Esquire Exclusive: The Ever-Expanding Universe of Tool's Maynard James Keenan

A few hours on the vineyard with a renaissance man whose found his place.

I’m riding alongside Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan in his truck on a bumpy dirt road that opens to a picturesque vineyard. We arrive at the Marzo block and park next to a rustic house and a duck pond, where he jumps out and starts a duck impression. Instantly, they begin to waddle and swim towards him. It’s a much different scene than the last time I saw Keenan—in February 2020, hours before performing for 18,000, amped-up New Orleans fans. But it is an ordinary day for a peculiar man who has carved out his world in an unlikely place: Jerome, Arizona.

One of the reasons Keenan chose Jerome is because he feels a familiarity between this place and his hometown in Michigan. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Sometimes it's about where you can't be. “I’m not supposed to be in LA. I’m not wired for that place,” he tells me as we weave through rows of lush grapevine. "My friend brought me here and I thought this is the place. The next day I switched my license over and registered to vote. Been here since ’95.”

Every one of us is searching for home, whether it be spiritually, physically or both. The desire to feel safe, comfortable and happy with oneself is the fuel that drives our creative pursuits. The right combination of hard work and luck can unlock those doors. In Jerome, Keenan, it seems, has unlocked a town, where decades of tireless work have made his dreams realities.

All the while, he’s maintained his status as a Grammy award winning prog rock legend, courtesy of Tooland two side projects: A Perfect Circle and Puscifer. But Keenan has also been fully immersed in the wine business for more than two decades. What was once a fledgling region now thrives thanks largely to the fruit of his labors. Other than the fact that he’s found home, he gives partial credit to Brazilian Jujitsu (he even owns a studio in Jerome) for this second layer of his success. 

“There’s a thing called economy of movement; don’t waste any energy. Use the other person’s energy against them to let them move. Quality of life is success in my opinion. My quality of life is finding puzzles and seeing them through. Whether it be a building, a wine, writing songs. They’re puzzles. Do I need to do all these things? No. But I have the means to instigate the puzzles and do them.”

And these puzzles aren’t always easy. As we pull into the Eliphante site, a 40 acre block with 28 acres under vine, he points to the vines about 50 yards from us. “We got hail in 2019 and it devastated the entire site. We had beautiful fruit, everything was on track, then 20 minutes of a microburst of hail. We found 100 dead birds in the vineyards because it hit so fast they couldn’t get out of the way of the hail.” It wasn't Keenan's first brush with losing it all, but that's not something that scares him.

“I’m ok with nothing. It’s like that stress management you go through in a martial art. You’ve seen it. You’ve been on the bottom rather than on the top. I don’t want to have nothing," he says laughing. "I’m enjoying all the shit that I’m doing, but I’m ok if it happens.”

As of right now, he’s far from it. Seven vineyard sites, seven tasting rooms, three winemaking facilities, two restaurants, a barber shop, a record store and the beginning of a hilltop site which, when finished, will be home to his Merkin Vineyards Hilltop Trattoria and Caduceus Cellars Hilltop. It’s a lot, and yet, you barely notice the imprint just driving through. Keenan says that’s by design, because community is important to him. During the Covid shutdown, he donated the fruits and vegetables he and his father grew for the restaurants to help their employees. 

“You always have the NIMBYs,” he says referring to “Not In My Backyard” people. “We love what you’re doing, just not in my backyard. That’s a gonna be what it’s gonna be, but for the most part people are seeing the benefit of the connection,” he says, as we walk through the Agostino block, which he named after his six year old daughter.

He plucks some mint leaves and hands me a few. We chew and walk. He leans down and grabs a flower and hands it to me.

“This is Nasturtium. Eat the whole thing.”

It had never occurred to me to eat flowers out of the ground before. This is my Charlie Bucket moment. I got the golden ticket. Time to eat everything in sight.

“It’s like horseradish. It’s fuckin’ great,” he says. “They’re everywhere. There’s food right outside your fucking house. So there’s the choice. There’s the education. The thing you can pass on. And we put all these flowers on salads. The purple ones, the yellow ones. Don’t ask me the names I’m dumb as shit (laughs).” 

A handful of purple flowers and ten fresh mint leaves later, we’re back in the truck heading to the next vineyard block. The dirt clouds the vines in the rearview and my mind is on one thing: I should’ve taken 20 more of those flowers. The truck stops at an empty lot on a residential street corner.

“I don’t know if this is a generational thing, but when I was a kid a lot of my friends would go boating and camping on this hot lake and what you really look forward to is the ice cream. So this will be our gelato spot. You pull up and order some fucking smoothie or a soft serve cone or a banana split.”

I imagined a crew of Oompa Loompas materializing and building an ice cream stand while singing. That fantasy was broken by a jarring reality. Did he just say vacation? It's hard to imagine him ever on one. I assumed he’d been working steadily since the age of zygote. Turns out he took one recently. Sort of. His version of break was recording and releasing a full length studio album, Existensial Reckoning, and self financing and filming two pay per view specials, Live at Acrosanti, and Billy D and The Hall of Feathered Serpents featuring Money $hot by Puscifer.

I tell him, at this point, he might as well run for office.

“Fuuuck no! he exclaims, laughing. "No, I bowl with the mayor. He has to play the middle, nod, and figure out what’s best for the community as a whole—listening and separating the squawks from the actual criticisms and compliments. I couldn’t do that. I have a vision and I do what I want to do. I would not be good in that position (chuckles). Off with their heads!!”

OK, so campaigning isn’t a part of the puzzle right now. But being the Willy Wonka of Arizona wine probably wasn’t at one point, either. Maynard’s full-plate is inspired. 

“You cut to Decline of Western Civilization Part Two where you see the guy from WASP, drunk in his pool and you go, that’s where you end up? And you have to assume, in a music career, that’s where you end up. Especially if you hang your hat on the thing you did not the thing you’re doing. That really put a zap on me.”

The scene he’s referencing is a hard one to watch. A rich, famous rockstar chugging vodka from the bottle while his disappointed mother looks on poolside. He slurs though a confession about how achieving his dreams only made him more miserable. That’s not what Maynard is after. He seems happy with the healthy balance of living for the art and experience, and not being bound by the old rules of rock stardom. “There’s a poison in purity with those kinds of things. I’m proud of what we did, but if I did it right, like if it was a bottle of wine, it was that year for that weather and that’s it. Don’t expect me to repeat that. I’m being true to that time. I shouldn’t be able to repeat that.”

After we parted ways, on my drive to the airport, I imagine Maynard floating happily in his own pool, calling his ducks over in between sips of his latest Spanish white, looking out at the valley he calls home. It looks a lot like a completed puzzle.

Full Article: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a37209317/maynard-james-keenan-tool-winery-interview-2021/