Celebrating the re-release of their breakthrough album “Rubberneck,” the Toadies have hit the road, performing their iconic album from start to finish.
amNewYork caught up with lead singer Vaden Todd Lewis.
It’s been 20 years since “Rubberneck” was released. How does it feel to reach that milestone?
It’s just been really good. People still react to the record. When the tour first started my thought was, we’ll go out and play the “Rubberneck” set. Then we’ll leave the stage, come back out after 2 minutes and see if anyone stayed (laughs). So we did that for the first couple of shows, but no one’s been leaving. So now we’ll play the “Rubberneck” set and after that we’ll play some songs that are less than 20 years old. So it’s been really great.
What extras are on the re-release?
We found some early recordings from that same session that just didn’t see the light of day at the time. There’s one song called “Rockfish.” It was just a working title [at the time] because I was going to write words for it, but I couldn’t find the right angle. [And now] it kind of stands on its own as an instrumental. And there was another song called “Run-In With Dad” which I thought at the time was too silly. I don’t know why.
Nostalgia is awesome, but what are the band’s plans in the future?
We have an album in the can. It’s kind of a retrospective of our whole career. But we’re having so much fun on this tour that we just want to keep being loud for a bit longer. So we’re talking about doing another run of this tour. There’s just a lot of options and that’s what’s great about being on an indie label.
If you go: The Toadies are at Irving Plaza on Thursday at 7 p.m., 17 Irving Pl., 212-777-6800, $22.
