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The Barenaked Ladies are bringing their Last Summer On Earth Tour to Blossom Music Center on August 1.   Their friends,  Sugar Ray and Fastball will also be on the bill for a great night of music.

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We interviewed bassist and singer of Fastball Tony Scalzo to talk about the tour, their latest album Sonic Ranch, and how "The Way" broke the band.

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Greg Drugan:  Thanks for taking some time with me today.  How has The Last Summer on Earth Tour been going so far this year?

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Tony Scalzo:  It’s been incredible.  It’s probably the best tour that we’ve ever been on in our thirty-two years as a band.  It’s because of the people involved, mainly Ed Robertson and The Barenaked Ladies are just the greatest guys out there.  They have been super supportive and respectful of their opening acts.  They give us their stage for the time allotted for our sets, that includes Guster and Sugar Ray. Then they invite us out every night to perform their final encore song with them.  To include us with everything has been really amazing.  The level of comfort, too, on this tour has been high. We have catering every day, we have breakfast, lunch and dinner. There’s a giant crew, because they have their own light rig and PA rig. If you need something, there’s always someone there on the crew to help. The venues have been stellar!  You’ve heard of Red Rocks, and the Greek Theater and Wolf Trap where we played last night in Virginia. We’ve been treated really well and we’ve been able to play in front of a lot of people and that has been reflected on our Spotify streams and Apple Music streams.  You can tell they are checking out our music again or for the first time. 

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GD:  That’s awesome.  Have you played with Barenaked Ladies or Sugar Ray in the past?

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TS:  We’ve played with all the bands.  Sugar Ray, over the decades we’ve played with many times. With Barenaked Ladies, we played with them on the HOARD Tour back in 1998 along with Blues Traveler.  But we hadn’t seen The Bare Naked Ladies or any of their members for well over twenty-five years.  It’s like we didn’t skip a beat. We got on the tour with them and everyone was old friends again. It’s feeling really good and it feels like there’s a lot of meaning in what we do.  A lot of artists probably forget that when they get a little older and they get caught up in their lives and families. 

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GD:  You released Sonic Ranch last year, I really like “Rather Be Me Than You” and “America.”  Do you have a favorite song on the record?

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TS:  Thank you. I like the song, and it’s a song I wrote called “Let Love Back In Your Heart.” I think it’s a pretty darn good record from front to back. It’s one of our best, consistency wise. We’re really proud of it. It took a little while to complete.  The tracks themselves and the writing and recording, not so much. Then you have all the stuff you want to improve upon, you want to add layers, you want to change words, you want a guest guitar player, things of that nature.  It’s been two years. 

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GD:  Were you guys in the studio together or did you record separately?  With technology today a lot of bands record and send files. 

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TS:  I can honestly say that all the drums and bass guitar and rhythm guitar, percussion and piano were all done with everyone present. Later when we went off to our different abodes, we all have home studios so we were able to fix some vocals and do things like that. For the most part, it’s live basic tracks.  All of the vocals were recorded with David out at Sonic Ranch in west Texas. 

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After a lot of consideration as to what we were going to call the record, early on we were just going to call the album Fastball, like The Beatles White album, they just called it The Beatles. Then somebody at the label said “change it to Sonic Ranch.”  I was like “oh, wow! I never thought of that, that’s a perfect idea.”  

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GD: That’s a great title.  It’s hard to believe that  “The Way” came out over twenty-five years ago. Do you remember the moment you realized it had truly taken off?  I remember it being on MTV all the time.  What was your experience with that?

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TS:  Being in Los Angeles, doing lots of set up work for the record at the label.  We were at Hollywood records at the time.  Hollywood Records were located at Disney Studios at that time.  I’m on the 134 freeway, in traffic at 4:30pm.  I grew up in Southern California so I knew all the radio stations and all of the DJ’s, and Jed The Fish, rest in peace- he just passed away recently, he front announced it and he played “The Way.” I was completely blown away.  Sitting in this traffic, I thought to myself, there is a percentage of these people listening to this song right now.  From that point, I had this feeling of inevitability that this was going to be a big song.  Sure enough, it was and that was a really big album for us.  It opened doors and took us around the world.  We got some awards here and there, we got nominated for a couple of Grammys.  We didn’t win, but Aerosmith needed it!  They got it, give it to Aerosmith. 

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GD:  Sure! But you got to go to the Grammys! 

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JS:  I did indeed! We had a blast. We saw Ricky Martin do this amazing psychedelic freak-out on stage. Madonna performed and Alanis Morissette.  We got to hang out at the bar with Garbage. Memorable times for sure. All of those moments back then to me are just blips in time. That’s the way life is.
 

