Maynard James Keenan is an American progressive metal singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, winemaker, and actor, best known as the vocalist for Grammy Award-winning American progressive metal band Tool. He has released four studio albums with Tool, and three with A Perfect Circle.
Being from Ohio, Keenan has a strong wrestling background (his father was a wrestling coach) and he started training Jiu-Jitsu in the mid 90’s under Rickson Gracie. He has been training sporadically for all these years and is currently one of the BJJ coaches at Fifth Dimension Studios in Cottonwood, Arizona.
Keenan training with a young BJ Penn, Dave Camarillo and Gumby.
He’s previously talked about what attracted him to bjj and revealed it was the hardest thing he’s ever done:
Tool Singer Maynard James Keenan Talks How He Built His Own Gym And What Attracted Him To BJJ
In the latest revolver episode “The Art of Work,” we join the Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer frontman at Verde Valley Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the martial arts academy he co-founded near his hometown of Jerome, Arizona. Watch Keenan demonstrate some of the fighting techniques that earned him his purple belt, and elaborate on how his lifelong affinity for combat sports is connected with his larger vision of sustainable living, self-sufficiency and creativity.
