Puscifer brings ‘Existential Reckoning’ to Tucson

When concert venues and studios closed, the Jerome winemaker (Caduceus Cellars and Merkin Vineyards) and multitasking rocker — Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer — turned to another medium that has defined his 30-plus-year music career: film.

“We did four concert films during that shutdown period because what else are you going to do,” said Keenan, who is bringing Puscifer’s “Existential Reckoning Tour — Let the Probing Continue” to the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall on Thursday, Oct. 20. “(The pandemic) didn’t really slow us down.”

Puscifer, which started off in 1995 as an outlet for Keenan’s “creative subconscious,” released its fourth studio album “Existential Reckoning” in early 2020 with plans to tour that spring. But when the pandemic put the world in shutdown and paused live performances, the tour was put on hold.

Instead of waiting it out, Keenan and his Puscifer bandmates — guitarist Matt Mitchell and vocalist Carina Round — made the concert film “Puscifer Live at Arcosanti,” playing the new album in its entirety in October 2020.

They followed that with a concert film for their 2015 album “Money Shot,” and two more concert films, “V is for Versatile” and “Parole Violator,” both set to be released on Oct. 28.

In addition to filming at Arcosanti, the ecologically and environmentally centered town in Yavapai County, Puscifer filmed on Keenan’s Jerome vineyards, the Wilshire Theatre in Santa Monica and the Mayan in Los Angeles. 

“It was kind of interesting being in the old theaters and the studios when things were shut down to really get a vibe for the historic buildings and historic studios,” Keenan said during a phone call from his Jerome home. 

Last summer, Puscifer took “Existential Reckoning Tour” on the road, including a stop in Phoenix in June. The Tucson show on Thursday is part of a 27-city run that kicked off on Oct. 13 and ends in Prescott, not far from Keenan’s Jerome home base, on Nov. 22. 

The show is classic Puscifer: part rock show, part experimental theater. In “Existential Reckoning,” the characters of Puscifer, dressed in suits that will remind you of “Men in Black,” are searching for aliens that they blame for the disintegration of society as we know it. There will be references to junk culture, technology’s hold on society, our disengaged citizenry and the threat of frauds and those who follow them.

“We’ve been kind of developing these characters with Puscifer for quite a few years now, since 2007,” Keenan said. “Actually most of them originated on the stage during the comedy days at Tantrum in LA, back around the same time Tenacious D was doing shows the first time.”

The comedy rock duo was among the comedians that opened for Puscifer in its early days.

When it came to getting back on stage before a live audience, Keenan said, “You snap back right into your live life.”

“There are no second takes; you get it right the first time,” said the 58-year-old, who is notoriously reclusive. “Now you’re playing to a group of people, and that changes the vibe a little bit. There’s theater and there’s film; it’s fun to do both.”

Thursday’s concert will be Puscifer’s first Tucson show since 2016. The show at the Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave., starts at 7:30 p.m. with opening act Night Club. Tickets are $47.50-$160 through ticketmaster.com.