To recap the last three months: Jerry Cantrell released a new album. We loved said album and considered this album to be one of the best of 2024. Then he sat down with us to talk all about it, and now he’s preparing to kick off his tour around the album later this week.
For the past three decades, Jerry Cantrell has been celebrated as one of rock’s greatest guitarists, both with the band Alice in Chains and as a solo artist. In that latter capacity, he released his fourth album in October, I Want Blood – and soon, he’ll hit the road for an extensive tour to support it (including shows in Sayreville, New Jersey, at Starland Ballroom, and New York City’s Irving Plaza). He promises that audiences can expect to hear his new songs, and many others from across his catalog.
Calling from his California home, Cantrell explains how his last solo album, 2021’s Brighten, inspired him to create I Want Blood in turn. “I hadn’t made a record outside of Alice [in Chains] for about 19 years, and so when I started feeling like it was time, I went out and made [Brighten], which I really dig. When I got done with that, I was really invigorated: ‘Man, that was fun, I wouldn’t mind doing this one more time!’ So I was energized from that experience, and jumped right into the demo process for I Want Blood.”
As he made this album, Cantrell gathered together an impressive array of guest musicians to pitch in on various tracks: Duff McKagan (Guns ‘N Roses), Mike Bordin (Faith No More), Robert Trujillo (Metallica), Greg Puciato (Better Lovers, ex-Dillinger Escape Plan), Gil Sharone (Team Sleep, Stolen Babies), and Lola Colette.
“I’ve been pretty lucky to make some great records with Alice [in Chains],” he says. “They’re my best friends in the world, and when I make records outside the band, I do the same thing: I call up my friends. I do like working with people that I have a personal connection with. These are all guys and gals that I admire. They’re really talented people, I really dig them as human beings, and we make pretty good music together.”
I Want Blood is more than “pretty good,” though: it’s as powerful, intense, and emotional as everything else Cantrell has created throughout his career. If it hasn’t already, the album should satisfy his longtime fans, and hopefully earn him many new ones, but Cantrell says he doesn’t think too much about how other people will react to his songs.
“I’m trying to make a record for myself, first and foremost, and if I’m excited about it and I dig it, there’s probably a pretty good chance that people who may have enjoyed stuff that I’ve done in the past, or been associated with in the past, are going to like it, too.”
“I never start out with some sort of intention or plan of what I’m going to write,” Cantrell continues. “In that way, I’m always surprised, just like anybody else, [about] what kind of record I’m going to make. I don’t know until I get into the writing process. Then I start to get an inkling: ‘Ok, it wants to go this way. That’s cool, that’s interesting.’”
He does have one unwavering requirement as he’s writing, though: “I’m not trying to re-make the same record over and over. I’ve never gone about making music that way, with Alice or on my own. I want to make something I haven’t made before.”
Cantrell says that he was a small child when he first realized that he wanted to create his own unique music. Growing up in Tacoma, Washington, he tells us that he “got taken by music at a very young age – it was always just really magical to me, the whole process. When I made the connection of, ‘Real people make this,’ I was like, ‘Maybe I can make it, too.’ Music is something that speaks to everybody, and I think that that’s a pretty cool and magical thing. I wanted to be a part of that.”
After making a name for himself as a talented guitarist in the Seattle scene, he co-founded Alice in Chains in 1987. In the early 1990s, Seattle became famous for having one of the most popular and influential music scenes in the world, and Alice in Chains were launched to international fame with massive hits such as “Man in the Box,” “Rooster,” and “No Excuses,” along with many more.
Cantrell credits his Alice in Chains bandmates for helping him evolve into such a distinctive artist: “Everything that I know came to focus in the filter of what Alice In Chains became. The way that Layne [Staley, vocalist] and I wrote, and Sean [Kinney, drummer] and Mike [Starr, bassist], we didn’t really talk about shit, but had an unspoken agreement of not holding back. No pulled punches. Warts and all. Unfiltered, unbridled, there it is. That’s something we all developed together, and I guess it’s something I take with me wherever I go.”
Though he has remained loyal to Alice in Chains, Cantrell has also concurrently established himself as a successful solo artist. His first album under his own name, Boggy Depot, was released in 1998, with Degradation Trip following four years later.
After putting his solo career on hiatus as he focused on Alice in Chains, Cantrell ended his solo hiatus when he released Brighten in 2021, then I Want Blood last year. He laughs and quips, “Hopefully it’s not another 20 years before I do another two!”
Still, Cantrell resists making any specific predictions about what might come next for him, preferring instead to let things unfold as they will. “You just go with what feels right,” he says. “The story is still unfolding. There’s not a stop sign on the horizon yet, so I’m just in motion and trying not to spend too much time looking back. Trying not to spend too much time looking too far forward, either. Just enjoying where I’m at.”
And where he’s at right now, Cantrell says, is enjoying this moment of releasing I Want Blood into the world. It is, in his own words, “a record I fucking love, and I think it’s really good, and I get to go out around the world and play it for people now. I’m just really lucky to be able to dedicate my life to doing what I really love doing, and been able to make a living doing that. Not everybody gets to do that, and I’m aware of that.”
GET TICKETS NOW TO SEE JERRY CANTRELL ON TOUR – INCLUDING STARLAND BALLROOM IN NJ ON 2/1, IRVING PLAZA IN NYC ON 2/5, & THE PARAMOUNT ON LONG ISLAND ON 2/11! LISTEN TO I WANT BLOOD WHEREVER YOU STREAM/PURCHASE MUSIC!