EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Maynard James Keenan + Puscifer, Still Growing

It's every artist's dream to be connected to a successful band, one that tours the world, leaves a lasting commercial and cultural footprint and, if all goes well, becomes part of many different conversations related to the state and future of music.

Most artists can't imagine checking those boxes with two bands.

And there are even fewer who strive to do this with three bands.

Enter Maynard James Keenan.

"We're not really allowed to have three successful bands — A Perfect Circle comes out and scratches an itch on the heels of Tool dragging [their] feet," Keenan tells Loudwire Nights host Chuck Armstrong.

On the verge of releasing Puscifer's fifth studio album, Keenan seems aware of the absurdity of having three bands that have achieved the level of success each has.

"We sold out Red Rocks, which I didn't think that Puscifer would ever be able to bring that many people in," he admits.

"And we did. We did it with the Greek on the last tour and now with Red Rocks. Actually selling out Red Rocks, that means all three of my bands have sold out Red Rocks. That's not easy to do, right?"

Keenan recognizes that Red Rocks is a destination venue, but even so, he's proud of this reality.

"A band named Puscifer that has an album called V Is For Vagina? You've still got to sell the tickets."

The Unlikely Conception of Puscifer

Though the world got its first introduction to Puscifer courtesy of the debut episode of HBO's Mr. Show With Bob and David in 1995 — Keenan sings a hardcore song in support of David Cross' character Ronnie Dobbs — the band was already taking shape at the Hollywood club Tantrum.

"A friend of mine, Laura Milligan, had a variety show and a bunch of comedians were coming down to do this kind of sketch comedy thing, and it was really inspirational to me," Keenan recalls.

"These people are working it. Some of them are writers for SNL, they're doing their own standup, they're building sketch comedy variety shows and they're just kind of working out their material."

Keenan describes it like a jam session for writers and comics. Milligan had a recurring character in the show, Tawny Port, a former child actress who was back on the scene after going through rehab.

"This is her comeback, you know," he says.

"She was the host and she would have a theme every week...all these comedians getting up to do their thing, they kind of had to work the theme of the week, in an improv way, into their bits. It was pretty inspirational to watch these people do their work, especially when you saw them play at a club last week doing similar stuff."

Keenan listed several familiar names who would be part of the show, from David Cross and Bob Odenkirk to Brian Posehn and Janeane Garofalo. Soon-to-be stars such as Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell even showed up to do bits every now and again.

"That's where Puscifer first started."

In addition to the lineup, every week there was a running joke that Tawny Port's musician boyfriend, Vince, was supposed to close the show but he would never show up.

"Eventually I became Vince," Keenan shares.

"I would show up. Vince was like the chameleon. He would do whatever was new and fresh, like last week he was an improvisational hardcore band doing 30-second songs, taking suggestions from the audience for subject matter and then next week he was wearing flannel and untied boots because grunge was now on the scene."

Keenan wasn't alone in these antics. On the weeks he didn't close the show, Tenacious D would show up to wrap things up.

"That's where Puscifer first started."

More Uncharted Territory For a Technological ‘Grandpa’

Years later, Keenan is relatively surprised at the growth of a band such as Puscifer, though he doesn't spend much time pontificating on that growth. He stays focused on the task at hand, and currently, that's getting Puscifer's new album, Normal Isn't, out into the world and then hitting the road for a run of unforgettable shows that only he and his bandmates, Carina Round and Mat Mitchell, can conceive.

"We're just kind of following where it leads," he explains about the creative process for the band.

"And usually when the foundation is what it is, it's just fun. It's a process of discovery."

Five studio albums into their career — with even more remix and live records in that catalog — Keenan admits Puscifer don't have many, if any, guardrails in that process of discovery.

It’s something that isn’t merely an artistic thing for Keenan, but this sort of naked approach to creativity is something he sees less room for in today’s increasingly calculated music climate.

"I hope my daughter doesn't hear this, but she's into K-pop and I'm old enough to see that it's just a computer program," he says.

