The very day I heard of Teatro ZinZanni’s existence, I vowed never to go near it. (I don’t do clowns. And I don’t do musicals.) Then Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard had to go and announce a show under ZinZanni’s “Spiegeltent.” A show featuring his musical cohorts and friends Shawn Smith, Regan Hagar, Vince Mira, Pete Droge and others. I was forced to reevaluate my conviction. If you suffer the same phobias as I do, you should reevaluate as well.

Cue the press release:

Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam has assembled a notable line up of Northwest singers and musicians for a special night of music as The HankKhoir. The HankKhoir features Vince Mira, Shawn Smith, Pete Droge, Barb Ireland, Dejha Colantuono, Elaine Summers, Lonnie Marshall, Scribes and Stone Gossard with musical arrangements by Teatro Zinzanni’s own Hans Teuber plus Seattle instrumental giants, including Keith Lowe, Branden Harper, DJ Bean, D’Vonne Lewis, Jeff Felder, Regan Hagar, Skerik and Steve Moore. Comedy and cirque performances by Teatro ZinZanni’s own Peter Pitofsky and Vertical Tango will be woven

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Duff McKagan’s supergroup Loaded is unplugging their gear and playing Seattle’s tiny Sunset Tavern on Tuesday. (They’ll be billed as the Rainmakers.) If you buy a ticket, you’ll witness a hard band rocking it softly—and help keep a friend of local music financially afloat as he battles cancer.

As Duff noted this week, Dave Ravenscroft “has been suffering through Squamous-cell Carcinoma, a cancer of the tonsils that has spread to the nodes in his throat. Absolutely brutal.” You don’t need to hear another story about our current health care system to know Ravenscroft must be keeping a wary eye on his checkbook. On top of that, “Dave has not been able to work for the last 12 months while going through multiple surgeries and chemotherapy.”

Tickets for this special, 21+ show are $95. All proceeds will go directly to Ravenscroft.

If you’re having a hard time making ends meet yourself, contributions of any amount can be made at any local Chase branch.

Want to know how Ravenscroft is progressing? Go …

Pearl Jam’s ninth studio album, Backspacer, will be released on September 20. To celebrate, the band will play KeyArena the following two nights. It will mark Pearl Jam’s first Seattle-proper show since 2005.

The Seattle shows open a nine-date, four-city tour that’s sandwiched between previously announced shows in Canada, Europe, Chicago, Austin, and San Francisco. As usual, Pearl Jam’s Ten Club members get first crack at KeyArena tickets (next Monday and Tuesday).

From the press release, more on Backspacer:

Scheduled for release in the U.S. on Sunday, September 20, 2009, the album will be released in the U.S. through Target, the exclusive mass retail partner, Pearl Jam’s own Ten Club and independent retailers, as well as online through digital, and gaming platforms yet to be announced. Internationally, the album will be available beginning on September 21, 2009 via Universal/Island Records.

If you missed Pearl Jam’s performance of “Got Some” on Conan O’Brien’s inaugural Tonight Show episode, your next chance to hear new music will come July 20, when the first Backspacer single, “The Fixer,” will hit the radio.

If …

Friday night, the streets of West Seattle’s Junction area will be closed and Mudhoney will rock the neighborhood. The iconic, two-decade-old band is anchoring the first night of West Seattle’s 27th Summer Fest with a one-hour set scheduled to start at 8:10.

Mudhoney isn’t the only notable local act billed for the three-day fest; also scheduled to play are Mark Pickerel & His Praying Hands, Hurricane Chaser, Kim Virant, Kristen Ward and many others. (Mudhoney’s own Mark Arm will be in the street crowd for the Black Panties, the Tripwires, Thee Sgt Major III, McTuff, etc.) And you can see any or all of them—including Mudhoney—for free.

This lineup and price tag (and the multiple beer gardens, vendors, food court and easy parking) should be enough to get even the most entrenched in-city-dwellers over the bridge.

On a recent evening before inexplicably under-the-radar Seattle singer/songwriter Shawn Smith was to play a short set at the reinvented Crocodile Club, Sound met with the man who fronted Satchel, fronts Brad (with Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard on guitar) and most recently, the riff-heavy All Hail the Crown. The enigmatic artist remembered Satchel’s The Family (for Sound’s July issue), then moved on to other projects, including his funky Pigeonhed pairing with local producer extraordinaire Steve Fisk, his hard rock work with Andrew Wood’s brother Kevin, and his current and upcoming solo endeavors. The conversation only strengthened the conviction that Smith remains one of this city’s unsung musical treasures. For not much longer, hopefully.

SOUND: What’s going on with Brad?
SS: We did an album over five years ago, and I don’t really understand why we haven’t put it out. It’s mixed and everything.

