The first time that I encountered Todd Lewis and Lisa Umbarger from the Fort Worth-based Toadies was somewhat of an interesting experience. In 1990, I was the booking agent at a live music club in Deep Ellum called Trees. We had just opened the venue a month or so beforehand, and one evening these two kids brought me their demo cassette tape to try and land their first Dallas gig.
One of the songs on the tape was an urgent little track called “I Hope You Die,” the chorus of which was, “D-I-E-E-D-I-E/D-I-E-E-D-I-E …” The song was written specifically about Dallas singer Edie Brickell, who, at the time, was a very close friend of mine. I could tell that Lewis and Umbarger were unaware of this. They seemed proud of the fact they were leading the first local backlash against Brickell’s group, the New Bohemians, whose debut album, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars, had just gone platinum.
This left me in sort of a conflicted position. There was no denying that the two songs on the Toadies demo tape were, for lack of a better word, badass. On the other hand, Brickell and the guys in New Bohemians were genuinely sweet people who I saw on a regular basis. How to juggle diplomacy? Should I be the one to tell them about the song? Or should I just wait and let them hear about it through the grapevine? I decided to go ahead and let matters take care of themselves, and I booked the Toadies a dozen or so times during my tenure at the club. They opened sold-out shows for Buck Pets, Funland and Course of Empire. Within a year, the Toadies were as big a local draw as the New Bohemians.
“I Hope You Die” never made it to one of their records, and as far as I can tell, Brickell never heard the song.
Fast-forward to 18 years later, when I met with the band again at the East Dallas recording studio owned by bassist/producer Mike Daane. Umbarger left the fold some time ago, and the rest of the band seemed done as well in the wake of the last Toadies studio album, 2001’s Hell Below/Stars Above and the rise of Lewis’ new band, the Burden Brothers. But as summer 2008 drew to a close, the Toadies were very much back on the scene. They had just returned from a triumphant performance at Lollapalooza in Chicago and were a month away from their first proper tour in more than seven years, the occasion being the Aug. 19 release of something even the band’s most optimistic fans thought they’d never see: a brand new Toadies album. The title of the album (and the lead single) is No Deliverance — perhaps because fellow North Texan Don Henley and his band, the Eagles, had already claimed Hell Freezes Over.
But No Deliverance is no half-assed nostalgia trip thrown together just for an excuse to hit the road again and coast on past glories. Band founder Lewis (who now goes by Vaden Todd Lewis) and longtime members Mark Reznicek (drums) and Clark Vogeler (guitars) are all a little older now, and perhaps wiser, too, if the tinge of grey hair means anything. But both on record and onstage, it’s clear that the Toadies’ trademark swagger hasn’t mellowed at all in the time they spent apart. If anything, the Toadies in 2008 sound as angry, hungry and defiant as they did on that first demo I heard nearly two decades ago.
The title No Deliverance works on more than one level. It’s as much about determination as it is about possession. It’s about lifelong commitment, having a real sense of purpose and not taking “no” for an answer. And it’s a tribute to a diehard fanbase that, judging from the fervid response at sold-out Toadies shows not only in Texas but across the country, never gave up the ghost.
And most of all, it’s about a band that refused to die, even long after its members had seemingly left it for dead.
It's been 14 years since the Toadies’ debut album, and half that since their last one. Which begs the question: Can a recording artist release a new album once every seven years and still maintain a profile in the pop culture mosaic? Styles come and go, people grow up and go about their business. The seven-year itch is a marketing bitch, especially amid the aftermath of the implosion of the standard retail music biz model. These days, there is a scattershot method to the industry madness; even the most enlightened are fumbling in the dark.
Then again, even back in the music-industry boom years of the mid-’90s, the Toadies were always tenacious underdogs who found success in the mainstream almost in spite of themselves and the major-label world they ran in. The band first signed with Interscope Records shortly after releasing the six-song Pleather EP on the indie label Grass Records. In 1994, the Toadies released their debut album, Rubberneck, and hit the road as the opening act for Bush, their new Interscope labelmates. Reznicek remembers their initial meeting as a sort of defining moment that set the tone for the band’s introduction to the music biz.
