Mike McCready Drafting Singers for Unreleased Mad Season Album
The Layne Staley-fronted band Mad Season were one of the most under-the-radar side projects of the ’90s, and now guitarist Mike McCready reveals that there is an unreleased album on the way, as well as a reissue of their debut album ‘Above’ and a live release.
In the mid 1990s, grunge heavyweights Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam were both going through some growing pains, so Staley and McCready joined forces to form Mad Season along with bassist John Baker Saunders and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin. Best known for their song ‘River of Deceit,’ the band hoped to draft a new vocalist after Staley left in 1997. Tragically, their journey ended when Saunders died of a heroin overdose in 1999 — the same fate that would befall Staley three years later.
In a recent interview, Mike McCready revealed that he is attempting to make some moves this year regarding the band’s long-dormant catalog. “We’re looking into re-releasing some Mad Season music that I did with Layne Staley before he died and John Baker Saunders,” the Pearl Jam guitarist told WFPK. “We’re gonna re-release ['Above'], hopefully by the end of the year and put a live concert out — and also we have 13 unreleased songs we never did.”
McCready added. “We were trying to do another record and it just didn’t work. Layne went off and did Alice in Chains and then he died, so what happened was I had to change the name to a band called Disinformation. From [those] sessions there are probably 12 songs…but they’re all music. We’re trying to find singers that are up to the caliber of Layne to do justice to it. I know a lot of [great singers] but it’s just getting the commitment.”
McCready later said that they are trying to acquire the rights to the Mad Season catalog and hope to release all of the projects by the end of the year.”There’ some cool stuff and people will be excited when it happens we’re gonna make it really nice for people.”