Business Insider has published a new article, “How rich musicians billed American taxpayers for luxury hotels, shopping sprees, and million-dollar bonuses.” The piece calls out artists across multiple genres, including Alice In Chains, for potential misuse and/or abuse of pandemic relief payouts.
Alice In Chains reportedly received $4.1 million through a program called the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG). Essentially it kept many regular touring artists and their crews paid throughout the government shutdown. The article reports that $3.4 million of that $4.1 million grant went to guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell, drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike Inez.
More troubling, however, is that the band apparently shared a GoFundMe page for their guitar tech who received a cancer diagnosis in 2022. According to the article, money from the grants didn’t go toward health insurance or benefits for their crew.
It further detailed: “Like other grant applicants, AIC Entertainment — the three band members’ touring business — had to tell the government only that the money was ‘necessary.’ But the month before they took their grant payments, the band members recorded about $48 million in income from selling the copyrights on their catalog. They made hundreds of thousands of dollars more from merchandise sales and other profit distributions in 2022. The band spent some money to pay its staff. It paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to sound-equipment-rental firms, videographers, and managers. But the precarious nature of working in the live-entertainment business didn’t change for some of its employees. Scott Dachroeden, a guitar tech and tour photographer who had worked with the band for years, received a cancer diagnosis in late 2022. The band, which records show did not spend grant money on benefits like health insurance, circulated a GoFundMe page on Twitter.”
“‘He has no health insurance and now cannot work to pay his bills,’ the page said. The band’s lead singer said on Facebook that Alice in Chains helped out behind the scenes, but a person familiar with the situation said that Dachroeden didn’t get much, if any, money from the band during the pandemic and that after his diagnosis, the band connected Dachroeden with a charity that helps with medical bills. Dachroeden died soon after his diagnosis. Alice in Chains‘ publicists and manager didn’t respond to requests for comment.’”
The full article can be viewed here.
