15 April 30 - MAy 6, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents O n a recent, sunny March after- noon in Fort Worth’s Near Southside neighborhood, it wasn’t tough to recall March 2020 when COVID-19 basically stopped the world. Bright and temperate outside, there weren’t many cars driving by or people walking near The Loop Artist Re- hearsal Complex, just like six years ago when shelter-in-place, work-from-home and curbside pickup all became parts of ev- eryday vocabulary forever. But inside The Loop, there were a couple of telling signs that the world kept spinning and society regrouped. For starters, a band was kicking out some wall-rattling jams, au- dible from the parking lot. Also, The Loop is now bigger than it was at the start of 2020. “There used to be an exterior wall over here, and we busted it down and started construction right around this time in 2020,” The Loop’s owner, Toadies lead singer and songwriter Vaden Todd Lewis, says in one of space’s many rehearsal rooms. “That was right when the shit hit the fan, and I thought, ‘Well, there goes all that money,’ but our construction workers didn’t have anywhere else to go, and they got the job done super quick. … I stayed away from the job but would drive up and keep tabs some- times and go up and down Magnolia Avenue. It had always had people walking dogs or just other people driving around, but it was like a ghost town instead, and it was really creepy.” Like many longtime touring musicians, Lewis and his band of more than 30 years had to slow down and stay in one place dur- ing the pandemic. That stasis eventually led to more than just a new era for the rehearsal space he runs with his wife, Rachel. In the months following the worst of the lock- down, he took an unprecedented step in dealing with his mental health, resulting in a diagnosis that changed everything. At that point, Lewis began making sense of song snippets he had been sketching out since those unstable days of spring 2020. The resulting work makes up the Toadies’ searing, urgent eighth studio album, The Charmer, a record that could not have ex- isted anytime before in the band’s or Lewis’ life. GRUNGE-ERA GOLD Of the many formidable bands to break out of North Texas during the mid-to-late 1990s, the Toadies, along with metal titans Pantera, arguably made the biggest splash. Other groups, including Tripping Daisy, Old 97’s, Deep Blue Something and Reverend Horton Heat, among others, were also making waves nationally after starting in the Dallas area. All those bands and more, along with Lewis, drummer Mark Reznicek and the guitarist and bassist at the time, Derek Herbert and Lisa Umbarger, represented what many still call the golden age of the Dallas-Fort Worth rock scene. The Toadies’ current lead guitar- ist, Clark Vogeler, joined in 1996, with bassist Doni Blair joining the group in 2008. After signing to Interscope Records in 1993, the band found “Possum Kingdom” on a near-constant loop on MTV and alterna- tive rock radio for an extended period before 1995 ended. The album that song is on, Rub- berneck, was certified gold for selling more than 500,000 copies that year, and certified platinum for exceeding 1 million in sales in 1996. Over that three-year span, Vaden says the band played “every show” they could. Though there were some major homecom- ing shows and enthusiastic out-of-state crowds during that time, Lewis says he never had any sort of epiphany or so-called “ah-ha moment” when he stopped to soak in everything that had transpired. Thanks in large part to the feelings of inadequacy that had long enveloped him, his view on Rub- berneck’s success as it was happening wasn’t the stuff of your average rock star fantasy. “I remember thinking it was more of an ‘ah-ha, we tricked them [the record label] into giving us money,” Lewis says. “I had such weird, low self-esteem back then, and I just thought ‘I can’t believe they’re letting this half-ass Pixies knockoff happen.’ So se- riously, when we got the record deal, I thought, ‘You fucking idiots.’ I really didn’t take it that seriously, which didn’t exactly help us get a good contract.” Lewis figured there’d be a record and a tour where he got to see the country, and that he would return to his role as a Fort Worth record store manager when that was done. Although that initial major-label hype phase lasted years, the massive breakout success of “Possum Kingdom” led some to think Lewis and company had come out of nowhere. “It was weird in those days, because we toured for two years straight, like 200-plus days each year, which was insane,” he says. “After around a year-and-a-half of that, we were sleep deprived, our livers were pickled, and I started having people sticking a micro- phone in my face asking me what it felt like to be an ‘overnight success,’ and I was just like, ‘Fuck you, buddy.’” Lewis swears he thought the Toadies’ glory days would be short-lived, and by the time 1998 rolled around, it started to look like that would be true. Interscope, which that same year re- leased a Tupac Shakur greatest hits album and Deep Blue Something’s Byzantium, the follow-up to their gold-certified album fea- turing “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” rejected the Toadies’ Rubberneck follow-up, Feeler. It took three more years before the official fol- low-up album, Hell Below/Stars Above, was released, and when it was, the label did not promote the record, reportedly prompting Umbarger to quit the band, which led to Lewis dissolving the group in 2001. Ask now if Lewis intended for that 2001 decision to be the end of the Toadies forever, and he’s quick to say yes. But five years later, the bandleader wasn’t so sure anymore. In the time away from the Toadies, he had a highly successful run with a new group, the Burden Brothers, a more collaborative project with an all-star list of local musicians, but he found that Mike Brooks ▼ Music Just a Normal Toadie With long-needed help, frontman Vaden Todd Lewis rocks his way out of his own darkness on his beloved band’s stellar new album. BY KELLY DEARMORE The Toadies, from left: Clark Vogeler ( guitar), Doni Blair (bass guitar), Mark Reznicek (drums), Vaden Todd Lewis (guitar and vocals). >> p16
