An Intimate Acoustic Evening With Everclear’s Art Alexakis

Following a successful Australian tour earlier last year with his Grammy-nominated & multi-platinum Alt-rock band Everclear, Art Alexakis will return to our shores next month to perform hits & fan favourites from his extensive catalogue. Fans will have the chance to hear classics such as Santa Monica, Father Of Mine, I Will Buy You A New Life, Everything To Everyone, and plenty more performed stripped back in an intimate acoustic setting. Hi Fi Way spoke to Art about the tour and what else is coming up in 2024.

It must be an awesome way to kick off 2024 in Australia with a solo acoustic tour?
Yeah, we’ve been talking about doing this for a while since the last couple of Everclear tours down there. The promoter seems pretty excited about it, I spoke to a few friends of mine in other bands and we ended up with Brendan B. Brown from Wheatus who is coming down to open up the shows. It is going to be fun!

Were you tempted to bring the full band back with you given how well the last tour did?
Nah, not this time! Next year! Next year is the thirtieth anniversary of Sparkle And Fade so that makes a lot more sense. I wanted to do the solo tour, people really like the solo tour. If you like the songs, that’s how the songs were written which was just me and a guitar. It is more conversational, it is a different aspect of Everclear that is for sure.

Do you enjoy that stripped back format more where you can delve in to the stories and the moments behind particular songs?
I do, it is fun! It is something I learnt to do, I used to busk just playing a guitar with my guitar case open when I was writing songs and learning to sing and play at the same time. It was a great learning experience, helped me learn to be more open with people and bring out my more extrovert personality, I have a little bit of both. I have an introverted personality as well. It is nice to have the more conversational and not screaming over load stuff all the time. Don’t get me wrong I love doing that but it is nice to mix it up.

Do you plan to play anything from your solo album Sun Songs?
It is predominantly Everclear songs but I’ll swing one song from it on there, maybe a cover, maybe some old stuff as well. At the end of the show I come back out, Freddy my bass player from Everclear is guitar tech goes out in to the crowd takes requests, people ask questions and ask me to play songs, sometimes I will, sometimes I won’t, sometimes I’ll play a little bit for them.

Does Brendan join you for a couple of songs?
Nah, it is not that kind of thing. Brendan and Wheatus opened for us on a tour and I became close with him. We’ve never played together, he’s just opening the shows, that’s all it is.

Do you get to be much of a tourist on this tour and take it as more of holiday well?
Not really, I’m working and doing interviews the whole time. I’m going to TV and radio stations. I’m working, I get a few days off here and there but I got diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis about eight years ago, I just need to rest a lot. I’m not out walking around on hikes, sightseeing and walking through museums, I’m not doing that shit any more!

You must be stoked that the love from Australian fans for Everclear and yourself keeps getting stronger?
Seems like it right? It really seems like every tour that we do we bring more people out, it’s one of those places that has always been really loyal to us. We put in the time and money to come there every other year. It really seems to be paying off and I love it. I really love Australia. My wife loves Australia, I wish we had time for her to come with me on this tour, maybe next time.

What is next for Everclear?
We put out Live At The Whiskey A Go Go last year and that has fifteen live songs and two new songs including Year Of The Tiger and Sing Away. That was a really successful tour last fall in the States. We’ll probably do another fall tour, we’re planning on putting out the thirtieth anniversary remaster with some extra songs of Sparkle And Fade like we did for World Of Noise a couple of years ago. I’m looking forward to that, that is going to be fun. I’ve been going through the vaults and finding some old songs and I think it will be a really cool package.

With such a significant milestone do you start getting nostalgic? Have you discovered stuff that you never knew you had or you wish you had done something with it at the time?
It is neither of those things, I listen to it and get a little nostalgic, not nostalgic perse and I just go that’s what we were at that time. I think the decisions I made about songs being on certain records I don’t have any regrets. I believe the decisions I made were right at the time for sure. I don’t have any hindsight on that.

It must be humbling how that album keeps resonating with fans and connecting with new fans who discover the band?
That’s a trip! Twenty five percent of our crowd are kids who weren’t even born when that record came out! They were babies! I am proud of that record, that was my first major label record and I made them let me make it, produce it, do all the art work, I love the way it came out at the time. I love where it’s out when I listen to it, I love the fact when I go back and listen to other songs that didn’t make the cut, didn’t get recorded but were written for that record and there’s a few of them that were b-sides on international records, there’s been a couple that haven’t been released and some of those will be on the thirtieth anniversary package. I just don’t know what songs yet, I have a lot to choose from.

Will an archival footage get released as part of the package?
No, not for Sparkle And Fade that I know of, there might be some out there. There is definitely some stuff from that era on YouTube now that other people have put out. We recorded and filmed some shows in Seattle on the Afterglow tour in ’98. So Much For The Afterglow will have its anniversary in 2027 and I hope to do a thirty year package for that. I would like to go through the archives if Capitol lets me look at that old video tape and see if there is anything worth putting out there. We spent all this money filming these shows which were during the day and there was to much light, too sunny, I don’t know, we’ll see and I’m sure there is other stuff that we filmed. I think things will come out of the woodwork the closer we get to it. The album for Sparkle And Fade I start work on that later in the year for sure.

What stands out most for you during that “Sparkle And Fade” period?
There’s a lot of them, playing at Livid in Australia and festivals in Europe. In the States playing Woodstock ’99 and hearing what they estimated were there was around three hundred and twenty five thousand and seeing people singing the words to some of my songs Father Of Mine, Santa Monica, New Life was pretty exciting. That doesn’t happen in most peoples lives so it was really special. I still get goosebumps when I think about it now.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Art Alexakis and Brendan B. Brown on the following dates, tickets HERE…