Now that Blues Traveler has finally decided it has earned the right to headline the summer festival that it owns, singer John Popper says this year’s H.O.R.D.E. tour may be the band’s last.
“We could have put ourselves as the headliner any year, but we wanted to earn it first,” Popper says. “The success of (the 5-million-selling 1994 Blues Traveler disc) `Four’ surprised all of us, and it finally seemed right to headline H.O.R.D.E. this year. But every October we ask ourselves whether we should do it again, and so far we keep coming up with bands we can believe in. But I’m thinking this could very well be the last one we’ll play, because I’m not sure how much more we can do for it, or it can do for us.”
In its fifth year, H.O.R.D.E. — Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere — ranks as one of the more lucrative summer tours, with a haul of more than $8 million for 23 dates last year, and for the first time drew within striking distance of Lollapalooza as the premier outdoor festival.
“Two or three years ago, I couldn’t find eight bands to fill the lineup,” Popper says. “This year, I had to whittle it down from 146 bands who wanted to be in it to the 50 we’re going to have play” during portions of the 42-date tour, which arrives Saturday at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park. (Also on the bill with Blues Traveler are Lenny Kravitz, Natalie Merchant and Rusted Root.)
Originally H.O.R.D.E. began as a way for a fledgling group of like-minded bands — Blues Traveler, Phish, the Spin Doctors — to pool their resources and play big outdoor venues instead of cramped clubs during the summer. Though none of the bands were welcomed by commercial rock radio, they developed word of mouth followings through constant touring and improv-based performances that changed nightly.
“Whether what we do is fashionable or not, it’s a legitimate way of playing, it has validity and longevity,” Popper says. “Look at bands like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers — they represented something real because they could kick live.”
While Popper insists that bands like Metallica and Prince would be welcome at H.O.R.D.E., it remains dominated by bands that favor long, solo-flavored jams. And there’s little doubt that the four members of Blues Traveler can jam. Popper — who cuts a swashbuckling figure with his belt of harmonicas strapped around his neck — is a virtuoso harp player, and he and guitarist Chan Kinchla can play the loop-de-loop all night long.
Which is why the group’s new double CD, “Live From the Fall” (A&M), often sounds like a three-hour solo-fest. Inspired in passages, it drags during the half-dozen tracks that noodle past 10 minutes. Here’s a band that’s almost too good for its own good, its approach trampling simplicity and concision in favor of ever denser improvisations, ever longer jams.
“We can play 15/8 (time signatures) like nobody’s business, and we can do 7/4 and not even notice,” Popper says with a laugh. “But anything traditional and easy is hard for us to do.”
That could be the problem.
You rang, Mr. Hetfield?
Metallica singer-guitarist James Hetfield checked in with some observations from the front lines a few days after headlining the Chicago-area Lollapalooza date in Pecatonica, Ill. Metallica not only represents the most mainstream act that has ever played Lollapalooza, but also the one with the most overt ties to the heavy-metal community. Hetfield confirmed the impression that the sixth annual festival has snipped many of its ties to the alternative-rock world.
“There was absolutely no way I saw us playing Lollapalooza in past years,” Hetfield says. “But now I don’t think it matters who plays it. The alternative elite part of it has been forgotten about. Rockers and mods, alternative and metal? Some people want to keep that gang mentality going, but I think most people who come out think there’s only two kinds of music: Good and bad.”
Hetfield says he suggested Tom Jones and Waylon Jennings for the main stage, and got Jennings for a handful of dates.
“I’m usually the guy in the band who says no to everything, but when management talked to us about doing Lollapalooza, I thought, `Why not?’ ” the singer says. “After being in the studio for as long as we had, I was up for anything. Plus I liked the idea that maybe we weren’t supposed to be there.”
Hetfield confirmed a previous Tribune report that the band likely won’t play a proper Chicago date until December or more likely early 1997. He also anticipates that Metallica will be back in the studio next year to finish a dozen songs that were readied for the band’s recent release, “Load,” but were left off when the group decided against making it a double CD.
Cash bounty
Rosanne Cash’s “10 Song Demo” (Capitol) has already sunk without a trace off the charts, the way of the ’90s for an artist who was among the most commercially successful country singers of the previous decade. But Cash cut the twang and replaced it with stark introspection on her 1990 masterpiece, “Interiors,” and hasn’t looked back since. Her music rests in the ill-defined space between country, folk and pop, and her songs deal with emotional ambiguity that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to easy-sell choruses. Cash may not be getting any easier to figure out, but she’s making the finest music of her life.
“I turned 40 last year,” she says, “and the year before that I made a major reassessment. There are some things that I had been living out that I realized I wasn’t interested in living out anymore, and that if I took a certain path it would lead to a future that I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be on a tour bus when I’m 50 years old with nine guys in their underwear. So what am I gonna do? What do I believe about myself? It was scary. I actually went to Paris, sat in a room, looked at a lot of art and thought about it for a while.”
She emerged from that self-examination to make her new album and complete a book of poignant short stories, “Bodies of Water” (Hyperion). Her work has become smaller, more personal, and she won’t be going on any big tours anytime soon. Which makes her performance Friday at FitzGerald’s all the more essential to see.
