Jeff Gutt was The X Factor’s runner-up. Then he kept his STP job secret

He coated floors between attempts at a music career

Before television, Gutt had already tried to build a career in Los Angeles, returned to Michigan and made another attempt on the West Coast with Dry Cell. That band secured a Warner Bros. deal that fell apart. Back in Michigan, he worked coating floors with epoxy and had experience singing in cover bands to pay his rent. Jeff Gutt told Vanyaland in 2024 that the experience had damaged his relationship with performing: “I kind of hated music”. The X Factor became another route into the industry.

Kelly Rowland mentored his runner-up season

Gutt first auditioned for The X Factor in 2012 with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. He returned in 2013 and joined Kelly Rowland’s Over 25 category, singing “Amazing Grace” in the four-chair challenge. For the December 18 performance finale, he sang Aerosmith’s “Dream On”, joined Goo Goo Dolls singer John Rzeznik for “Iris” and returned to Radiohead’s “Creep”. TheWrap’s Jethro Nededog awarded Gutt the first two rounds in his recap verdict. Gutt finished runner-up in season three. Years later, he told Vanyaland that his future STP bandmates had never seen that finale performance of “Dream On”.

Rival City Heights took him back to the road

Gutt introduced another band after the television run. Rival City Heights played its debut show at Detroit’s Masonic Temple on May 3, 2014, with former bandmates Gary Pittel on guitar and Brandon Brown on drums among its members. In late 2015, the group toured Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and India. Its single “Take It Back” arrived on February 19, 2016. Evanescence drummer Will Hunt joined for the band’s tour with Trapt. At Revolution Music Hall in Amityville, New York, Gutt’s set included “Run to Me”, “Fading Out” and the new single. Hunt would remain part of Gutt’s recording story a decade later.

He kept the STP partnership secret for a year

Stone Temple Pilots invited Gutt to audition after bassist Robert DeLeo heard about him following a Hollywood Vampires show in Detroit. Gutt sang on the last day of the auditions; he had bypassed the online submission process. For the audition, he slipped away from a Las Vegas recording session with Hunt, flew to Los Angeles and returned without telling his colleagues why he had travelled. The band began working with him in September 2016. He spent the following year writing and recording with Dean DeLeo, Robert DeLeo and Eric Kretz while the partnership stayed private. Gutt later described smiling to himself when an STP song played on a bar jukebox. The public introduction came at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on November 14, 2017, where he performed with the band.

An acoustic idea became a test of his songwriting

During the audition process, Gutt heard the DeLeo brothers playing an idea on acoustic guitars. He heard a melody and began directing the song, sensing that they were giving him room to show how he wrote. That piece became “The Art of Letting Go”. The collaboration produced material alongside his work learning the band’s earlier songs. Drummer Eric Kretz described the sessions: “We ended up finishing 14 songs”. Gutt’s recording debut with the group, the self-titled Stone Temple Pilots, arrived on March 16, 2018. His first album with STP grew from those months of writing before fans knew he had joined.

Perdida grew from songs written on tour

Some of Gutt’s next STP album took shape during a snowy Canadian tour in late 2018. The band entered Kretz’s Bomb Shelter Studios with three songs and a month off, then kept developing ideas as members brought in music and lyrics at different stages. The result was Perdida, the group’s first acoustic album and Gutt’s second with STP, released on February 7, 2020. Its ten tracks dealt with heartbreak, loss and starting over. “There’s pain in these songs”, Jeff Gutt told SPIN. He described the writing as a shared release for the musicians, with each song following its own path through the studio.

He sang all of Purple in Sydney in 2025

On February 28, 2025, Gutt fronted Stone Temple Pilots at ICC Sydney Theatre for a performance of Purple in full. Wolfmother opened the show. Gutt began the album sequence with “Meatplow” and “Vasoline”, then worked through songs including “Silvergun Superman” and “Interstate Love Song”. He dedicated “Still Remains” to Scott Weiland. After “Kitchenware & Candybars” completed the album, the band played five songs from Core, including “Wicked Garden”, “Plush” and “Sex Type Thing”. He had told Vanyaland in 2024 that these songs brought back memories of his neighborhood and teenage years.

Rival City’s sessions became We Are Not Machines

In an August 10, 2026 interview with Rocking With Jam Man, Gutt connected his project We Are Not Machines to the old Rival City sessions. He and Will Hunt were rebuilding that material, with other players still to be decided. Gutt had songs he felt belonged outside STP, and he described the new music as drawing on heavy emotions. In an interview reported on October 28, he told The Rockpit’s Andrew Slaidins that joining STP had required him to stop work on a record. He was finishing it and expected to write with STP again when the band came together naturally.

He was back in the studio daily in November 2026

By his November 2, 2026 conversation with Noise11’s Paul Cashmere, the separate album had been a decade in the making. Gutt said he was working daily in Los Angeles to complete recordings he had previously taken halfway to completion. A different producer was helping him bring the material together. He wanted to take We Are Not Machines to festivals or on tour, fitting dates around his STP commitments and Hunt’s work with Evanescence. Completing the record had become a personal task: “I can’t just leave it halfway done”, Jeff Gutt said.

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