Info Headline
The Cranberries with Griffin House
Where: Rams Head Live, 20 Market Place, Baltimore
When: 8 p.m. Thursday
Details: $40; ramsheadlive
Seven years is just the lifeline The Cranberries needed. After years of commercial and critical success, the members of the Irish Rock Band that hit it big with the 1993 major label debut “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?” just couldn’t keep the creativity going after 2003.
“We definitely needed the break,” said co-founder Noel Hogan. “When we initially took the break in 2003, it was always ‘let’s see what happens’ kind of thing.”
What happened was the members went off to solo careers singing and producing until earlier this year when frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan invited the other members to join her and play when she celebrated becoming an Honorary Patron of University Philosophical Society at Trinity College, Dublin.
“It just felt really good,” said Hogan. “It just comes back to you and we talked about it on and off and then [a reunion] was on and off and on and off. Then all four of us committed to it.”
Suffice to say the group is now on a tour — which will kick off in Baltimore — behind O’Riordan’s second solo album “No Baggage,” but will also play the band’s classic as well as new songs.
“I guess we are surprised as anyone,” said Hogan. “When we took the break the buzz, the spark was out of it. Now it’s back again and everyone wants it.”
That doesn’t mean the band members will abandon their individual pursuits though. Just as examples, O’Riordan is presumably continuing her solo work and Hogan will continue producing around time recording and playing with The Cranberries. That, said Hogan, is the formula for more success with The Cranberries.
“I think [the solo projects] have been a massive help to all of us. That was partyly the problem in 2003 when we went into the next [Cranberries] album [which was never completed],” Hogan said. “There was no gap where anybody could go off and be adventuresome. We all wanted to do different things and realized maybe The Cranberries wasn’t the place to do them.”
Not that anything went horribly wrong with the band, he said. The band members just needed to flex their individual creativity before they could come back together as a whole.
“I went to a Radiohead [concert] a few years ago and watched the band on stage and thought ‘God, I’d love to do that again,'” said Hogan. “We all needed to feel that again and want to do it … Now we do.”
