Scott Ian totally should have had a cameo on Deadwood. (Via Anthrax.com)

When you’re already playing guitar for Anthrax, playing pro poker for Ultimate Bet, writing a comic book and helping kick off the Hard Rock Cafe at new Yankee Stadium, why not go ahead and throw “opening a rock club” into the mix?

Scott Ian got together with longtime friend Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains to turn The Playground’s Rock Room into Dead Man’s Hand — which makes its soft opening Friday night. It kicks off with a performance from System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan and friends, then on Saturday brings up a comedy set from Buffet Jackson, Jason Harris and Brandon “Gooch” Hahn from 8 to 10 p.m. before supergorup The Starf**kers hits the stage. Poker pros Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, Brandon Cantu and Joe Sebok are expected to be there, as are Vinnie Paul and Tera Patrick. After all that, Ian is going to be doing DJ sets on Friday nights in December.

We talked to die-hard Yankee fan Ian, who did a performance at the Stadium Hard Rock with Ace Frehly in the spring, on the eve of Game 1 of the World Series when he was sweating the Bombers. Now that it’s 3-2 and headed back to the Bronx, we hope he’s not as anxious.

So how did this come about?

Jerry and I have been friends since ’91. We met, Alice in Chains came out on tour with us and we’ve just been friends ever since. Really the genesis of the whole thing was when I started playing poker. A couple years ago when I started getting into playing cards. Jerry said, ‘I’ve had a regular home game at my house for years’. Basically if Jerry was home in L.A., every Wednesday night he would have a card game going on. So he invited me over and I started going over there on Wednesdays. When I got more serious about playing cards I started inviting him out to tournaments and stuff, charity events. It just really kind of came out of conversations of us hanging out and playing cards and being like Wow, wouldn’t it just be great if we had our own spot to just hang out with our friends. We could have a bar and play a little late-night poker and blah, blah, blah.

That space was just remodeled. Are you planning on doing anything different in there?

We’ve been slowly but surely putting our stamp on the things. We’ve done a couple of walkthroughs. I know on the production end of things we had a lot of comments. Specifically on technical shit, like getting rid of the ground support for the lights, flying the lights from the ceiling as well as flying the P.A. from the ceiling. … There’s a lot of stuff we’re adding to it. I just got a couple dozen of these amazing rock ‘n’ roll photos from this photographer Gene Ambo out of Chicago who’s been shooting the rock scene there for 25 years and I’ve known forever. He just sent us some amazing prints, and not stuff you see hanging in the Hard Rock or places like that. You’re going to see Cliff Burton and James Hetfield and Kerry King and Lemmy. It’s going to be a much different vibe.

How much do you anticipate being there?

As much as possible. This isn’t going to be the kind of thing where I sign a deal and I’ll show up my contractual amount of times and hang around and wait to pick up a check every three months. That’s not why I did this. I did this because it’s something I want to do and I want to be involved in. The actual amount of work I’ve taken on in the last three months, I know I’m committed to it because the extra 40 e-mails a day that I actually get to and answer, it’s been pretty crazy. At the same time it’s something I really want to be involved in and I really want to do. I’m going to be there a lot.

Our first soft opening parties are Nov. 6 and 7, and I assume I’m going to be there for that. I plan on being there every Friday DJing in December right now is the plan, and I’ll already have made my quota for a year right there. My attitude is people have an expectation I think with something like this. They see that my name and Jerry’s name is on this place. It’s not like we’re going to be there five nights a week. That would be impossible. But at the same time it would be cool if people come in and we are there on some type of regular schedule. I really feel like I should show my face there as much as possible.

Have you been into DJing? What do you plan on spinning?

