Ursa Major is the bear coming out of hibernation, hungry for spring, ready to feed and thrive.
Since 1997, San Francisco’s Third Eye Blind have recorded three best-selling albums and assembled one career retrospective. 3EB will release ’Ursa Major’, their first studio collection in five years, in autumn 2009.
Led by Stephan Jenkins, 3EB won wide success during a tumultuous group of years when the major-label recording industry was finally losing its grip on an enterprise that for decades it had dominated with steely efficiency. Nothing could have made 3EB happier! 3EB, however, have experienced no comparable loss. Instead, they have gained artistic clarification -- and, surprisingly, a fan base larger than ever.
Participation in the older, untouchable realm of nervous star-making and could color a band’s identity. In the case of 3EB, it often blurred the perception of their brilliant musical creations. In recent years, those creations have recast the band among a current generation of fans.
3EB now write, tour, record, and communicate in a fluid new world where their music continues naturally to evolve. Their exchange with their audience is unfiltered.
STEPHAN JENKINS lives in San Francisco and has a dog named The Boo. He enjoys composting, moving walkways, and has an overwhelming and tragic crush on Air America host Rachel Maddow.
BRAD HARGREAVES lives in the Hollywood Hills, enjoys learning new things, and has a powerful Dachshund named Shelby. They are both secretly slipping off the world.
TONY FREDANELLI has moved recently from Las Vegas to a cliff in San Diego, where he injures himself repeatedly learning to surf and rollerblade, like everyone else in San Diego. He is addicted to fruit juice, and believes most every conspiracy theory has gotta have a little something to it.
MR. JENKINS: What’s happened to us, since we released ’Out of the Vein’, our last major-label album, in 2003, is that we took some time. I have no idea what happened to the time, except that I produced some other albums, and I built a studio of my own. And then Brad played with his other band, Year Long Disaster. And our guitarist Tony Fredianelli moved from Las Vegas to San Diego and got set up there, and had a lot of accidents surfing and rollerblading.
MR. HARGREAVES: Year Long Disaster, that’s a different band, no question. Third Eye Blind has never been in a van; Year Long Disaster may never graduate to a bus. But with Third Eye Blind, we emerged when the biz was overtaken by shareholders. We knew it and we wrote about it. But that didn’t mean we loved it. So I think we’re more comfortable now, in the current state of anarchy.
MR. JENKINS: We worked on our fourth album, and we talked about doing our fourth album. But I think there was a kind of confidence missing. As a songwriter, I was in this phase where, you know, there are times that you need to listen and times you need to speak. I needed to listen, and I wasn’t doing a very good job of that. The world was not making any sense to me. We were being told to be afraid to behave. I walked around feeling dumbfounded. So I wasn’t making it to the place where I could speak. But during this time -- unbeknownst to us -- fans out there were trading songs and discovering music on the Internet. Our music had all this activity.
MR. HUNTER: When I interviewed them in 2006, Third Eye Blind were starting to notice their popularity among 15- to 22-year-olds. They had asked me to write a liner note for ’Third Eye Blind: A Collection’. I got the call because Stephan Jenkins had liked a piece I had written for ’The Village Voice’ music section about their awesome single "Never Let You Go." Possibly one thing I shared then with their new fans now is that in the piece I ignore everything except the song and how I hear Third Eye Blind make it sound on the track. Any rockstar image was no concern of mine. Not to slight the tune’s lyrics, with their striking zigzagging verb tenses, but for me, Third Eye Blind could have been a string quartet playing Bach, really hot.
MR. JENKINS: I think music is an identity formulation device. I think our fans embrace music the same way I did, kind of using it to figure out who they are. Who I am has always started with a song. What happened is that Third Eye Blind became a playlist. Not the albums, and not as the result of a major-label marketing department. We became a playist, this completely democratic thing where there are no lead singles, no payola. It’s just songs. Fans would get the songs they like, and trade them with each other. And then, when we did some shows -- as in San Diego in 2007, when 11,000 people came -- we would encounter them. In San Diego, we had to get a bigger venue. It turned out to be the biggest show we’d ever played there.
