Not only is this year the 30th anniversary of the band Everclear’s game-changing second album “Sparkle and Fade,” it’s also the 30th anniversary of when the band first played Toad’s Place in New Haven on its first major national tour.
Everclear returns to Toad’s Place on Oct. 23. Amazingly, they’re playing there with Sponge, the same Michigan-rooted rock band that shared the bill with them in the same club back in 1995.
Toad’s Place in the 1990s was rolling with a lot of changes in the music industry. The club was the place to see a lot of the up-and-coming indie acts who’ had been rewriting the rulebook about where the big bands could be from, how they would be marketed and where you could find them. Neatly situated between New York and Boston, New Haven was (and still is) a great stop for any band driving themselves to shows in a car or van.
It was also still at time when the opening acts on national tours were carefully chosen. It was never a good idea to get to a Toad’s show late. You might miss out on an opening band which, in a few months, might be eclipsing the headliner. More often, like the Everclear/Sponge show, they were equally hardworking, equally deserving bands who may or may not see major chart success but were operating at their peak in terms of live shows.
A year before the 1995 show, Sponge had already played a much larger New Haven venue, Veterans Memorial Coliseum, opening for Flaming Lips, Candlebox and Sweet Water.
For Everclear, though, “this was our first big bus tour. I have very fond memories. Sponge were just wonderful. They treated us like family,” said the band’s frontman, songwriter and sole founding remaining founding member Art Alexakis.
“Sparkle and Fade” was Everclear’s second album but its first for a major label, Capitol Records. The album was heavily promoted, the publicists playing up any similarities to the grunge bands that had conquered the rock world like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Sound Garden. It helped the marketing that Everclear was formed in Portland, Oregon at the time when the Northwest music scene was blowing up.
“I’m not from Portland. The band is from there. I moved there when I was 30. My girlfriend, who was soon to be my second wife, was from there. She was pregnant with our daughter Anna so that’s how we moved to Portland in late ‘91. Anna was born in June of ‘92 and Everclear was born in April of ‘92. Everclear was going to be my last band.
“I was born in Santa Monica and grew up there. I moved to Los Angeles in 2011 for health reasons, then in 2016 I got diagnosed with MS. California is warm but it’s not hot and it’s not cold so it’s perfect for me.”
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“Sparkle and Fade” was released in 1995, and though it was surpassed in sales by some of Everclear’s subsequent albums, it remains a touchstone for fans and contains some of the band’s best-known songs: “Heartspark Dollarsign,” “Santa Monica,” “Heroin Girl,” and “You Make Me Feel Like a Whore” as well as some of its best-written like “Summerland” and “Chemical Smile.”
When the album was released, the songs were analyzed in terms of some of the struggles and addictions Alexakis had revealed in his personal life. He continued to write songs of self-empowerment, questioning authority and taking one’s own paths. But he balks at the idea that his work is adapted from his life. “Yeah, things are personal but just because I write in the first person doesn’t mean the songs are about me. A third of my songs are autobiographical, a third are things drawn from my life that I have artistic license to create new stories from and the other third is made up stories. I’m a writer,” he said.
Everclear released three albums between 1993 and 1997, then the two-volume opus “Songs from an American Movie” in 2000, then just four albums between 2003 and 2015 and none since then. The band continued to tour, concentrating on its hits. Asked if he has any plans to record again, Alexakis said “I’m 63 years old. I feel like everything I had to say was said. But after everything that happened in this country last year, I started writing a lot. I have a bunch of new songs and new ideas.” A new album is not out of the question.
The “Sparkle and Fade” 30th anniversary tour began in September, just days after the previous Everclear tour ended. “On this tour we do the whole album. It’s ‘Sparkle and Fade’ and the hits. No requests,” Alexakis said. So while in August Everclear’s live sets opened with the title song from the band’s 1997 album “So Much for the Afterglow,” that song is now held until the encore, after “Sparkle and Fade” has been heard in its 14-track entirety.
He noted that only some of the folks in the clubs these days know “Sparkle and Fade” from when it came out three decades ago.
“The peculiar thing is that like 30 percent of the fans that are coming out are not the older fans or the ones who grew up on ‘Sparkle and Fade.’ They’re in their late teens and early ‘20s, kids who weren’t even born when these songs were written. And they know every word to every tune. The ‘90s is classic rock to them. They think it was the last time of real rock ‘n’ roll. That’s hard to argue with. They hold on to the bands they like, and it seems like they’re really into lyrics,” Alexakis said.
“It’s nostalgia for some people,” Alexakis added. “That can be very healthy. You remember where you were at a certain time in your life. We tend to remember the good times more than the bad.”
Everclear plays on Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. at Toad’s Place, 300 York St., New Haven with Sponge and Local H. The show is sold out but there is an email list if tickets become available. toadsplace.com.
