A new voice for Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains (left to right): bassist Mike Inez, drummer Sean Kinney, singer/guitarist Jerry Cantrell and singer/guitarist William DuVall (Credit: James Minchin)

When singer Layne Staley died of a heroin and cocaine overdose in 2002, most fans assumed they had heard the last from Staley’s grunge-era group, Alice in Chains. But in 2006, the band reemerged with a new singer, a relatively unknown Atlanta native named William DuVall. First at a VH1 “Decades Rock Live” concert honoring fellow Seattle rockers Heart, then on a popular world tour that stretched into 2007, DuVall slowly but surely silenced the doubters, delivering Staley's parts on classic Alice in Chains songs with fiery authority. For the band’s first album of new material in 14 years, last year’s well-received “Black Gives Way to Blue,” DuVall took his place as an official member of the band, sharing vocal duties with the band's lead guitarist and principal songwriter, Jerry Cantrell.

Replacing a deceased singer is no easy task, and DuVall doesn’t take it lightly. “It’s a way of keeping Layne alive,” says the 42-year-old singer/guitarist, who has been fronting bands of one kind or another since his teens. “Going out and playing all those songs that he contributed to—that’s a living manifestation of him.”

As Alice in Chains prepared for their latest U.S. tour, Metromix checked in with DuVall to discuss the band’s resurgence—and find out what the singer was up to back in the early ‘90s, when the guys he now calls his bandmates were at the forefront of the Seattle grunge scene.

The first time you toured with Alice in Chains was back in 2006. What was that experience like—filling in with a band that had such a huge and devoted following?
It was quite a roller coaster ride, really. Because initially, there were just a few shows booked with no real plan as to what was going to happen afterward. But then what happened was, we got out on the road and the thing started taking on a life of its own. More shows were being booked as we were traveling. So then it just became this year-long tour of 22, 23 countries.

And at some point during all that, it became more than just a reunion tour?
Yeah, absolutely. Because as you get out there and you’re playing, you develop your own chemistry—and you establish, or re-establish, the relationship with the audience. The cumulative effect of all that was that we found ourselves backstage and during sound checks and in hotel rooms, coming up with new ideas for new music. And we’d get home from a leg of the tour and have this little pile of ideas—and at the end of 2006, and certainly by ’07, these little piles turned into kind of a mountain of stuff. And that became the songs we recorded for “Black Gives Way to Blue”—and all the things that were recorded at the same time that aren’t on the record that may see the light of day at some point.

So there’s more material?
Yeah, we recorded enough stuff for two albums. Whether any of the things that aren’t on “Black Gives Way to Blue” will see the light of day, or when—who knows? I’m just saying it was a really creative period and it led to a lot of new songs.

Back in 1992, when “Dirt” came out, what were you doing at that point?
I had a band called No Walls back then. That was sort of a—it’s hard to explain No Walls. The modus operandi there was to combine what I loved about rock music—from the Hendrix Experience to the Who to the MC5, you name it—with my love for more experimental music like Ornette Coleman and James Blood Ulmer and Albert Ayler and the Coltrane Quartet stuff…

Sort of free jazz stuff?
Exactly. No Walls was an attempt at sort of a free rock band. [Laughs] If I can be so bold, it was in the spirit of, like in the ‘60s, the Hendrix Experience was basically a jazz drummer with a rock bass player and a high-energy blues guitarist—all of whom had an ear for different music individually and then together they created this unique hybrid. And that was kind of the idea behind No Walls.

So were you paying attention to the so-called grunge scene at that time?
Oh, sure. I loved all kinds of music—always have. I originally came into playing in bands through punk rock, the early ‘80s hardcore scene.

Yeah, I saw that one of your earliest bands was a punk band called Neon Christ.
That’s right, yeah.

Great name, by the way.
Yeah, and they loved it in Atlanta, Georgia in 1983. [Laughs] It was meant to raise a few eyebrows, but we ended up doing quite a bit more than that. Having three different county cop cars staking out your rehearsals was something we didn’t anticipate.

I’m assuming you never had a chance to meet Layne, is that correct?
That is correct…I never did meet Layne.

When you’re approaching the songs from that era, are you just being yourself when you sing them? Or is there a particular sound or style that you try to go for?
The only way to do any music is to be yourself. Of course, that is a tricky thing when you’re dealing with material that’s that well-known and that’s that intense and personal in a lot of ways. Especially a lot of Layne’s songs on “Dirt.”

It must be pretty intense experience for you to deliver some of those lyrics.
Sure. But you know, I have a history with intense material. I kind of dove in the deep water at about 14 years old and stayed there. [Laughs] And there’s a lot of experience that I’m bringing to that material, and that’s what I draw on. None of us are strangers to grief or despair or hard times. I think in the end, that material, however personal its origins might be to Layne or Cantrell, the feelings are universal. And that’s why they resonated with a lot of people. Everybody that really identifies [with] or gets off on a song like “Junkhead” is not experiencing an addiction to heroin. Of course there are people that are—but there are a lot of people out there who are more tapping into the feelings of alienation and the feelings of, “You people just don’t understand me, so I’m gonna create my own scene.”

“Junkhead” is about more than just being a junkie.
Totally, man. Totally. And those are feelings that I definitely identify with. So that’s what I plug into.