The Strongest Link

Though she's been supportive of the reunion, McCallum had initial concerns about the band's using the name Alice in Chains. "Frankly, from a personal standpoint, I thought maybe if they gave themselves a new name, it would be a fresh start. I figured that going out as Alice in Chains, they might get some negativity. But, you know, the business side of it says that if you keep your original name, everything flows more smoothly. I don't mean to put this in [terms of] dollars and cents, but the fact is, if you go out with a different name, then you have to reestablish yourself financially, and it's very expensive. Also, the fact is, Jerry wrote a lot of the music, and it's kind of like, that is their identity too."

Long wary of the media and skeptical of doing interviews — mainly due to the way Staley's drug problems were handled by the press — both Cantrell and Kinney have been willing to speak out lately and defend themselves against some of the criticism that's been hurled their way.

"We're not replacing [Layne]; we're playing our songs, man," Kinney says.

"It's like, who's somebody else to tell us we can't be with somebody?" Cantrell adds. "You get divorced and what, you can't be with anybody else? Somebody dies in your family, you can't continue to live on? People deal with it every day, and we're dealing with it right now, and that's our choice and our business."

"That's life. Welcome to life," Kinney interjects.

"Yeah, welcome to life," Cantrell continues. "So as far as that decision, that comes down to us, and as far as what we've seen standing in front of people, having William sing with us, people have been there with open arms, man, holding us up when sometimes it feels like you don't wanna fuckin' stand."

Although Alice in Chains hasn't named DuVall its permanent lead singer, longtime AIC producer Toby Wright says that plans are in the works to record a new album, though no new material has been written. For now, AIC's sets consist entirely of songs familiar to Alice in Chains fans, and the band stresses that the shows are a celebration of the band's entire catalog and of Layne's powerful legacy.

And though some people invoke the title of "We Die Young" — the lead track on AIC's 1990 debut, Facelift — to ironically assess Alice in Chains post-Layne Staley, perhaps the best representation of the band as it exists now is the image of the three-legged dog that appears on the cover of its last studio album, 1995's Alice in Chains: sad, missing a limb, but still standing.