After more than 30 years in the music business, singer-songwriter Mark Lanegan has learned a few things about himself as a creative individual. For someone who at times begrudgingly took on the role of lead singer for the bands he’s fronted—most notably the Screaming Trees—Lanegan has grown leaps and bounds as a songwriter and, particularly, as a frontman. So much so that he still finds surprises in his line of work.
The measured, gravelly-voiced musician, who played the Showbox to a large crowd on August 24 with his Mark Lanegan Band, says that in the early days, he and his fellow players in the Screaming Trees (a group born in Ellensburg in 1985 who scored a platinum single, “Nearly Lost You,” from the Singles soundtrack) were “learning as we went along—and we were slow learners.” But Lanegan, who perhaps more than anyone else epitomized the 1990s grunge era with his disaffected eyes and long red hair, says he feels more “on the ball now” as a writer, and he knows “how to sing and write songs in a way that feels natural.”