Watch Maynard James Keenan Make Wine, Talk David Bowie in New Video
Tool‘s Maynard James Keenan discussed winemaking, music, legacies and David Bowie in a new video for Revolver, “The Art of Work.”
The clip was shot at Keenan’s Caduceus Cellars vineyard in the former copper town of Jerome, Arizona. For Keenan, the vineyard is an opportunity to reconnect with a more utilitarian kind of creativity, which he said has imbued his music and writing with a different kind of perspective.
“I’m always writing. I’m working with Tool, Perfect Circle, Puscifer all the time,” Keenan said. “Just slowly hedging our way through it all to present. If I was just doing those things, you start to run out of actual life experiences. All you’re going to write about is the bus or a fucked up lawsuit, you just kind of lose your way, become disconnected. This is the reconnect.”
Keenan also mused about building his legacy, but while he recognized music would be a component of that, he seemed more interested in the long-term impact of his vineyard and winemaking. As an example, Keenan pointed to the outpouring of reverence for David Bowie, but noted the musician’s death marked the true end of his creative output.
“In a way that’s done, he’s done it, he can’t do anymore, he’s no longer here,” Keenan said. “There’s a reverence to him, and a worship of sorts, a fan reaction to what he’s done, and now he no longer is here, but that’s kind of one direction. What we’ve done, or what we’re setting up as a community here in Northern Arizona, Southern Arizona, with the winemaking and the culinary efforts, the community efforts that go along with it, and all the collateral benefits of a winemaking and grape growing community – their might be some founders of that movement, but if we are no longer here, there are other people to continue what we started. In a way that’s more of a legacy because you’ve established something that can continue 100, 200 years beyond you.”