Sean & Duff

Duff McKagan and Sean Kinney are teaming up for their own radio show.

Details as to when and where this will air won’t be announced for a while, but they’re already recording some shows, and they’d like to get you involved.

The guys will be doing a segment called “Random Stuff with Sean & Duff”, where they’ll answer questions submitted by fans.

What we need is for you to email us a brief question. It could be about anything; music, movies, food, travel, advice, or even their mutual disdain for milk.

We’re looking for anything that will get a little conversation going, and also answer the burning questions you’ve been dying to ask.

So keep it short and to the point, include your name, and email us today at askseanandduff@gmail.com

Thanks,

Baldy

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Baldy’s Blog: Sao Paulo 11-14-11

There’s nothing quite like a plane ride between festival gigs.

Picture the airport in Santiago filled with Alice In Chains, Faith No More, Loaded, Down, Megadeth, and a few more bands that I don’t even know, all being chased after by fans trying to get a last minute autograph or picture.

It was a bit like a South American heavy metal petting zoo, just with more hair & tattoos.

After that mayhem, we loaded up and flew to Sao Paulo on a flight that was so turbulent I thought those tattoos were gonna get knocked off of some of the passengers.

We made it there alive with tattoos intact though, and landed in rainy Sao Paulo.

Rain.

As a Seattle based band, Alice In Chains knows a thing or two about rain.

And having read the forecast ahead of time, we all knew the probability that the final day of the SWU festival in Sao Paulo was going to be a wet one.

And it was.

Have you ever driven to the mall on a rainy day and not been able to find a decent parking space? And you don’t have an umbrella, so the 15 seconds it takes to get from your car to the mall doors is swift soaking wet misery?

Now imagine stretching that 15 seconds out to 12 hours, with the rains coming and going, on your feet the whole time, squished in amongst 60 or 70 thousand other drenched music fans.

That takes dedication.

By the time Alice hit the deck (at midnight), it was a constant, steady downpour, and it never let up for the next 90 minutes that they played.

But it seemed that the rain dampened everything except the Brazilian fans’ enthusiasm, as they were a great crowd, especially when you factor in the conditions they put up with all day.

And it’s not like the band hasn’t played in rain before either.

Since stages are covered though, usually it’s relatively dry unless there are high winds blowing in.

It wasn’t terribly windy in Sao Paulo, but the stage was completely soaked all the way back to Sean’s drum kit, and the rains were falling on the first five feet of the stage, which is where the mic stands and guitar pedals all live, which means that’s where Jerry, Mike, & William live for the most part, so they got soaked as well.

Thankfully no one slipped & fell down, and no one got electrocuted, so their hair getting wet was the only real misfortune of the night.

Other than that, it was a great night, and I can say with a good amount of confidence that it won’t be another 18 years before Alice In Chains returns to Brazil, and hopefully many more countries in South America.

And since this wrap-up started in the airport, lets end it there.

Two nights later we’re at the airport getting ready to depart.

The band had been waiting in line for about 5 or 10 minutes to board the flight out of Sao Paulo. I noticed some glances here and there, but none of the other people in the boarding area approached the guys. Then a girl working in the gift shop came over with a camera, and as soon as the band posed for a shot with her, it was like the floodgates had been opened. People came rushing over and suddenly it was like the camera phone Olympics had begun. My personal favorite was all of the older folks who had no idea who the guys were, but were taking pictures anyway, and even asking to pose with the guys. Finally an older woman approached our tour manager and in awesome broken English asked, “Who them?”

He thought about it for a second or two and replied, “The Backstreet Boys”.

I think her grandchildren are going to be confused when they see the picture.

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Baldy Blog: Santiago 11-12-11

We arrived at the airport in Santiago at 6:00 A.M. Thursday, and when the band de-planed there were three fans waiting for them at the end of the walkway.

That was a pretty good indication of what we were about to get into.

Apparently they were airline or airport employees, and they knew what flight we were on, and were camped out waiting the second the guys walked off of the plane.

Once we passed through customs and made our way to baggage claim, there were another 30 or so more fans waiting.

Remember, it was 6:00 A.M. The only thing I’m doing at 6:00 A.M. is sleeping, so to see that many fired up fans waiting to meet the band was really cool.

It didn’t take long for word to slip out where the band was staying either, as a bunch of fans were camped out across the street from the hotel not long after we arrived.

They were holding up banners, singing Alice songs, and screaming whenever a band member appeared.

(I’m sure that the average Ritz Carlton guest wasn’t too thrilled to be serenaded by Man In The Box as they were trying to eat their room service wine & cheese, but I suppose that if you can afford to stay at the Ritz, then you can afford ear plugs too.)

