Pearl Jam's Mike McCready and former Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan have formed a new supergroup with former Screaming Trees' drummer Barrett Martin. The new group is currently unnamed, and the band is looking to tap multiple vocalists to help flesh out ideas new and old.
"Duff and Barrett and I got together. We wrote some new stuff and we took some of those old Mad Season demos from that [unreleased] second Disinformation record, so we are trying to find something to do with those," McCready told Billboard. "We're talking to Jaz [Coleman] from Killing Joke and I've been trying to find some singers to work on some of that stuff."
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Mad Season, the Nineties band McCready and Martin played in with Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley and bassist John Baker Saunders, are readying a reissue release of the group's only album, Above, which is due April 2nd. The band had intended to record and release a second album, Disinformation, but the new record never materialized. McKagan and Martin also play together in Walking Papers, and McCready worked with the group on their debut album last year.
Work last year on the Mad Season reissue and the Walking Paper album sparked inspiration for a new project, Martin said. "I had a whole bunch of song ideas and Mike had a whole bunch of song ideas and Duff had a whole bunch of song ideas that were not making it into Walking Papers," said Martin. "We decided that we would go into the studio and record them. Right now they're being sent out to different singers. Mike and Duff are overseeing that because they know everybody."
The new band hasn't set any release dates for their music, but according to Martin, that depends on the vocalists. "As the different singers finish their songs and turn them in, that will determine when they get put out," he said. McCready is looking to have a hectic year: he told Rolling Stone last month that Pearl Jam hopes to have their record out "this year, for sure," and the band has set two July shows ahead of a fall tour.
This article originally appeared on Rolling Stone: Pearl Jam's McCready, Guns N' Roses' McKagan Form New Band
