Last summer, after a show in Los Angeles, Everclear’s Art Alexakis asked Marcy Playground’s John Wozniak if he’d be interested in joining a tour featuring a handful of bands that made names for themselves in the ’90s.
Wozniak thought it was a great idea.
“I was totally all about it,” Wozniak said. “I was like ‘Yeah, it sounds like fun. Any time you want to do this, I’m in.’ ”
The Summerland Tour, which features Everclear, Sugar Ray, Gin Blossoms, Lit and Marcy Playground, heads to Wolf Trap on Wednesday.
| Onstage |
| Summerland Tour |
| Where: Wolf Trap’s Filene Center, 1645 Trap Road, Vienna |
| When: 7 p.m. Wednesday |
| Info: Featuring Everclear, Sugar Ray, Gin Blossoms, Lit and Marcy Playground; $25, $42 in-house; wolftrap.org |
“He just wanted to put together a tour of bands that he played with in the past, bands from the ’90s, in a sort of ’90s rock thing,” Wozniak laughed.
For concertgoers, the Summerland Tour is a clear nostalgia trip. Each band had a handful of popular songs, or at least songs that might sound vaguely familiar to people of a certain age. Marcy Playground arguably boasts the biggest single hit of the five bands playing, with “Sex And Candy” spending 15 weeks at the top of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. (Though the likes of Everclear’s “Santa Monica,” Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy,” Sugar Ray’s “Fly” and Gin Blossoms’ “Hey Jealousy” can claim plenty of airplay bragging rights).
But for Wozniak, the Summerland shows aren’t so much a walk down memory lane as they are another tour. Marcy Playground has kept active with six full-length albums and frequent club shows.
“For us, it’s just another tour in the sense that we’re out there and we’re doing our thing,” Wozniak said, adding that the venues on this tour are larger than what the band typically plays, and the crowd is more varied. “It’s not our crowd. Our crowd’s there, but they’re a smaller portion of the whole.”
Marcy Playground recently released a new collection of songs titled “Lunch, Recess & Detention.” The album includes B-sides, previously unreleased songs, covers, alternate takes and new stuff. Highlights from the 19 tracks include the new island-sounding single “Mr. Fisher,” a cover of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and the song “Shapeshifter,” which got left off of the band’s second album of the same name.
“It is a little odd that we cut the title track,” Wozniak said. “People have been asking for it for a long time, so it was nice to finally get it on a record.”
After the Summerland Tour wraps up, Wozniak looks to keep busy. He produces other acts and has an idea for a Marcy Playground live album. The band might play some shows, and he plans to write some music for an upcoming Marcy Playground release.
In the mean time, Wozniak is just enjoying the current tour.
“It’s been going great,” Wozniak said. “It’s been cool to play with some of these bands again.”
