Though some cross pollination certainly prevails, two primary camps of Third Eye Blind fans exist.
The first is the expected. They come to shows because of the eminently catchy “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Graduate,” “Never Let You Go,” and another half dozen hits that appeared on the Bay Area pop-rock outfit’s first two albums, released in the late ‘90s. They head to the bathrooms or make for the beer line when anything from the subsequent five records — all of which have been released this century by the way — lampoon the setlist on any given evening.
Then there’s cadre of devotees who think the 3EB debut and sophomore efforts are well and good but are just as excited to hear the might-as-well-be-a-Cure-cover “Dust Storm” and “Box of Bones” from the 2021 LP Our Bande Apart. Throw in something from the 2016 EP We Are Drugs or a cover of Joy Division’s “Disorder,” and someone in the audience is bound to lose their shit in ecstasy. They grab a hard seltzer or two before the opening chords are struck and don’t leave their seat for the concert’s entirety.
Stephan Jenkins is firmly in the second camp. Sure, he’s the frontman for the group, but he also champions Third Eye Blind’s success, credibility, and importance like no one else. He doesn’t prefer a nostalgic take on his livelihood but recognizes there’s a quarter century of its history allowing him to fill 20,000 capacity amphitheaters, as he did last July at Mansfield’s Xfinity Center, as well as do the intimate “An Evening with…”, this Saturday (March 25) at Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom.
This tour of smaller venues was supposed to be in support of a new record, but Jenkins hasn’t finished the lyrics yet. “I blew it,” he says. “That’s typical of me.” Instead, much to the joy of the very vocal diehards, it’ll be a 20-plus song set, no opener, and an acoustic interlude.
Vanyaland sat down with Jenkins ahead of tomorrow’s sold-out show to take part in our 617 Q&A series (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings), during which the outspoken singer passionately educated us on how restoring kelp along the California coastline helps everyone, why Third Eye Blind is indie rock, and what film deserved to win Best Picture at this year’s Oscars.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: The tour that’s been going on for some time now is called “25 Years in the Blind.” But you’re on the record about not being a fan of nostalgia for the band. How do you reconcile looking back but also wanting to focus on the present with Third Eye Blind?
Stephan Jenkins: It ain’t easy. [long pause] So yeah, 25 Years in the Blind was actually last summer, ‘cause this would be technically 26 years, and the spring tour is, it’s kind of an extension of the summer in that we go to the places that we didn’t get to play. So instead of playing Boston, we’re playing in New Hampshire and we’re going to play the songs that we didn’t get to play. So, it’s different, but the problem is still the same, which is how do you reconcile? How do you go out there and say something like “25 years” and then say you’re not nostalgic. It seems contradictory, right? Well, ‘cause it is, man. And here’s my semi convoluted answer: I like keeping our music alive, and I like that it moves into people’s present tense. One of the greatest contributions that Spotify provided is that music doesn’t have a date stamp, so kids who find their music, they just put it on a playlist because they like it. And so it becomes new for them. It illuminates their present experience. And that is, that’s enlivening, that’s like blood to a vampire.
So, we’re not actually looking back.
Somewhere around half of our audience wasn’t born when my first record came out, which is very cool. It keeps an energy that is precious. And we have always been an indie rock band. We are making music that matters to us now, and we share that. I’m not playing for the gallery. I like it when we play some songs that are hit songs and people have a big sing along. I really enjoy that, but I don’t make [it] my set list. There’s a lot of bands that do that. They’re just like, we do play for gallery and we just give ’em what they want and each of our records sounds the same and they cook up a their sauce like that. And that’s fine. But that’s not what we do. And our audience… I can see them responding to the music that we make now.
If somebody wanted to call you a ’90s band, there’s so many bands out there from that era – or from any era – that say, “Hey look, I look out in the crowd and half our crowd is really young. Half our crowd wasn’t born when the first album came out…”
There are? I don’t know very many bands who do that. I can’t think of any.
Oh, I think there’s bands out there who say that they’re still relevant and fresh, but they do the same set list every night. They just do the hits and say that they’ve got a younger crowd, but when you go and see them, they don’t have a younger crowd. Yeah, they have pockets, and they’ll have a dad that brings his daughter or something. But I do have to say that seeing you live over the past couple years, and especially just in Boston this last summer, it’s not pockets and it’s not kids with their parents – which there are aspects of that – but there’s groups of young kids that are there on their own. And I found that fascinating.
