‘All Aboard!’
Train jumps tracks to play for the fans
Idealism, especially in pop music, has been on a downhill slide since the ’70s.
In this era of bigger is better — where the largest posse, the most bling-bling and slickest production rules — artists who boast about “getting back to our roots” and “playing for the fans” tread dangerously close to spouting a hopelessly self-serving cliche. Or worse, they can be accused of concocting a ploy to generate free publicity.
Case in point: Train. The pop-rocker band has scheduled five-day, small club stints in Atlanta, Chicago and its hometown of San Francisco. The point is to, you know, “play for the fans.” If those fans are under 21, however, they’re out of luck.
Train formed in 1994 and released its self-titled first album with the modest radio hit “Meet Virginia” in 1997. But the band didn’t hit the big-time until 2001’s ubiquitous Drops of Jupiter catapulted the group to Grammy-winning, major-league status.
Presumably, most of Train’s original followers won’t need fake ID’s to gain admission.
Regardless, comely lead singer Pat Monahan sounds wide-eyed at the prospect of scaling down for these dates, which will feature selections Train hasn’t attempted to play live since the band’s years spent struggling in the Bay Area. Interestingly, the idea for the series came from the band’s newest member, Atlanta’s veteran bassist Johnny Colt (formerly of the Black Crowes and Brand New Immortals).
“Our fans have been asking us to do certain songs forever,” says Monahan. “But how do we give them what they want when we’re playing 3,000-seat theaters for people who just want to hear the radio hits?”
Colt’s solution was to go punk rock and spend a week working intimate venues in a handful of influential cities. Though it’s unlikely anyone has ever put the polished, radio-friendly Train and “punk rock” in the same sentence (“Calling All Angels” currently sits at No. 3 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart), Atlanta got the nod because the band records its albums here with producer Brendan O’Brien.
“We could charge a lot of money,” says Monahan, “but that defeats the idea of taking a step backward, getting back to your roots and doing something for the fans. We’re doing this for them, not us.
“We don’t really have a plan and that’s the beauty of what we’re trying to do. It’s going to be more musical than ever. We’ll spend hours before each show learning stuff, so every night we’ll have new covers. Some of the show will feature only the three remaining original members.”
Additionally, each attendee will receive a free CD of the night’s performance. Jam bands have started to embrace this concept, but for a group with Train’s popularity level and major-label affiliation, it’s a generous and unusual move.
Monahan seems sincere, but not naive: “It’s something we should have done a long time ago. Sometimes success makes you so busy that you’ve gotta make time. You have a crew and have to run the band like a business, and, unfortunately, the business ends up taking precedence over the art. Recognizing when that happens, when you lose touch with what you started doing this for, is the issue. Go win a Grammy, but come back. You need to stop yourself from thinking that is real life.”
Ultimately, whether it’s Prince, R.E.M. or the Stones, who all have taken this stripped-down, intimate-venue approach, it comes down to the love of making music.
“Musicians like us don’t choose music,” says Monahan, earnestly. “It chooses us.”