Chad Gray Hints at the Possibility of New Music With Solo Band

In the second part of the two-part interview with Full Metal Jackie about his "30 Years of Madness" solo tour, Mudvayne and Hellyeah vocalist Chad Gray hints at the possibility of new music with his current solo band, though it comes with a "wait and see" caveat.

Talking with Full Metal Jackie for her weekend radio show, Gray shares, "If this looks like it could be something more, I might create some new music. I might write some new music, just solo stuff." But he's quick to affirm, "I still am doing Mudvayne. I still wanna do Mudvayne. But I'm loving doing this because I'm having the opportunity to play Hellyeah music again. But I'm still very much in Mudvayne and I'm still doing Mudvayne. We'll see what happens with more new music from Mudvayne, but hopefully I'll be able to."

At present, Gray's enjoyed the DIY approach to fielding a band and touring during Mudvayne's 2026 off year, but he continues to monitor the fan reaction to what he's been providing, "It's just all gonna depend on how it's received, honestly. But if it does well and the tour is great, then that's kind of a no-brainer. Then maybe I should do it. But time will tell."

Elsewhere in the interview, he confirms that he had concerns about Mudvayne getting deep into 2026 without a plan for 2027 and admits that's where things stand at the moment.

This part of the interview also delves into Gray's observations on the solo band he's put together, carrying the metal mantle for a new generation like his favorite bands once did for him and reflecting on the albums that best represented the most rewarding periods of his career. Check out more of the chat below.

It's Full Metal Jackie. Chad Gray is my guest on the show this week. We've back with part two of our interview talking about "30 Years of Madness." Chad, throughout your career, you've been with Mudvayne or Hellyeah, and there's been a label behind you. This "30 Years of Madness" has been largely something started up on your own. Have you enjoyed this experience of building this from the ground up, picking your musicians, deciding when and where to play and making your own path?

Yeah. It's been awesome. I'm doing it with my wife. It's so much fun. Shannon [Gunz] and I are best friends and now we're business partners. When this thing first started, because Shannon gets very into what she's into, whether it's her work with @Radio or her work as the manager of Chad Gray.

I thought I was gonna lose my wife to this, 'cause it was like, we'd be laying in bed, we'd be talking about, "Oh, we gotta do this, we gotta do that. What do you wanna do about this? Or what do you wanna do about that?" all day.

And then we're laying in bed one night, it's like 8:00 or 8:30. We go to bed early, and we're laying there, we're watching a show, and she pauses the show and she's like, "Oh, I was gonna ask you. What do you think about..." I like, "You know what, Shannon?" I was like, "I gotta pause right there." I was like, "I am not losing my wife to Chad Gray." "You are Chad Gray's wife, but I'm not losing my wife to being Chad Gray's manager." I'm like, "We've got to draw lines here." So we've got some boundaries now, but it's been a lot of fun doing it with her. She's a really smart girl and very creative and we're creative together and it's been a lot of fun doing it with her.

But it's been a lot of fun with these guys I'm playing with. Marcus [Rafferty] is one of my best friends forever. Marcus worked for Hellyeah for years as a guitar tech. He worked for Mudvayne as a guitar tech. So Marcus and I go way back. And then Marcus, we brought him in as the utility player in Mudvayne when we came back together. And then Greg [Tribbett]'s wife passed and Marcus stepped up into Greg's spot and we got another utility player for his spot.

So Marcus and I are super, super close. And I'm doing this with him and it means just so much to me. I love him so much. And he's been a savior in a lot of ways. He's been a fire plug under my ass to do it. I can run things by him. So it's been awesome doing it with him.

We've had two or three different drummers before we landed on Devin [Attard], but Devin's a phenomenal drummer, man. He's so great and he's so young. He's 26 years old and he is just so grateful and so willing to work. He's willing to put the time and energy into playing these songs and... But he's that good of a drummer. He can do it. There are certain drummers that would not be able to play this music from a drumming standpoint. You're talking Matt McDonough, who's the self-proclaimed super genius brainiac and that's how he plays. And then you've got Vinnie Paul, that's just that complete other side of it, a completely different style ... more laid back, groove-oriented. But Devin does a really good job playing both of those roles.