The fans were even screaming up at the rooms where the guys were staying, which prompted my idea that Sean should cover Mike in a blanket and dangle him over the balcony so the fans could get a better look. Unfortunately there were no terraces in the hotel, so that homage to Michael Jackson didn’t end up happening.

We stuck around the hotel that first night, which ended up being fairly comical as the fans outside the front of the hotel figured out that the guys were in the hotel bar, so a bunch of them kept parading past the windows with the banner. Then later when we made our way to the restaurant at the opposite end of the hotel, the fans and banners appeared over there. They were all very polite and respectful the whole time, and just really excited to see the band, which was cool.

Friday was a day off, so Jerry went golfing, Sean rented Harleys with Duff and some other guys and went riding, and Mike, William, & I went sightseeing.

So despite Jerry being dive bombed at the golf course by birds who thought he was trying to hit their eggs instead of golf balls, everyone had a great day getting out and seeing some of Chile.

And then there was show day.

I’m not even sure I can sum up the Chilean fans in one word, although when Mike looked over at me towards the end of Dam That River, I just mouthed the word WOW to him.

When the band walked out on stage, the place erupted, and with the first “Ah!” of Them Bones, the venue absolutely exploded.

I literally couldn’t hear William or Jerry singing for the first two songs, as the fans were singing every word and completely drowning out the vocals coming from the stage.

I’m not ashamed to say that I was covered in goose bumps for the first two songs of the set. It was that incredible.

There’s no question that Santiago was one of the top 5 crowds I’ve ever seen at an Alice In Chains show, and it wouldn’t take much to convince me that they may have been the most enthusiastic.

When Angry Chair segued into Man In The Box, it was like popping a cork on a champagne bottle, and 50,000 people sprung into the air and started jumping up & down in unison again.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that level of excitement at an Alice In Chains show, and it was awesome.

It sort of reminded me of Mike Inez petting an English bulldog, or me opening a can of Diet Mountain Dew.

Unrestrained, 100 percent, all-out joy.

The fans in Santiago are among the best we’ve ever seen, and the band has already said that their first trip to Chile definitely won’t be their last, and I can’t wait to come back and do it all again.

WOW.

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Baldy’s Blog: Winnipeg 08-20-11

My phone rang at midnight on our first night in Winnipeg, and after some brief small talk and a slight pause, the voice on the other end said, “Can you come smell my room?”

I’ve toured off and on for 20 years now, and I’ve heard some strange things over those years, but that was a first.

Forget the exotic locales, forget the sold out shows and five star hotels, forget the celebrities and hot chicks. When you peek behind the curtain of life on the road with a rock band, sometimes it’s just about a dude helping out another dude by sniffing his hotel room.

So that’s what I did.

I threw on my shoes and went down to Sean’s room and took several big whiffs of his room…and couldn’t smell a thing.

Apparently he thought there might be a gas leak, but my nose didn’t detect anything, so after sticking my head in every closet and every room and even getting on my hands & knees and taking a giant huff off of the carpet (ewww), I assured him all was well and went on my way.

So with one new job description to add to my resume, I returned to my own room and the sweet scent of Mountain Dew & Cheese Pleesers.

The next three days were spent rehearsing for the show, and the next three nights were spent either indulging in or hiding from Winnipeg’s nightlife, depending on which band or crew  member you were.

Over the course of those three days leading up to the show, the guys ran into lots of fans around the hotel and in the city, and it was amazing how many people remembered the last time the band was in Winnipeg.

It was nearly 20 years ago, opening for Van Halen in November of 1991.

Neither Sean nor Jerry could remember exactly when we were here, but for some reason the time is stuck in my head.

Maybe it’s because I can still recall walking three or four blocks through the snow from the hotel to a laundromat  in tennis shoes & a jacket, with my nose running like a faucet, my ears nearly freezing off, and my toes going numb in record time.

For some odd reason that’s literally all I remember from our time here way back when.

This can happen when you travel a lot over a long period of time. Memories fade or disappear, and sometimes all you’re left with from one stop on one of the coolest tours you’ve ever been on is the recollection of picking snot-sicles out of your beard in a lonely laundromat in downtown Winnipeg.

Sure it’s disgusting, but it’s all I’ve got.

So this time around I’ll remember the weather being warm, the show being great, Duff playing Rooster with the guys, and the typical Canadian friendliness we always experience when we’re up here.

Then again I won’t be surprised if when I look back 20 years from now, sniffing Sean’s room will be all I remember.

God I hope not…

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Baldy’s Blog: Thackerville 08-13-11

Whoever coined the phrase “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” was a wise son-of-a-bitch.

Alice In Chains played their first show in nearly 10 months at the Winstar Casino in Thackerville, Oklahoma, to a sold-out, standing room only crowd.

