Grunge icons Stone Temple Pilots play The Summer Concert Tour in Taupo and Queenstown in February.

“Hopefully,” Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Jeff Gutt says, “we can bring the sunshine.”

When he Zooms in for our interview he’s in not-so-sunny California where, he says, it’s been raining for a month.

Outside my window, the rain had only just started to fall that morning. I had no idea it wouldn’t stop. Two days later a state of emergency was declared in Auckland as unimaginable rainfall devastated the city.

A couple of days after, the emergency warning extended to Northland, Coromandel and the Bay of Plenty.

Hopefully, when the grunge icons take to the stage at Taupō’s Summer Concert Tour on Saturday, they can bring the sunshine. What they’ll definitely be bringing, Gutt assures me, is an hour’s worth of the band’s considerable hits.

“It’s gonna be a lot of songs people love because they’re the songs that I love. You know, the reason I wanted to throw my hat in the ring to be the singer of Stone Temple Pilots was because I love their songs so much.

I really wanted to help them continue their journey. That’s why I’m here. To go down there, go anywhere, and perform the songs that I grew up on, that I love and that really had to have a lot to do with who I am as a musician and a singer today.”

It’s tempting, and understandable, to consider Gutt “the new singer” for the band. But he’s been with them for six years, having joined in 2017 after a gruelling, year-long, audition process, and has released two albums with the band. There was the hard-rocking self-titled album in 2018, a reset for the band that’s referred to as “the butterfly album” thanks to its cover art, and 2020′s beautifully reflective Perdida which saw the band putting down the electrics in favour of acoustic guitars and experimental orchestration.

Gutt was 16 when STP released their influential debut record Core. Powered by songs like Sex Type Thing, Dead and Bloated and Plush the album saw the band be crowned grunge royalty alongside Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

“Core was my jam. I love Core, man. There was nothing like it at the time. Even though there was always chatter about them sounding like all these other bands. But to me, Core was an original piece of work. It was heavy and had simplicity but was complicated at the same time. To me, that was a perfect record.”

The high schooler immediately became a fan and was so influenced by their original singer Scott Weiland, that it altered the course of his life.

“I was in bands but was always the guitar player. I never wanted to be the centre of attention. It’s funny how that worked out,” he laughs. “But when Core came out that was the year I sat down the guitar and didn’t pick it up for a whole year. All I did was concentrate on vocals and vocal styling. All of the things that go into creating yourself as a singer. It was a very inspirational time for me as a musician to take that next step into being a singer.”

Gutt knew he was stepping into some big shoes. Weiland may have been first written off as being a sound-alike of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, but he quickly proved himself one of the era’s greats, with a singular adaptive style that was as experimental and fearless as the music the band was creating. Plagued by addiction problems that caused plenty of problems within the band the gifted singer was found dead of an accidental overdose in 2015.

“Absolutely. Every day,” Gutt answers when asked if feels Weiland’s spirit around the band when they play. “He was such an integral part of this band. It will always be about him and I’m okay with that. Part of me does this to help keep his memory alive because I really love Scott. I mean, I didn’t know him. I never met him. But he has been such a huge part of my musical journey. Every day I go out there’s respect for him. Maybe there’s a little kid at the show, and the parents are like, ‘Oh, but you should have seen them with Scott’. But then that little kid’s gonna learn about Scott and that’s more important than me you know. That’s how I see it.”

In a lot of ways, he’s still the fan he always was. He says Wicked Garden and Dead and Bloated, two songs off Core, are his favourites to perform and he still buzzes out when members of the band email him ideas for songs they’re working on.

“It’s wonderful. You put on the headphones to a song no one’s ever heard before. That’ll never get old to me,” he grins. “Playing live is probably the best I feel in life. It’s such a freeing thing because the one thing I do try to carry from Scott with me is his fearlessness, his complete freedom. It’s definitely a gift and a blessing.”

Rain or, hopefully, shine, you can bet that the man singing those Stone Temple Pilot classics like Vasoline, Big Bang Baby, Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart or Interstate Love Song will be enjoying their shows here as much, if not more, than even the most dedicated STP fan in the audience.

“If you were to tell the 16-year-old me, ‘Dude, you’re gonna be the singer of Stone Temple Pilots one day,” I would have been like, “Yeah, okay, whatever.”.

* Stone Temple Pilots play the Summer Concert Tour with ZZ Top, Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo and The Angels in Taupō on Saturday and Queenstown on February 11.