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Mad Season Live At The Moorewith Mark Lanegan

Mad Season Live At The Moore

With Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age), Barrett Martin, Mike McCready (Pearl Jam), John Baker Saunders(The Walkabouts). … Mad Season: Live at the Moore (1995)

Interesting Tidbits about the Band Members:

In 1994, John Baker Saunders went into a Minneapolis drug rehabilitation facility, where he met Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready. After completing treatment, Saunders and McCready returned to Seattle and formed a band called The Gacy Bunch, with vocalist Layne Staley and drummer Barrett Martin. They soon changed the band’s name to Mad Season. Mad Season’s acclaimed album, Above, released in 1995, was awarded a gold record for sales in the United States. It was the only album that Mad Season would record. Saunders’ died in 1999 due to a heroin overdose. Another one..beatin by the beast. Saunders began his career as a blues bassist, working with traditional blues artists in Chicago, such as Hubert Sumlin and Sammy Fender. He recorded and toured Europe with the Seattle-based band, The Walkabouts.

Mike McCready (as we all know..or at least should know) is one of the founding members of Pearl Jam. McCready was also a member of the side project bands Temple of the Dog, Mad Season and The Rockfords.

A childhood friend of Stone Gossard, went to one of the band’s shows and appreciated McCready’s work after hearing him perform Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Couldn’t Stand the Weather” Gossard had known McCready from back before high school when the two would trade rock band pictures with each other. After the demise of Andrew Wood and Gossard’s band Mother Love Bone, Stone asked McCready if he wanted to play music together with him. After a few months of practicing together, McCready in turn encouraged Gossard to reconnect with his Mother Love Bone alum Jeff Ament..and the rest is Perl Jam Histroy.

During the production of Vitalogy, McCready went into rehabilitation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he met bassist John Baker Saunders of The Lamont Cranston Band. In 1994, when the two returned to Seattle, they formed a side band, The Gacy Bunch, with vocalist Layne Staley of Alice in Chains and drummer Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees. After several live shows, they changed their name to Mad Season. The band released the album Above through Columbia Records in 1995, and are best known for the single “River of Deceit”. The band broke up following Saunders’ death in 1999 due to a heroin overdose. Staley would pass away three years later in 2002, of an apparent overdose of heroin and cocaine. Coincidently Staley would die on McCready’s Birthday.

Barrett Martin was the drummer for the Seattle, Washington groups Skin Yard and Screaming Trees, as well as the supergroups Mad Season and Tuatara. A multi-instrumentalist and producer, he also does recording session work in Los Angeles and has played on, or produced, over 70 albums to date. He is primarily known for his powerful tribal drumming style, which includes the use of the tom toms as a rhythmic component that replaces the traditional hihat and ride cymbal.

Barrett Martin is coming out with a new album in 2011 with the Barrett Group and has been appointed adjunct professor of music at Antioch University, the famed liberal arts college in Seattle, WA.

Post Mad Season

Following Saunders’ death, McCready returned to working and touring with Pearl Jam and also later formed a new side project, The Rockfords. Martin briefly returned to work with Screaming Trees before the band disbanded in 2000. Since then Martin has worked as an occasional touring drummer for R.E.M. and performs with R.E.M guitarist Peter Buck in the band Tuatara. Staley briefly reunited with Alice in Chains in the late 1990s before dropping out of the public eye permanently. His body was later found on April 19, 2002 in his condominium, the victim of an apparent overdose of cocaine and heroin.^[11] Lanegan has gone on to a relatively successful solo career, has worked with Queens of the Stone Age, and performed with Isobel Campbell on the 2006 Mercury Prize nominated album, Ballad of the Broken Seas, and as part of a duo with Greg Dulli under the name The Gutter Twins.

Mad Season – Live At The Moore – X-Ray Mind