On the tragic side, the band’s bass player Bobby Sheehan died of a drug overdose in 1999. After his death, the band had to decide whether to continue. Guitarist Chan Kinchia said, ”Brendan, John and I talked about whether to go on. After losing someone so close to us, we realized that breaking up the family that remained would only compound the tragedy. So, without a doubt, we decided to carry on.”
After auditioning a number of bass players, Blues Traveler hired guitarist Kinchia’s brother Tad. He obviously knew everyone in the band, and is an excellent bass player with his own style. Having his own style was an important reason Tad Kinchia was hired. John Popper says, ”We didn’t want Tad to replace Bobby or try to sound like him. The only way this could work would be for Tad to come in on his own. We didn’t want to enshrine Bob. We wanted to celebrate what he was trying to build, because we weren’t done building it. We’re still building it.”
Blues Traveler has also officially expanded to five members. They have had several different keyboard players on tour and in the studio with them, but they were always hired guns. Ben Wilson was hired to be the band’s full-time keyboardist.
The newly energized Blues Traveler has recently released their 7th CD, Bridge. The quintessential “Jam Band” has tightened up the songs and moved forward musically, while still staying true to their sound. The lyrics are more emotionally complex than on previous albums, and according to Popper, helped with the healing process after Sheehan’s death. ”This album is more about relationships because I think that’s a phase of healing that I’m dealing with, says Popper. I use the songwriting as medicine to kind of help me summarize how I’m feeling so I can get past it.”
Each song on Bridge relates to what the band has gone through in the past two years. The highlight of the CD is “Pretty Angry”, a tribute to Bobby Sheehan. ”We were packing up Bobby’s stuff in New Orleans after the funeral,” Popper remembers. ”I looked at his brother Johnny, and we both looked so pissed off that the song kind of wrote itself. You expect that you’re only going to feel sad. People tell you that you’ll feel angry, but you don’t really understand that until you feel it. At that moment, that paradox stuck with me. Several weeks later I just sat down and wrote it pretty much immediately, in about ten minutes.”
Go To Page: 1 2
