Alan Sculley

BUSH returns to Utah this month touring behind a new 21-track best-of album, Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023. The tour will stop in West Valley City on July 31, 2024, at the Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre. The tour is going well but at first, Gavin Rossdale, BUSH’s founding member, primary songwriter, singer and guitarist, wasn’t overly enthused about this project.

He didn’t want to give the impression that BUSH was putting a cap on a career that had seen the band sell some 24 million albums and amass 26 hit singles or that the band would just be coasting into the future.

“Our manager suggested that it was time to celebrate the milestone of 30 years, celebrate 26 hit records and just celebrate with everyone,” Rossdale explained in a mid-July phone interview. “And I was not, it seemed weird to me because I’m always obsessed about the next record (and moving forward).”

Much of Rossdale’s focus over the past several months has been on the next Bush studio album, which is on target for release early next year.

But for now, the band is on tour, joining fans in marking the 30th-anniversary milestone of a career that has seen plenty of success, as well as a few of the ups and downs that can be expected in a career as long as BUSH’s has had.

Formed in London in 1992, the group hit big with its 1994 debut CD, Sixteen Stone, which sold about six million copies. Showcasing a grungy but melodic, guitar-forward sound, Sixteen Stone spawned the No. 1 alternative rock singles “Comedown” and “Glycerine” and the top-five singles “Everything Zen” and “Little Things.”

The band followed that blockbuster bow in 1996 with Razorblade Suitcase, which reached number one on the Billboard magazine album chart while going triple platinum. That sophomore effort gave BUSH another chart-topping hit in “Swallowed,” as well as two more top-five singles in “Machinehead” and “Greedy Fly.”

The success continued with 1999’s The Science of Things, another million-selling release that included the hits “The Chemicals Between Us” and “Letting the Cables Sleep.” But the group’s fourth album, Golden State, was a commercial disappointment, and the group fell apart after lead guitarist Nigel Puslford and bassist Dave Parsons decided to leave the band.

Rossdale pushed forward. He formed the group Institute in 2004, releasing an album, Distort Yourself, in 2005, before going solo and releasing the album WANDERlust, in 2008. But neither album connected on anything close to the level BUSH had achieved, and Rossdale has admitted that throughout this time, he wanted to reform BUSH.

In 2010, he decided to do just that. Drummer Robin Goodridge re-upped, but Pulsford, who had tired of the extensive touring schedule of BUSH and wanted to spend more time with his family, declined, as did Parsons. Eventually, Rossdale moved on with the reunion, bringing in guitarist Chris Traynor (who was part of Institute and played on WANDERlust) and bassist Corey Britz (who also played on Rossdale’s solo album).

BUSH re-emerged in 2011 with the album The Sea of Memories, which featured the band’s most recent No. 1 single, “The Sound of Winter.” The band has released four more albums since then, evolving their music in a still-melodic, but heavier, more metal-infused direction, especially on the previous two albums, 2020’s The Kingdom and 2022’s The Art of Survival. And while the four most recent albums haven’t been blockbuster hits, they have produced another eight top 20 mainstream rock singles, and BUSH’s touring business has remained strong. This summer represents a new high point, as BUSH headlines large outdoor amphitheaters. 

 “There was a time where I hadn’t really stopped working, but I maybe wasn’t working effectively and we weren’t where we wanted to be. And then we started plotting a steady course on The Kingdom record, then The Art of Survival and now the greatest hits and the next record that will come out,” Rossdale said. “So it’s just been…stay consistent, stay focused, and let’s see where we get to. Now we’re finally, well not, but we’re back to headlining arena tours, which is quite, you know, it’s a big accolade when it’s not as easy (for rock bands) to be heard these days.”

Rossdale said the bulk of the next album is recorded, but he’ll probably do a little more writing to see if he comes up with any additional songs that deserve a place on the album.

“We’ve recorded 10 or 11 songs and we’re really good position,” he said.

For the next album, Rossdale, Traynor, Britz and Nik Hughes (who replaced departing Goodridge in 2019) re-teamed with Erik Ron, who produced The Art of Survival and a pair of songs on The Kingdom.

“He’s fantastic and he put things in perspective,” Rossdale said, noting that Ron excels at helping the four musicians find consensus and keep moving forward in the studio. “I think we work well, and everyone has such a huge opinion, it’s like just getting all of us to agree and being in agreement (is tricky). And that comes from just always prioritizing song and letting the song sing, so to speak. It’s a beautiful situation because everyone does different things, you know, all the time. Everyone plays guitar all over it and plays bass all over it. I put down keyboards on it. We don’t care who does what.