“Day one, we walked in and they were doing their sound check, I think it was in San Diego, and we start walking in with all of our gear, and their tour manager just pushes us out of the room,” Reznicek recalls. “We all had our arms full of guitar cases and amps, and the guy just pushed us out the back door and said, ‘You’re not coming in here until we’re done with sound check.’ And that was the first meeting we had with them, and it just went kinda downhill from there.”
After a year or so of grinding it out on the road, it started to look like Interscope had given up on the record. While originally agreeing with the label’s plan to market the album, Lewis had already become distrustful of the process and the principals. “I had a way different attitude than most people, which was, anytime I ever met anybody in the industry, the first thing through my mind was, ‘How is this guy gonna fuck me?’ Which probably isn’t a healthy way to start off a relationship, you know … I had my dukes up the whole time.”
The Toadies were exhausted from touring; the label was close to pulling the band’s tour support. It felt like they were already hitting the wall as a group. Then the improbable happened; a program director at a rock station in St. Petersburg, Fla., started playing the song “Possum Kingdom” in heavy rotation.
“We put the record out and went on tour, and the label did their promotional push for it, and when it didn’t happen to their standards, they just kind of dropped the ball,” Lewis says. “And this one guy kind of took it upon himself to get it going.”
Within a month, other program directors all across the country took that cue and started playing the song as well. Then MTV jumped on board, and the “Possum Kingdom” video found a pair of hyper-enthusiastic boosters in the title duo of Beavis and Butt-Head. Maybe it was a Dallas thing, given the characters’ love of Pantera, too. Or maybe they just got off on hearing Lewis’ bloodcurdling scream, “Do you wanna die?”
Whatever the reason, Rubberneck found new legs, and the Toadies were given a second wind. A pair of throwaway B-sides were added to the soundtracks of the films The Cable Guy and Basquiat, and the Toadies returned to the road as the opening act for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Three months later, Rubberneck was certified platinum. The Toadies, a garage band from little ol’ Fort Worth, had arrived after all.
"The only one who could ever reach me/was the son of a preacher man …”
By the summer of 1993, North Texas had become the twisted new Dirty South Bible Belt. While the rest of the world was busy discovering the Toadies’ evocative new material about sin and salvation and manhood and dignity, the Interscope label moved forward and signed three other Dallas-area artists: rockabilly preacher-on-acid Reverend Horton Heat, born-again gospel act Kirk Franklin & God’s Property and the cultish, Denton-based “Fraternity of Noise” band Brutal Juice.
Subversive spiritual possession was nine-tenths of reality, and this particular period of time was defined by a welcome exorcism of oppressive conservative ideals. While the members of the Toadies are all pretty outgoing and easy to hang out with, there is very little comedic subtext in the band’s lyrics. Case in point: It could be said that the Rubberneck hits “Tyler” and “Possum Kingdom” were both sung from the standpoint of an obsessed stalker. The prevalent emotion is usually aggressive and personal. The perspective is almost always first-person, the manic words directed at a specific individual. Older songs like “Quitter” and “Backslider” were implicitly accusatory and almost prosecutorial in tone. Lewis-penned songs like “Little Sin” and the title track from the 2001 album Hell Below/Stars Above offered frenetic dissonance and an odd time signature as the backdrop to an alternative salvation.
Time and again throughout the band’s catalog of song, blind faith and a fixation on morality are openly challenged as a reasonable means to an end. Not that listeners always make the connection. “A lot of people don’t get that,” Lewis says. “I’m surprised that people don’t get that.”
Guilt. It’s what’s for breakfast.
But those who do get it do so right away. The intensity of the subject matter is a dead giveaway. A typical Toadies live performance is a visceral examination of trust, betrayal, confession, revenge and retribution; all the stuff that makes you not wanna get out of bed every morning. Call it the horror of whoredom. But somehow, Lewis makes the specifics of his pain sound appealing; his life isn’t that far removed from the protagonists of all of the Stephen King books that he read as a teenager.
Best of all, this music exists as art over commerce. It ain’t easy to pull off this kind of thing and still be able to make a living doing it.
