Years in the making, Sean Dowdell is taking the shifted release date of his new album in stride. Notably Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington’s pre-stardom outfit, it’s been a long road for him and Grey Daze to reach this point, with the album serving as a re-introduction of the Phoenix band’s 90’s alt-rock style through painstaking studio work both old and new.
Describing first meeting Bennington, Dowdell chuckles as he recalls. “We were introduced through a mutual friend who told me he knew this kid who could sing like Eddie Vedder, and wanted to audition for our band. Chester was 15 years old, I was 17. He came in and he sang Pearl Jam ‘Alive’ and he sounded great. He had this raw talent that was like ‘holy crap, this kid’s good!’ and then I basically had to go to Chester’s house and ask his dad’s permission to let him join the band. In 1993 we formed Grey Daze and ended up recording three records together.”
As he explains it, the idea to reactivate the band and get back in the studio was Chester’s all along. “In 2016, Chester had just finished the One More Light album with Linkin Park and was a year on from leaving Stone Temple Pilots,” Dowdell explains. “We were best friends and business partners so we talked quite a bit. We’d throw these big parties for our company, Club Tattoo, in Arizona. During a conversation to plan the next event, Chester said ‘I’ve been thinking for this party, we should put together Grey Daze again. I miss playing with you and I miss having a band of my own. It’s time.’”
“I basically had to go to Chester’s house and ask his dad’s permission to let him join the band. In 1993 we formed Grey Daze and ended up recording three records together.”
The initial news of Grey Daze’s return sparked lots of excitement, which got Bennington’s thoughts churning further. He continues. “Once we’d made an announcement that Grey Daze was getting back together, we started getting offers to play all over the world. Chester started realising that this could be something we’d carry on for more than just a show, so we started talking about re-doing the music. We had a catalogue of 35 songs that we could re-record and put back out so that’s how the project developed.”
“I went into the studio while he was actually out on the road and started working on the tracks, he and I would go back and forth on them,” Dowdell explains. “After working with the producer, Chester said ‘these songs are starting to sound a little bit dated. Lets go back and refresh the sounds, re-track guitars and re-write some of parts’. The idea was when he got off the road with Linkin Park, we were going to go back into the studio and have him re-track his vocals.“
Tragically, those sessions would never eventuate as Chester passed away on July 20, 2017, three days before Grey Daze were set to start rehearsals in Phoenix. “I gave a eulogy at his funeral and just put the Grey Daze project to the back of my mind,” says Dowdell. “About 6 months after he’d passed, it kept eating at me to finish the record and the music, something just kept pushing me to finish it.”
The finished version of Amends consists of all new musical arrangements with Bennington’s vocals from the original 90’s recordings laid over the top. He says, “once we got back into the studio, we scrapped all of the music and literally started over. We worked on Chester’s vocals by themselves, worked on the arrangement and then we actually wrote the music around his vocal tracks, every single song that way. Which is one of the reasons it took us two and half years to get it done.”
“They gave me their blessing because they just know the integrity I have as a human being and they know I would never do anything to tarnish their son in any way.”
As Dowdell acknowledges, it also took some serious foresight in storing the recordings to be able to unearth 20+ years later. “I had kept about 16 of the master tracks. Our very first guitar player also had the original ADAT recording of the first record. He gave them to me once he found out what we were doing and was very supportive of the project and wanted to see it come to light. So we ended up with two full albums of material.”
Fortunately for all involved, Dowdell and Bennington’s family remain close which enabled him to get the record done to everyone’s satisfaction. “First and foremost, I went and talked to Talinda [Bennington’s wife]. She’s not only a friend of mine, she’s also my business partner in Club Tattoo so we have a great relationship. I told her what I wanted to do and she said, ‘look, you’re his best friend. You’ve never screwed him over, you’ve never had anything other than his best intentions at heart. I trust you, just make sure its good and do what you want to do,'” he says. “I had the same conversation with Chester’s parents. They gave me their blessing because they just know the integrity I have as a human being and they know I would never do anything to tarnish their son in any way.”
You would be forgiven for thinking this is the last we’d hear from Grey Daze, but that’s not so, according to Dowdell. “The whole reason we did this project was for Chester, so it would feel disingenuous for us to spend the last three years finishing this project then say ‘hey, here’s our new singer!’” he says. “That’s just not something we want to do. We would do something live in a tribute fashion where we bring in guest singers, we’d do that. If the record is received as well as we think it’s going to be, we have enough to do at least one if not two more records! This took a lot of work and a lot of time – it was a passion project. If we end up doing all this work and people say ‘this sucks, we don’t like it’ then I probably won’t do another record. That’s not the reaction we’re getting so far, people seem to love it and with that as the standard we’ll probably go in and do another record after this.”
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