Everclear frontman Art Alexakis is proof that hard work and perseverance pay off.

Long before fronting one of the top bands the 1990s, Alexakis was tolling away at his craft. Along with trying to break through on the music scene, he was fighting addiction. A change of scenery was just what he needed. 

A move to the Great Northwest led to him forming Everclear, and his personal lyrics and straight-forward rock made them one of the top alternative acts with the 1995 album Sparkle and Fade and the 1997 follow-up So Much for the Afterglow.

“When you hear someone new, you just think they’re coming out of nowhere,” Alexakis said by phone. “Man, I had been touring and playing and working my butt off for like 12 years. 

“This wasn’t an accident. This was me learning and getting better and teaching people what I wanted and bringing out the originality in them, making special music that way. That’s the organic way of doing it. 

“Now you have bands on TikTok that put out one single and they get huge for a second, then they’re just gone. It’s disconcerting to say the least. I love to see bands out at the clubs learning their thing. That’s how you do it. You make your bones.”

The guys around him have changed, but Alexakis continues to work his butt off in clubs and will be at Piere’s on Saturday, Sept. 9, with The Ataris and The Pink Spiders.

Chance encounter

Long before hitting it big, Alexakis was a struggling musician trying to make it work. When his girlfriend became pregnant, he made the move to her hometown of Portland — a move that would change his life.

“I moved up to Portland from San Francisco in December of ’91,” he said. “It was going to be my last band. I put an ad in the paper, met a bunch of guys (including bassist Craig Montoya and drummer Scott Cuthbert). We started the band in April of ’92. My baby was born in June. We played around Portland in the summer, wrote songs, rehearsed, and didn’t really have a buzz or a following. I wasn’t sure this was the best thing for my last band. I was going to cut bait, but I wanted to hear what it sounded like recorded. I didn’t have money to record, I had a baby. We just had no money.”

At that point, fate struck.

Picking up any work he could, his girlfriend was working in the day care at the local YMCA and volunteered Alexakis for a job.

“Her boss needed someone to dig out a garden, and she’s like, ‘My boyfriend can do it.’ I’m like, ‘What?! What?!’ So, I’m making $200, which back in 1992 was a lot of money,” he said.

While digging that garden, he noticed people kept coming and going from a nearby home. A recovering drug addict, he figured it was for drugs. Luckily for him, and future Everclear fans, it was a home recording studio and the owner recognized him from shows around town.

“He showed me his basement, and it was a basement studio with eggshell crates on the walls, but he had some good mics and a good compressor,” Alexakis said. “I’m like, ‘How much do ya want?’ He said, ‘$10 an hour.’ ”

Short on cash, Alexakis offered a trade of some of his gear for studio time. Learning he could get 40 hours of recording time for the gear, he got to work with Montoya and Cuthbert.

“We’ve only got 12 songs to our name,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Cool. We’ll come in and record all the songs.’ We did it after work the next two weeks. We all had day jobs, then we’d come in and record, and I mixed with him. I heard there was something in the music. There was something there.”

Those songs become World of Noise, their debut album.

“People in the Northwest — clubs, papers, and critics — just freaked out on it,” he said. “So, in ’93, we became the big new band in Portland.”

Hitting the big time

The “big new band” caught the attention of Capitol Records, but Cuthbert didn’t come along and was replaced on drums by Greg Eklund, forming the band that would break through with Sparkle and Fade.

Off the strength of songs like “Santa Monica” and “Heartspark Dollarsign,” Sparkle and Fade put the band on MTV and all over alternative radio.

While those songs are far from being about puppy dogs and ice cream, the album features much darker ones, including girlfriends dying, moms jumping from bridges, and daughters crying out for the fathers.

“I like to write from the first person, because I am a storyteller,” Alexakis said, letting me know — thankfully — not all of those songs describe real-life events. “I’d say a third of the songs are autobiographical, another third are from my life or things I’ve read, and then there’s songs I just made up. If I’m writing from all three of those perspectives and you can’t tell the difference between what’s autobiographical and what’s not, I’m doing my job.”

And one of those songs, “Queen of the Air,” even fooled a bandmate. 

The song describes a young boy having dreams about a woman jumping from a bridge, and his memories reveal his “Aunt Virginia” was actually his mother taking that plunge.

“After we recorded that song and were listening to it, he said, ‘I just want to tell you, I’m really sorry about your mom. That must have been really hard for you,’ ” Alexakis said. “I go, ‘What are you talking about, dude? My mom lives like 35 miles away in Beaverton.’ ”

One song that is autobiographical in a way is “Strawberry,” which chronicles his journey to remain clean and not “fall down now.”

“I had been sober for five years, and I was still having drug dreams,” he said. “A lot of people in the program do that. You’re freaking out in our dream like, ‘Oh my God, what did I do? All that time, all that sobriety.’ Then you wake up and are like, ‘Thank God.’ I had this dream, then went back to sleep and went right back into it, farther down the line. 

“It was just all this bad stuff: people dying in car wrecks and shooting up in a car. Finally, after three times of going back into the dream, I just get up at 3 o’clock in the morning, get my guitar and notebook, and spent about two hours writing the song.”

After finishing about two-thirds of the song, he went back to sleep. When he arose later that morning, he put the finishing touches on it and wanted to keep it as stripped down as possible.

