Photos by Keith Perks
Everclear, touring to mark the 30th anniversary of “World of Noise” and the long-awaited digital release of the debut album, recently performed at Penn’s Peak in Jim Thorpe, Pa., with support slots by fellow ’90s alt-rock standouts Fastball and The Nixons.
Speaking to Highway 81 Revisited to preview the tour, which included stops at the Palladium Times Square in New York and the Keswick Theatre near Philadelphia, Everclear frontman Art Alexakis was asked about the recent resurgence in ’90s music and culture.
“I think it’s a couple of things. One, it’s just old school, just kids kind of looking back. Like my daughter and her friends are wearing flannel. Everyone knows Nirvana. Even her friends know Everclear. OK, that’s what teenagers do. When the ’80s thing happened, all the hipsters were wearing mustaches and mullets, which sucked the first time around, but I get it. But I think there’s a difference here because at our shows, 20 t0 30 percent are young people who know the words to all the songs. There’s no rock ‘n’ roll out there. The ’90s were the last time when there was new rock, not nu metal. So I think ’90s bands are just getting a lot of attention for what was happening, and I get it, because all of us in the ’90s who were musicians, we were brought up in the ’70s and we came up with Zeppelin and Sabbath and Aerosmith and Boston and Cheap Trick. And then we lived through hip-hop and punk rock and new wave and Jane’s Addiction and Pixies and all the underground stuff that was going on.”
Up next for Everclear is a show on Friday, Sept. 16 at Four Winds Field in South Bend, Ind., before dates in Iowa, Massachusetts, Arizona and Louisiana, October dates with Sponge in Vancouver, BC, and the US Pacific Northwest, a one-off at Rock & Brews in Highland, Calif., and a November tour of the UK with Soul Asylum.
Fastball, known for the 1998 hits “The Way” and “Out of My Head,” released its latest album, “The Deep End,” in June. The Nixons, formed all the way back in 1989, had a hit with “Sister” in 1995. On June 24, the band released a new EP, “Kaleidoscope.”
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