Although the weather is not quite keeping pace, the concert season in Newport is certainly heating up. Next up at Jane Pickens Film and Events Center – iconic 90s band Crash Test Dummies roar into town on May 9. Click here for tickets.
Tagged as adult-contemporary act in the early/mid 1990s, the band was also lumped in with the grunge movement at the time. They achieved mainstream success in 1993, with the hit song “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” which featured the deep baritone vocal of founding member Brad Roberts. Since then, they’ve released numerous albums and singles, touring on and off over the years.
I spoke to Roberts earlier this week about the upcoming show. He said that fans can expect a power-packed night of music in Newport. “We play all the old hits of course, and some new material as well,” he said. “I wrote a new song called ‘Sacred Alphabet;’ it’s up on all the streaming sites. And we throw in some songs from records that never sold that many copies, but that hardcore fans love.”
The band’s northeast tour takes them from Washington, DC to upstate New York over the next couple of weeks. I asked Roberts how touring is different these days.
“One big difference is that I was doing it with a major record label back in the 90s,” he explained. “When I was touring then, I was constantly doing press, at a pace that was absolutely absurd. I had no free time whatsoever on the road, I’d get up and start doing interviews at eight in morning and go till noon, and then drive somewhere for a few hours, and get to the other end and do more interviews and perform at radio stations, that kind of stuff.”
“As helpful as that was, and as useful as that was, and as grateful as I was to have all that going on, it nevertheless was extremely exhausting,” he added. “Now when we tour, we’re able to go out on the strength of our name. It’s a much more pleasant way of doing it.”
He’s seeing longtime fans and a few newbies in the crowd these days. “There certainly are a lot of older fans, and a lot of them bring their kids. I’ve noticed there is this transgenerational appreciation for Crash Test Dummies, a lot of parents expose their kids to our music, and they end up going along to the show with their parents, or they end up being the ones dragging their parents to the show.”
Like many artists in the digital age, Roberts has been releasing one song at a time, rather than putting together a traditional album for release. “I kind of enjoy doing one song at a time, because I like the pace,” he said. “People tend not to listen to records anymore. When I was listening to music as a kid, I would get a record, bring it home, shut off the lights, close the doors, make everything quiet and dark, put the record on and listen to side A and then, side B. And you’d listen to all the songs in a row and hear how they hang together, and get a sense of what the album is all about as a collection. Many records leant themselves to that kind of listening.”
Roberts grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, birthplace to many popular musicians including Neil Young and Randy Bachman. I asked him for his thoughts on why so many great musicians come out of the Canadian prairies.
“The winters are long,” he began. “In my case, I couldn’t play hockey, I sucked at it. And if you didn’t play hockey, the winter was going to be very long. The alternative to becoming a hockey player for me was to get garage bands going. I think that a lot of nerdbags like me that were not athletic go through that same process, where they turn to music for their own entertainment. It’s brutal, it goes down to minus 40 in Winnipeg, minus 40 is where Fahrenheit and Celsius meet,” he laughed.
Click here for or more information on the show.