Mudvayne, "World So Cold"

Chad, you were talking about the members of your band. Tell us more about the other guys.

I met a guy, Joe Bonasorte, out here in Vegas that's another one of those Vegas players like [Christian] Brady. I was introduced to him through Brady. He's that guy that plays in six different things on six different nights, you know? So he's a phenomenal guitar player.

Nick [Villarreal] is one of the best bass players, I swear to God. He can play Ryan [Martinie]'s stuff note for note. He can play Kyle [Sanders]'s stuff note for note.

The band I've assembled is just incredible and they're all just super nice and super gracious and super grateful and super humble. It's the nicest. There's no fucking egos in the room at all. It's just incredible to play with these dudes. Again, I just wanna see what happens.

If this looks like it could be something more, I might create some new music. I might write some new music, just solo stuff. I still am doing Mudvayne. I still wanna do Mudvayne. But I'm loving doing this because I'm having the opportunity to play Hellyeah music again. But I'm still very much in Mudvayne and I'm still doing Mudvayne. We'll see what happens with more new music from Mudvayne, but you know, hopefully I'll be able to. It's just all gonna depend on how it's received, honestly. But if it does well and the tour is great, then that's kind of a no-brainer. Then maybe I should do it. But time will tell.

Chad, metal was there for you as a kid and you had bands that you looked up to. At 30 years in, you're now that guy. There's a generation of kids that grew up on L.D. 50 and "Dig." What does it mean to you to carry that metal mantle just like your heroes did for you?

It's one of the things I'm most grateful for in my life, to be able to be a metal kid, just have this passionate love affair with metal like I did. To have this music save my life literally and then be handed a torch and say, "Hey, now you carry it till it's time for you to pass it." And it's just like, "Huh?"

But I've been able to carry the torch for metal, man. I never thought that I would ever be able to do that. So many people try really, really, really hard for a long time and some are able to do it and some don't hit the mark. I'm more grateful for that than I probably am any other thing in my life.

A piece of me is in the history books of metal from the inception of metal. It just keeps moving and it keeps growing and it keeps vacillating and it just keeps going and going and going. And it's gonna be here long after I am, and long after the next guy that carries the torch is and long after the next guy that carries the torch is.

Let's hope, anyway. Metal's saved people's lives. I've talked about it in depth and I share it in my stories. I share it in my songs how much this music's done for me. And I'm grateful to be able to share those stories with other people and to remind people that they're not alone, to remind people that if anyone wonders, the world I came from is a very lonely world. Everything is internalized.

You come from an alcoholic family, you come from an abusive family, you come from sexual assaults, and you come from things like that, you don't scream that from the mountaintops. You internalize. And it's probably about the loneliest place in the world. And metal spoke to me in a way that let me know that I wasn't alone.

Based on what I was hearing lyrically from other artists, I was like, "Oh, that sounds like that guy's been through what I'm going through." You know, it sounds like You know what I mean? Like And all of a sudden, it's just like this big, deep breath. Like, "Okay, I'm not alone."

That's what your music is doing for fans now.

Absolutely. There's at least one other guy and that's why I've just always wore my life on my sleeve. I don't hold anything back. I just put it all out there because you never know who it's gonna touch.

Look, I can write a song, and I put people on on-ramps, right? Or put people on the road. This is where I'm going with this. But the whole way I write vague and ambiguous, so as I'm writing, I'm giving people off-ramps to where they can take it and make it applicable to their life.

Because I think that's so important that people are able to make it applicable to their existence. If people find something in something that I put out there, that's the greatest gift that I could be given. 'Cause that's always my intention. My intention's always been to help. My intention's always been to help the way that music helped me. And that's how it helped me. It helped me because it spoke to me. Because I was listening, and somebody, the person that I was listening to, was acting as the voice of the voiceless. And now I get to be the voice of the voiceless.

