Credit: Jamie WeilandThe day before the release of Blaster, the debut album from Scott Weiland's new project, Scott Weiland & the Wildabouts, Jeremy Brown, the band's lead guitarist, died at the age of 34. Brown had been working with Weiland since the singer's 2008 album, "Happy" in Galoshes, and he wrote the majority of the instrumental parts on Blaster.
"No one will ever fill Jeremy's huge shoes," Weiland tells ABC Radio. "It'll always be different from now on. It's just been something that's incredibly hard to even imagine. I wake up in the morning and it hits me and it's just like a kick in the n**s."
Weiland made the difficult decision to go on with the band's scheduled tour despite Brown's passing, recruiting guitarist Nick Maybury to join the band.
"We are doing this tour," Weiland says. "I know that because of the tragedy of Jeremy passing away there were a lot of people that were thinking that we weren't going to be doing this tour, and we are doing it. We're going to be rocking out, so come and rock out with us."
Brown's death adds even greater personal meaning to an already personal album. Many of the songs on Blaster, such as "Way She Moves," are inspired by Weiland's wife, Jamie.
"She's my muse," Weiland tells ABC Radio. "She's an artist as well, and she affects me emotionally, she affects me artistically, she affects me on every level. I'm deeply in love, and I can't help but have her be my muse."
It's no surprise, then, that Weiland names "Way She Moves" and "Modzilla," which contains what he considers to be Brown's best guitar riff, as his favorite songs to perform live.
"They're unique in their own way, and they just kind of get me shaking my a**," Weiland says.
Scott Weiland & the Wildabouts' tour continues tomorrow, April 28 in Corpus Cristi, Texas.
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