Blues Traveler on the road to Cedar Rapids

There’s a reason Blues Traveler has stayed together for 36 years and counting.

It goes back to Princeton, N.J., where harmonica player and singer John Popper, guitarist Chan Kinchla and bassist Bobby Sheehan got together to jam in the basement of drummer Brendan Hill’s parents’ house.

Initially calling themselves The Establishment, the teenagers changed their name to Blues Traveler. After graduating from high school, they ventured 50 miles northeast to New York City, where they were supposed to be going to college.

But they really were playing the club circuit, where they were discovered and signed by A&M Records. They dropped out of school, started making records and touring, and never stopped.

“Basically, I’ve spent my entire life in my high school band. I get more and more of a kick out of it, that I can say that,” Kinchla said by phone before launching the spring tour. The summer tour is swinging through the McGrath Amphitheatre in Cedar Rapids on Aug. 11.

“It’s all the original surviving members. The fact we did kind of grow up together creates some bonds that go beyond just being in a band together. We’re like brothers. We get along as well now as we ever have,” he said. “We have to come to grips with the idea that we’re never going to break up.”

That high school band’s first three albums — 1990’s “Blues Traveler,” 1991’s “Travelers and Thieves” and 1993’s “Save His Soul” — all went gold. Then came “Four” in 1994 — a six-times-platinum smash that included the Grammy-winning hit “Run-Around.”

While the album sales piled up, Blues Traveler also became one of the most popular jam bands. They didn’t know that when they founded the H.O.R.D.E. tour and hit the road with their fellow travelers summer after summer. Or that they could fit the “jam band” description.

“We kind of came up before that was a term,” Kinchla said. “In the late ’80s, there was us, Widespread Panic and Phish on the East Coast. They called us neo-hippies back then. We were more rock ’n’ roll. But we did improvise live. Our studio efforts were more controlled and focused.

“In the late ’90s, that term came up and it didn’t completely fit,” he said. “We don’t really fit any category — are we pop, rock ’n’ roll, a jam band? But live, we definitely stretch it out and improvise a lot more, so maybe it fits.”

New music

The band’s latest release is 2021’s “Traveler’s Blues.” Recorded during the pandemic, the album features guests like Warren Haynes, Keb ‘Mo’ and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram joining the band on set of songs that include the classic “Ball & Chain,” Jimmy Reed’s “You Got Me Runnin’,” The Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” and Son Seals’ “Funky Bitch.”

“It’s the blues album we always wanted to make back in high school, but we couldn’t,” Kinchla said. “We were kids and we quickly evolved into our own kind of rock band. Now we’ve got a Grammy-nominated blues record. We proved we can play some decent blues.”

Blues Traveler didn’t win the Traditional Blues Grammy last year. But the nomination did show that the blues part of the band name fits, no jamming allowed.

“We made it a point to keep it on the form because with Blues Traveler, we’ll just keep going until it's back to Blues Traveler,” Kinchla said. “We went back to the original recordings of the songs and used those as our boilerplate. They’re a little more loosey-goosey live. But we still stay pretty close to the originals.”

New tour

A song or two from “Traveler’s Blues” likely will make it into the live sets this summer, on a co-headlining tour with Big Head Todd & The Monsters, with whom Blues Traveler has toured since the early H.O.R.D.E outings. Today’s lineup includes Popper, Kinchla, Hill, keyboardist Ben Wilson and Chan’s younger brother, bassist Tad Kinchla. (Sheehan died in 1999.)

But the concert playlist won’t be dominated by material from any single Blues Traveler album.

“You gotta bring the hits, especially if it’s a cross-section gig,” Kinchla said. “If it’s a theater for just our fanatics, maybe not. But you don’t want to go see a band you’ve spent a bunch of money on and not hear the hits.

“That’s only 20 minutes, for us. And so you’ll see some new stuff, some blues stuff. We always do a different set every night. But to be honest, we can only do so many songs, otherwise you can’t really remember them. So we’ve got about 25 songs in working form.”

None of those 25 songs will sound the same each time it’s played on tour, either. That’s one of the reasons that Blues Traveler goes out to play.

“Playing live, that experience is what we always wanted to do — play live in front of a great crowd, improvise and have fun,” Kinchla said. “That’s part of the reason we’ve stayed together for 35 years. No matter what’s happened in the business, the ups and downs, we’ve always gone back to playing live shows and having fun. That’s what’s kept us going.”

As the interview wound down, Kinchla was asked what he thought Blues Traveler’s legacy would be when the band hangs things up, however far in the future that might be. He thought for about 30 seconds, then replied:

“We wrote a lot of great songs. We kind of brought back the improvisation after all the classic ’70s rock, and played a lot of great shows. I’m really proud we managed to stay together. Look at Paul McCartney, I’m sure he doesn’t need the money, but you can’t drag him off the stage. We’re like that.

“We’ll keep going until the wheels come off.”