In a Let There Be Talk podcast interview, Jerry Cantrell discussed Alice In Chains’ decision to stop touring around the time their self-titled ‘Tripod’ album was released in 1995, outside of a few rare 1996 performances. Host Dean Delray mentioned the Tripod album being under-appreciated, and Cantrell discussed where the band were at in 1995 and 1996.
“It’s an absolutely different record. I think that the reason probably that record [is underrated], it was a number one record, it debuted at number one, it did really well that way, but we didn’t tour it. That’s why probably [it’s underrated]. We did two and a half years of touring on Dirt, and we did two years of touring on Facelift. We took it everywhere, we got in everybody’s face with it, but at that particular point, that was when we had kind of decided to kind of take a break, because we were pretty burnt out.”
“We didn’t really [tour the self-titled record], that was pretty much the end of it, as far as touring.”
“We did a couple of shows for that [with KISS], we did an Unplugged, and that was pretty much it.”
“That was a really cool show. It’s one of those things that you shoot for when you’re a performer like yourself or me. You’re shooting for that, you can never plan on it, you can never guess when it’s going to happen, but those magical kind of things, you just can’t do anything wrong. You’re just in sync, and it’s all cool, it’s powerful.
That’s what that gig was, it was like a perfect day, it was a perfect day and perfect experience. The banter back and forth between us and the audience, it was just fun. Everybody was like in a rehearsal room, and that’s one of the records that people comment to me about a lot, is that record.”