“I just wanted to record this on acoustic guitar like I’m playing it now and put some vocals on it,” he said. “I called the studio and had them call the guys and the crew to let them know I was coming in by myself. I went in that day and spent about six hours recording the whole song, vocals, guitars, and everything.”

Alexakis was being more than a storyteller on “Pale Green Stars,” which chronicles his girlfriend’s pregnancy, arguments, and how “It’s so hard on a young girl/She thinks it’s all her fault when it all goes wrong/It’s hard on a grown man, too/To see my baby crying out the window, calling out my name.” 

“That is true,” he admitted.

Not Settling

His storytelling led to a hit album, and things only got better with 1997’s So Much for the Afterglow. On the strength of songs like “Everything to Everyone,” “Father of Mine,” and “I Will Buy a New Life,” the album became the band’s top seller, and once again his perseverance led to its success.

An early version of the album, titled Pure White Evil, another term for the grain alcohol Everclear, was recorded in New York, but even Alexakis wasn’t totally sold on it.

“I played it to for my AR guy, and I knew it wasn’t great. I knew it was OK. I knew it wasn’t great,” he said. “He’s like, ‘Arthur,’ he’s an old English guy, ‘Arthur, it’s a good record, but it’s not great and it’s not going to do what you want it to do for your career. There’s great songs in here, they just need to be better actualized and you need to write some more music. But I think you have two-thirds of a great record.’”

Alexakis said he walked around New York City about two weeks with two notebooks — and also watched Jerry Maguire “five to six times.”

“In one (notebook), I wrote down songs and ideas for songs, and they other was just ideas for how to make this production sound more unique and exciting,” Alexakis said. 

“I wrote the song ‘So Much for the Afterglow’ and some other songs. I took some songs out, retooled the songs, and went back in the studio, spending about a month making all the changes.

“By the time I had mixed and mastered it, I was like, ‘OK. This is the best record I can make. I’m not leaving anything on the table.’”

The changes worked, and Everclear had an album that would earn a Grammy nomination and go double-platinum.

Finding Pot of Gold

The good times continued on 2000’s Songs From an American Movie, Vol. One: Learning How to Smile with “Wonderful” reaching No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band’s highest position on that chart.

“Those are like the three records that I see my progression,” he said of Sparkle and Fade, So Much for the Afterglow, and American Movie. “I bring out all my influences on every record and really proud of that work. I’d say World of Noise, too. Those four records are pretty spotless.”

Following Songs From an American Dream, Vol. Two: Good Time for a Bad Attitude later in 2000, Montoya and Eklund left the band, changing the dynamic.

Everclear have released seven albums since then, beginning with 2003’s Slow Motion Daydream. Their latest is Black Is the New Black in 2015. 

In between is an album of covers, with 2008’s The Vegas Years, and re-recorded songs on 2009’s In a Different Light and 2011’s Return to Santa Monica.

Last year, World of Noise was re-released on its 30th anniversary, featuring six new songs. Everclear will also release Live at the Whisky A Go Go on Sept. 8, featuring some tracks fans will love to dig into.

“When I found those original tapes last January in a trunk — I actually found a trunk that I thought belonged to my mother-in-law — and it’s all these tapes,” he said. 

“It was like finding a pot of gold. They were over 30 years ago and I had to pay this guy thousands of dollars to clean ’em and put them on digital hard drive. And not just this album, but lots of stuff that you might be seeing in the next few years.”

‘Don’t give up’

And for those musicians in the midst of trying to make it on the scene, the hard-working Alexakis has advice.

“Don’t give up,” he said. “If they give up, someone’s just going to say, ‘Excuse me. I want this more than you. Thank you very much and get the hell out of my way.’ That was me. I was relentless. I had a motor that just would not stop. 

“I think tenacity and perseverance adds up to a lot. Talent, being in the right place at the right time, so luck to a certain extent, but it’s also putting yourself in the right place at the right time. You have a lot more control than you think you do.

“I would also urge younger bands to listen to older music that connects with them,” he added. “Not to necessarily emulate it, but listening to it, letting it seep in. Bring some of that classic-ness of rock and pop to what they are doing now. It will help to make them more unique.”

And if any of those bands to break through, that passion cannot stop. 

While some musicians may fall into a funk after decades of performing, he is not one of them. He showed that in 2015 when he performed at Headwaters Park while in a walking boot.

“When someone isn’t connecting with their music, that’s when they’re phoning it in,” he said. “That’s when they’re thinking about everything else but their music. 

“I think with a lot of music you can do that, because the lyrics aren’t that intense. In my case, they’re really intense. I have to connect to that character, whether it’s a character I created or it’s a character that’s me at a different age. 

“When I’m singing ‘Father of Mine,’ I have to own it. That’s the only way it’s going to come through. When we play that song, grown men cry, I swear to God. Almost every night.”

Performing might remain special to him, but not everything about being on the road is glamorous.

“I love getting up on stage, connecting — that’s awesome. The travel? It used to be exciting. It’s not anymore,” he said. “I’ve flown millions of miles, rode millions of miles on buses. I wish I had a Star Trek device where I could just teleport. It would be great.”

Until that time, he will continue to hit the road and make new music — all because he noticed people coming out of a basement as he dug a garden.

“You can’t write that stuff: People say that, but it’s really true,” he said. “Fact is way crazier than lore.”