Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains Side Project Mad Season Gets New Life

2012-07-25

Story by Charles Ken

Expect new music from Mad Season, featuring Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, to drop this year

Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready recently dropped the news that that there’s about a full album’s worth of tracks recorded in the mid-90?s for the band Mad Season, featuring members of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, that never got fully recorded before Staley’s return to Alice in Chains and untimely death. Now, it seems those songs will finally see the light of day, as legendary Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan has agreed to sing on the project that’s slated to drop, if all goes well, by the end of the year.

Mad Season featured Staley, McCready, bass player John Baker Saunders and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin. The band got together to record some songs, but eventually, Staley went back to Alice in Chains and McCready reunited with Pearl Jam.

“We’re looking into re-releasing some Mad Season music that I did with Layne Staley before he died and John Baker Saunders,” McCready recently told WFPK. “We’re gonna re-release [‘Above’], hopefully by the end of the year and put a live concert out — and also we have 13 unreleased songs we never did.

“We were trying to do another record and it just didn’t work. Layne went off and did Alice in Chains and then he died, so what happened was I had to change the name to a band called Disinformation. From [those] sessions there are probably 12 songs…but they’re all music. We’re trying to find singers that are up to the caliber of Layne to do justice to it. I know a lot of [great singers] but it’s just getting the commitment.”

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Charles Ken

Meet the expert - Charles Ken is a graduate of Michigan State University where he studied writing and history. He's a longtime music buff and covers classic rock for Audio Ink Radio. Contact him at ken@audioinkradio.com.