There’s been a couple, I don’t know if you would call them “think pieces” in recent years, but there’s been articles written about a kind of Third Eye Blind revival. And I was curious as to whether you think that’s accurate or if you’re like, “Wait a minute, we haven’t gone anywhere. We’ve remained popular. We’ve been putting out viable music on the regular.”
No, I think it’s valid. I think it takes two for a revival. And I think from somewhere around maybe 2001 to 2008, that was a really fallow period for us. And then somewhere around there something began to switch back on and it continued to grow until now, we go out and we play amphitheaters and sheds and stuff. But there was definitely a period I think where we went quiet, and that was kind of in that whole rap rock thing that went through alternative radio. It really had a moment and it was not … it was just, yeah, it wasn’t my thing. And then we restarted. So, yeah, I think there’s something to that, but it’s definitely happened before.
The thing about Third Eye Blind though, is we really are an indie rock band – we always have been. And we are kind of camouflaged by radio hits, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t this other kind of energy and this other kind of life that’s really core to who we are. It’s just not one that the casual eye sees.
What does the term “indie rock” mean to you? Because some people would say you can’t be an indie rock band because you were on a major label. You had all these hits on mainstream radio. People know your songs that wouldn’t even go to a concert.
Yes. Yes. And they make a good definitional point. Everything that I made on a major label, we made ourselves, produced ourselves, was never in some big management company and I produced our records, so we were always DIY and we had this distribution from Elektra and it got picked up on radio. So, our ethos of handmade was always from our inception. So that’s one of my definitions. And then the second definition is, I’m not looking to crack a pop code in writing. I’m looking to try to make a dent in my own landscape and make sense of it and then share that. So yeah, I think that’s very different than a pop mindset.
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I heard the interview you did with Stryker on the podcast Tuna on Toast, and there was a point that struck me where he mentioned — just the title — and you audibly bristled at when he said “Semi-Charmed Life.” You said something along the lines of, “I won’t talk about that song.” And I don’t want to talk about that song. I’m just curious as to why you didn’t want to talk about it.
[laughs] Fucking hell. I mean… [long, long pause] It’s not that I mind talking about it. It’s that… it is… a whole bunch of reasons. Wow. A lot of reasons come to my mind. It is limiting. And most of the time when I’m asked about it in an interview, it usually means that the interviewer is lazy and doesn’t actually know anything about our band and what we do; they just know a song on the radio. So it feels a bit embarrassing, really. I just… I just wonder how much more Thom Yorke has to say about “Creep.” What else is there to add? You know? It’s an absolutely stunning, immortal work of genius. And it will last after the apocalypse and is a gift, not only to humanity, but to future colonies and laws. [laughs] What can one say? Yeah.
I guess it just feels like I, it just makes you feel like you are being really limited, and that’s not something that I enjoy doing. I feel like I have the feign pleasure and then I become suspect of the person I’m talking to – and that’s not a good feeling to have either. Especially when it’s like, we just made a record that we really dig and want to share. And – one more thing is – finally – is so do our fans. So do our fans. So, if you go to a show, we’re going to be playing songs from Our Bande Apart, but also songs that we did on the Unplugged record. But I like “Semi-Charmed Life,” by the way. I’m happy that I wrote it and I love it that people like it and it’s still invigorating to play because of the way the energy that comes back to me. It’s a rare pleasure.
One song I did want to ask you about, and this has just always been a curiosity of mine, the cover you did of “Train in Vain” for the Burning London tribute to The Clash back in ‘99.
Oh wow.
Do you remember how you ended up with “Train in Vain?” Did you pick it? Was it assigned to you? Because it was an all-label compilation, like everybody was on a Sony/Epic subsidiary.
We did pick it, but we had a bunch of different songs that we were thinking about doing, and I think I chose that one because it’s just a weird, different angle on The Clash. And I love The Clash and I wanted to get inside that rhythm. [sings the “Train in Vain” drumbeat] And what I learned from doing that song was just how good The Clash is. God, they’re so amazing. What was their drummer’s name?
Oh, Topper. Topper Headon.
Just incredible. To me it was humbling to cover The Clash, because I wasn’t trying to recreate that beat, I was trying to make that go someplace else, take it someplace else. And I just couldn’t get past his rhythm. It just, it’s just too incredible.
I want to ask you a little bit about SeaTrees, who yourself and Third Eye Blind is working with to restore the ecosystems of the California coastline and also to sequester carbon. If I’m some guy sitting at the corner bar watching the ballgame in Nebraska, why should I care about kelp restoration?