A good handful of that crowd was made up of fans that traveled from places like Illinois, California, New Mexico, New York, Canada, England, and even Nepal.

NEPAL? Good God.

Having had nearly a year off from seeing a full crowd of screaming Alice In Chains fans, I can honestly say that I really miss the band playing live, and especially miss seeing the smiling faces of the frequent flyers who we’ve come to know & love over the last few years.

I could fill a shopping cart with adjectives to describe some of these people, but for now I’ll just settle on amazing and talk about the actual show a little.

The performance was billed as an acoustic evening with Alice In Chains, but that was a bit of an untruth.

William played an acoustic guitar, but Jerry had his full arsenal of electric guitars and Mike was rattling molars with his usual supply of basses as well. Sean was playing his smaller acoustic kit, but he was hitting it like it owed him money, so there was plenty of noise coming from him too.

So although the stage was set up with the look of an intimate acoustic show, the evil was still being delivered at full volume.

Speaking of evil, Acid Bubble was a cool inclusion in the acoustilectric set, alongside old favorites like Love, Hate, Love & Angry Chair.

The other big surprise was the band playing Right Turn, which I can’t recall them ever playing in this incarnation, and I’m not even sure if they played it back in the old days either.

I’d heard them play this in rehearsals a few times, but when William uncorked those high notes that Chris Cornell sang on the album, the fans went nuts and I had my first goose bump moment of 2011.

Encore time finally came around, and after stellar versions of Don’t Follow & Would?, Jerry introduced his father to the crowd and sat him down on one of the two couches that was set up on the stage. He then proceeded to pull a bunch of fans from the crowd, and the next thing you know there were about a dozen fans onstage watching Alice In Chains play Rooster from the comfort of two designer couches.

That was a pretty cool way to end the show, but since we were in a casino and it was only 10:00 P.M., there was a lot of night left.

Jerry ended up playing poker while Sean, William, & Mike hung out and talked to fans until the wee hours of the morning.

Like I said, absence makes the heart grow fonder, so while everyone there was pumped up to see the band again, I have to say that it did my heart good to see and talk to the Chainiacs that I’ve missed since last fall.

This two date North American tour rolls to Winnipeg next, and there’s still time for you frequent flyers out there to book your tickets…

- Baldy

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March 8th, 2011

I’ve spent a lot of time tonight watching old home video from the studio as Mike, Layne, Jerry & Sean recorded Facelift. It’s been so long, but in some ways it feels like yesterday. Everyone was so young, so excited, and as silly as it may sound; things were so much fun at that point in time. And that’s a word I keep coming back to as I try and wrap my head around the loss of another friend. Mike Starr was fun. He was a carefree spirit; quick with a joke or a laugh or a silly face, and always fun to spend time with. He loved being a musician, and he loved being in a band. And he was great at it. The guy was a rock star before he stepped on his first stage.

I think Mike lost a part of himself once he was out of the band, and he spent the remainder of his life trying to fill the void. I hadn’t seen Mike in several years though, so I can’t speak to his battles and struggles. What I can speak to is the guy I remember from what seems like so long ago. Mike was immensely talented, and took enormous pride in the band he helped create. He was a monstrous bass player, and a monstrously good time to hang out with. He was a good friend, and tonight especially I’m trying to focus on the great times we had together.

As I watch these tapes from 22 years ago I keep coming back to a line Jerry wrote in Your Decision; “No one plans to take the path that brings you lower”. Mike and Layne were both good people who made bad choices, and the weight of those choices was something they could never get out from under. But neither of them intended for things to turn out the way they did, and neither of them deserved it.

Mike Starr was a founding member of Alice In Chains, and he was a participant in Celebrity Rehab, and for good or bad, those things are what make up part of the headline tonight. I’m choosing to focus on the Mike Starr that was my friend though. A good person who deeply loved his family, friends, and fans, and who was deeply loved in return.

He will be missed…

-Baldy

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Jerry, Baldy, & The Rooster Go To Super Bowl XLV

If you.re a big time Alice In Chains fan, then you.re probably aware that Jerry is a big time football fan.

He & I share an obsessive passion for our two favorite teams, our hometown Seattle Seahawks, and the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers.

So as I sat in a wing joint with a bunch of friends two weeks ago and watched the Steelers secure a slot in Super Bowl XLV, I wasn.t surprised when Jerry called.

He didn.t want to just share his excitement about our team going to the championship; his wheels were already spinning and he was making plans to once again attend the game, and he wanted to take me.

Make no mistake about it, that.s some Elvis shit right there.

Back in the 70.s Elvis Presley was known to buy Cadillacs for some of the guys in his inner circle.

Cantrellvis buys me tickets to Super Bowls, and I.ll take that over a Cadillac any day.