GD:   What part of that album feels most personal to you now that it’s years later?

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JS:  I’m not sure what that means.  They’re all personal.  They’re songs we wrote and we recorded them.  We fought, we argued, we came together and we worked things out. That’s all personal stuff and sometimes your ego gets in the way of something that can be great and if you learn to step back, maybe your producer is right. I guess that answers your question.
 

GD:  Sure, it’s all personal.  Now you guys Fastball have stayed active across decades as music has changed with the times. How has the group maintained your chemistry together with you and Miles and Joey?

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JS:  First of all, we didn’t get famous enough for things to get really weird.  That’s just a theory.  A lot of big bands have personnel coming in constantly.  How many guitar players have the Red Hot Chili Peppers had?  That stuff happens. I think Green Day is a good testament to just sticking together and maybe not taking the career so seriously, upfront.  Upfront, making sure you have good relationships with the guys you work with.  We don’t get up in each other's faces, when we're home, we’re home. We all live about thirty miles apart from each other. We all have families and we don’t see each other that often.  When we’re on the road, we have a set of unwritten rules that we just sort of follow. I can’t really explain it, but you just stay out of each other’s way, then you know how to talk, when it’s time to talk. Don’t get too carried away with your own agenda and try to be concerned about everybody else.  You can go far that way, you become more than colleagues, you become brothers and sisters in some cases.  That’s worked very well for us.  We love each other and we’re brothers. 

I’m going to do something real quick.  I’m going to read something because it’s crucial to what you are wanting to know about and it’s crucial to what’s going on.  This is from Miles today. 

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To our fans, We wanted to let you know that our drummer, Joey Scheffield is currently in the hospital dealing with a medical issue. He’s in good hands and we’re optimistic about his recovery, but unfortunately he won’t be able to join us for the remainder of the upcoming shows with The Bare Naked Ladies.

Joey is a huge part of what makes Fastball, Fastball.  While no one can truly replace him, Dean Butterworth from Sugar Ray has graciously agreed to fill-in so the show can go on.  We know this isn’t ideal but your support means the world to us and to Joey.  Please send all of your good vibes, and I will add prayers, because that’s what the Sheffield’s want, so if you are the praying kind, throw them up please. We’ll keep you updated as we know more.  Thanks for sticking with us and we’ll see you out there. 

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I could tell by the way that the interview commenced that you were unaware of this.  I just wanted to throw that out, because we will be using that script from here on out. So that’s what’s happening here. 

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Without the help of people on this tour, I don’t know if Joey would be ok today.  He had to be taken to a very small town hospital in Laconia, New Hampshire and things got worse there and there’s not adequate services that you can get. So he got transferred to a hospital in Boston and he’s doing much better now.  His wife has shown up and it’s been really nerve wracking the past three days.  Without the help of these people, Barenaked Ladies, Sugar Ray and the crew, we wouldn’t be able to stay on this tour. 

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GD: They say, when you are on tour, and you are exemplifying that, that you are like a family. Sugar Ray’s drummer stepping up. Wow, that’s amazing. 

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TS:  I would say, optimally you are like a family. It’s not the case all the time.  This is a business of egos. Those things get in the way of stuff. The guys in the Bare Naked Ladies, their ego is secondary to their humanity.

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GD:  Thank you for sharing that.  I’m sorry, I was unaware of that.  I had no idea and prayers are going out to Joey. 

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TS:  Thank you.  If you you want to talk more about music, that’s fine.  If not, I’m good too.

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GD:  Sure, I’ve got a few more questions if you don’t mind.

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TS:  Sure, go ahead.

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GD:  After all these years in the industry, what still excites you about writing, recording, or performing music?

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TS:  If someone’s an artist, or if someone’s a songwriter or if someone’s a creator of art, they’ll have a hard time telling you what it is.  All I can say is, what it is. It’s something that starts with nothing or a little tiny element and you build around that. Maybe a thought, maybe a dream, maybe something comes into your head, maybe a musical melody, maybe a beat.  There’s so many aspects to musical art and I will continue to call it art.  I don’t care.  People think that we’re just a pop band that makes catchy tunes with catchy lyrics. It’s art and we are artists and we work very hard on it. I love the sort of compilation that you get into when a song is being created. You think, “what is the inspiration behind this? Did I come up with this or was I gifted by some kind of thought that popped into my head by some other entity.” Who knows? But you think about these things. 

