Toadies Still Hopping After Label Shakeout

May 9, 2001 -- Dallas heavy rockers the Toadies have experienced more angst during the past few years than a platinum-selling group probably should. When they came off the road after nearly three years of touring in support of their 1994 breakthrough album, Rubberneck, the Toadies promptly parted ways with guitarist Darrel Herbert, who no longer wanted to tour. The group quickly tapped Clark Vogeler to fill the spot, but its attempts to record its next album were dogged by a number of factors — not the least of which was when its record company, Interscope, became part of a massive merger and consolidation that left the group wondering about its future.

"We were nervous," says bassist Lisa Umbarger, 36. "All of our friends around the Dallas community were being cut, and we knew it — like the Reverend Horton Heat and Tripping Daisy. We were like, 'Wow, they're cutting all the Dallas bands' — that's what it felt like. We figured it was a natural progression and we'd be gone soon, too. I don't think we felt assured until the new record came out."

But that new release, Hell Below/Stars Above, isn't Toadies' original follow-up to Rubberneck. The group had recorded another batch of songs, now dubbed The Feeler Sessions, for release in 1998; but as it waited out the corporate machinations, the band grew unhappy with the recordings — "We used ProTools, and we wanted it to sound a little bit more live, not quite so mechanical," explains Umbarger — and ultimately opted to start over.

"A lot has happened," she adds with a laugh, acknowledging that there was concern about whether the Toadies would continue to exist. "It was an emotional strain on all of us. The thing that kept us going is we're such great friends. We had a strong relationship to build on. The main thing is that after The Feeler Sessions, we just kept writing instead of giving up and going, 'This isn't going to happen.' We did the thing we did best; we just went in and kept working. And we did a lot of things [on Hell Below/Stars Above] that we've never done before, things we would've considered a risk before. But after all those things had happened to us, who cared? We were ready to gamble."