First Look - Entertainment
Blues Traveler
It’s not every band that’s still staking out new musical territory and embracing fresh challenges more than 23 years into their career, but that’s the case with Blues Traveler. For the band’s new release (and Verve Forecast debut), "North Hollywood Shootout," the quintet ventured out of their creative comfort zone to explore some adventurous new horizons. The resulting album is a landmark in Blues Traveler’s large and widely loved body of work, demonstrating the enduring strengths of the band’s songwriting while capturing the spontaneous spirit of their legendary live shows.
The aforementioned body of work encompasses eight studio albums and four live discs, six of them certified Gold or Platinum, with combined worldwide sales of more than 10 million units. The band’s best-known single, "Run-Around," is the longest-charting radio single in the history of Billboard magazine. Along the way, the band has played more than 2,000 live shows in front of more than 3 million people.
"We’re still trying to reconcile the different things we do, and cultivate what we’re individually good at into something that’s bigger than the sum of its parts," notes frontman and harmonica slinger John Popper. "When we’re all playing and it’s working, it becomes this separate entity, and that’s still the thing that we’re chasing."
"North Hollywood Shootout" — produced by Grammy-winner David Bianco, whose diverse résumé includes work with the likes of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Ozzy Osbourne, Mick Jagger and Teenage Fanclub — makes a strong case for Blues Traveler’s timelessly vital writing and performing abilities. Such memorable tunes as the uplifting road-trip anthem "You, Me and Everything;" the playfully romantic "Love Does;" and the elegant, evocative "Orange in the Sun" boast infectious melodic hooks while showcasing the interactive instrumental chemistry that originally endeared the band to its rabidly devoted fan base.
The new material also makes a strong case for the introspective side that’s always been a key element of lyricist Popper’s persona. The heart-tugging lyrics of the opening track, "Forever Owed," were inspired by the singer’s recent USO trip to Afghanistan and Iraq, while the poignant "Borrowed Time" is a bittersweet meditation on mortality and transience, inspired both by the recent passing of bandmates Chan and Tad Kinchla’s father and by Popper’s feelings for his beloved and aging dog. The album’s biggest sonic curveball is its closing track, "Free Willis, Ruminations from Behind Uncle Bob’s Machine Shop." The six-minute spoken-word sound collage finds the band jamming over an insistent drumbeat, while actor Bruce Willis, a longtime fan and friend, delivers a colorful freeform monologue/rant.
Their knack for evolving musically has been a hallmark of Blues Traveler’s output ever since the group’s four founding members — John and Chan plus bassist Bobby Sheehan and drummer Brendan Hill — began playing together as high school friends in Princeton, New Jersey. The musicians moved to New York City after graduating, and Blues Traveler quickly earned a local reputation for its high-energy, heavily improvisational live shows, with Popper’s soulful singing and flamboyant harp-blowing matched by Kinchla’s inventive combustible guitar work and the rhythm section’s propulsive punch. Their inspired performances placed Blues Traveler at the forefront of an emerging movement of rootsy jam bands, a vibrant community that also produced Phish and the Spin Doctors. Blues Traveler soon took to the road and won a reputation as a tireless touring act, winning a fan base up and down the East Coast before they’d even released an album.
After signing a deal with A&M Records, Blues Traveler released its self-titled debut, including the hit track "But Anyway," in the spring of 1990. The album won the group a national audience that continued to grow with the following year’s "Travelers and Thieves" and the live EP "On Tour Forever;" and 1993’s "Save His Soul." In 1992, Blues Traveler founded the touring H.O.R.D.E. festival, which became an influential outlet for bands associated with the jam scene. 1994’s "Four" became a quintuple-platinum breakthrough for Blues Traveler, spawning the Grammy-winning smash single "Run-Around" and the follow-up hit "Hook." The in-concert collection, "Live from the Fall," arrived in 1996, followed by the 1997 studio effort, "Straight On Till Morning." The 1999 release of Popper’s debut solo project, "Zygote," was followed that August by the shocking news of bassist Bobby Sheehan’s sudden death at the age of 31.
Blues Traveler eventually bounced back from the loss of their comrade, regrouping as a reenergized five-piece with the addition of Chan’s brother Tad Kinchla on bass and Ben Wilson on keyboards. The new lineup made its recording debut with 2001’s "Bridge," followed by the live "What You and I Have Been Through." The acclaimed studio album, "Truth Be Told," arrived in 2003, followed in 2004 by "Live on the Rocks" and its companion DVD "Thinnest of Air." 2005’s "Bastardos!" produced by ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett, reasserted Blues Traveler’s experimental edge. 2007 saw the release of "Cover Yourself," a set of acoustic re-workings of Blues Traveler favorites. Also in 2007, Popper stepped out again to tour and record with the John Popper Project featuring DJ Logic, which also included Tad Kinchla on bass.
"You have to be smart enough to know that you don’t know what you’re doing, and so you give it your best shot by trusting your instincts," said Popper. "The great thing about knowing that you don’t know what you’re doing is that there’s more to learn. And I think that as long as we have more to learn as a band, we’ll be all right. What makes it work is honesty. As long as you mean it, you’ve got the potential to come up with something really good."