Another in a line of great shows is coming to the Jane Pickens Theater this weekend, showcasing a band you’re likely to know for their memorable choruses and jingle-jangle guitar hooks. Toad the Wet Sprocket are playing the hundred-year-old Newport venue, and they’ll bring all the 90s angst and verve you would expect.
Formed in California in 1986, the band saw its heyday in the early 1990s, but broke up to pursue other projects in 1998. They reunited in 2010 and have been recording and performing together ever since. Even if you’re not a uber fan, you’re probably familiar with their well-crafted pop-rock tunes like “All I Want,” “Fall Down,” and “Good Intentions.”
I spoke to bassist Dean Dinning recently and learned the band, named for an old Monty Python sketch, has been experiencing a career resurgence in recent years. “Nobody gets that lucky,” he said. “You kind of hope for that, but it’s not really up to you whether you last and survive, you do what you can to control it and feed it.”
One way a band can keep the spirit alive is to stay creative and release new music regularly. “We put out a couple of albums of new material – first in 2013, and another during the pandemic,” Dinning explained. “I think that reinvigorated the fanbase, in a really nice way. Combine that with a tour we did with Barenaked Ladies last year, where we got in front of about 130,000 people, many of whom were not our regular fans, and that seemed to make a difference as well. We were just at a festival in Omaha with Barenaked Ladies, the Samples, and Collective Soul, and the first thing I said when I saw the Collective Soul guys, was ‘we’re all still alive, can you believe it?’”
Audiences are changing, although core fans still fill the seats at their shows.
“We’ve been seeing parents bringing their kids for a while, and I think we are seeing younger fans getting more into it and showing up on their own. “You look out and it’s pretty much what you expect to see, and then there’s a gaggle of teenage fans who came on purpose to see you. They’re not just waiting for the next band. And they’re super into it, they know the songs,” added Dinning.
“That’s one good thing that streaming has done; it’s made it really easy if someone wants to do a deep dive on a band, they can listen to all your songs in a weekend and decide whether the band is for them or not. Sometimes, you’ll see some kids who are obviously way into it. We love that.”
Their latest album, Starting Now (2021), was recorded during the pandemic. Dinning explained the process of how the band put the album together.
“That was a pandemic record pure and simple,” he said. “We just got to record the basic band tracks, the beginning sketches, before everything shut down. We decided to finish the thing remotely, sending the files back and forth. It doesn’t really lend itself to experimentation, but when you’ve been in a band for 30 years, and you know what your role is, it is a good way to work. I really enjoyed honing in on my parts and not feeling like I was wasting anybody’s time if I took the whole afternoon to work out the perfect part. Everybody’s doing what they do well, and it sounds like us.”
What’s on the horizon for the re-energized band? “We want to do an acoustic EP or acoustic album; I really liked when Alanis Morrisette put out that Jagged Little Pill acoustic a few years back, and we’ve been doing an acoustic break in the show now, so it really lends itself to putting that down on a recording and getting that out.” The band also re-recorded the All I Want album, which is a “Best Of” compilation. “We’re also toying with the idea of maybe doing a covers album, music we were listening to when we were getting started.”
“The acoustic set kind of hits the reset button,” added Dinning. “Some people say we sound too much like the record when we play live – I take that as a compliment. When we take songs that they’re familiar with, and play them in a completely different way it, kind of gives it a little bit of wow factor.
Only a few tickets remain for the show at Jane Pickens this Friday, September 22. Megan Slankard opens at 8PM. Click here for further information and tickets to the show.