I'm hoping that other people that have found something in me and it's inspired them to do what I do and can be the voice for the voiceless as it keeps carrying on. And I think that that's so important that we take care of one another because we are a family.

We are the social pariahs. We are the outcasts. We don't fit in. And I'm okay with not fitting in.

Chad you were talking about carrying the metal torch and how this music has always been a home for people who never felt like they fit in. You also said you've always been comfortable being one of those outsiders and not fitting in.

I'm okay with not fitting in now that I have a tribe of a bunch of others that don't fit in.

That's something else that music gave me, too. When I was 13 years old and somebody handed me Too Fast for Love, and I took it home and I listened to it, and I'm like, "What the heck is this?" I went back and I took that tape back to my friend. So it gave me this music, right? That just literally touched me from the second I heard it from the first riff. And then all of a sudden I went to school and I'm like, "Oh, hold on a minute. That guy looks like he listens to my music." "Hold on a minute. That guy looks like he listens to my music." And here I am, the poster boy for that kid 'cause I was poor as shit and I dressed like a hobo. And I just got completely lambasted.

Now all of a sudden, I've got a tribe. I've got a crew of people. And the one thing that bonded us was music. And it didn't matter what we looked like. It didn't matter that I was a scrub. We talked about music. We talked about Mötley Crüe. We talked about metal. And all of a sudden, now I belong. It was like religion. It's like something bigger than myself. It gave me something bigger than what I had, 'cause what I had was very small and what I had was very lonely and it gave me something larger than life. For that, I'm eternally grateful, and I'll do everything I can do to keep running it up the flagpole, man.

Obviously the Mudvayne reunion has been keeping you occupied recent years and there was a collective decision on taking a break this year. Sadly Greg went through a death of his own with his wife late in the touring last year, and we've seen he's doing an album with his brother coming up. I just wanted to check in on the status of Mudvayne and where things stand.

I knew that we talked about taking 2026 off and I'm like, "I should probably do something," 'cause I have a feeling when I'm deep into 2026 I'm still not gonna have heard anything about 2027 and that's kinda where I'm at right now.

Like, I haven't really heard anything about, "Okay, big plans in 2027." There have been mutterings that that's it. So I'm like kind of kinda glad I did this. 'Cause I just don't wanna sit at home. That's not where I'm happy, sitting on the couch doing nothing.

I like to be onstage and I like to be touring and playing and doing it with great players and great friends and standing in front of my greatest friends and having my greatest friends stand in front of me and that's where I wanna be.

We've been talking about "30 years of madness," and at 30 years in, this is a great time for reflection. What was the most rewarding period in your music career? That time where the music, the creativity, and just all things going on in your life clicked and all was at its best.

God, there's like different ones with different bands. With Mudvayne, probably right off the jump being in that space with Garth Richardson and for the first time ever recording your debut album. Just everything that you wanted in your life is right in front of you.

It's just a matter of going and getting it and knowing that you're just kinda sitting there burning on the launchpad. Like, are we gonna blast off or is this whole thing gonna blow up? You never know what people are gonna say or think, you know?

But just getting into it and just putting as much energy as possible into writing and recording that album, and so we could hit the ground running, like when we came out. So that was obviously a huge moment was LD50. But doing every record in my career has been amazing.

Honestly, Blood for Blood [with Hellyeah], that was just such a big moment for us. We had been self-produced for the first three Hellyeah records and then we get an opportunity to work with Kevin Churko and the dude is awesome. And we get together and we'd lost Greg on the doorstep of that album. Greg was no longer in Hellyeah. So it was me, Tom, and Vinnie and Kevin. It was like, "Uh, okay, here we go."

