BLUES TRAVELER BREAKUP BASTARDOS

Blues Traveler have released their 8th studio album, their Vanguard Records debut ‘Bastardos!’ and the band, which was started in 1983 in Princeton, New Jersey, continues to write infectious songs built around John Poppers stunning vocal and harmonica range. The album, which was produced by Ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett at Texas Treefort Studios in Austin Texas, shows the band still has the ability to draw in their audience with songs about love gone wrong.

In fact during the recording of Bastardos! John Popper saw his engagement fall apart and many of the songs on the album like, “Can’t Win True Love,” “What Could Possibly Go Wrong,” “That Which Doesn’t Kill You” and “She Isn’t Mine,” are centered around the recurring theme of the tragedy of love. We caught up with Popper on the date of the albums release to discuss his writing inspirations and his own experiences with love this past summer during the recording of Bastardos!.

“I was in a four year relationship and we were going to get married in May and the day before we started writing songs in Seattle, which is where I live, we broke up and ended the engagement. So I had a lot of crap going through me for two different writing periods. So yeah, love gone wrong, that sounds about right.” Popper then went on to recite a verse of the classic Neil Diamond song ‘Love on the Rocks.’

Being high school friends and having started the band over two decades ago, founding members Popper, Chan Kinchla and Brendan Hill were thrust into the unfortunate position of having to replace original bassist Bobby Sheehan due to his death in 1999 at the early age of 31. When the band regrouped in 2001, they replaced Sheehan with Chan’s brother Tad and brought in keyboardist Ben Wilson. Popper went on to discuss the band’s excitement in composing and arranging songs together.

“Really amazing, because their hunger really kind of drives us in a way. When you get older it’s harder to be, I guess hungry is the word. You know it’s the first time you’re really going through a lot of these experiences. For them, (Ben and Tad) this is their third record with us, so they’re really kind of getting used to it too. Where I feel their newness is, is in their excitement over composition and arranging and I think they’re really taking musical strides that we wouldn’t take. And it’s because it belongs to them and it becomes what we count on about them. So I’d say the trust with them is pretty strong from the jump, staying that way and growing.”

Fresh off a summer tour, where they played to sell-out crowds across the nation, including their band’s 11th year as headliner at their ‘Home away from Home’ Red Rocks, Colorado on July 4th, the band is due to start a new tour in support of “Bastardos!” which starts September 22nd in Dallas, Texas and extends until November 22nd in Boise, Idaho. The week of Blues Travelers album release date of September 13th, the band did an extensive circuit of TV and Radio shows like Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Carson Daly and Howard Stern, all in the same week. On September 26th, Blues Traveler will tape a performance on Austin City Limits, which will air in December.