“It’s just so funny. If you leave the room, there’s every chance someone’s going to play your part better,” he added. “You come back and it’s like ‘I didn’t play it that well.’”

The new album, currently titled “I Beat Loneliness,” will continue down a similar stylistic path as The Art of Survival, according to Rossdale.

“Some of it is metal, but I don’t sing metal,” he said. “So it makes for a really interesting hybrid, where I’m singing, you know, you could easily put a metal singer who’s screaming (on a song). It would make perfect sense. But I’m not interested in that. I’ve always loved melody. I’ve always loved heavy. So I’ve just been finding a way to just link them even more.”

Rossdale still finds that the process of writing songs and finding something fresh to be exciting and honing his craft is pretty much a daily adventure for him. He figures he’ll keep writing songs and making albums with BUSH as long as he’s progressing creatively.  

 “I’m always trying to push myself to find something that makes sense,” he said. “It’s almost as if the more records you make, the fewer records you should make. Like I’ve always said, there are too many songs in the world and never enough great ones. So if I can challenge myself to write at a standard as I perceive as equal or improved upon what went before, then I continue.”

For now, though, it’s time to play concerts and celebrate the songs that have made BUSH one of the most popular rock bands of the past three decades. And fans who see BUSH this summer can expect a set list that leans toward the hit songs that make up “Loaded: Greatest Hits 1994-2023.”

“It’s going to be a mixture of things,” Rossdale said. “So it’s a lot of variation, a lot of vibe and a couple of surprises, all of that stuff.”

• What: BUSH in concert
• When: July 31, 2024 
• Where: Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre, West Valley City
• Tickets and info: livenation.com

Could it be that Andy Frasco is maturing? He’s returned to touring and Utah fans at this year’s Utah Arts Festival can expect Andy Frasco and the U.N. to still bring the party on stage (or somewhere in front of the stage when Frasco is crowd surfing). Frasco will headline the Saturday, June 29, 2024 music lineup along with funk band Cool Cool on the Festival’s scenic Amphitheater Stage. 

But the singer/keyboardist is toning down the partying and other shenanigans that typically happened on and off stage on past tours. 

“I’m doing it for my liver,” Frasco said when he phoned in for a recent interview. “I’m all about the party, but I want people to know that I’m a songwriter, too. So I’m just really dialing in my songwriting, really dialing in my musicianship, so I know I can’t blame my partying for my sh***y songs…I love partying and I love giving the people their entertainment, but I also want to give them something to think about.”

The fact is, by the time the pandemic hit in spring 2020, Frasco was not in a great place. He’d been drinking too much and doing cocaine and finding his life-of-the-party behavior had left him wondering who his friends were and battling some genuine bouts of depression. 

No one wanted the pandemic, but being forced off of the road gave Frasco the much-needed opportunity to take a hard look at himself, figure out how to get his life in a better place and decide if he still truly loved writing music and going on tour.

“I was just very selfish,” Frasco said, citing one of the contributing factors to his emotional issues. “I was like doing things and not thinking about others. All of a sudden people wouldn’t start calling me back. I realized maybe it was me. I always blamed everyone else that I was on an island. But maybe I’m putting myself on an island. So I had to figure out the (situation) and realize what was making me sad.

“Before the pandemic, I didn’t want to be there. And I was faking a smile because I was just too depleted,” he said. “I had to look at myself in the mirror, like what are you doing this for if you’re not going to wake up? You preach happiness and you’re not even happy, so why do you keep (doing) it?”

One significant change was to kick his cocaine habit. He also cut back on drinking, although he admits he still enjoys his beverages. But the supply of Jameson liquor is lasting longer these days, as he and his band have moderated their intake onstage these days.

“There’s still drinking. I’m not going to lie to you there,” Frasco said. “But it’s definitely more toned down. We’re drinking half a bottle of Jameson a night, not the full bottle.”

The changes in behavior won’t surprise those who’ve been paying attention. Especially on the 2020 albums “Keep On Keeping On” and “Wash, Rinse, Repeat.,” the album that arrived in April 2022, it was clear Frasco wasn’t just offering escapism in his music.

That was a main theme for Frasco after he founded Andy Frasco & the U.N. in 2007, began touring and released the first of what is now nine studio albums in 2010.