And Sean has Elvis qualities of his own, as he jumped in and offered to pay my travel expenses.

How do you say no to that?

Fast forward two weeks.

The Super Bowl was held in Dallas this year, which is about two hours from Jerry.s dad.s house in Oklahoma. Jerry had secured three tickets to the game, so his dad would be joining us (even though he doesn.t care about the Steelers).

The plan was to fly to Dallas Friday and go to the ranch in Oklahoma, then come back to Dallas for the game on Sunday.

Mother Nature can be a dick though, which I found out upon walking into Seatac airport at 4:30 A.M. on Friday.

In the 25 minutes between checking the flight status online at home and arriving at the airport, my flight got cancelled.

Dallas was getting hammered with freezing temperatures, snow, and ice everywhere.

For some reason Jerry.s flight wasn.t affected though, so he made it in on schedule while I waited around and finally arrived 32 hours after I was supposed to.

Thankfully there was an available room at an airport hotel when I arrived Saturday night, so while Dallas was entertaining 100,000 drunken out-of-towners and Jerry was home on the range with his family, I was drinking 40 ounces of Diet Mountain Dew on a Holiday Inn bed watching Mad Men episodes on my computer.

But I made it.

Meanwhile, as my personal travel drama was unfolding, and even bigger drama was taking place in the Tulsa Fedex office.

It turns out that our tickets and parking passes were scheduled for delivery to the ranch on Friday, which didn.t happen due to the weather, and we were informed that they wouldn.t deliver to the ranch on Saturday.

The thing about attending sporting events in general, and the Super Bowl in particular, is that they tend to want to see a ticket before they let you in the stadium, so this was going to be a problem.

Thankfully the Alice In Chains problem solvers kicked into high gear, turned on the charm and greased a few wheels, and the next thing you know Jerry had the tickets in his hand.

And then the big day arrived.

The Cantrell Express picked me up and we made our way to Cowboys Stadium and Super Bowl XLV.

I didn.t find out until afterwards, but Jerry.s dad had never been to a football game before.

We snaked our way through the the maze that led to the entrance, and after a patdown and a metal detector and a wanding, I was in.

Jerry & Rooster were right behind me when I started the process, but after I made it through and turned around, they had fallen way behind.

What was taking them so long?

As I mentioned before, Jerry.s dad had never been to a football game before, so the level of security for a Super Bowl game never occurred to him, and he neglected to leave his hunting knife back in the truck.

It may not have been a Crocodile Dundee sized knife, but pretty much anything with a blade is prohibited, so he ended up having to toss it in the trash before being allowed in. So with that lesson learned, we were all finally in.

We made our way into the stadium and found our seats, located in a luxury box up by the Pittsburgh end zone.

I won.t bore you with details of the game, other to say that while Jerry & I were developing stress-related ulcers in the pits of our stomachs due to our beloved Steelers coughing up the ball repeatedly, Jerry.s dad seemed to be having a pretty good time.

I noticed that part of his good time was watching me squirm and sweat and suffer.

That.s pretty much what the guys in the band do when we.re out on the road though, so I.m used to other people enjoying my misery.

Ultimately our team lost, and although the fact that Jerry & I both actually like the Packers takes a bit of the sting out of the experience, it still wasn.t the happy ending we had hoped for.

Leave it to the football rookie Rooster to sum the game up perfectly; .They made a few boo boos that cost .em the game..

That pretty much says it all.

Our post game plan was to head back to Vinnie Paul.s place, since that.s where we would be staying overnight. He.s out on the road with Hellyeah, so he offered us the use of his house.

Rooster took off back to the ranch, and since Vinnie also owns a gentlemen.s club in Dallas, we figured we.d leave his house and head to the Clubhouse to drown our sorrows in loud music, dim lighting, and flesh for a couple of hours.

Then it was back to Vinnie.s place and some restless sleep in a puddle of my own tears.

And that is my Super Bowl XLV story.

The silver lining in this gray cloud of defeat is the benevolent kindness of my friends in the Alice In Chains camp.

Jerry and Sean for bankrolling this trip, Chuck & Laurie from Team Alice for coordinating the tickets, passes, & travel, (and averting the near Fedex disaster), and Vinnie Paul & his assistant Handsome for the hospitality.

Overall it was another amazing experience, despite my favorite team gargling a chance to win a seventh Lombardi trophy.

It was great to spend time with Jerry & The Rooster, and it.s one more chapter in my book of Alice In Chains related adventures.

P.S. If you take a look at the pictures, now you’ll finally know why the Thackerville gig got postponed…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliceinchains/sets/72157625882339407/show/

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Tags:  Baldy  Blog  Posted by aliceinchains