Everclear will perform at The Cotillion Ballroom Friday with American Hi-Fi as part of their current “Lucky 7” tour.
Fans can vote for seven songs to be added to the setlist (drawing from a list of 21 tunes overall) that the group will perform at each stop, alongside favorites such as “Father Of Mine” and “Santa Monica.” There are also a few surprises thrown in at various stops.
Founding member Art Alexakis recently explained that having an increasingly younger group of fans discovering the group’s classic output, along with long-term supporters constantly asking for songs that haven’t been performed in decades, if ever, provided inspiration for the current tour.
Fans can vote for their favorite songs athttps://set.fan/E9AcPL6xajwxu0DfYF8K.
The following interview has been edited for length and for clarity.
Tell me about the idea behind this current tour, where people have the chance to vote for their favorite songs and have those worked into the setlist.
We like to tour every year because our fanbase likes us coming out. Last year was such a big deal with the “Sparkle and Fade” tour, and next year is going to be the “So Much For The Afterglow” tour, so I wanted to come up with something that would be special, especially for the fans. Every show people request songs, and a lot of people request really deep tracks, and we [say], “Well, we don’t know those songs, we haven’t played those songs in years,” or “We’ve never played those songs.” I thought it’d be really cool to set up a motif [where] we would do seven songs [by request].
So, the “Lucky 7” [stage set] has a ‘50s kind of Ratpack/Vegas motif. It’s cool. We have stuff on stage, we have films going on between songs. It’s a real entertainment experience and performance. And we’re doing songs that we either haven’t played in decades, or a couple that we haven’t played ever. We’re five shows in and people are really just loving it.
As you see the songs that people are voting for, are there surprises for you?
Some surprise me. Like a young person will want to hear a deep song off of “World Of Noise,” our first album, and I’m, like, “OK.” We’re playing a pretty deep song off of [that album] for the VIP [experience]. That’s been going over really great because people don’t expect that. I just think it’s fun to mix it up. Every night, I’m mixing up the songs and putting them in different places. It’s fun for the band, and I think it’s fun for the hardcore fans that come out. A lot of our fans are younger fans nowadays, like Gen Z.
They know all the songs on every record, they’re just super crazy about it. When we play the deep songs, they’re singing along. Seeing these kids singing along to our version of [Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’] “American Girl,” which we haven’t played in literally 25 years at least, if not longer. Yeah, since Craig [Montoya] and Greg [Eklund were in the band], so it’s been 25 years. It’s really fun.
Do you remember when you started to see more of the Gen Z audience come in?
It started right after COVID, I’d say. We’d see maybe 10 percent. These younger people. I figured that they were coming with their moms and dads and uncles and stuff. Sometimes that’s true. But then I started talking to these kids after the show and they’d say, “No, the ‘90s was the last era of real rock ‘n’ roll.” It’s kind of hard to argue [against] that, it really is. [Laughs.] They feel like it’s a classic era. That makes sense to me, and I say that onstage. All of us in the ‘90s that were making music grew up with classic rock, we grew up in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s. I think it comes full circle. It just creeps up incrementally every year. I’d say last year it was 25-30 percent, but we’ve been doing shows in L.A. [that made my wife say], “Baby, you’re not lying. Half the people there were Gen Z, and they know all the words! They’re buying all the merch.” It’s awesome all the way around.
Man, it’s just great to see people having fun, to have that younger energy in there. The old-school fans are having fun with it, too. They feel the energy as well.
I was in a record store about a year ago, looking for records by new bands, and there was a group of young people in there, probably 17 or 18, and they were buying up albums by Led Zeppelin and Joni Mitchell.
Dude, it just shows you the lasting power of classic music. I got into jazz in the ‘90s and 2000s and I’m listening to Brubeck and Mingus and Return To Forever, stuff that came out when I was kid and I had no interest in because it wasn’t aggressive, it wasn’t heavy, it wasn't punk rock. Guess what? It is! [Laughs.] It’s super heavy and it’s awesome, but it’s new to me, just like the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s music is brand new to these kids. It’s super exciting to watch. It’s like watching your own kid fall in love with music.
You’ve been playing shows and touring for a long time, and I know that one of the things musicians talk about often is the comedown after a show. Do you still have that, where you finish a concert and say, “OK, I just played to a couple thousand people. What do I do now?”
The need to decompress. But these days when I come off stage I’m generally trying to jump into an AA meeting on Zoom. That’s what I’m doing when I’m coming off stage. That helps me decompress as well. We all have different ways of doing it but, yeah, man, it’s a lot. We get off work, we’ve been doing physical and emotionally draining work, and it’s 10 or 11 at night, when most people have been getting off work at 4 or 5 and they can decompress at home with their family and have dinner. We have to decompress by ourselves because our families aren’t with us. We’re usually on a bus or in a hotel room. It’s a lot.
I don’t think that people should feel sorry for us, but it’s not “Ozzie and Harriet” for sure.
