All these dying days

I walk a ghost town, used to be my city.....

"Isn't it real obvious what the song is about?" asks Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan, no trace of sarcasm in his bone-weary voice.

"That one represents all the things we've just been talking about, the we've been talking about. I thought it was pretty literal."

The song is "Dying Days," off the Seattle-based Trees' new album, "Dust". The people we've just been talking about, both of them dead by their own hands, are Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club. The two were among Lanegan's closest friends.

And yeah, it does seem obvious that "Dying Days" is about Seattle in particular and rock star deaths in general. But most songwriters avoid being pinned down on real-life references in their songs. Ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, for example, swears his Foo Fighters song "How I Miss You" has nothing whatsoever to do with his friend Cobain.

Lanegan, though, has been through so many bleak experiences and chased so many personal dragons, he's moved beyond worrying whether anyone can connect the dots to them in his music.

It's a miracle he's even making music at all. "Dying Days" dates back to April, 1994, the month Cobain exorcised his own inner demons with a shotgun.

At the time, Screaming Trees - who perform tomorrow on the Lollapalooza main stage at Molson Park - were in the midst of recording an album that didn't want to be made. Lanegan felt the sessions weren't working.

When news of Cobain's death broke, "for quite a while afterward, I didn't want to make music anymore, to be honest," he says from the road.

Imagine how he felt hearing Cobain sing Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" on Nirvana's Unplugged In New York TV show and album, both released posthumously. Lanegan had introduced Cobain to the song.

The new Screaming Trees album sessions were scrapped, and the band members, who also include Barrett Martin and brothers Van Conner and Gary Lee Conner, went their separate ways, convening only briefly for a tour of Australia.

Screaming Trees took most of a year off before getting down to business again for the sessions that became Dust. Together with producer George Drakoulias (Black Crowes/Tom Petty) and mixer Andy Wallace (Nirvana/Sonic Youth), the band worked quickly to make the album a melodic powerhouse.

Only "Dying Days" remains from the earlier sessions, and "it's been radically changed," Lanegan says.

Why the change of heart about making music again?

"Time and healing," Lanegan says simply.

"You can only stay dead with your friends for so long, and then you've got to start living again. "Kurt wasn't the only friend that I lost. I lost several people in a very short period of time who were real close to me, him being the closest. "

"Jeffrey Lee Pierce died during the making of Dust. He had been writing for the record, and he was another very, very close friend.

"We all experience loss in our time," Lanegan continues. "But we wrote a couple of songs together (Lanegan and Pierce) and I'll put them out on the next solo record.

"I'm also going to record the song Kurt wrote for me. It's called 'You Got No Right.'"

Lanegan has released two critically acclaimed solo albums in recent years, Whiskey For The Holy Ghost and the Winding Sheet. But he tours only with Screaming Trees, and tomorrow's Lollapalooza stop is the band's first area appearance since 1993.

Cobain and Lanegan also recorded together, for a planned EP of Leadbelly cover tunes. The two took turns singing lead. The EP will never be released.

"We recorded a few songs, but logistically it never worked out." Lanegan says. "We both had to go on tour. It will never come, out because he didn't want it to."

Lanegan doesn't make records simply for the sake of having a product on sale. Dust is the bands first album since Sweet Oblivion in 1992, and the aborted project in between is nothing new. In 1987, a planned double album was scrapped after it had been mixed and mastered.

Dust pulls together the band's many musical influences, combining Lanegan's Morrison-meets-Cohen voice with such sonic touches as sitar and strings. It's nothing the band hasn't tried before, but the group has never sounded better. "I enjoy it much more than I ever have before," says the 30-something Lanegan, who has learned just how short life really is.

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