there was a thread about his project here awhile ago and i recall there being an interest. heres an article i saw today.

source

Ex-Pumpkins drummer beats the odds
For much of the last decade Jimmy Chamberlin has been picking up the pieces of a life shattered by drug addiction.

In 1996, at the apex of his fame as the drummer for the groundbreaking Smashing Pumpkins, Chamberlin and keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin checked into a swanky New York hotel and overdosed on heroin.

Melvoin never checked out.

His death sent the Pumpkins into a spiral that ultimately caused their dissolution. Chamberlin was charged with heroin possession and jettisoned from the band.

While he avoided jail time and rejoined the band two years later, Chamberlin has never fully recovered from Melvoin's death.

"Jonathan Melvoin passing away was the single worst thing that's ever happened in my life," confessed Chamberlin via telephone, hours prior to last night's official launch of his solo debut at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles. "If it were up to me I'd go back and change things, but I'm not God. I think it's OK to have regrets as long as you can learn from them."

That's precisely what the now 40-year-old recovering drug addict is trying to do with the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, an amorphous jazz-rock quartet that Chamberlin formed with L.A.-based songwriter and instrumentalist Billy Mohler. The two first crossed paths when Mohler auditioned for the band Zwan, the first post-Pumpkins collaboration between Chamberlin and Billy Corgan. Mohler never got the gig and Zwan disbanded after just one album, 2003's acclaimed "Mary Star of the Sea."

After Zwan, Chamberlin was quickly given a record deal from Sanctuary and immediately recruited Mohler. They began laying down the drums and bass last May and six weeks later they had recorded the 11 tracks that comprise "Life Begins Again."

Guitarist Sean Woolstenhulme and organist Adam Benjamin were brought in to flush out the record's celestial vibe. Corgan, Ex-Catherine Wheel frontman Rob Dickinson and Mohler's godfather and former Righteous Brother Bill Medley contributed guest vocals.

"A lot of people show up thinking it's going to be this crazy progged-out, inaccessible jazz thing that's just going to give everybody a headache," said Chamberlin, whose father was a jazz clarinetist and fed his son a steady diet of Duke Ellington and Count Basie while growing up in Joliet, Illinois. "When they hear the tunes and just kind of how accessible it is, I think everybody has been pleasantly surprised."

Including Corgan, who urged Chamberlin to write some lyrics for the song "Loki Cat" so he could sing on it. Corgan's vulnerable wail lends a certain majesty to Chamberlin's sombre, yet somehow upbeat lyrics that portray the duality of life: that it has the potential for great suffering, but also great beauty.

At the time he wrote the song, Chamberlin's mother was terminally ill (she died in September) and he had just lost his beloved cat, but it could just as well have been about Melvoin.

"There were a lot of things going on in my life at that time and the "Loki Cat" song kind of sums up how when something is taken away from you it's easy to be bitter about it, but the positive side is to see a kind of perfect sense of nature and to try to make sense out of that," said Chamberlin, who believes his two-year-old daughter was compensation for the loss of his mother. "Certainly before Nature took my mother away she did deliver my daughter to me, so I'm grateful in a lot of ways."

"Life Begins Again" showcases Chamberlin as one of his generation's most innovative drummers and the main reason the Pumpkins deteriorated so quickly in his absence. Thankfully he and Corgan are back on the same page and collaborating again.

"I think it's good for people to see that our musical relationship is still intact," said Chamberlin, who drums on Corgan's upcoming solo project to be released this spring. "We talk almost on a daily basis and we're still best friends and we talk about doing stuff in the future."

A little more than eight years ago that friendship and Chamberlin's own survival looked bleak. Even prior to the night Melvoin died, the Pumpkins had struggled with Chamberlin's addiction since they first formed in 1985.

History tells us that more often than not the combination of rock and heroin ends tragically. Yet occasionally people beat the odds. Chamberlin is one example and ironically the thing that nearly killed him, has sustained him.

"After all that nonsense went down in the 1990s and I got back behind the drums it became apparent to me what my role on the earth is and I think that is to play music," he said. "Instead of going and setting down the drumsticks and saying, 'Music killed my friend' and 'I hate music,' I think the thing to do is to learn from that and embrace it in a positive style ... and have the courage to carry on despite what everybody thinks or what the normal thing to do is, which is to kind of just go in a closet and hide your face in shame forever."