No, the last time I DJd I was playing vinyl. Maybe, who knows, it’s been so long that that’s come back around now for all I know. I’ll be playing basically the music that’s in my iTunes. It’s going to be all hard rock and metal. The whole idea behind this place is that it should be a place that if Jerry and I were to walk in there, any night of the week, we would feel comfortable hanging out in. That was really our biggest concern and our main thing about the whole thing. We just want to know that we can walk in this place and I’m not going to fucking walk in and hear the same stupid mashup DJ bullshit that you can hear at every other place in the world. That’s not what we want to do and that’s not what we want to hear and that’s not what we’re comfortable with. I don’t want it sound like Rehab. I don’t want it to sound like Tao. I can go to those places if I want that scene. This should be an alternative to that. Put it this way, if I do walk in unannounced on a Thursday night and I hear that kind of shit, the shit’s going to hit the fan.

You’ve got a couple of guys like Vince Neil has his bar now, and Sammy Hagar’s opening his place on the strip, and there’s Wasted Space. What do you think about the whole rock club thing and specifically, rockers who are opening up bars in Vegas?

I think it just shows you something that people are looking for an alternative. Not everybody wants to stand in line outside of some giant fancy place that basically is looking to rape their wallet. That’s not what we’re about. We just want a comfortable vibe in a room where people know they can go out and hear killer music and get drinks for a reasonable price. We’re not looking to kill people. I just really think people are looking for an alternative. Certainly, I am looking for an alternative. I’ve been coming to Vegas forever and I don’t go to those places. I’ve been to places like Pure and Tao. Look, it’s just not my vibe. I can’t deal with that level of whatever for more than 45 minutes. It drives me nuts. We’re just looking for a thing that’s much more chill. I just think you’re maybe seeing that across the board. There’s a whole other segment of the population that doesn’t want to go to the place that Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian is hanging out in. There’s a lot of people who don’t watch those TV shows.

What do you think of the new Alice album?

I love it. I think it’s great. I think it’s amazing. What they’ve accomplished and the road Jerry’s taken to get here. To see this finished product, and the songs he wrote, it’s amazing. If he ever writes a book about the last five years of his life, what a great final chapter of this chapter of Alice in Chains. You almost couldn’t write the script any better. To come back with such a strong record, it’s just so killer.

What’s going on with you, in your music projects?

We’re finishing an Anthrax record which we hope will be out springtime or maybe early summer. We’re in the good or bad position, depending on how you look at it, that we really don’t work with deadlines anymore. It’s great on one hand, but on the other hand it kind of sucks because it gives us too much rope to hang ourselves with sometimes. You can keep doing a record for four years. But we’ve been out doing shows too.

It’s kind of hard to say no when you get these calls saying, ‘Do you want to go play this huge festival in Japan? Do you want to do this? Do you want to do that?’ Yeah, we want to do all of it. It’s a good place to be right now after all this time our brand has come back around after 25 years. The brand means so much now to people because so many people never got to see it. People who are this kind of music now who never got to see Anthrax back in the day. There’s a huge demand for stuff that’s been around for a long time. It’s kind of what we’re seeing now. It’s just great for us because we love playing shows.

What bands do you hope to get in there? Do you have anyone tentatively lined up to play Dead Man’s?

We’ve been looking at a lot of different stuff. We’re just trying to figure out what we’re going to do. We’ve been toying with the idea of trying to get some bands in to do residencies on a certain night of the week every week. We just have a lot of balls up in the air. We’re putting all that together. We haven’t really decided when the official grand opening is. We’re doing these two soft opening parties. My attitude is we’ll be able to step back and see how these two nights went and what we need to fix or what went great.

I think we’ll be able to answer a lot of our own questions after these first two things we do Nov. 6 and 7. I’m in no rush. Jerry and I, our attitude is we just want to do this right. If we try and rush and get this place open, then what’s the point of that? If someone comes and they come to the place and it’s not a great experience for them, then they’re not coming back. If we rush, it’s not going to be the experience we want it to be. It took us this long to get this place, there’s no reason to be like we have to open in 24 hours.

By Jason Scavone

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