Chad Gray says he is playing Hellyeah songs again to keep Vinnie Paul‘s music alive, after Mudvayne opted to take 2026 off.
When Mudvayne decided to sit out 2026, Chad Gray did not take the year off with them. He picked up the phone, called some friends, and started booking venues himself.
The result is “30 Years Of Madness“, a run of shows drawing on both of his bands. Speaking to Full Metal Jackie, Gray explained that none of it was planned. There was no agent involved at the start, just him and his partner Shannon Gunz ringing people they knew.
“Shannon [Gunz] and I booked these shows. We booked the Vegas show with friends of ours here. We booked the Machine Shop with Kevin [Zink] ’cause I know Kevin. We booked Epic Events Center because we know Ryan [Vander Sanden] and Mark [Skogen] and everybody that runs that place. And Ryan happened to book a place called the Rust Belt in Moline, so that show came together. So Shannon and I just booked these shows on our own. We didn’t have an agent or anything and it was just kind of let’s see what happens. And then all of a sudden, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, like they all sell out,” he said (via Loudwire).
The numbers surprised him more than anything: “We play East Moline, Illinois, for Christ’s sake, like the Quad Cities, which should be a stop on every tour. And we put 1,200 people in that place. Then we went to Epic Events Center and we put 1,500 in there and Mudvayne sold 1,700. So I was only short 200 from Mudvayne. I was feeling pretty good about myself. But that’s what this is telling me.”
The harder problem was what to play. Gray has twelve albums behind him, and the opening night ran an hour and 50 minutes across 19 songs before the band told him it was unsustainable. They cut five and still landed near an hour and 40.
The Hellyeah material is the part that matters most to him. Those songs had not been performed since early 2020, when the band’s touring stopped for good.
“It’s emotional for me. He was such a warm and generous man to everyone. And just to let his music die because he did is ridiculous,” he said.
“Vinnie was my best friend and my brother and I was so grateful for him and what he gave me on so many levels. The friendship, the brotherhood, the knowledge that I got from him. He was just a consummate professional. He was such a pro and I learned so much from him.”
Gray was blunt about where the band sat in Vinnie Paul‘s own estimation.
He continued: “And I know some people are gonna be like, ‘whatever,’ but Hellyeah to Vinnie Paul was as important as Pantera ever was. It was everything to him. Pantera had been Pantera and he was in Pantera, and he loved Pantera. But Vinnie was the guy that, ‘If this is what I’m doing now, this is what’s most important in my world and what’s most important in my life.’ And he just gave so much.”
He backed that with a specific example, one that cost the drummer money.
“He ponied up money for us to be able to go do our European tours with Korn, to be able to go over there and open for Korn. We were over there for two months and our guarantees… we definitely went huge in the hole. But he was like, ‘We’re going.’ And he did that kind of stuff because it was so important to him to build this thing and he knew that that’s what it was gonna take. And he had it. He had it to give and he did. And it’s just so important to me to keep his legacy alive,” Gray recalled.
Gray said he can see the reaction in the crowd, the same look he got when Mudvayne returned after twelve years away, only on different shirts. He also believes his old bandmate is watching.
“Vinnie is smiling ear to ear. I can feel him at every show, standing over me, him and Dime. I can just feel them over me, looking down proud. Proud of me for doing it and keeping his name alive. Vinnie‘s not dead if I’m still doing this.”
Asked for a memory that captured the man rather than the drummer, Gray went straight to food.
He replied: “Dude, Vinnie was just the king of the barbecue. We were on our old Eagle that we spent more time in the shop than on the road. But we would might do a one-off festival or something with any number of random bands, BLS, Five Finger, whoever. And when we would do that, we would roll into a Sam’s Club, good morning, and I would wake up, and the entire front lounge would be full of food.”
“And when I say full of food, I can’t express ‘full of food’ enough,” Gray continued. “Literally, pans, chicken, steaks, sausages, carne asada, da, da, da, da. Literally, the entire front lounge, the tables, the couches, everything just stacked full. And we roll into the venue, man and we get out, and our bus had those big, big folding tables, the big long ones. That was part of our gear, three or four of those big, long tables and grills rode in there with all sorts of appliances, margarita makers. We would just roll in and unload. And this is early. We’d get there 11AM or whatever and we’d start setting up.”
The band travelled with folding tables, grills and margarita makers as part of their gear, set up by late morning, played their afternoon slot and then cooked.
“Everybody in the bus is prepping, cutting peppers, cutting this, cutting that, getting everything prepped up, man,” he added. “And then obviously we’d start getting ready for the show. Because we always played earlier, like 2 or 3:00 in the afternoon or whatever, we’d get offstage, man, and go right at it. We would cook for the whole goddamn place. The bands, the local crews, the staff of the festival, whatever. Didn’t matter what it was. And these weren’t all Wimmer fests. These were whatever rock radio fest we’d be at. He never took a dollar from anybody. It was just like he probably rolled into Sam’s Club and spent a fortune on food and just doled it out. Everybody was welcome, but that’s just who he was. And it was like that at those kind of situations. It was like that at his house. Anybody could roll by. That’s who he was. He taught me a lot about how to be a rock star. A lot of people are just too cool for school. I mean, this dude had been arguably one of the biggest bands on the planet and is arguably one of the number one drummers to ever play the game and was the most sweet, down to earth, genteel, genuine person you would ever meet.”
Gray said the other surviving Hellyeah members have been supportive. Christian Brady played the earliest shows before his Las Vegas commitments got in the way, Tom Maxwell is at home with family, and Kyle Sanders is touring with Kerry King.
The tour is now considerably bigger than the five-date experiment it started as. An autumn American leg announced in June carries Butcher Babies and Devil’s Cut in support, with Marcus Rafferty, drummer Devin Attard, bassist Nick Villarreal and guitarist Joe Bonasorte behind Gray. Around 27 or 28 songs have been rehearsed, with more in progress, and he intends to rotate five or six every night rather than repeat a fixed set.
Vinnie Paul died on June 22, 2018 at the age of 54, while Welcome Home was still being finished. The album was completed and released on September 27, 2019, with Roy Mayorga of Stone Sour covering the drum stool for the celebration of life shows that followed. Hellyeah‘s final performance came at ShipRocked in 2020, and the band has been inactive since.
Gray formed Mudvayne in 1996 and co-founded Hellyeah in 2006 with Vinnie Paul, Nothingface guitarist Tom Maxwell and Mudvayne‘s Greg Tribbett. Mudvayne returned in 2021 after a twelve-year absence and released their first new material in sixteen years last summer with “Hurt People Hurt People” and “Sticks And Stones“.
