It’s been 23 years since the Toadies started playing rock
music in Fort Worth, Texas, but even the band will admit that the road they’ve
taken over that lengthy period of time has been anything but smooth.
Through lineup changes, shelved albums, member departures,
band break-ups, one-off reunions and full-on reformations, the Toadies are an
act that has experienced nearly everything — except, perhaps, the freedom to
grow as they choose.
On July 31, the Toadies will release their fifth full-length
album — a disc fittingly called Play.Rock.Music., because, perhaps
for the first time in their career, the band feels capable of unapologetically
doing just that.
After bursting onto the national scene with their
breakthrough Rubberneck album, which begat their signature
single “Possum Kingdom,” the successful follow-up single “Away” and the immense
fan favorite “Tyler,” the Toadies returned to the studio in 1998 with the
pressure of trying to match their first album’s success. The result was a disc
called Feeler, an album the band’s then-label home, Insterscope
Records, was supposed to release in 1998/99 but decided to shelve despite the
band’s protests. So it was back to the drawing board for the 2001-released Hell
Below/Stars Above, an awkwardly timed sophomore album that enjoyed moderate
success and almost universal critical acclaim but was ultimately doomed because
of the seven-year wait it took to arrive.
Disappointed and dejected, the band dissolved just a few
months after that album’s release. Bassist Lisa Umbarger quit music altogether.
Drummer Mark Reznicek joined Dallas country band Eleven Hundred Springs.
Guitarist Clark Vogeler moved to Hollywood, where he became an Emmy
Award-winning editor for breakout cable reality series Project Runway.
Front man and primary songwriter Vaden Todd Lewis formed a new band called the
Burden Brothers.
It was a reunion show in Dallas in 2006, originally planned
as a one-off gig, which reignited the band’s spark. The following year, the
band embarked on a surprise tour of Texas. A year later, they fully re-formed,
recording and releasing 2008’s No Deliverance for Dallas’
Kirtland Records and ushering bassist Doni Blair (formerly of Dallas band
Hagfish) into Umbarger’s former role.
Immediately, fans of the band ecstatically welcomed the
Toadies’ return. On stage at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, they played
to the largest — and maybe even rowdiest — crowds of their careers. On tours in
support of No Deliverance, they played across the country to
sold-out rooms and eager audiences.
Refreshed and inspired, the band launched their own annual
festival in 2008, and, each summer since, thousands have traveled to remote
Texas locations to attend Dia De Los Toadies — not only to observe the
festival’s namesake in action, but to watch the band’s favorite up-and-coming Texas
talents as well.
In 2010, redemption finally came: The band re-recorded their Feeler tracks
and, rather cathartically, released for Kirtland, the second Toadies album that
never was.
This past spring, the band, joined by Grammy-nominated
producer Chris “Frenchie” Smith (Jet, Built to Spill, …And You Will Know Us By
The Trail of Dead), entered an Austin recording studio with a clean slate —
and, for the first time in the run of the band, Lewis says, without any fully
written tracks in tow.
“I just wanted to do something I wouldn’t have
ordinarily done,” Lewis says. “I wanted to broaden my abilities as a writer.
And it turned out to be a beautiful process. If it felt good right then and
there in the studio as we fleshed it out, then we knew it was pretty good. And
it just worked, man.”
So much so that the sessions, which were originally planned
so the band could record a new EP release, ended up providing the Toadies with
a complete full-length’s worth of material. And not for naught: The songs onPlay.Rock.Music. are
some of the best the Toadies have ever released. The trademarks of the band are
all present — Lewis’ howl, the chugging guitars, the unrepentant angst — but
they’re also improved upon.
Says Lewis: “These songs are decidedly more poppy, I’d say.
I mean, I’ve written a lot of songs with no chorus before, but these ones have
hooks.”
They also have a certain fire to them: “Rattler’s Revival”
boasts an infectious bounce (and, on a bonus version of the song, horns
provided by Dia De Los Toadies alums Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears);
“Summer of the Strange” finds the band rediscovering an uneasy-yet-alluring
creepiness it hasn’t showcased since Rubberneck; and “Laments of a
Good Man,” Lewis proclaims, is as weird a song as he’s ever penned.
“It’s just all over the place,” he says before relating that
song’s oddities to the new album’s sound as a whole. “There’s some stuff on
here that will make eyebrows go up for sure. Hopefully, that’s a good thing.”
Without question, it is: With the band’s second successful
stint now having lasted almost as long as the initial run, Play.Rock.Music. showcases
a band in full stride, an outfit with renewed vigor and, perhaps most
important, a group with a clear and confident understanding of itself.
The Toadies’ long, slithering road to this fifth full-length
may not have been pretty. But should it have been? Not at all.
The Toadies don’t make pretty music. They make music that
music that crawls under, into and through your skin. They make music that makes
neck hairs stand on end. They make music that begs to be blasted at full volume
— with haunting lyrics that bear their battle scars proudly.
The Toadies do that masterfully on Play.Rock.Music. And,
Lewis promises, they plan on doing that for many other records to come, too.
Surrounding the release, they’ll proudly showcase this new material this summer
– first, while on tour with fellow ‘90s stalwarts Helmet and, later, at their
fifth annual Dia De Los Toadies event in New Braunfels, Texas, on August 31 and
September 1.
This, after all, is a band that’s released just five studio
LPs in 23 years. So you get the feeling that Lewis, Reznicek, Vogeler and Blair
won’t mind waiting a little longer before writing the remaining chapters in
their ever-undulating story.
Catch the guys out on the road this summer:
((WIth Helmet)
7/20 Houston TX - House of Blues
7/21 Pensacola, FL - Cptn Fun Beach Club
7/22 New Orleans LA - Tipitinas
7/24 Jacksonville FL - Jax Rabbits
7/25 Ft. Lauderdale FL - Revolution
7/26 St Petersbugh, FL - State Theatre
7/27 Orlando, FL - HOB
7/28 Atlanta, GA - Masquerade
7/29 Charlotte - Fillmore
7/31 Silver Spring MD - Fillmore
8/1 Philadelphia PA - Trocadero
8/2 New York NY - Webster Hall
8/3 Boston MA - Paradise
8/4 Rochester, NY - Waterstreet Music Hall
85 Lansing, MI Michigan - Rock and Brew Fest
8/7 Cleveland OH - HOB
8/8 Detroit MI - The Crofoot
8/9 Chicago IL - HOB
8/10 Indianapolis, IN - The Vogue
8/11 St. Louis, MO - Pop's
8/12 Kansas City, MO - Beaumont
8/14 Denver CO - Bluebird
http://Toadies.com
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http://twitter.com/#!/thetoadies
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