"I don't know what it is, my mind just goes crazy when I sleep. [I have] dreams of being held down forcibly," Mark Lanegan says gravely. "It's really hard for me to sleep; that's why I like to be left alone." He pauses, then looks up from his dinner with an intent countenance and continues, "I've been grasped by the succubus for years."

He describes the inhabiting succubi, female demons that are said to have sexual intercourse with men while they sleep, as a great pressure on his chest that often jars him awake, his arms flailing. Not ideal for airplane travel, he admits with a laugh.

"She wants to take your soul with her, but she won't let you go," Van Conner explains. "She also protects you in an evil way."

"That's the thing, she supposedly protects you," Lanegan sighs. "[But] the spirit has her way with me while I'm sleeping."

Lanegan's sexual dreams might seem like fantasy, but as he seriously recounts his nocturnal turmoil, it sounds more like hell. While some may not believe such stories, explaining them away through medical science (seizures) or drugs ingested (prescribed or otherwise), Mark seems to be revealing a truth about himself, as odd as it may sound.

Marco's Supper Club in the Belltown section of Seattle is one of those way-hip, far-too-noisy, trendy restaurants with tinkling ivories piped in through the sound system. Waiters whisk by in immaculate white shirts and aprons, hovering around, but never stopping long enough to listen above the din. Screaming Trees' bassist Van Conner sits quietly with his hands folded across his stomach, staring across the room. While vocalist Mark Lanegan sits peacefully with his hands resting in his lap, his head slightly cocked back. He's sound asleep - apparently the white noise helps him take a brief nap.

After a short yet awkward pause, Mark comes to life with a grumpy smile and slightly furrowed brow. He appears to be living up to his image as the cranky Tree, inciting acidic comments in his wake and getting in more than a few booze-fueled brawls over the years. Although one can't say it's all an image, the man behind the deep and passionate voice is more charming than irritable.

Waking from his sleep, the red-headed, freckle-faced musician is slow to warm to conversation about 'Dust', Screaming Trees' long-awaited follow-up to 1992's 'Sweet Oblivion'. Together with guitarist Gary Lee Conner and drummer Barrett Martin, Mark and Van have spent the better part of the last year in various stages of production for this record, their third for Epic and their seventh overall. It's been a long time coming, especially for a band that appeared to be on the cusp of major success with the hit single "Nearly Lost You".

As Mudhoney's Mark Arm put it, Lanegan "made little girls west of the mountains swoon with his smooth-as-silk voice and irresistible smile."

But when too much time passes, people (and even little girls) forget. While other Seattle bands, most of them comparatively new, became MTV fodder, Screaming Trees was seemingly left behind in, uh, sweet oblivion. Though not single-handedly responsible for the Seattle explosion, Lanegan's smoky baritone and the large bookend brothers on strings helped blow up the bridges for the new "grunge" sound.

The Conners and Mark have a steep and long history together that dates back to high school, when Van would hang out with his older brother Lee and his friends in their hometown of Ellensburg, Washington - a farming community known for its rodeo and little else. "We were the most backwards thing about the whole town," Mark claims.

They formed a band and in 1985 recorded a demo EP, 'Other Worlds', with Steve Fisk producing. Their first full-length LP, 'Clairvoyance', was released on indie Velvetone in 1986 and was also produced by Fisk. The following year, the band signed to SST, who released three full-lengthers (two produced by Fisk and one by Jack Endino) and the earlier demo 'Other Worlds'. Major labels came knocking and before Seattle grunge broke, Screaming Trees signed on at Epic.

Meanwhile, solo and side projects were in the works, and the Trees seemed to be screaming within the ranks. "The not-getting-along, I think, just came from knowing each other really well. And we've been through a lot together. I think that's also why we've managed to stay together and make good records. There's that underlying thing - that we know we can make good records together - that keeps it going," explains Van.

Coming from a married man's perspective, he continues: "It's just like any three or four guys who have spent more time together than any other job would make you spend together. Most people who are married don't spend as much time together as we do."

"It's unnatural," chimes in Mark, who's not married. "We do better work when we get along. We've probably done our most creative things when we push each other real hard to do as good as we can. I mean, we started out by making a lot of records just really off the cuff that we didn't try very hard at. Now, we want to make them count. We want to make them be something that we can be proud of.

"I think we take it fairly seriously by now, where we didn't take it seriously at all for a long, long time," Mark maintains. "We kind of grew up."

"I think the tension that there is between us, or has been, carries over into the music," Van says.

"Getting along is the easiest part," stresses Mark. And the hardest? "Everything else," he answers with a wry smile.

"I can think of a lot worse things we could be doing right now." Van sits back and laughs.

"We've done most of them," admits the vocalist.

All that extra effort has paid off, though it wasn't apparent at first. The elder statesmen of Seattle "grunge" didn't seem to fit into the major label-dom suit, as evidenced by their first full-length Epic release, 'Uncle Anesthesia' - a good, but not great record produced by Terry Date and Soundgarden's Chris Cornell.

"There are some good songs on that record, but as far as an actual record, it feels like out-takes, like a B-side album or something," Van admits with nervous laughter.

"'Dust' has a definite cohesiveness from start to finish, as a whole, whereas that one sounds like a different band from song to song, and not a real good band," concedes Mark.

"I think it's like what was happening with the band right then. We weren't really a band. Things were falling apart at that time," Van explains. "But, hey, we could have made a really great record and no one would have cared anyway. There was no microscope at that time on Seattle. Epic really didn't have an alternative department."

