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The Toadies
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In the space of a week, Mark Reznicek called twice to conduct interviews that hadn't actually been scheduled. The first time, the Toadies' jackhammer drum maestro simply left a message, saying he'd try again later. On the second occasion, he reached me just as I finished another interview, but I was unprepared for an impromptu chat with him and so we scheduled ourselves an actual time for a conversation to take place.
That small series of misunderstandings and missed connections is indicative of the larger trouble that's plagued the Toadies since their last album in 1994, the million-selling hit Rubberneck. The whole ordeal that took place around the Toadies on their way to the just-released sophomore album, Stars Above/Hell Below, is as tortured, circuitous and dense as a Tom Clancy novel.
The obvious question to ask after a band has to wait nearly seven years to release its second album is, "How in the name of all that is houses of the holy did you manage to keep the band together while waiting to release your next album?" The answer is as surprising as the time it took to structure the question.
"We were actually pretty busy most of the time," says Reznicek from the bus as the Toadies' current road excursion begins. "We've been playing around Texas, doing little tours, writing songs. It's weird how all of a sudden it's seven years later."
Indeed it is. Of course, there's the matter of the album that was recorded and scrapped and surviving the biggest corporate merger in the music business, but that would be skipping ahead, wouldn't it? A little history is in order.
In 1989, guitarist Todd Lewis and bassist Lisa Umbarger, both familiar figures in the Dallas/Fort Worth scene, joined forces to create the Toadies. Within a year, the band survived a rash of temporary drummers and settled on Reznicek for the timekeeper's chair and added second guitarist Darrel Herbert shortly after. A handful of self-released 7-inch singles, EPs and cassettes brought the Toadies to the attention of New York indie Grass Records, which made the band its initial signing in 1992.
The Toadies' EP Pleather and its incredible road ethic led to interest from major indie Interscope Records, which brought the band up to the next level, resulting in the well-regarded album Rubberneck, an incredible rush of Hard Rock with a kinetically contemporary edge. For well over two years, the Toadies hit the road opening for any act that made sense, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Butthole Surfers.
But the roadwork took its toll on Herbert, who called it a day, to be replaced by former Funland guitarist Clark Vogeler. All of the turmoil and the band's hard work paid off handsomely with the announcement that Rubberneck had finally achieved platinum status.
That's when the wheels on the Toadies' magic bus began to wobble. Seagram's acquisition of Universal and subsequent label mergers meant that artists were being dropped categorically across the label group, including Geffen, A&M, Polygram and Interscope. The Toadies were amazed to discover that they'd survived the purge and were still under contract with Interscope -- "We thought maybe the guy that was supposed to send the pink slip out to us got fired himself," laughs Reznicek -- and so they began working on the follow-up to Rubberneck in 1998.
The band came away from the writing and recording process with an album that gave them an uneasy feeling. It wasn't a bad album, according to Reznicek, just not particularly right.
"It's hard to say as far as any one thing, but it just seemed kind of lifeless," he says. "It was recorded using ProTools, which was brand new at the time, and nobody knew what its proper applications were, so it came off kind of robotic-sounding, and it wasn't live. We recorded 14 or 15 songs, and after listening to it, we never got to the mixing stage. Some of it sounds OK, and we may end up getting someone to remix them to use for B-sides. And we re-recorded several of the tracks for this album, so it wasn't a total wash. I guess it was the world's most expensive demo session."
The resulting rework mutated into Hell Below/Stars Above, a visceral and emotional album, both sonically and lyrically. Challenged by the disappointment of their initial work, Lewis and the band took everything up a notch, from the actual songwriting to the performing and arranging. Even though the goal was to overcome the pitfalls of the previous sessions, the process became much more organic as the band began to explore its '70s roots in a completely contemporary application.
"At the same time that we wanted to sound like us, we wanted to branch out in different ways," Reznicek says. "I don't remember us coming to a conscious decision to be different. I guess it's just a process of growing up over the seven years. Some of the more outlandish ideas were Todd's, like having the Gospel singer on the title track. We got done with that song, and we thought, 'That needs something else.' We tried some different things and we wound up getting ahold of this Gospel singer. That was it."
The overall '70s vibe of Hell Below/Stars Above is neither clichéd nor forced, as the Toadies use the references as a foundation rather than mere ornamentation. That authenticity gives the album its punch and the band its personality.
"Knowing what some of our influences are, I can definitely see them manifested in the songs, whereas the casual listener wouldn't," says Reznicek. "We're probably a little older than most of your average Rock bands, so we actually did grow up in the '70s, and it's still what sounds good and right to us, as opposed to all this Rap Metal bullshit that's out these days. We didn't set out to sound like a '70s record, but it's where we all come from. It's what good Rock & Roll was to us, and we emulated that sound to some degree.
"I hate to be negative, but I don't hear all that much happening out there these days. We just decided to do something about it."
Once the Toadies had completed the album, the wheels of business began to grind slowly. There was still a great deal of fallout from the label merger, and things proceeded with great caution. In the meantime, the band used the extended hiatus to revisit the Texas environs that had originally supported it and began the process of roadtesting the new material, which is paying dividends now that the band is out in support of the album.
After an almost locustlike incubation period, the Toadies are giddy at the prospect of being back out on the road, presenting an album that they firmly believe is their best work. Still in all, things were a little tentative when it came time to hit the coast-to-coast road.
In Texas, it was as though the band never went away, but on the all-important national stage the Toadies are having to prove themselves all over again. By all accounts so far, they're doing just that.
"It's like we've got a new lease on life," Reznicek says with a road-weary laugh. "We've been out on this tour for a little more than a week, and the shows are going really great. It's fun. People actually seem to remember who we are."
THE TOADIES play Bogart's Wednesday with guests Elliot and Diffusor.