One look at song titles like “Mature As F***,” “Blame It on the P***y” (from 2016’s Happy Bastards) or “Smokin’ Dope ’n’ Rock ’n’ Roll” and “Commitment Deficit Disorder” (from 2014’s Half a Man) and it was obvious that Frasco and company were bringing the party with funny, sometimes bawdy lyrics, a disregard for rules, decorum (and sobriety), and a rowdy sound that mixed rock, funk, blues, soul and pop.

The approach generated a good bit of popularity, as Frasco and the U.N. began what became a consistent routine of playing roughly 250 shows a year—a pace that continues to this day. Along the way, the band especially caught on in the jam band scene and festival circuit.

But especially with Keep On Keeping On, Frasco started to shift the narrative of his songs to more thoughtful subject matter, a direction that continued on Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Frasco still kept the tone of the lyrics light, while the music on these two most recent albums stayed buoyant and catchy as ever. But Frasco’s lyrics now wrestled with topics like getting older, maintaining his mental health, finding happiness, being considerate and appreciating life as it happens.  

Keep On Keeping On arrived shortly after the pandemic hit, and with touring halted, Frasco didn’t worry about taking the next musical step for quite a while.

Instead, he took to social media. He hosted a video I Wanna Dance With Somebody Dance Party, and started an irreverent variety show podcast series he called Andy Frasco’s World Saving S***Show. But much of his podcasting work was devoted to a series he calls Andy Frasco’s World Saving Podcast. It features interviews—some of which get downright deep— with musicians and other celebrities, commentary and comedic bits. The series has gained considerable traction and Frasco, who is frequently joined by co-host Nick Gerlach, has continued doing these podcasts even as he returns to a full schedule of touring, songwriting and recording.

With all of this activity, it wasn’t until about six weeks before he was due to return touring in 2021 that Frasco realized he wanted to have new music for the upcoming shows and charged into making Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

He traveled to several cities—Nashville, Charleston, S.C., Los Angeles and Denver to write and record with other songwriters, a process that helped him sharpen his songwriting chops as the album took shape.

“It was basically like going to songwriting school,” Frasco said. “Like I wrote with 20 different songwriters and I wrote with like 15 different songwriters in Nashville, and I wrote with a couple of guys in Charleston and a couple of guys in L.A., and instead of like the mind state of I know everything, I went in there with my mind state of I don’t know anything. It kind of helped me grow into the next phase of my career.”

Feeling he was in a creative space, Frasco spent a chunk of 2022 making his current album, L‘Optimist. The new album reflects a new development in Frasco’s life.

“I think it’s a love album. I finally committed to someone and I’ve been writing about her,” Frasco said. 

The songs, though, aren’t all about romantic bliss.

“It’s scary as hell. I’ve never had a relationship,” Frasco revealed. “I don’t even know what the f*** I’m doing. That’s what I’m writing about. Like is this OK?”

Some of the songs from L‘Optimist are popping up in set lists on Frasco’s current tour with his band, along with material from his back catalog. 

 “I have two different philosophies when I write songs,” Frasco said. “Sometimes I write songs for the record and sometimes I write songs for the (live) set. And these new songs, I was focusing on trying to write it for both. It’s been really nice. It’s given me confidence that I can write songs for both the (album) and the live show.”

• Who: Andy Frasco & the U.N. with Cool Cool
• When: Saturday, June 29, 2024
• Where: The Utah Arts Festival at Library Square, SLC
• Tickets and information: uaf.org

Twenty-seven years ago, Third Eye Blind blasted onto the music scene with a self-titled album that went six-times platinum and included the enduring alternative rock hits “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Graduate,” “How’s It Going To Be” and “Jumper.”  A double-platinum second album, “Blue,” followed two years later.

Then the radio hits stopped coming, with 2000’s “Never Let You Go” marking the last top 10 single for the band. So it might seem surprising for Third Eye Blind to still be headlining amphitheaters this summer. 

But Third Eye Blind’s popularity endures. And Stephen Jenkins, Third Eye Blind’s founding member, songwriter and singer, noted that turnout for his band’s concerts is actually bigger than ever. So how does it feel to live in this kind of welcome reality 27 years after the blockbuster self-titled debut album was released? 

“Implausible would be the word probably,” Jenkins said in an early May phone interview. “Really, it just feels like I’m just on this ride, and more than anything else it just reminds me about the basics. It reminds me of the things that I value, which is being musical, being authentic, being in a genuine exchange with the audience. All of those things are the things that remain the most important to me.”