Lewis is the son of a Southern Baptist preacher. This made for an interesting dynamic in the household. While the family expected him to take a spiritual path forward, he was more into blasting AC/DC’s Back In Black and the Talking Heads album More Songs About Buildings and Food every day on his Sony Walkman.
Lewis and his father have a unique relationship. Each is, in his own way, a charismatic messenger, though the generation gap is inherently evident. Their core individual beliefs stand in direct opposition, so they make it a point to just not pry into one another’s personal lives that much.
“My dad and I had come to grips after the many years of battling this head-to-head that both of us agreed to just not discuss it,” Lewis explains. “We both just acknowledge that we’re both really good at our craft. I mean, my dad is really good at what he does. Compelling. So we have that mutual respect and understanding. But he doesn’t come to my shows or anything.”
Two generations of communicators, two different perspectives.
“Music and art is just what it is,” Lewis continues. “I’m not a politician, I’m not a preacher and I’m not a spokesperson or role model. A lot of that upbringing, too, besides the religious aspect, was the financial end of it. We didn’t have a lot time for music and art. It was not emphasized in our house, outside of church. Once I realized that there was a whole world out there, I just decided, ‘Hey that’s where I’m going.’ It was just alien territory for me for the longest time, and now it’s part of that deliverance. Once you commit to going back into that, it’s kick-ass.”
No Deliverance was released on Kirtland Records, the Dallas- and Los Angeles-based independent label founded five years ago by former Deep Blue Something drummer John Kirtland. Ironically, the Toadies find themselves once again sharing a label with Bush; Kirtland acquired the rights to the British grunge band’s back catalog after the Interscope imprint Trauma went under. But this time around, the Toadies aren’t at the bottom of their label’s totem pole. One of Kirtland’s first releases was Buried in Your Black Heart by the Burden Brothers, the hard-rock band Lewis launched with former Reverend Horton Heat drummer Taz Bentley almost immediately following the Toadies’ post-Hell Below/Stars Above breakup. Both the Burden Brothers and the Toadies are managed by Sonar Management, a division of Kirtland. For the first time in the band’s career, the Toadies are a flagship act.
That, along with the length of time they’ve been off the scene, inevitably burdens a record like No Deliverance with a lot to live up to. Fortunately, it really does deliver. Early fan reaction to the title track and first single, a rocker as brutal as any in the band’s history, was strong, and a pre-release write-up in Spin was pretty glowing, too. But it’s the second single, “Song I Hate,” that should really put the Toadies back on the map.
Fans of the Pixies are going to love “Song I Hate.” By the time a creepy, atonal melodic figure gives way to the line “I’m giving up on you,” the first-time listener is hooked like a hungry catfish. The chorus seems to tell you all you need to know about the state of rock ’n’ roll on the radio: “You’re the song I hate/but I can’t let go ….” Or, one wonders, could it be an anti-love song to the first song to put the Toadies on the map, “Possum Kingdom,” which remains the band’s all-time most requested song?
“No,” Lewis laughs. “Actually, it’s about this song. It was the last song we did in the studio, and we just couldn’t get it right for some reason. I was singing about having to sing this song.”
Hopefully, he’s had time to warm up to it. Because once it’s out of the gate, “Song I Hate” could easily became a song that’s hard to escape on rock radio.
If there was any doubt that an extended layoff might diminish the band’s intensity, the 10 songs on No Deliverance exist as a bold reclamation of familiar territory. Lewis says the title track came out of the realization that there was no escaping his life decision to become a professional musician.
“The song ‘No Deliverance’ was about the experience I went through when the Toadies disbanded in 2001,” he says. “I spent several months of not doing music, and not wanting to be a part of the business. I had been let down by some real key people in my life, and they were all involved in music.”
One of those people might (or might not) be former Toadies bassist Lisa Umbarger, who quit the band as the tour came to an end. Lewis and Umbarger were once co-workers at a Fort Worth-area Sound Warehouse record store; they started the band from scratch and logged thousands of miles on the road together over the years. When Umbarger bailed out, Lewis couldn’t see carrying on without her. That was it.
