On the Road, On the Mend: Toadies are breaking through, not breaking down

Toadies are a Texas-based alternative band best known for their 1994 album “Rubberneck” and the single “Possum Kingdom,” a release from the album that was a hit on radio and MTV in 1995.

At the time, many listeners assumed the band had exploded overnight, but lead singer/guitarist Vaden Todd Lewis said the band did their fair share of grinding before fame set in.

“We did a year plus in a van and trailer, which was typical for a major label band,” he says. “We tried, but the label didn’t really try that hard. We just went and harassed radio stations and everybody we could find to play the record and put us on the radio. Eventually, after touring for like a year at least, a program director in Florida started playing the whole record, and he really lit it on fire. He would just pick random songs and play them. It picked up in Florida and moved over to the West Coast and then back to the East Coast. And then it was on.”

He continued, “People asked me at the time, ‘What’s it like to be overnight famous?’ I’m like, ‘I’ve been fucking dragging ass for a year-plus getting this going. So, you know, it’s a lot of work.’”

After the album and single took off, the band embarked on a brutal touring cycle that had them playing 250 shows a year for two years straight.

“I came home to my apartment at some point and put all my stuff and my car in storage and terminated my lease because I was never there,” he says. “We toured a lot. We toured too much, honestly. We were just in it. I didn’t even know what day it was, or what year. I just kept going, and eventually I looked up and I was like, ‘Man, we’ve got to write another record. We’ve got to stop, and so that’s what we did.’”

Though the band remained active, the follow-up to “Rubberneck” would not arrive until the spring of 2001. By the fall of that year, Lewis had decided to break up the band. They reunited in 2006 and have remained active since then.

Toadies just released their eighth album, “The Charmer,” in early May, which they recorded with the legendary audio engineer Steve Albini in Chicago. (It would become one of the last recordings that Albini, who famously helped Nirvana nail the sound for “In Utero,” would work on before he passed away in May 2024.)

“(Albini) said, ‘I work for you, and I’ll do whatever you guys want to do. We’ll make it happen,’” Lewis recalls. “And he did. There’s one or two little instances where, like, we wanted the drums to be like Fleetwood Mac. So, we picked up all the drums and moved them into another room and set them up there. And it sounded like Fleetwood Mac. So, you know, little things like that. He was really there to do the job.”

Lewis believes the continued interest in bands such as Toadies and other alternative acts from the ‘90s may be because younger listeners are eager to hear music that is raw and imperfect.

“Nothing’s auto-tune,” he says. “There are no computers. It’s all just four people making noise. That’s what we do on stage, and I think people are hungry for that. Like most musicians, I’m a perfectionist, and I want to get this right, and I want everybody to get it right. I had to kind of let that go. What I tell my guys if anybody gets down on themselves about some mistake that nobody heard is this: the people pay to see a live show. They don’t pay to look at a record.”

Lewis says that about half the songs on “The Charmer” are about his struggle with depression and thoughts of self-harm. On tour, he’s been addressing the crowd nightly about the topic.

“It’s just sick and sad, and I want people to be able to talk about it and to be able to go talk to their doctors or their families or both and try to get some kind of help,” he says. “I got help about five years ago. I thought getting help was going to kill my creativity and my individuality and my weird brain, and it did not. I just can’t recommend it any higher. I encourage anybody that’s got the struggle to please try to find help.”

Apropos of that, he adds, “I think we’re gonna have Punk Rock Saves Lives out with us in San Diego, but I’m not sure. They’ve come on to some shows and they follow us around in a van, and they set up a table, and they turn people on to help — whether it’s mental health or physical health.”

• Where: Observatory North Park, 2891 University Avenue, San Diego
• When: Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 7 pm
• Ages: All ages
• Cost: $49.70