The barrage of top-10 radio hits that launched the band’s career may have dried up after “Never Let You Go” (from “Blue”), but in other ways Third Eye Blind has actually been a resurgent band over the past decade.

That span has seen Jenkins and drummer Brad Hargreaves — the remaining members of the early Third Eye Blind lineup — enjoying a period of stability, with guitarist Kryz Reid, bassist Alex LeCavalier each now in their second decade with the band and keyboardist/guitarist Colin Crev (a member since 2019) rounding out the current lineup.

With this unit, the personalities and the priorities of the band members have aligned in a way that didn’t always happen with the original band.

“This band, just we love each other,” Jenkins said. “We like to be together and we’re like we’re like a bunch of puppies. I think what makes this band jam is our sense of empathy, really, more than anything else with each other. We like to make space for each other on stage and that’s what makes it jam.”

The current band members not only have the right chemistry, with Jenkins leading the way as songwriter, they’ve been quite prolific. After releasing only two albums over the 15 years that followed the release of “Blue” in 1999, Third Eye Blind has been releasing music at a steady clip, with three full-length studio albums — 2015’s “Dopamine,” 2019’s “Screamer” and 2021’s “Our Band Aparte” — and two EPs (2016’s “We Are Drugs” and 2018’s “Thanks For Everything”), plus “Unplugged,” a 2022 album that featured acoustic versions of song from across the group’s catalog, joining the band’s catalog.

Jenkins feels that along the way, his attitude toward songwriting and recording loosened up, and that accounts for the increased musical output of Third Eye Blind.

“I think it’s really just a lack of judgment,” he said. “I think I was always being hard on myself in the past and I probably still am, but something has improved there. Something has gotten better in some ways and I’m less critical of myself and more able to just get into it, to make music. So I think that’s the reason.”

Exactly what songs Third Eye Blind will play on tour this summer is an open question, as Jenkins said the band has plenty of options.

“We have a lot of music and there’s a lot of different stuff that fans want to hear. if you go on Reddit and ask what do you want to hear this summer, if you get 50 different responses, you’ll get 50 different songs,” he said. “So we try to do things like almost like being DJs and we kind of try to mix ourselves as a live band and weave in different things back and forth is kind of the idea. So that’s how I’m looking at making this set. There’s also going to be an acoustic section where we get rid of all the amps and stuff and we play everything with acoustic guitars and (lighter) drums and reimage the songs like that.”

There may also be new tunes available to play, as Jenkins has been busy finishing lyrics and vocals for what could be an EP or album, depending on how things play out and whether Jenkins writes more songs for the project.

“For me it (inspiration) comes when it comes and I don’t know how to do it differently than that,” Jenkins said. “I wish I did. But I do have a new album (happening). I’m about done. And so there’s pressure here at the end. It’s going to definitely help me finish it.”

Third Eye Blind is performing at the Utah First Credit Union Ampitheatre on June 25th, get your tickets here.

Taking Back Sunday’s new album, “152,” may be a turning point for the long-running alternative rock band. In reshaping the energetic emo/indie rock sound that was established on the band’s popular 2002 debut album, “Tell All Your Friends,” the new album offers the kind of musical leap rarely seen from bands with as much history as Taking Back Sunday.

The musical growth didn’t happen by accident. After going through a series of personnel changes between 2003 and 2010, original members John Nolan (guitar) and Shaun Cooper (bass) returned to Taking Back Sunday. The first album from the reunited early lineup, a 2011 self-titled effort, stuck close to the emo-ish guitar rock of “Tell All Your Friends.” But then the band members began hinting at some new musical directions on 2014’s “Happiness Is” and 2019’s “Tidal Wave” — becoming less concerned with conforming to an expected sound and leaning more into just writing songs they found exciting.

And when Taking Back Sunday got sidelined from touring by the COVID pandemic, Cooper, Nolan, singer Adam Lazzara and drummer Mark O’Connell had time to take stock of what they want the band to be musically and fully commit to pushing forward creatively.

“We have had a lot of time to think through the pandemic. We were kind of home sitting on the couch and hoping that the world would somehow get back to normal,” Cooper said.  “You do a lot of soul searching and stuff and think about what you want the band to be and the general consensus (in the band) is we hadn’t hit our peak yet. And a lot of people say ‘Oh, that’s crazy, like you guys peaked in 2005.’ Well, if we believed that we wouldn’t still be here doing the thing. Us as artists, as songwriters, musicians, we all feel like we’ve evolved considerably and we want to examine that and put it into practice when we’re working on these songs.”