SOUND: Is it a label issue?
SS: It’s not in my hands, I’ll just say that. I just want to put it out—put it on iTunes or something. It’s been so long. I started saying something about …

In just a few months, we’ll hear what Alice in Chains really sounds like without Layne Staley. The reunited band’s first studio record since 1995 will hit stores on September 29. (Which, interestingly enough, may or may not be one week after Pearl Jam’s new album drops.)

Per the press release:

“ALICE IN CHAINS have revealed the title of their highly anticipated upcoming album and confirmed its release date. The record, titled BLACK GIVES WAY TO BLUE (Virgin/EMI) will arrive in stores on September 29th.

BLACK GIVES WAY TO BLUE is the band’s first new studio release in more than 10 years. The quartet (vocalist/guitarist Jerry Cantrell, drummer Sean Kinney, bassist Mike Inez and vocalist/guitarist William DuVall) recorded the album with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Rush, Foo Fighters) at Studio 606 in Northridge, CA and Henson Studios in Hollywood.”

Will the classic Seattle band show their native city some love to commemorate the release? No word yet, but the guys are playing elsewhere between now and then.

“On July 18th, Alice In Chains will be sharing the stage with Kid Rock at

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In late April, Chris Cornell was in Seattle for a sold-out show at Showbox SoDo. Just a few hours before his set, the former Soundgarden frontman and recent Timbaland collaborator spent some time with Sound in his swanky Four Seasons suite. Much of the surprisingly long conversation can be found in this month’s cover story on the former grunge god, Key Change.

Here’s more of it—the first of three segments where Cornell talks about the making of his Timba-produced new record, Scream, Soundgarden’s catalog, returning to the city where he became famous and more.

SOUND: You were thinking about someone remixing your work, and Timbaland was thinking of working with a rock musician …
CHRIS CORNELL:  Yeah. [Timbaland] didn’t want to do remixes, he wanted to do original material. I thought, well, that would be an interesting thing. But what would I do with it, really, if we went in and did two or three songs? It wouldn’t make a lot of sense. And everyone had told me that he makes albums in three weeks. I thought, well, why …

Before Jeff Ament was the bassist for one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, he was in one of the earliest true “grunge” bands. And before that, he was in a solid punk outfit that moved from Missoula, Montana to Seattle in 1983. Without Deranged Diction (and its 1984 demise), there may have been no Green River, no Mudhoney, no Mother Love Bone, and no Pearl Jam.

This Friday, that early punk band, defunct for 25 years, will reunite for one Seattle show. Fittingly, Deranged Diction’s reunion set will take place at the recently un-defunct Crocodile.

From the press release, in Ament’s own words, a brief history of the brief life of the band:

“Jon Donahue and I met Bruce Fairweather skateboarding the brick banks at the University of Montana in September of 1981. Within a month, we were rehearsing as Deranged Diction with Bill the drummer, playing songs by Black Flag, 999, the Dead Kennedys, the Ramones and the Clash. We played a half dozen shows that school year, mostly with new drummer Sergio Avenia,

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Regan Hagar has had a serendipitous, successful rock and roll career. He became a founding figure in the pre-grunge Seattle scene by hanging out at the Showbox in his teens and befriending the flamboyant Andy “Landrew” Wood on Bainbridge Island. He went on to play drums with Wood in the now-iconic glam act Malfunkshun, with Shawn Smith in the short-lived ’90s band Satchel and with Smith and Stone Gossard in the on-again, off-again Brad. Now in his 40s and with two kids cultivating their own musical talents, Hagar is managing tours for grunge godfather Neil Young. Shortly after catching a Gossard solo set at the Can Can in which the drummer played on a few songs, I spoke with Hagar about leaping from behind the kit to a living legend’s caravan, and about how his work affects his kids’ rock aspirations.

SOUND: It was cool to see you and [Brad bassist] Mike Berg on stage with Stone.
REGAN HAGAR: I thought Stone’s band was just fantastic. He’s been kind of doing a lot of recording and leaning that …

Sometimes the best way to tell a story is to transcribe it. Rock fan and journalist Greg Prato has done just that with his new book Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music. He lets the people who birthed a genre in the ’80s and ’90s—and those who witnessed its rise—speak directly to the reader. The book’s simplicity is its genius. Prato briefly introduces the near-500 page tome, and sets the stage for each chapter with single paragraphs; over 130 ex-girlfriends, concert attendees, producers, photographers, label founders and Seattle’s musicians and singers themselves—everyone from Mark Arm to Eddie Vedder—explain how a talented, diverse crop of young bands came to transform the music world nearly two decades ago.

Shortly after its April 1 release, I spoke with Prato about his favorite grunge band, how his indispensable, fascinating book came together, and what he learned in the process. And then transcribed.

SOUND: What drew you to put together such a comprehensive history of Seattle’s grunge era?
GREG PRATO: I’ve been a long-time fan …