When the Toadies released Rubberneck in 1994, no one had any idea it would be one of the decade’s landmark achievements. Likewise, no one had any idea that the band would face a difficult road in returning to record their sophomore release, Hell Below/Stars Above, seven years later in 2001. The latter may have been just as memorable, but it never managed the acclaim of its older sibling.
“Possum Kingdom” was the buzziest of MTV Buzz Bin tracks. And there was something going on with “Rubberneck” that was unique: it was grunge, but it didn’t come from Seattle; it was punk, but it didn’t come from New York; it was hard rock, but it didn’t come from California.
It came from Fort Worth.
Twenty years later, the band is hitting the road to celebrate that debut. When they come to Iron City on Wednesday, they will play the record in its entirety, including tracks like “Tyler,” “I Come From the Water” and “Happyface.” It will also include a set of its other material, with tracks from that sophomore effort.
Lead singer Vaden Lewis spoke to Weld about Fort Worth, a loyal fan base and creating “Rubberneck.”
Weld: What separates a Dallas band from a Forth Worth band?
Vaden Lewis: Not much, really. It’s kind of a big club. They kind of go together for me.
Weld: There was a real bustling scene of artists from Dallas/Fort Worth in the ’90s. Has that continued?
VL: Totally. There’s a new crop of artists right now that are kicking all kinds of ass. Back in the day, it was a little more segregated with the two cities being separate, but that was more of a competition, I think, between the clubs than it was the musicians themselves. But this new phase, everyone wants to be successful — the clubs and the bands. It’s all for the greater good [Laughs].
Weld: When you had that division, did you find yourselves more aligned with Fort Worth?
VL: Yeah, it was easier to get gigs in Fort Worth. There were only one or two places they would even let us play in Dallas – that’s just the way it was at the time. But anywhere we ended up playing, the location was pretty much a warehouse with a stage and a lone lightbulb and a cooler full of beer. In either city. That’s kind of the way it went.
Weld: You come here celebrating 20 years of Rubberneck. Did you have any idea when you were creating it that you were making a classic?
VL: Oh no. No. No. I don’t know who would say yes to that [Laughs]. It’s such a fickle industry. To be successful in any business – well, first of all it was a band, it wasn’t a business at the time – but to be successful in any endeavor, you can’t know that going in. No, I didn’t expect it to be a big deal at all.
Weld: There have been several of these anniversary tours that bands have done of late – will you be playing the record start to finish on the tour? What can we expect from the show?
VL: Yeah, we’ll do the record top to bottom, and initially, before the tour started, my thought was, and what we had planned on doing was going out and doing the record top to bottom and then taking a short break and letting everyone leave that wanted to leave, because we just figured that’s – you know, I’m a realist…if I’m going to go out promoting Rubberneck, I expect only people to show up that know that record and then when it’s over, they’ll leave. So that’s what I expected to happen and what I planned for and after the first couple of shows, I realized, no one is leaving. They are all sticking around for more. So, we stopped taking a break and just kept playing straight through. That’s been a good thing.
Weld: You’ve likely been labeled as a one-hit wonder, but your records are fantastic and your live show is enthusiastic – do you feel like you have a loyal following of people that “get that” and are beyond “Possum Kingsom?”
VL: Oh yeah. That’s always going to be an anchor in the set, but our fans have been crazy adamant for the longest time. We went away in 2001, we broke up, and we came back and went out on tour in 2008, our crowds were more enthusiastic than they had been. It was really surprising. We expected to go out and play a few shows and it turned out to be a bigger crowd than the ones we had left. So yeah, we’ve just got the best fan base and everyone has their favorite song. It’s a really cool thing.
Weld: Will you also be playing a good bit of Hell Below/Stars Above?
VL: Yeah, we play a good chunk of it. We do Rubberneck and then we just kind of come out and play however many songs. We play about an equal amount from the rest of our catalog. We try to hit the highlights. I know people are going mostly to hear Rubberneck, so we try to not to do really obscure stuff. We’ll throw in one every once in a while because our fans just really love that stuff. But we try to keep it mostly, a little something from each record that people may have heard.
Weld: It was seven years after Rubberneck before we got Hell Below/Stars Above, and then it was another seven until No Deliverance. You’ve explained there was a break after 2001, but were those timetables deliberate, or did other things just come up in life and the music was put on hold?
VL: Well the gap between Rubberneck and Hell Below was because we had label nightmares. The band toured too much on the advice of our manager at the time. We toured like crazy and just toured too much. We were burned out and we had toured so much that we began to see our crowds get smaller rather than larger; you start to see that curve switch. We decided, “We’re all exhausted and we need to go home for a little while.”
We went home. Took a break. We immediately started writing the next record. Then we just started running into trouble – with the label, with management, with legal problems – it was just one thing after another, and getting approval to go and do a record, and then starting to do the record and then getting the approval pulled in the middle of the project for I don’t even know why – stuff like that. It just took forever. And finally that record came out in ’01. That was a bunch of years of busting our ass to get that record out.
Weld: You’ve had a little bit of turnover, largely on bass. Is the current lineup one you expect to see together for a while?
VL: Yeah. Our bass player left in ’01, at the end of that tour, which pretty much cued the breakup of the band. When she quit, I was just like, “You know, if she’s going to jump ship, who can I lean on?” Because we had been counting on the four of us together for years. To have one of my own jump ship, it took the wind out of my sails.
At any rate, we got the band back together, and Donnie’s been in the band for seven years now, and is a full-on member of the band and contributing to the cause. So yeah, this is the way I see it lasting for a while.
Weld: A deep nugget I found, which may or may not be true as it came from Wikipedia, but I read that Elliott Smith played piano with you guys on Hell Below/Stars Above. How did that collaboration happen?
VL: Oh yeah, that’s actually a true one! There’s a lot of them that are not. [Laughs] But, yeah, our producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf – they produced Rubberneck and Hell Below – in-between those two records they had done a couple of records with Elliott Smith, including the one he got a Grammy for. And they were in the process of finishing up a record with him when we started working with those guys in the same studio. They had him working down the hall, then they’d come in and work with us. So we hung out a lot, and we got the idea for some piano on a piece and said, “Hey, let’s get Elliott to do it.” And it was a great idea.
He came in. He said, “I’m not a great piano player, but I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” He did a great job. So I’d beg to differ with him about his abilities as a piano player. It was cool.
Weld: Who are the top five American rock bands of all time?
VL: Tom Petty at the top. ZZ Top. Chris Cornell – anything he’s involved with.
I’m having a hard time. I may not be able to get beyond three [Laughs].
The Cars. And…I’m not the biggest Ramones fan, but I’d have to say The Ramones because of their pull in the world.
Toadies come to Iron City on Wednesday, August 13. Black Pistol Fire will open. Doors open at 7 p.m., while the show is set to begin at 8 p.m. General admission tickets are $20.
