This must be the place: ‘Memories of candles and incense, and all of these things, remember these?’
Tenth floor at the Cambria in Asheville.
Garret K. Woodward photo
Hello from Room 1001 at the Cambria hotel in downtown Asheville. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m currently sitting at this writing desk (pictured), I’m overlooking the intersection of Haywood Street and Page Avenue, the Harrah’s Cherokee Center and former George Vanderbilt Hotel within sight.
Last night, the city was on fire with live music in seemingly every direction in preparation for the 33rd installment of the “Warren Haynes Presents: The Christmas Jam,” which is taking place this evening at the civic center. Every single spot had something going on, and something really damn good. To note, legendary rock act Stone Temple Pilots are heading Xmas Jam.
So, Friday night, I’m bouncing between The One Stop and The Orange Peel, etc. Amazing bands. Wild crowds. A smile ear-to-ear. Anyhow, I feel a little overwhelmed, so I decide to wander over to The Vault for a quiet nightcap and to just kind of decompress. Thus, I walk in and I immediately recognize the dude sitting at the nearby table. It was Eric Kretz.
I turn to my friend, “Dude, that’s Eric Kretz.” My friend: “Who’s Eric Kretz?” Me: “The drummer of Stone Temple Pilots.” My all-time favorite band that literally changed the course of my life. And there he is, just hanging there, all while his drum tech was making some phone calls.
My friend leaves to go back to The One Stop. I walk over to Eric. Me: “You’re Eric Kretz.” Him: “I am. You’re the first person to recognize me.” We talk for a hot minute and I take my cue to say it was nice to meet and so forth and aim to leave. Eric goes, “Grab a beer, let’s sit down and talk.” So, I do.
And for the next hour, we talked about nothing and everything: STP recording sessions, motorcycles, Louisiana, kinesio tape, etc. Nonstop and enjoyable conversation. No recording devices. No photos. Just two humans connecting. As I get up to leave, he gives me his number and said to call the next time I’m in LA, or he’ll call me when he’s in Western North Carolina (he really wants to visit the Wheels Through Time museum in Maggie Valley).
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To that, I tell him at one point, in all sincerity, “Eric, your band is the reason I became a music journalist. I saw an AD for STP at the Rolling Rock festival in 2001 in Rolling Stone when I was 16, and I was so bummed that I couldn’t afford to go or be able to get in, and so, I subconsciously decided that I would become a music journalist, and that set me on this journey.”
STP has been “my band” since I was in middle school, growing up in a small Canadian border town in Upstate New York. When I saw them live in 1999 in Montreal, it changed my life. STP tore the roof off the Bell Centre. The band was a muscle car, with lead singer Scott Weiland the high-octane gasoline. Walking away from that performance, I knew, even then at age 14, that all I wanted to do was be around music, especially when performed live.
And through all the ups and downs of STP, Weiland still remained my all-time favorite front man. Nobody even comes close to him, in vocal range and in stage presence. To which, that iconic performance at the Rolling Rock festival in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, shows the band at its pinnacle. The footage still gives me chills. Track it down and give it a whirl.
As I became a music journalist in the following years, Weiland sat at the very top of my wishlist of musicians/people I always wanted to interview. On Nov. 22, 2015, I had the honor of finally sitting down and interviewing him face-to-face backstage at The Orange Peel during his solo tour that fall.
To preface, that 2015 interview became a lengthy feature I wrote for Live for Live Music, with the following sentiments of mine still ringing true:
“I was an odd, somewhat alienated and picked-on adolescent, something that I found solidarity in with the persona, words and sounds that radiated from Weiland. He was out there, almost to a fault, where the more you tried to pin him down, the more elusive he became. He didn’t want to be defined, and also was so transparent in his actions and motives. Weiland sang about deeply sensitive and personal topics, where you knew that beneath all of his bravado and tough skin was a guy who was just as vulnerable and in search for truth as the rest of us were. He was innately human, and projected that more so than many of his contemporaries in the grunge era.”
That Asheville interaction with Weiland was surreal, to say the least. A true full-circle moment in my life. I had sincerely befriended my favorite musician, only to tragically find out just days later of his untimely passing on Dec. 3, 2015. He was just 47 years old. The music of STP will always be the vast majority of the “soundtrack of my life,” perhaps the entire mix, you know? The melodies are as timeless as they are filled with this sense of urgency.
In a recent issue of The Smoky Mountain News, I had the sincere privilege of interviewing STP guitarist Dean DeLeo. It was recorded several years ago and remained unpublished until the appropriate time, which became this upcoming appearance this evening at Xmas Jam. To which, I’ll be interviewing STP bassist Robert DeLeo (Dean’s brother) at some point later today.
“Well, I know what I’m sitting on, musically speaking. And I know what Robert has. There’s a lot left. We just love making music. And we love being able to share it with you,” Dean told me. “And I got to tell you, I don’t want to claim ownership on this thing. You know, this [music] belongs to all of us. This is all of ours. I just want us all to really have it be a place where we can completely dip our minds and find every emotion in it. And if we just get to do that, then that makes me feel good, man.”
As I get up to leave The Vault, I shake Eric’s hand to say goodbye and add, “Your music changed my life, and all for the better, so thank you.”
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.
