William DuVall

William DuVall

William DuVall (born September 6, 1967, Atlanta, Georgia) is the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of the band Comes With The Fall and is also the current lead singer and rhythm guitarist for Alice in Chains.

Biography

DuVall's music career started in the early 1980's Atlanta hardcore punk scene. William first performed with Awareness Void of Chaos.

In 1983, William helped found the controversial Atlanta-based hardcore punk band, Neon Christ; contributing guitars and lyrics to the band's albums. Neon Christ had strong ties to hardcore luminaries, Corrosion Of Conformity and Bl'ast. With a couple of short East Coast tours and two albums, the politically-pointed band started gaining popularity. The band used its popularity to support many charitable causes including working to free Fela Anikulapo Kuti.

The band disbanded in 1986, reuniting for a one-time show featuring the original members on December 24th, 2004. Currently, the members are said to be filming a documentary, which concluded with a February 2nd 2008 show at Lawrenceville, Georgia's punk haunt The Treehouse.

After Neon Christ originally broke up, DuVall was briefly the second guitarist in the popular Northern California hardcore punk band, Bl'ast, contributing a small bit of writing to their second album, It's In My Blood, released on the influential hardcore punk/alternative label SST Records, founded by Greg Ginn of hardcore punk band, Black Flag. DuVall did not, however, stay with the band long enough to record on the album.

DuVall spent the late 80s with a Jimi Hendrix-inspired band, "No Walls". They released one album.

He also spent the late 80s in college earning a degree in philosophy.

In 1994, DuVall co-wrote the song, "I Know," for fellow Atlanta musician Grammy nominated Dionne Farris; this song won DuVall an ASCAP award.

In the late 90s, DuVall founded the band Madfly. He served as guitarist, singer and songwriter. Their efforts included two albums, "Get the Silver", and "White Hot In The Black", both released on Duvall's label DVL Recordings, the latter distributed nationally by Mercury Records/PolyGram. Madfly gained commercial success, but decided it was not in the best interest of the members and disbanded to form the band Comes With The Fall, with new bassist Adam Stanger. Later the members relocated from Atlanta to Los Angeles in pursuit of a new audience.

DuVall has also been the lead guitarist for Octone Records artist Michael Tolcher in recent years as Tolcher toured throughout the United States.

DuVall befriended musician Jerry Cantrell in 2000. Quickly becoming Cantrell's go to man, William has performed with Cantrell on tour and multiple shows, including Cantrell's famed band, Alice in Chains, which DuVall is currently fronting in place of Layne Staley, who died of a heroin overdose in April 2002.

In 2007; Alice in Chains, fronted by DuVall, began touring with Velvet Revolver and Kill Hannah. The ReEvolution tour was in two parts. The first taking many European cities and Eastern United States. The second part; also referred to as The Libertad Tour, is primarily a cross-country tour that spread into three cities in Canada. It has since been advertised on the official Alice in Chains website that the band; now with Duvall officially noted as lead-singer, are working on new material with an album scheduled to be released in summer 2009.