Soon thereafter, Lewis was at a loss about how to move forward with the rest of his life. It took motivation inspired by others to get his ass in gear. “I spent about six to eight months of doing nothing, just standing around all day in my garage building stuff,” he explains. “After six months of people asking me, ‘What are you doing now?’ or ‘What’s the next project?’ or whatever … I realized that I am a musician. That’s what I love to do. And maybe I could put together a new project. That I could figure out a new way to do it, maybe learn from these experiences over those last few years. That’s when I started the Burden Brothers and got that going.”
The Burden Brothers released a handful of records and toured over a five-year period, but without a radio hit like “Possum Kingdom,” the band never tapped into the largesse of the more established Toadies fan base. Meanwhile, Lewis got married to Dallas musician Beth Claridy and they started a family. On a couple of different occasions, he cautiously reunited the Toadies (with Dallas bassist Mark Hughes replacing Umbarger) for radio-station-sponsored festivals in the Dallas area. The audience response at these shows was unexpectedly overwhelming.
Finally, Lewis did what he had to do. He called up Vogeler and Reznicek and floated the idea of getting the band back together to make a new album. Less than a month later, they hired producer David Castell and were in pre-production for No Deliverance. Before any of them knew what hit them, the Toadies were back.
Vogeler, who joined the Toadies in the interim between Rubberneck and Hell Below/Stars Above, is excited about the new album and by the momentum generated by the band’s recent appearance at Lollapalooza. Thanks in part to a plum Saturday evening slot on the next stage over from where the reunited Rage Against the Machine were scheduled to play right after them, the Toadies ended up playing in front of a crowd of some 50,000 people. And the audience wasn’t just patient Rage fans, either; dozens of fans waved Texas flags and handmade banners welcoming the band back to Chicago.
“Lollapalooza,” Vogeler exclaims via phone from his home in Los Angeles, “was fucking crazy. There were so many people there, we were just holdin’ on for dear life. We all kinda had that feeling. Every now and then I would just look up and all you could see was this huge mob of people. It was really overwhelming. At the end of the day, it was such a blast. That was the biggest crowd I’ve ever played in front of in my life.”
Biggest, maybe; but for rabid devotion, the honor still goes to hometown crowds — as evidenced by the Toadies’ sweaty, sold-out show in June at Fort Worth’s Ridglea Theatre and the turnout at the band’s “Dia de los Toadies” festival, held Aug. 31 at Possum Kingdom Lake. The Toadies headlined a bill supported by guests Lions, Dove Hunter, the Backsliders and Tejas Brothers. Whether or not the event lives up to “first annual” billing by spawning future installments remains to be seen, but stranger things have happened. Reznicek — who also plays in the Dallas alt-country band Eleven Hundred Springs — looks forward to the more immediate possibility of the Toadies finally making it overseas for a string of tour dates. “We’ve still never been over there, “ Reznicek says. “It would be great to finally get over there and play in London or Berlin. People like us over there. We get e-mails from people in Europe all the time, asking us when we’re coming. It would be great to finally get to do that after the start of the New Year. I would love that.”
As for Lewis, the king of pain who once couldn’t wait to spew venom at a fellow Dallas-artist-done-good, and who never met a suit in the record business he didn’t distrust on instinct — well, you wouldn’t necessarily know it to hear him onstage or singing on the new album, but he’s in pretty good spirits, too. After 20 years of experience in the music industry, he’s much more centered emotionally these days. Priorities have changed now that he has a family, and though he’s obviously happy that the Toadies have come full circle to reclaim their profile on the rock landscape, his aspirations are reasonable, and he’s keeping it real.
“I consider myself an artist, and that’s my craft, and that’s my contribution to society,” he says matter-of-factly. “And honestly, as much as we love doing it, I don’t think that anyone is seriously going to have their lives changed by listening to our music.”
This kind of humility is rare for many who make a living standing behind a microphone, especially considering the heavy thematic tone of the songs Lewis has written and performed throughout his career as a Toadie, a Burden Brother and now as a Toadie again. But it really shouldn’t be that shocking to anyone who’s ever made any effort to read between the lines of even his most vitriolic anthems. To quote another band that wouldn’t die, it’s only rock ’n’ roll.
Jeffrey Liles (aka “Cottonmouth, Texas”) is a Dallas-based writer and recording artist.