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A song like “The Way” I remember very vividly came from a moment of frustration. I got on the phone with a guy from our label and I said, “hey, I know we need to come up with songs for the second album but I’m having a hard time. I don’t know what to write about.”  He said, “You know The Beatles came up with “A Day In The Life” by reading the newspaper.”   So I picked up a paper and I see this article on the missing couple. I read a little bit, I didn’t really read it intensely but I realized that they were an elderly couple and their adult children and their extended family were all on the hunt for them. They were able to get their story on the news. We learned about the details a little bit later but I jumped on that as a subject right away. I started in with “They made up their minds, they started packing.”  I had this idea that they were going to throw down some of their responsibilities they were used to after a half a century of raising children. They were on a little road trip and were only supposed to go a couple of hours but they ended up five hundred miles. They had actually crashed and it took a few days for some kid to find their car at the bottom of a really wooded ravine.  It’s very sad, especially for that family. For some reason, it produced this song.  That whole song has surrealism in it even though it's a true story.

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GD:  You have been playing Northeastern Ohio for many years, do you have any memories of playing in the Cleveland area?

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TS:  Sure!  Many memories actually.  We’ve had some great times since the very beginning of our band, cruising around in a van. You know, it’s funny. I’m in a parking lot and we just rolled in and I’m in Elyria right now as we speak!

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GD:  Are you really? What?

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TS:  Yeah, it’s crazy! We’re half way to Goshen, Indiana where we’re playing tomorrow and this is where our bus has to rest. So we’re gonna stay here for maybe twelve hours and take off to the gig tomorrow.  Weird, right? A couple of years ago, me and Miles were doing a couple of shows with The Fixx, they were acoustic and we got invited to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to go and check it out.  We got the full on passes and enjoyed ourselves there.  We used to play down in the Flats.  Made a lot of friends there. I have a couple of friends that still live there and I’m going to ring them up and hopefully get some dinner with them.  Ohio is an historic place for Rock and Roll. The Dead Boys, The Rubber City Rebels and Chrissy Hynde.

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GD:  Chrissy Hynde from Akron!

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TS: And Devo!

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GD:  Joe Walsh!

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TS:  I did not realize that he’s actually from Ohio.  Thank you, that's great!

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GD:  The James Gang, Cleveland that’s him!

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TS:  I always think of him from being from Catalina Island or something. (laughs) But we love it here.  I dig the vibe.  It’s like halfway between the east and the midwest.  There’s a lot of hard folks out here who like to party and rock and roll is still alive.  I can see by your wall  One of my favorite records is Aerosmith Rocks. I love that record.

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GD:  I think it’s one of their best.  Toys In The Attic is up there too but I love Rocks. 

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TS:  I think they really nailed it with Rocks.  It’s got this, it’s less radio friendly and more of this kinda like when Led Zeppelin did Physical Graffiti, we’re going to get more serious with this rock and roll.  I like that 1984 record.  I bought a copy of that on vinyl, a reissue for my son who’s thirteen.  I said “put these headphones on” and I put on “Hot For Teacher” and he was just blown away. 

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GD:  That’s awesome.  We have the same taste in music!  One last question, what can fans expect from this tour and especially when you guys play at Blossom Music Center in August. 

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TS:  As I read from Miles, they can expect to see us working it out with a substitute drummer who’s actually a brilliant drummer named Dean Butterworth.  Dean’s played with a bunch of bands and we met Dean back in 1998 when he was playing with Ben Harper. He’s also been in Good Charlotte, he was the musical director on a television show with Jane Lynch, she had a game show.  Dean’s fully capable of backing us as a drummer and we are also able to employ some members of Bare Naked Ladies for a few songs and they help us out.  Going in, if people realize that our main anchor is not with us, they will enjoy the show with good songs and they will be performed in a manner that we are ok with and hopefully they will be ok with. 

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GD:  I’m sure they will.  Tony, again thank you so much for your time.  Safe travels on the road and I will be seeing you in August.

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TS:  Alright, Greg! You look and resemble one of my favorite Greg’s and that’s Gregg Popovich from The Spurs! 

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GD:  I’ve never been told that, but I’ll take it!

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TS:  It’s great to talk to you.  I feel like I’m talking to Pop and you put me at ease right away.  You have a great rest of your day and we’ll see you out there at Cuyahoga Falls! 

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GD: Enjoy your day in Elyria!

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TS:  Who Hoo, we’re going to the Red Lobster! (laughs) 

 

Be sure to check out Fastball, Sugar Ray and Barenaked Ladies when they make a stop at Blossom Music Center on August 1 on their Last Summer On Earth Tour!

 

 

You can watch the full zoom interview here! 
 

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