Maynard James Keenan Keeping It Real Amid Tool Recording Rumors

Following Tool's tour last summer, rumors of a new album have been rife. Fans shouldn't get their hopes up, though, since frontman Maynard James Keenan tells Noisecreep that he's too busy right now -- what with Puscifer hitting the road and his Arizona winery, Merkin Vineyards, at all systems go.

Still, there's some good news: Keenan doesn't totally discount more activity from the iconic mathy metal band. "It's hard to say," Keenan tells Noisecreep. "I don't know if I can right now. I am on the operating table and I'm breaching, I'm having a baby. The idea of making another baby right now is not appealing," he says metaphorically, if not a little dramatically, of recording a new album.

More pressing, it seems, is Keenan's desire to promote a grassroots lifestyle. That's one of the reasons he made his mockumentary, 'Blood Into Wine,' which documents Keenan's efforts as a wine producer.

"Why make this film? I think it's really important for people to understand that you can start something in your backyard, and it doesn't have to be something that takes over the world." Standard ideals of consumer and commuter culture clearly don't sit with Keenan. "I can walk to my winery from my kitchen. That's the way things used to be, when you made your living in your home." But he isn't the average rock star with a jones to save the environment. "The idea of saving the environment with a Prius doesn't quite do it," he scoffs.

Another of Keenan's ventures is a food market specializing in organically grown local produce, which he opened near his rural estate in Arizona. "You have a lot of buzz words flying around like sustainability, local and organic. It looks good on a sticker in a grocery store, but the actual practices of growing those things seems to erase political lines, social lines. When you meet the farmer who is struggling, then you don't really care who he voted for, honestly. You want to help him to grow the crop."