In both his geographic history and actual song titles, Art Alexakis of Everclear is mostly associated with places like Portland, Santa Monica, Summerland and Nehalam.
But for a short period in the late ‘70s, he was a teenager living with his father’s second family in the Houston-adjacent Alief and Katy areas (he also lived with roommates in Montrose).
It was also during that time he had a brief and somewhat dangerous career stint in the fast-food industry.
“When I was 15 1/2, I worked at Ken’s Crispy Fried Chicken on Westheimer, even though I was too young and had lied about my age,” he says over Zoom. “One night, my manager told me I was going to be one of the assistant managers and get a raise. So, I just had to hold off for four months until I turned legal!”
But alas, Alexakis’ ruse and time cooking chicken ended abruptly the very next day after his good news. As he was carrying racks of hot fowl in the kitchen, he stepped on a hose full of high-pressure hot water. It burned his leg and he was sent to the hospital where “everybody found out” how old he really was. Goodbye Assistant Manager position.
In 2023 Ken’s Crispy Fried Chicken is long gone. But Art Alexakis will have a chance to see a bit of his old stomping grounds when Everclear plays the unlikely venue of sports bar & restaurant/batting cage venue the Home Run Dugout in Katy on January 12.
“I’ve played minor league baseball fields before, and I was even a baseball player, but to me a show’s a show. That’s the punk rock ethos. Just plug me in!” he laughs. “Is this place off Mason Road? I’m not going to recognize anything about Katy!”
Years later as the frontman of a Everclear, seemingly everybody would also know about his transplanted Texan father and the fraught relationship the pair had. It was chronicled in one of the band’s signature songs, the emotionally powerful “Father of Mine.”
Much of it directly autobiographical, a forceful Alexakis catalogs the Poor Paternal Parenting, clicking off spousal and child abandonment, physical and emotional abuse and even birthday gift stinginess. He also notes that he’ll carry the inflicted damage his entire life, and vows to behave the complete opposite with his own offspring.
The song is eviscerating and unfortunately, all too relatable to millions of listeners. So, what happened when its composer’s own father heard the finished track?
“People thought I hated my dad, and I didn’t. He just wasn’t there when I needed him. My mother told me when I was young—and this was her way of passively aggressively talking about him—she said ‘Son, a real man doesn’t move across the country and raise somebody else’s kids. A real man, if it doesn’t work out, just moves down the street,’” Alexakis says.
“One of my stepsisters told him about it and he said to me ‘Well son, I heard you wrote a song about me. I hope you did me proud.’ And I said ‘Well, dad, I was honest.’ And we never talked about it again. It was my mom who raised me and battled diseases and had operations and was a badass and tenacious. She was everything to me.”
Alexakis adds that when his mother was dying in 2004/2005, his father did reach out to him about mending fences and having a relationship with Art and his granddaughter. The son had only one caveat.
“I told him I bear him no malice, but I didn’t know him,” he says. “I told him to call my mother, listen to her, apologize to her and not argue and be a man. Be a mensch and let her clear her spirit. And just take it. If he could do that, I’d be on a plane the next week with my daughter to Houston and we’d start a relationship,” he recalls. “I gave him her number. And he never called.”
The last time Alexakis saw his father in 2016, it was over Face Time as he lay dying in his hospital bed—though Art did introduce his second granddaughter to him via video. Four days after his father passed, David Bowie died. And one man was on his mind far more.
“When Bowie died, I was way more brokenhearted. He had given me way more. He had a fearlessness to be a freak and make his own niche in life. That inspired the hell out of me and tens of millions of other people,” Alexakis says.
When we last checked in with Alexakis this past summer, the band was ready to release Live at the Whisky A Go Go. The 17-track record featured most of the Everclear’s best-known material (“Wonderful,” “A.M. Radio,” “Santa Monica,” “I Will Buy You a New Life,” “Heroin Girl,” “Everything to Everyone”) along with two new songs with a contemporary edge. One addressed teen suicide and bullying, the other a certain former President who can’t seem to let go of the past (“Year of the Tiger”).
And while it celebrated the band’s 30th anniversary, it was amazingly also their first “official” live release. Alexakis was happy with its reception.
“I honestly didn’t see a bad review!” he laughs. “It was kind of a bold idea to just record one show. I wanted it to be a document. We mixed it and sweetened it up a little bit, but we didn’t redo it. And at the end of the day, I only replaced three or four lines because I was singing off mike.”
But he doesn’t take record reviews all that seriously, noting that Everclear’s own breakthrough albums Sparkle and Fade and So Much for the Afterglow received some poor critical reception initially. As he says did one of his personal favorites, the Pixies’ Doolittle. Now, all are considered classic alt rock records.
“No offense, Bob,” he laughs. “But writers…whaddya gonna do?”
He’s also called the current Everclear lineup of himself, Davey French (guitar), Freddy Herrera (bass) and Brian Nolan (drums) the one with the “most sense of band.” And potential dicey issues that would be (and were) at the forefront of a younger group are not prevalent here.
“We all know our places and we respect everybody. We have a great crew, management, agent and publicist,” he says. “It’s just special having mature, adult relationships. Imagine that! And even though I’ve been sober for 34 years, I’ve been super locked in the past three, four years. My relationships and friendships and family are all great.”
Everclear’s Katy gig is the first of handful of U.S. dates, before Alexakis takes off to—of all places—Australia for a string of solo acoustic gigs with pal Brendan Brown of Wheatus (“Teenage Dirtbag”) opening.
“They love the Everclear down in Australia!” Alexakis says. “When we were having platinum records in the U.S., they were selling double that down there. And I get recognized when I go out all the time. It’s a trip.”
Finally, since it is the Christmas season, we wondered if there were any holiday traditions in the Alexakis household. Turns out that the Everclear frontman really likes to cook, even whipping up turkey gravy on the spot when it was not on the table where he had this past Thanksgiving. Though he’s also had a tradition of eating Chinese food at restaurants during the holidays.
Like any Gen Xer, he was also raised on animated TV holiday specials. Of which he knows something a bit deeper about.
“I think the trifecta is A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Boris Karloff, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But man, I found out later a lot of those writers on those Rankin Bass things were writers who were blacklisted because they were gay and just lumped in with the Communist scare,” he says.
“So, look at the elf in Rudolph who wants to be a dentist and he says ‘I’m independent. Let’s be independent together.’ I remember watching that with my drunk, druggie friends—some of whom were gay or into drag—and they said ‘Man, that dentist elf is gay!’’ he laughs. [Note: That dentist elf would be the blonde Hermey].
“And who hasn’t referenced the Island of Misfit Toys? My whole life has been as a Misfit Toy! Also, Santa’s kind of a dick on that show!”
Everclear plays at 8 p.m. on Friday, January 12, at the Home Run Dugout in Katy, 1220 Grand West. The Hunger opens. For more information, call 833-382-6881 or visit HomeRunDugout.com. $35 general admission, $50 VIP Standing, $275 & up tables and suites.
For more on Everclear, visit EverclearMusic.com
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
