Taking Back Sunday teases new album ahead of Taste of Chaos at Jones Beach
Taking Back Sunday frontman Adam Lazzara will bring the boys back to the beach on June 18. Credit: Getty Images / Scott Legato
Adam Lazzara doesn’t remember much about the first time Taking Back Sunday played Nikon at Jones Beach Theater.
It was 2004 and the band was playing the now-defunct K-Rock Dysfunctional Family Picnic, just days before the band’s second album, “Where You Want to Be,” would debut at No. 3 on Billboard’s album chart and at No. 1 on the independent album chart. Shortly after the band’s set, when Lazzara and I took a wrong turn out of the band’s makeshift dressing room backstage and mistakenly ended up in a public area, he was quickly spotted by a few screaming fans and stopped to speak with them and sign autographs, as he has always done. But the screaming grew louder and the crowd kept growing until we were surrounded and it became clear we had to leave, especially once fans started pulling at his shirt, trying to get his attention.
“I don’t remember that at all,” laughs Lazzara, calling from his home in Charlotte, North Carolina. “A lot of that stuff doesn’t really stick with me. . . . It’s hard for me to imagine a lot of people running up to me and wanting to talk.”
Of course, that still happens, though guitarist-vocalist John Nolan says it’s different now. “I don’t miss those days,” he says. “I can have conversations with our fans now.”
Taking Back Sunday — Lazzara, Nolan, guitarist Eddie Reyes, drummer Mark O’Connell and bassist Shaun Cooper — has always been a forward-looking bunch and that certainly isn’t changing now, as they ready their seventh album, due out in the fall. They don’t see spending their summer on the Taste of Chaos tour with Dashboard Confessional, which will include another stop at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater on June 18, as a return to the days when they were muscling their way onto rock radio playlists along with Dashboard and Brand New or as part of the ongoing emo revival led by new bands like Modern Baseball and The Hotelier.
“I lose sleep over that stuff,” Lazzara says. “We’re not just this one thing. We’re not going for some sort of cash-in. . . . I couldn’t put any more of myself into these new songs and we’ve all grown as musicians. I don’t think it’s fair.”
After all, the band’s last album — 2014’s wider-ranging rock effort “Happiness Is” — also reached the Top 10 of Billboard’s album chart, as well as topping the independent albums chart, a sign that the band’s fan base is growing with them.
And they see their upcoming album, recorded with a longtime collaborator, Bethpage-based producer Mike Sapone, as another ambitious step forward.
“I’m very excited for people to hear it,” Nolan says. “I think it’s going to be a surprise to some people. We’re all extremely excited about what we’ve done. It’s the culmination of things we’ve tried over the past two records. I think it’s the strongest record we’ve done since getting back together. We’ve freed ourselves up to go in new directions.”
The new album was recorded in Charlotte, where Lazzara and Nolan now live with their families, marking the first time the band members essentially stayed home while recording. Lazzara says the familiar surroundings enabled the band to be more adventurous.
“It just helped everybody push harder,” he says. “I think some of the playing on this record is just the best we’ve ever done. There were times when Mark was playing and I was thinking, ‘I don’t know how he’s physically doing that.’ ”
Though the band is eager to play the new music for fans on the current tour, Lazzara says he’s not sure it will be possible. “Everyone has a video camera in their pocket now,” he says, adding that the band will do its own headlining tour in the fall. “You really don’t want people’s introduction to a song to be from cellphone video.”
In any case, Taking Back Sunday plans to enjoy playing Jones Beach again, a first for Nolan and Cooper, who were not in the band when it played there the four previous times.
“This is huge for me,” Nolan says. “I grew up going to see shows there.”
Nolan, who grew up in Baldwin, says his parents had taken him to Jones Beach to see concerts for years, but the one that sticks out for him was when he saw Hootie & the Blowfish. “It was actually a really fun show,” he says, laughing. “What made it really memorable, though, was that it was the first time I didn’t have to go with my parents.”
However, Nolan says he is more excited about the Jones Beach show because of what it means for the band now. “It keeps the focus on the future,” he says.
Dashboard Confessional back in gear
Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba wasn’t sure what would happen when his band came back after a five-year hiatus.
“My expectations were that we’d be on the bottom rung again, working our way back up, like everybody should be when they walk away,” says Carrabba, calling from the band’s rehearsal space in Tennessee. “It didn’t happen that way.”
Instead, Dashboard Confessional returned last year with a co-headlining tour of amphitheaters. This year, the band is headlining the Taste of Chaos Tour, which stops at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater on June 18.
“I’m not the right person to explain why it happened this way, but I am the person thrilled that it did,” Carrabba says. “It’s like we’re coming back where we left off. It’s truly exciting. . . . The feeling of sheer luck has not left us.”
While Carrabba spent his hiatus working on solo material and forming a more country-leaning band, Twin Forks, with Bellmore native Suzie Zeldin, he says he has excitedly been working on new Dashboard material for the past year.
“I am actively writing and recording every day,” he says, adding that the band has been playing together once or twice a week just because they are having so much fun. “We got in the habit of treating ourselves like a band that just started.”
Carrabba says the process has felt like the early days of the band, back in the Aughts when he was delivering raw, emotional rock like “Screaming Infidelities” and “Hands Down” alone on acoustic guitar.
“Nobody’s looking,” he says. “The only test these songs meet is ‘Do I think it’s good?’ That’s it. We recorded all last summer without getting notes from people.”
Last month, he surprised fans with a new song, “May” — the first new Dashboard song since 2009 — that calls to mind the early days of the band, though he says it’s too early to tell how the album will fit together or what direction it may take since the band has come up with an eclectic mix of new songs.
“I’ve made no decisions about where these songs will go or how they will come out,” says Carrabba, adding that the band currently has no record label. However, he says he is eager for fans to hear it.
“We are just so grateful to our fan base,” he says. “We appreciate it so much that we are still able to do this. There’s no pretension, just sheer joy and kind of befuddlement that we get to do this still.” — GLENN GAMBOA
WHO Taking Back Sunday
WHEN|WHERE 5:30 p.m. June 18, Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, Wantagh
INFO $26-$75; 516-221-1000, livenation.com
