The Toadies continue to add dates to their first US tour in seven years, as the August release date for the band's first album since 2001 fast approaches.
The Texas-based outfit, which launched its comeback outing in June, has added another half-dozen or so new shows to its current trek, which resumed July 29th in Tulsa, OK, and continues on into early fall.
"No Deliverance," due in stores August 19th, (Kirtland Records) is the group's first album of new material since 2001's "Hell Below/Stars Above." The band has created a website for the new album, which contains a brief audio preview of the set's title track.
The single, "No Deliverance," impacts Rock on August 5th.
The Toadies rose to fame in the midst of the grunge era with their 1994 Interscope debut, "Rubberneck." The set spawned several hits, including "Possum Kingdom," "Away," "Tyler" and "I Come from the Water."
Interscope reportedly spiked the band's planned 1998 follow-up, which the group eventually reworked for release in 2001 under the title "Hell Below/Stars Above." Five months after that album hit the street, frontman Todd Lewis announced that the group was breaking up, and cited bassist Lisa Umbarger's departure from the lineup as the catalyst for the split.
The band, sans Umbarger, who remains detached from the group, eventually played a handful of well-received reunion shows in Texas between 2005 and 2007.
The notion of a reunion dawned on Vaden Todd Lewis when he was writing songs in his Fort Worth, Texas, home last year, after his most recent band, Burden Brothers, fell apart.
"About six songs in, it dawned on me that a good portion of what I was writing was sounding (like) pretty classic Toadies," the singer-guitarist says by phone from Texas. "I called up Mark (Reznicek, the Toadies drummer) and (guitarist) Clark Vogeler and just asked them if they'd be interested in doing a record and some touring, just to see what would happen.
"They'd each moved on to their own lives and were doing really well. But I was fortunate enough to get them both to go, 'Hell, yeah!'"
Of his major-label experience, Lewis says, "I'd like to think that you live and learn. When we formed the Burden Brothers, we decided that an independent was the way to go, and it's been really great. But looking back at the Interscope deal, I have to say that they may have turned down a record, but they didn't drop us. So we actually didn't get hit as bad as some people."
Perhaps another thing that brought the Toadies back together was the inclusion of "Possum Kingdom" in a recent edition of the uber-popular "Guitar Hero" game. That, too, more or less happened by chance.
"Clark is a big fan of the game, always has been," Lewis says. "He's out in LA and asked around and found the guy that was the head of the company. He asked him, 'Hey, how come you haven't put the Toadies on one of these things?' He said that they'd been dealing with Interscope, but that the label hadn't returned his calls on us. Somehow, we managed to sneak it by them, and it's introducing the band to a whole new generation of fans."
Those fans, as well as those who were there the first time around, have been turning out in force for the band's current tour.
"It's great, it's just awesome," Lewis says. "These shows are going really well, and everybody's stoked. It's like we never went away."
"We're just planning on working and seeing what the new record does. So much of this life is seeing what happens and what you can make out of it. I've got options, and I'm not locked into anything. I feel good about that."
Upcoming Tour Dates:
August 2008
21 - Tyler, TX - Click's
22 - Dallas, TX - The Palladium
23 - College Station, TX - Northgate Music Festival
26 - Shreveport, LA - The Warehouse
27 - Baton Rouge, LA - The Varsity Theater
29 - Houston, TX - Verizon Wireless Theater
30 - Corpus Christi, TX - The Pavilion @ Concrete Street Amphitheater
31 - Graford, TX - Possum Kingdom Lake (Dia De Los Toadies)
September 2008
3, 4 - Austin, TX - Stubb's Bar-B-Q
6 - Odessa, TX - Dos Amigos
8 - Phoenix, AZ - The Brickhouse Theater
9 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern
11 - Los Angeles, CA - Roxy Theater
13 - Anaheim, CA - House of Blues
14 - Las Vegas, NV - House of Blues
16 - San Francisco, CA - Slim's
19 - Seattle, WA - Showbox SoDo
20 - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theatre
21 - Boise, ID - Big Easy
23 - Aspen, CO - Belly Up
24 - Englewood, CO - Gothic Theater
25 - Lubbock, TX - Lonestar Events Center
26 - Amarillo, TX - Midnight Rodeo
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