ready, and was eager to show the opposing sides of Everclear's sound. However, delays in the mixing process of Learning How to Smile had pushed its initial April release to July, limiting the amount of recording time for the follow-up in order to meet Capitol's demands of an end-of-the-year release.
Proclaimed as a "return to rock", Songs from an American Movie, Vol. 2: Good Time for a Bad Attitude was released just four months after Vol. 1 in November of 2000. Unfortunately, the promotional push for Vol. 2 while still in the throes of supporting Vol 1 confused much of the music-buying public. Learning How to Smile's second single "AM Radio" was released barely weeks before the release of Vol. 2, leaving some stores to mistakenly label the song as the first single from Vol. 2. The confusion was amplified by the band's decision to accept an opening slot for matchbox twenty in the months after the release of Vol. 2, a somewhat awkward billing for a band who was trying to support a hard rock album.
By the late spring of 2001, both albums had stalled. Capitol attempted a final push by re-releasing Learning How to Smile with "Out of My Depth" and "Rock Star" from Good Time for a Bad Attitude as bonus tracks. A cover of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" received some modest airplay as a result, but couldn't help revive the momentum. A tour of the United Kingdom for what would have been the band's first extensive tour of the country since 1998 was cancelled shortly before its start.
That summer, the band decided to license "Rock Star" to the movie of the same name. Fortune seemed to finally be turning around for the band, as the promotional push behind the movie helped the song find an audience at radio and VH-1. However, the push ended following the events of September 11th.
The band regrouped a year later to record their sixth album, Slow Motion Daydream, released in March of 2003. Both band and label were excited about the effort prior to its release. Everything looked positive until Alexakis and Capitol came to odds over the album's first single. Capitol was thrilled about one of the last songs added to the album, a somewhat 9/11-influenced "The New York Times". Alexakis, however, had previewed a tongue-in-cheek ode to Republican suburbanite housewives, "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom", during a solo tour in 2002, and had received a fair amount of media attention. Capitol eventually relented to Alexakis' demands and released the song and video, but didn't put much effort into the song and album's promotion. "The New York Times" was released shortly thereafter as the second single with even less support from the label, and the album stalled after selling a mere 100,000 copies.
At the end of the tour support for Slow Motion Daydream in August of 2003, Montoya and Eklund decided that it was time to move on, and departed the band to pursue other interests. The following summer, Everclear ended its relationship with Capitol Records. Capitol compiled a Greatest Hits album reflecting the band's tenure at the label, titled Ten Years Gone: The Best of Everclear 1994-2004, which was released in October of 2004.
Montoya and Eklund post-Everclear
After leaving Everclear, Craig Montoya formed a new band Tri-Polar with Sweaty Nipples members Scotty Heard and Brian Lehfeldt. After completing the recording of their debut album, Scotty Heard left the band for personal reasons. Heard was then replaced by former Red Sector guitarist Kevin Hahn. The band's self-titled debut album was released on May 27, 2005. The band spent several months on hiatus in late 2005 and early 2006, but has announced plans to reform (along with former guitarist Scotty Heard) for shows this summer.
During the last couple of years in Everclear, Greg Eklund quietly recorded demos of his own material in his garage. In 2004, Eklund formed The Oohlas with his brother Mark and female vocalist Ollie Tamale. After self-releasing an EP of their first seven demos, the band entered the studio in late 2005 to record their debut album. The completed album will be released in August of 2006 on Stolen Transmission, an imprint of Island Records.
The new Everclear
After a solo tour in the fall of 2003, Alexakis decided to continue with Everclear, organizing a new band that made its debut in March of 2004. The new lineup consisted of bass player Sam Hudson, guitarist Dave French, and drummer Eric Bretl. In the summer of 2004, the band added keyboard player Josh Crawley, and swapped Bretl for former Everclear drum tech Brett Snyder. The new lineup released its first recording, a cover of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land", that summer. A self-released EP of performances recorded for XM Satellite Radio called Closure was given out at shows in the fall of 2004.
Free of a major label, Alexakis spent the ensuing year and a half slowly recording material for a new Everclear release. He admitted that the time after the breakup of the original lineup served as a "wake up call", during which he suffered his third divorce and a filing for bankruptcy. Alexakis announced the completion of the album in early 2006, tentatively titled Welcome to the Drama Club. The new band is still shopping for a label, but Alexakis hopes that the album will see release in the late spring. Songs on the release may include "Glorious", "Beautiful Dream", "Almost Instant Karma", and "Hater".
Discography
Studio albums
| Year | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1993 | World of Noise | Tim/Kerr |
| 1995 | Sparkle and Fade | Capitol |
| 1997 | So Much for the Afterglow | Capitol |
| 2000 | Songs from an American Movie, Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile | Capitol |
| 2000 | Songs from an American Movie, Vol. 2: Good Time for a Bad Attitude | Capitol |
| 2003 | Slow Motion Daydream | Capitol |
EPs
| Year | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1993 | Nervous and Weird | Tim/Kerr |
| 1997 | White Trash Hell | Fire |
Live and compilations
| Year | Title | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | Live from Toronto | Capitol |
| 2004 | Ten Years Gone: The Best of Everclear 1994-2004 | Capitol |
Singles (in chronological order)
- Nervous and Weird
- Fire Maple Song
- Heroin Girl
- Santa Monica
- Heartspark Dollarsign
- You Make Me Feel Like a Whore
- Everything to Everyone
- I Will Buy You a New Life
- So Much for the Afterglow (Australia)
- Father of Mine
- One Hit Wonder
- The Boys Are Back in Town
- Wonderful
- AM Radio
- When It All Goes Wrong Again
- Out of My Depth
- Brown Eyed Girl
- Rock Star
- Volvo Driving Soccer Mom
- The New York Times