Stoned at the Winery: Catching Up with a Stone Temple Pilots Tribute Band

Graphic by Izzie Claudio

By Charlie Desjardins

It’s 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 22, and I’m being led through the bowels of City Winery to the “green room.” There, I’ve been promised an all-access, highly-exclusive pre-show interview with the self-described No. 1 Stone Temple Pilots tribute act “north of Boston,” and absolutely nothing will stand in my way.

Except for a locked door.

“There’s a door open on the other side!” Olaf Westphal, bassist for Plaistow, New Hampshire’s Stone Temple Posers, shouts.

Stone Temple Posers and I in the City Winery green room. Photograph courtesy of Grahame White.

Most people my age are probably spending their Saturday mornings recovering from hangovers, but seeing as how I never drink, connecting with passionate, underappreciated segments of the local music scene is the only liquor I need. In my eyes, Stone Temple Posers are one of those segments, and when Olaf reached out to me with a warm invitation to their gig at radio legend Mistress Carrie’s “Grunge Brunch,” one major question lept to my mind and stayed there for the next week. It gnawed at my brain fibers as I slept, leered at me from behind the shower curtain, and followed me down dark alleys . . .

Why Stone Temple Pilots?

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore STP, but . . . what does a band like Stone Temple Pilots even mean to my generation? Hell, what did Stone Temple Pilots ever mean? They were always labeled grunge, but their slippery style favored the DeLeo brothers’ huge riffs over doom-and-gloom musings. They dabbled in heavy metal, alt-rock, and glam, and though they always stood as commercial giants, they never achieved mythical hero status like Alice in Chains and Nirvana. They were ripped by the press as misogynists following the release of debut single “Sex Type Thing,” derided as Pearl Jam rip-offs, labeled druggies about five thousand separate times, and buried into oblivion by shock-jock indie bloggers who couldn’t tell the difference between a baby carrot and their own prick. One of these bloggers, Pitchfork’s Ryan Schreiber, wrote an infamous review in which he wished for frontman Scott Weiland to “tie [himself] off and fall directly into space forever.” 

To these “legitimate” critics I say screw you, and screw your bullshit! STP has always deserved more respect—especially following Weiland’s untimely passing in 2015—and if it takes a group of middle-aged dudes with thick New England accents and hockey-dad garb to plant those seeds, then so be it.

Stone Temple Posers performing at “Grunge Brunch.” Photograph courtesy of Grahame White.

“Have you always loved STP?” I ask the Posers excitedly.

“Nope,” frontman Hal White says with a laugh. “At the time I hated grunge.”

Well. . . this is awkward.

Hal was the last person to figure into the Stone Temple Posers equation, as Olaf, his stepson and drummer John, and guitarist Paul had been gigging together since their stint with cover band The Nerve in the early 2000s. While that band played a large variety of Stone Temple Pilots covers, it wasn’t until 2011 that Olaf and Paul joined their first STP tribute band, Crown of Apathy (a reference to Core’s deep cut “Piece of Pie”). From there, Olaf held stints in Stone Temple Aviators and SiN. Right now, he’s splitting his time between the Posers and a Nirvana tribute group.

“I went somewhere else and somewhere else and somewhere else,” Olaf tells me, recalling his journey between STP cover acts. “This one has worked a lot longer than the others.”

The aforementioned “journey” to Stone Temple Posers started in 2014—the twentieth anniversary of Stone Temple Pilots’ 1994 classic Purple—when Olaf, Paul, and John noticed a sudden lack of tribute acts in the area. Sensing an opportunity to pay homage, they placed a call on Craigslist for a singer, and one person answered the request.

“And then that person left so we got Hal,” Paul jokes.

Like his bandmates, Hal, a Marine Corps veteran, had a long and winding road to musical glory, though he started in a far starrier place: a hair band called Goldwing, which the Posers’ website describes as “Winger before Winger was Winger!” 

“I was a guitarist-turned-bassist,” Hal recalls. “[Goldwing] had been trying out singers, and they couldn’t seem to land anyone so they got me.”

Nowadays, with his salt-and-pepper hair and Patriots quarter-zip, Hal White couldn’t look any less like Kip Winger if he tried. He also couldn’t sound any less like Scott Weiland, but even he knows that.

Stone Temple Posers’ frontman Hal White. Photograph courtesy of Grahame White.

“[Scott Weiland] isn’t the easiest guy to emulate,” he says. “So I gotta imagine what he would be doing at this age. I’m not taking my shirt off, I’m not dying my hair orange.”

This lack of one-to-one authenticity hasn’t stopped Stone Temple Posers yet, and if their busy concert schedule is any indicator, it might never stop them. They do most of their gigging at small pubs and music halls, often playing bills alongside tributes to Green Day, System of a Down, and Heart.

“We once opened for a band at [New Hampshire biker bar] Wally’s,” Olaf, the closest thing the Posers have to a band manager, tells me. “Next week we’re playing at The Boat in Dracut.”

One peculiar rule I discovered: the band never plays with other Stone Temple Pilots tribute acts. They claim this as a purely artistic compromise—they don’t want audiences to get bored—yet I get mixed signals when Paul runs through the semi-complete list of rival groups (which includes names like Shirley Temple Pilots, Naked Sunday, and New Jersey outfit Lounge Fly).

Stone Temple Posers’ bassist Olaf Westphal. Photograph courtesy of Grahame White

“We reached out to Mistress Carrie about this gig,” Olaf says. “It was pretty smooth. A lot of times it’s not that smooth.”

“It’s definitely territorial,” Hal adds. “For a long time it was only us. Now we have to beat the other bands to it.”

While an “STP-Tribute Band Hunger Games” would make for its own insane (and wildly tempting) investigative piece, I’m happy to report that the Posers don’t seem to care much about coming out on top. Nor do they care about sex or drugs or turning a profit. 

“The gigs actually cost us money,” Paul says. “I’m just grateful we got our parking validated today.”

“We do it to make the people happy,” Hal says. “At least, that’s why I do it.”

Catch the Posers at the 2025 Plaistow Summer Music Series! (June 25 @ Plaistow Town Common)