Mad Season

Formed in Seattle in 1994, Mad Season is often likened to a grunge supergroup, with a single cult studio album, Above. Guitarist Mike McCready (Pearl Jam) and bassist John Baker Saunders (The Walkabouts) met in a rehab center, and the project evolved with the involvement of drummer/percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees) and singer Layne Staley (Alice in Chains). Initially named The Gacy Bunch (a cross between the serial killer John Wayne Gacy and The Brady Bunch series), the band eventually opted for Mad Season, in reference to the period of the hallucinogenic mushroom bloom. After a few concerts, the quartet moved into Seattle's Bad Animals Studio, owned by Heart sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, to record Above, released on March 14, 1995 on the Columbia label. Featuring Mark Lanegan as a guest on five tracks, it reached No. 24 on the Billboard 200 and No. 41 in the U.K., modest positions considering the impact it was to have. Certified gold for its half-million sales in the U.K., it includes the singles "River of Deceit" (#9 on the alternative charts), "I Don't Know Anything" and "Long Gone Day". The album, which combines long, introspective ballads with a blues and jazz feel and Skerik's saxophone, with grunge and acoustic passages, is dominated by Staley's vocal performance, reflecting the members' inner struggles with their respective addictions. The series of concerts that follow give rise to the live album Live at the Moore, released in VHS video format before its CD/DVD edition in 2013. The musicians then went about their business, reuniting only for a cover of John Lennon's "I Don't Want to Be a Soldier" on the Working Class Hero compilation. They attempted a comeback in 1997, but Staley's addiction made this impossible, and they opted for Mark Lanegan and the new name of Disinformation. Planned sessions were eventually postponed and then cancelled, before the deaths of John Baker Saunders (January 15, 1999) and Layne Staley (April 5, 2002). In addition to the 2015 release of the album Sonic Evolution, featuring Mad Season songs accompanied by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ludovic Morlot, the album Above was reissued in 20213 as a deluxe edition, in the form of a 2-CD and 1-DVD box set including Live at the Moore.