WILLIAM DUVALL Discusses His Role In ALICE IN CHAINS

May 10, 2013

ALICE IN CHAINS' new album, "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here", is due out on May 28 via Virgin/EMI. The CD is the band's second album with William DuVall on board as co-lead singer and guitarist, following 2009's comeback effort, "Black Gives Way To Blue".

Asked how he would characterize his guitar role in ALICE IN CHAINS, DuVall tells GuitarPlayer.com: "It's everything from writing riffs to providing counterpoint to what [Jerry] Cantrell is doing to doubling what he's doing to playing solos. I do the solo on 'Phantom Limb' on this new album. So, it's really everything that you would expect from a two-guitar band. My being in the group also gives the band another guitar player who can write things, and we've also turned into a bit more of a jamming outfit when we rehearse. I'm told they didn't really do a whole lot of that before. But that's sort of where I come from: a jamming background. I'll start up something and see where it goes in rehearsal. That's a different way of interacting, which is cool."

Regarding how naturally DuVall and Cantrell settled into their roles when they first started playing together, William says: "I would say we're still settling in — it's always a work in progress. There are a lot of things that we have in common and then there are a lot of things that set us very much apart from one another. He tends to write a lot of parts for songs and layer a lot of things, and before ALICE IN CHAINS was a two-guitar band reproducing that stuff wasn't possible. Now it's much more feasible. Not only can we more accurately reproduce things from the previous albums, but we can also write in a way that lends itself to being presented in a two-guitar format onstage. If he writes something that has five or six parts to it, rather than having to just pick one, we can pick at least two and add the most important piece of another part. We really present it very close to, if not exactly like, the record on a lot of songs."

ALICE IN CHAINS kicked off a tour to promote the new disc on April 25 in Miami Beach. The band will also headline the Rockstar Energy Uproar Festival later this summer.

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