"It's just A.I. generating androgynous figures. There'll be a touring band to sell T-shirts, but they'll choose those people based on what the computer model looks like — and the music, that's not what we're doing. There's no offense to that, there's a lot of kids that get into that, and it's just not my cup of tea. I'm never going to be that."

Puscifer aren’t wired like that, as Keenan explains, because they have a different focus for their creativity. It’s not a dismissal of popular music so much as a line he draws between music as exploration and music as a product designed for scale.

"We're just literally exploring sounds and telling stories," he assesses.

"If you're trying to create a product that's going to be marketed at Walmart or at Starbucks over the sound system there, I guess that's a whole different game. That is not the game we're playing."

Keenan is able to play Puscifer's game a bit differently on Normal Isn't thanks to jumping into production more than he ever had before.

"It's just fun. It's a process of discovery. We're just literally exploring sounds and telling stories."

"Sitting on my hands during COVID, I basically begged Mat to be patient with me, like trying to show grandpa how to fucking screenshot a fucking image," Keenan, who turns 62 in April, says about getting his hands on programs such as Pro Tools and Logic.

"He just basically helped me crack the code and kind of level up in terms of understanding how to get ideas into a file and share them rather than me humming into a voice memo and then grabbing five songs from my library of various bands to go, 'Somewhere between these.'"

Why Keenan Was Drawn to Punk Rock

Following the announcement of Normal Isn't, Keenan described the album as "the place where goth meets punk," saying he, Round and Mitchell all leaned into their early influences.

When asked about those influences, though, Keenan doesn’t want to share an incomplete list.

"At the age of 61, going on 62, I've been involved in music for so long, which has been inspired by bands and musicians and actors and comedians and all those things," he says, efficiently pooling together forms of entertainment that make up the entirety of Puscifer’s presentation.

"There's so many layers to each song, and it all comes down to frame of reference, right? It's what you've absorbed, how you absorb it, when did you absorb it, what was happening in your life, were you between the ages of 13 and 21? There's music [that's] going to hit different."

Thinking about the idea of punk being part of the influence, though, the conversation turns to a show Keenan saw in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1986: The Henry Rollins-fronted Black Flag.

"Growing up in a small town in Western Michigan, I literally didn't know the difference between Six Pistols and AC/DC," Keenan confesses.

"It sounds the same to me, compared to Fleetwood Mac. I guess I was into more of the, rather than saying punk rock, I think it was more the rebellious nature that I was into — the outliers and the marginalized musicians."

Keenan says he's carried that attitude with him over the years and he'll always remember the influence of watching both Black Flag and Greg Ginn's instrumental band, Gone.

"There's some people that fit into the punk rock category that people go, 'That's not punk.' It's like, eat a dick, that's totally punk."

A Long Game That Finally Found Its Audience

From his earliest influences to the comedy clubs in Hollywood to Normal Isn't, there is no question that Puscifer have been part of Keenan's growth as an artist for decades.

For a lot of reasons, he's grateful to be able to still explore this world all these years later.

"It's just, it's an expression of how we're wired, me and myself and also those guys," he says about Round and Mitchell.

"I feel like it found the audience it was supposed to. It just took a long time to find them."

Keenan says he's confident Normal Isn't will attract new fans and through that process, those fans will be opened up to music they didn't know existed.

"I'm sure people that are getting into this new album are going to realize, 'I love this song, this is from the new album,' and somebody's going to go, 'No, actually that's from Money Shot and that one's from Conditions of My Parole.' They're going to go back and go, 'Oh, the songs were already here, we just didn't know about them.'"

"It's an expression of how we're wired. I feel like it found the audience it was supposed to. It just took a long time to find them."

As for whether or not there's still new ground he wants to cover as an artist and singer, he admits there is — but he doesn’t want to share too many details.

"There's a couple of things that I wouldn't mind diving into, just kind of reengineering and reinventing a few things," he explains.

And as fans might expect, he doesn’t seem too concerned about the timing of those things.

"There's no hurry on that."

Listen To + Watch The Loudwire Cover Story Interview With Puscifer's Maynard James Keenan