"No one really had one," Mark grumbles. "We weren't really metal. I think we've always been a *rock* band. It seems like we were always too normal for an underground type of thing in the really hip indie world, and a little too weird to be normal."

"We were kind of stuck in the middle somewhere," Van says.

Screaming Trees, though still not definable by category, proved they were far from middle of anywhere with 'Sweet Oblivion', the record that may always be known as the one that (as their new single "All I Know" says) "shoulda been, coulda been" much more. Although not exactly on the lips of record buyers everywhere, Screaming Trees became more than a Seattle secret with the 1992 release of Cameron Crowe's 'Singles', a comedy based in Seattle, and the subsequent platinum soundtrack, which included "Nearly Lost You" from 'Sweet Oblivion'.

Tours with Soul Asylum and Spin Doctors helped to increase their name-recognition and gave them the exposure they needed - even if the audience wasn't exactly filled with screaming fans. "I don't mind playing on a strange bill. I always figure, you know, love us or hate us, they're going to remember us," Mark theorizes. "I'd rather play with Spin Doctors any day of the week because, I'm sorry to say it, but I think we blew their asses off the stage."

While they did blow a few people's minds, what they needed was a smashing follow-up to 'Sweet Oblivion'. Immediately following the tour, they recorded an album with 'Sweet Oblivion' producer Don Fleming, but ultimately shelved it. The only track saved was a cover of Jesse Colin Young's "Darkness, Darkness", which surfaced on the soundtrack for 1994's Arnold Schwarzenegger action-adventure movie 'True Lies'.

The four Trees went back into the studio, this time with producer George Drakoulias - better known for his work with the Stones-like and stoner-like Black Crowes and mellow folk-rockers Jayhawks - and engineer Andy Wallace, who's twiddled knobs for the likes of Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana and Toadies. Away from the distractions as home, they recorded 'Dust' at several studios in L.A. and mixed it in New York.

Although the delays certainly put unnecessary pressures on the band and started countless rumours of infighting, the result is proof that the time was well spent. The superb record was written similarly to 'Sweet Oblivion'. The Conners and Lanegan share almost equal songwriting credit, with Martin receiving credit on the opening track, "Halo Of Ashes", and the closing track, "Gospel Plow".

"Everybody had something to do with the writing and recording, no matter what instrument they play or what part they wrote. Everybody's looking at the whole picture, instead of one part of the puzzle," Van believes. "We tried it for the last record, and it felt like it worked so well we just wanted to follow it in kind of the same way. We did some things different, but I think the idea was to take 'Sweet Oblivion' to the next level."

"It's a lot different from 'Sweet Oblivion', to me. There's a lot more going on. There's a lot of different instrumentation," Mark opines. "I have a really good perspective on this one. We've lived with it for a long time, I like it a lot. I think the way I feel about a record has more to do with the period of time in which the record is getting made, more than maybe the music itself." Pausing, he gazes across the room before returning his attention to the table. "It's more of a time frame than making the music itself."

Most of the ten tracks on 'Dust' conjure up images of long, dusty, open roads, lonesome cowboys, and, strangely, the Old West via Morocco. Some new sounds were achieved with through the inclusion of additional musicians, specifically the Heartbreaker's Benmont Tench on mellotron, organ and electric piano. (Also, that's Pearl Jam's Mike McCready doing the guitar solo on "Dying Days", I Love You's Jeff Nolan paying guitar on "Dime Western", and Chris Goss lending his deep throat for backing vocals on "All I Know" and "Make My Mind".) Haunting acoustic melodies like "Traveler" and "Sworn And Broken" are pure heartbreakers, as are the quicker "Dying Days" and "Halo Of Ashes".

Perhaps going back to Lanegan's rather unusual religious upbringing ("My family was really anti-religion, but very into letting their kids do what they wanted. My grandmother belonged to a real strange right-wing religious cult. I hung around the fringe of that. But also I went to a Catholic church for a while, and I went to a Mormon church for a while. The longest stint that I did was in a Southern Baptist church.") many of the songs take on a spiritual or soul-searching theme. The band even turned the old country hymn "Gospel Plow" into a Trees original with a sparkling mid-section. The most obvious sequel to "Nearly Lost You" is "All I Know". The catchy hook and sweet sound of Mark's voice as he sings the chorus "all that I know shoulda been/ coulda been/ mine" will undoubtedly remind the girls west of the Rockies what smooth-as-silk *really* means. Lanegan is the Johnny Cash of rock 'n' roll - both in his dusty voice and his bad-boy persona.

While there are three other great, well-known voices in Seattle - Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell and Layne Staley - Lanegan's hearty baritone is sure to turn a few ears. And with a main-stage spot on Lollapalooza, the Screaming Trees should get the mass recognition that's thus far eluded them.

"If you stick around long enough, and make a good record, you're bound to sell some to somebody. There's always going to be somebody who hates it, and there's always going to be somebody that likes it. The more people who hear it, the more people are going to like it, so I fully expect this one to do twice as well as ['Sweet Oblivion']. If it doesn't, I'll be disappointed," Mark avows.

"It doesn't matter..." he recants. "It could not sell any at all. As long as there's a chance that we can sell some in some way, then I'm happy. We've been lucky enough to do better with every [record] that we did. If that all of a sudden stops, and we have to go work at the post office, then so be it."

"We had no idea that it would ever, ever happen to the point where we're at," Van admits. "If someone would have said when we made our first record that we would make another one-"

"We probably would have laughed in their face," interjects Mark, finishing Van's thought. The two laughs loudly, but nobody seems to notice in the noisy restaurant.

[more articles]