TOOL engineer talks about Maynard James Keenan’s emotional moment

TOOL engineer “Evil” Joe Barresi talked about a particular memory when Maynard James Keenan got the whole studio emotional.

Maynard James Keenan is a deep musician, and we all know that. He also proves this point with two tracks from the TOOL band’s 2006 album “10,000 Days.” In that album, Keenan sang the songs “Wings for Marie (Pt 1)” and “10,000 Days (Pt 2)” for his mother Judith Marie Keenan, who lived her last 27 years (roughly 10,000 days) on a wheelchair.

Those songs mean a lot to every member of the band, and especially the frontman Keenan. He previously stated that putting himself out there for those songs as much as he did was probably the stupidest thing that he could have done.

TOOL engineer Joe Barresi has recently appeared in an interview with Dean Delray, and he talked about those songs. He mentioned how drained and emotional Keenan was while singing them.

TOOL engineer Joe Barresi on Maynard James Keenan singing 10,000 days:

“I saw him in the studio when he sang ‘Wings for Marie,’ about his mom, on ‘10,000 days.’ I was on the verge of an emotional breakdown at that point.

It’s very rare in the studio. You try to get the vibe right and you have the singer sing, and a lot of times you get an amazing performance but sometimes singers go in thinking, ‘I’ll just do it five or six times and we’ll comp it.’

But he sang that song and you could tell he was drained because it meant so much to him, and I was listening to the lyrics and what he’s singing and how he’s singing it…”

TOOL engineer Joe Barresi reflected on the unusual microphone preference of Maynard James Keenan:

“On ‘10,000 days,’ he was using a Sound Deluxe mic – it’s a tube mic but he loved to hold it, and that’s not normal in a studio. But it’s not very physical or emotional to stand in front of a microphone and sing either.”

After explaining what microphone Keenan used on ‘10,000 Days,” Barresi told how they prepared the scene for him.

So we would wrap the microphone up in foam, and he would perform with it, and he had a mic stand, he could hold the mic stand and do whatever, but he was definitely emotional and physical when he sang it.”

You can check out the songs below.