Well, let’s start with Nebraska. Because your way of life is ending. And the aquifer underneath the Nebraska that’s made it some of the most fertile farmland in the world is going away. And it’s going away because of climate change. So, in order for you to continue your Nebraskan way of life, you need to embrace the glory of a climate solution’s future. You need to take on an optimistic, future-oriented mindset and stop clinging to the impending death that is a non-sustainable future, which is fossil fuels. So the reason why Bob Clingwald from Nebraska needs to do this is because if he doesn’t, it’s going to kill him and his family and his way of life.
But that’s the negative way of looking at it. A positive way of looking at it is — this is why is kelp restoration is so amazing — is that climate solutions means abundance. It means infinite abundance. It doesn’t mean making do with less, it means having infinitely more. That’s what it means. It means more jobs. The power of the sun is free and it’s totally clean. What we’re going to do is we’re going to learn how to harness it more and more and more. Our future means that we need to have endless free energy. That’s how we have to go forward on the Earth. And we can do it. And we also have to have systems in place that take the carbon that we produce and store it and we need to make oxygen. And the amazing thing is that we have these massive, massive biological systems available to us. And all we have to do is get together and nurture them.
Off the California coast, we have trees that grow in the ocean, and they grow a foot and a half a week. So you can have an entire forest that goes a mile out to the ocean in a year. This isn’t some 40-year boot sequence that is, say, a redwood forest. This is now.
In short, because it’s a miracle. And it lets us know that we are people who can make miracles. There is a miracle that is biology right off our coast. And these wankers, these kind of rapacious fucks who are like, “Well, yeah, let’s just go to Mars.” Right. Miracle’s right here.
:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
Nope. How that did not win Best Picture is beyond me. I do not understand it. It is Best Picture. And the reason why is because you actually are watching a Western, and Westerns are about establishing order in the new territory from wildness. Going back to John Ford and the classic Westerns, that’s the myth that they’re working on. And then going through the Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. This is the first time that it has been truly rethought. And I don’t think that Hollywood understood how good it was. The acting is amazing, I think. I don’t have any evidence for this, I just suspect that there’s some idea out there that it’s Black, and so it doesn’t fit into the Black film slot. Instead of, it’s a film. It’s a story. They didn’t know what to do with that because of their own fucking weird biases. So, my recommendation is to go and enjoy Nope.
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
You’re big into hip-hop and its influence has come through Third Eye Blind over the years. Give me seven essential hip hop albums for Stephan Jenkins.
You know, this isn’t really fair. I hate these fucking kind of questions. [Note: Jenkins actually loved this question.] So, here’s my point. If you ask me again, I’ll give you another list. And then it’s just like, how do you not have Jay-Z on this list? The next list would have Nas on it, which [isn’t] on here. So the caveat is I’ll give you the list, but there’s two things. Number one, there’s no such thing. And number two, ask me again and I’ll give you a whole different list.
The Streets – Original Pirate Material. Totally changed my mind. To me that was just, like, “Wow.” Totally.
Dr. Dre – The Chronic. Going back to the start, The Chronic is what kind of put gangster rap, which didn’t really mean anything to me, into this real sense of musicality.
De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising. Let’s go with the Daisy Age of hip-hop.
Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet. I just remember the first time I heard “Fight the Power.” [starts singing] “Nineteen eighty-nine!”
The Notorious B.I.G. – Ready to Die. The longer I go, the more brilliant Biggie Smalls becomes to me. But I didn’t totally get it before because it was kind of like, “Oh, he’s just kind of in with Puffy” and all this other kind of stuff. And you didn’t hear some of this back channel stuff that he was doing and just how smooth and liquid his mind was.
Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Well, I just think… I just don’t see how you can not have The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as one of these records. And I would compare her record to Bob Marley – it’s like Bob Marley Legend. It’s just this kind of perfect thing.
Missy Elliott – Miss E… So Addictive. Like how the fuck do you leave Missy Elliott out? I think that the South, culturally, would really benefit if you just took all those Confederate monuments down and you put up Missy Elliott in that rubber suit [from the video for “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”]. I think everyone would feel a lot better and all those little civic squares with those stodgy Confederate guys up there…everyone would just be in a better mood if it was just a beautiful copper sculpture of her in that blow-up rubber suit.
AN EVENING WITH THIRD EYE BLIND :: Saturday, March 25 at Casino Ballroom, 169 Ocean Blvd, in Hampton, NH :: 8 p.m., 18+, sold out :: Event page