Of course, wanting to reinvent a band’s sound and actually finding ways to do so are two different things.

For Taking Back Sunday, a key moment in meeting the goal arrived when EDM star Steve Aoki contacted the band about collaborating on a song that became “Just Us Two.” At that point, the band had been writing songs for “152,” but hadn’t landed on a direction for the album or zeroed in on a producer for the project.

“Our good friend and legendary DJ Steve Aoki came to us, and he had been wanting to work with us on a song back in 2019,” Cooper said. “And we couldn’t get it done until, I guess it was 2021, maybe the beginning of 2022. We got in the room with him and he had this amazing engineer, Tushar Apte. We said we don’t know who this guy is, but he is an amazing artist and the speed at which he works and his creative ideas, his direction, how he can put everything together and how he understands what we provide as a band and as individuals that makes Taking Back Sunday, can we get this guy to produce our record?”

The band wondered if Apte, who had mainly worked in the pop arena, would want to work with a rock act like Taking Back Sunday. But it turned out he’d been wanting for some time to produce a rock album. So Apte signed on to produce “152.”

It quickly became clear that the band’s instincts about the partnership with Apte were spot on.

“It was just such an exciting time to see the synergy we had together. It’s all greater than the sum of its parts when we were in the room working with him and I feel like he really understood what we did,” Cooper said. “He really understood that we wanted to reimagine our sound, but we didn’t want to stray too far from what we are. And he really acknowledged that and did a great job of funneling our rock music through his pop sensibility, and there you have ‘152.’

The band’s intentions are apparent with the opening track on “152,” “Amphetamine Smiles.” Instead of blasting off behind big electric guitars — a typical opening salvo from earlier Taking Back Sunday albums — the song eases in behind acoustic guitars and sweet synthesizer lines before blossoming into a rich mid-tempo track. Taking Back Sunday’s melodic abilities also shine on “The One” (which has a bit of an epic U2 touch), “I’m The Only One Who Knows You” (which started out as a punky rocker before being transformed into a spacious ballad) and the potent mid-tempo track “New Music Friday.” Meanwhile, “Keep Going,” “S’old,” and “Lightbringer” bring the familiar rock energy, while still delivering melodic punch.

While “152” is still a rock album, the pop influences that are more pronounced than ever on the album weren’t foreign to Taking Back Sunday, either.

“We’re all pop music fans. We all really like Post Malone. We think he’s awesome. We all listen to Taylor Swift,” Cooper said. “I saw Harry Styles live with my family and he put on an amazing show. I love that record ‘Harry’s House.’ It’s incredible. I listen to the band Haim. I think they’re tremendous in how they kind of fuse pop and rock music and there’s just so many hooks. And I mean, we’re going back to revisiting a lot of 80’s stuff like Don Henley’s solo stuff is just tremendous, Phil Collins. Whitney Houston. So we’re like how can we incorporate this into our Long Island hardcore roots? It’s always kind of been the thing, we’ve been fans of that music. So I think we felt free to kind of explore that.”

In addition to bringing a pop sensibility to the proceedings and tightening up song arrangements, Apte was also instrumental in helping Taking Back Sunday infuse their guitar-centered sound with an array of different instrumental/sonic elements and textures that add considerable color throughout “152.”

“Sonically it’s a different kind of thing for us. There are so many different elements that you’ve never heard on the Taking Back Sunday record,” Cooper said. “It’s the four guys that have brought in all the Taking Back Sunday records. That kind of element is still there, that kind of songwriting, four guys in a room, with just kind of an elevated sound. But hopefully we’ve improved as musicians and songwriters, our musical choices that we make when we’re playing our guitars, bass, drums and vocals, everything has matured with us.”

Taking Back Sunday will spend much of the rest of the year on tour, and songs from “152” will be featured in the shows.

“We’re so proud of the record that we’re going to play a decent amount of it,” Cooper said. “Maybe we’re going to switch it up some nights and then put in some different songs from it and stuff, but I would say (we’ll play) maybe four or five (new) songs probably every night. The songs are relatively short, too. So if you don’t know them just yet, they’ll be over relatively quickly and we’re going to fire back with something that you may be a little bit more familiar with.”

Taking Back Sunday is performing at the Union Event Center on June 11th, find tickets here.