Ask just about any casual music fan and they’ll tell you that Maynard James Keenan is a rock star. After all, what else do you call a platinum-selling artist who has been in the top tier of the music industry for two decades and regularly headlines arenas and large theatres all over the world?

Ask the man himself, however, and you’ll get a very different story. Speaking on the phone from an Ohio hotel room, the singer—who also fronts the art-metal band Tool, and the marginally less sinister A Perfect Circle—tells the Straight that he’s never been seduced by the trappings of excess and celebrity.

“If you want to be a rock star, if you want to be famous, you have to be on lunch boxes and be part of Happy Meals and whatnot,” he asserts. “It’s a poison, and it seeps in pretty quickly and it’s hard to get back out.”

It’s his scorn for major-label marketing that inspired him to go the DIY route with Puscifer. The band, which also functions as a multimedia art project and encompasses everything from sketch comedy to clothing, draws on a revolving cast of members who handle bookkeeping, merchandising, and more.

So what are the advantages of being your own boss? “Your vision doesn’t get clouded, and you get paid on time,” the frontman observes. “It might be a harder struggle, it might be harder to get yourself on the map, but at the end of the day, you feel far less insulted.”

Puscifer’s in-house approach has been a long time in the making. The band was first seen in a 1995 episode of David Cross and Bob Odenkirk’s HBO series Mr. Show, but its debut album, the lewdly titled “V” Is for Vagina, didn’t arrive until 2007. This delay, Keenan explains, occurred because the band’s business model wasn’t always financially feasible.

“Back in ’94 or ’95, technology hadn’t caught up with any of the ideas,” he reflects. “In order to do any of the things we’ve been doing the last five or six years, it would have taken million-dollar budgets on every project. To do animation back in ’94 was a million-dollar budget for a video. To just film a sketch back then, you had to have several hundred thousands and get a development deal, and somebody else would end up owning your product afterwards.”

Thanks to the newfound availability of home-studio technology, Keenan and his collaborators recorded their recently released sophomore LP, Conditions of My Parole, in the cellar of the singer’s very own winery, located in Arizona’s Verde Valley. Surrounded by casks, the players laid down 12 diverse songs that range from soaring hard rock to low-key, electro-driven balladry.

The album opens with the expansive “Tiny Monsters”, on which seasick synth tones give way to a danceable patchwork of programmed beats, blippy loops, and distantly chiming guitars. This paves the way for other adventurous stylistic forays like the stripped-down psych-country of “Tumbleweed” and the folk-rocking robo-funk of the title track. Eclectic and sonically lush songs such as these prove that Keenan and company are more than capable of handling recording duties themselves without the need for an outside producer or big-budget studio facility.

The singer says that it’s only fitting that the album was created in his wine cellar, since he believes that the creative pursuits of music and winemaking are inextricably linked. “The process that goes into both winemaking and blending and writing songs and recording them is very similar,” he says. “They’re very much joined at the hip.”

Not only are Keenan’s two careers artistically complementary, they are tied by practical demands: Puscifer is only able to tour for part of the year, since Keenan’s winemaking business sometimes requires the singer to be back home in Arizona.

With his winery currently in its slow season, Puscifer is promoting Conditions of My Parole with a North American tour. And while Keenan is mum about exactly what the group’s Vancouver show will offer, he hints that it will be a spectacle that will span a variety of mediums. “The best advice would be to not go in with expectations,” he says. “Just go in with an open mind, because we’re not performing in a stinky, beer-soaked rock club. It’s in a theatre for a reason.”

Keenan knows that Puscifer’s quirky approach to live performance won’t go over well with Top-40 fans who are looking for the next big hit. Of course, that’s just fine with him. “If we were trying to take over the world, then I suppose that we would want to streamline it, or water it down so that it appeals to one specific audience that would easily swallow it,” he muses. "But I’m not really concerned about that.”

Puscifer plays the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts on Tuesday (March 13).