Walking in that room the first day with Kevin Churko, like, I didn't really know him at all. I'd briefly met him. And now I'm sitting in the studio and he's looking at me and it's just me and him, and he's like, "What song do you wanna start with?" And I was like, "I don't know. I've got one that I've written called 'Moth'." And he's like, "Okay." He's like, "Which one is that?" And I kinda hummed it to him. He's like, "Okay." And he puts it up and he's like, "This one?" I'm like, "Yeah, that's the one." And he's like, "You got any ideas for it?" I'm like, "Yeah." So he'd always turn the volume down real low and he like slid right over next to me. He's like, "Go ahead and sing it." And I started singing it and he's like, "Okay." He's like, "Okay. You wanna sing it? What do you think? You wanna sing it? Like, let's give it a shot." He's like, "I really like the sound of that." So I walked in and I started singing it and we sang through the whole thing.

Come walking back in and he sits there and he's just kinda rough mixed it. He just turns around and he looks at me and he's like, "I got two things." He's like, "Number one, the good news." He's like, "This is a great song." He's like, "I think that this is going to open you guys up. I think that this is gonna be the one that really does it." He's like, "Number two, this was the first song on this record you tracked so now every song has gotta be as good as this song."

Chad, we were just talking about Blood for Blood, the first record with Hellyeah that you made with Kevin Churko, and he heard "Moth" before the rest of anything and basically said to you every song had to be as strong as that one. What was your reaction when he told you that?

I took that because obviously there's different vibes, right? There's "Demons In The Dirt", there's "Cross To Bear," there's like heavier songs. But I literally thought about that and I'm like, "I am going to, no matter what the song is, I'm gonna write every song on this record and I'm gonna compare it to this song. I'm going to make it as strong as this song. Even though it's a different style, I'm gonna make sure it's as strong as this song." And that's just something, the seed that I planted in my head. And to this day, I think Blood For Blood is one of my most complete bodies of work because I went at it with that vibe. I'm gonna make every song as good as "Moth," even if it's not the same vein as "Moth." Even if it's heavy, I gotta make it as good, and I felt like I did that. So Blood For Blood was a big moment, but Welcome Home was big.

I had six songs left to write on that when Vinnie died and the next day I was sitting on a bed at the house I was staying at and I was praying. I just kind of wasn't really praying, but I was just talking to him. And I said, "Brother, everything in me wants to get in a car and go home right now. We got six songs. You just put it out as an EP. Everything in me wants to just go home and call it good." And I was like, "But dude, this is your final music and for you I'm gonna finish this. I'm gonna do this. I don't know how in the hell I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna finish this for you." And that's what I did. And it was hard as fuck and Kevin and I, it was probably several days before we actually got back in there and started working again, probably after the funeral.

But I told him, I said, "I can't be in another room, bro." I was like, "I cannot be in another room. I don't wanna be in another room from you." I was like, "I need to be right next to you." And we went and got the big boom stand and we put the big mic up in the live room, and we just sat right there.

And Kevin was right there and I was right here, and we were on cans, and that's how we did it. 'Cause I had to be able to see him. I couldn't be alone just off in some room by myself. And I mean, he has, he has a window, but it's like I can't really see him, and I just, I felt I needed to be there with him. 'Cause him and I are bros to the end and we're still great friends.

But man, that was really a time when two dudes really leaned on each other, man. We needed every bit of everything that each one of us had to offer to be able to get through that. But Kevin was my champion, and I feel like I was his. We built a really strong bond, but we got through it, and we did it for Vin. And we knew why we were doing it, and I told him that. I said, "Kevin," I was like, "I wanna leave right now, bro." I was like, "I just wanna go home and call it good, man, and just put out an EP for And he's like, "I know you do." And he's like, "Well, how do you feel about it?" And I'm like, "I think we gotta do it. I think we gotta do it for Vinnie." And he's like, "I think you're right." So that's what we did.

Chad, I think that Vinnie would be proud of what you're doing right now. It's "30 Years of Madness," go see this tour. This is so important and the fans are so happy that this is coming. I can speak on behalf of being a fan myself. So I really wish you the best of luck with this and beyond.

Thanks again to Chad Gray for this second part of our interview. The "30 Years of Madness" tour continues and tickets are available. You can also follow Chad through his Instagram account. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie's weekend radio show here.

Below, see 60 rockers who've been successful in multiple rock and metal bands.