TRAVIS (from Facebook.com post, 6/21/08): I have never been able to see you guys live and that is on my top 10 list of things to do before I die! You guys have been my favorite band since I was 14…now 22! The music never ceases to amaze me! Please! Please! Please! I would give anything for some feedback or a show here!
MS. PELOSI: I hate to sound like an old lady at 36, but I was blown away by these young people at the show I attended in New York. What totally struck me was, first of all, the show was sold out, which was on a Tuesday night, just a weeknight. The whole stadium -- everyone -- was mouthing along to the song lyrics. Times Square on a Tuesday night and the entire room is mouthing along every word to every song. I’m just standing there. I felt like I was visiting another country. I’m sure if you went to see U2 it would be the same thing. But it seems like usually at a concert there are a mix of people there for all kinds of different reasons. And this seemed like here everybody was there to sing along to Stephan’s songs. They were there because they were so, so devoted.
MR. HARGREAVES: People now encounter these songs from each other, not from major-label labeling, or the association made to a kind of all-American rock movement -- which we had nothing to do with. We came up moved by the strange combination of British rock and Bay Area hip-hop.
MS. PELOSI: The people at this show, they were not, like, women my age. I saw parents dropping people off. There were a lot of young boys mouthing the words. And usually, when you see young boys at concerts, it’s because their girlfriends drag them there; they’re just doing what she wants. In this case, they were in it for themselves. How do these young boys know the words to these songs? Teenage boys, that’s a tough bunch.
MR. HUNTER: I once was a thirteen-year-old Yes fan certain their goofy image didn’t spoil their music. So these new Third Eye Blind believers operating chiefly on songs seem sort of heroic to me. But by the late-’90s in the U.S. music business, it would have been foolish to deny that people’s music choices often represent, as Stephan Jenkins puts it, "an identity formulation device." I mean, who knows? The music, to me, seems of paramount importance. Yet people have been accessorizing their identities with music for forever.
MR. JENKINS: Our fans now know our songs like "Tattoo of the Sun" and "Horror Show;" they know songs like "Slow Motion," which is the biggest song of the night. "How’s It Going to Be" is not the biggest song of the night. "Slow Motion" is not on an album: It wasn’t allowed. Perfect story: Our former label begged us not to put that song on an album because they didn’t feel like it fit "our image," as we were described, of "fresh-faced Beatles."
MS. PELOSI: At the concert, Stephan would say "We have a new song," and the whole room would go, "AHHHHWWWW…" as if no greater offering existed.
BILL (from Facebook.com post, 6/17/08): I saw them about a month ago and Stephan played a new song acoustic. There was a lyric in there about a blowjob not being enough. Does anyone know which song that was and where I can find a decent version of it?
MR. JENKINS: After I was able to listen, I did become able to speak again. What I realized is that I had looked for, wanted, aspired to some kind of public life, even some Hollywood, all that kind of thing. But the respectable upward social trajectory -- how everybody wants a dream home, meaning their next home, not the one they’re in now -- did not actually satisfy me. In fact, it left me feeling kind of empty. Where I realized that I like to be is in a house with a bunch of friends and a lot of wine and a whole bunch of conversation, and the kind of gorgeous chaos that comes from that, that’s so rich and fertile. The idea of making something that’s small and precious and that might have a chance to travel outward is appealing to me. To say: I make this because I feel provoked and am trying to express what’s provoking me, or create that provocation in a song, that is the centerpiece, that’s the home of what I think I’ve gotten in touch with again. The reason is because of the fans. I think that there is renewed energy that we are invigorated by with that exchange that we see with our community.
TRAVIS (from Facebook.com post, 6/17/08): I hope to play music just as good as you guys someday! But now days everyone wants to just scream in their music, your style has always been original, fun, and the lyrics are always provocative! Peace!
MR. HARGREAVES: We make music because it’s how we make the world make sense to ourselves; I make music because I have to make music. We’re thrilled that it travels to other people who want to share in it. These three guys are in this band for that reason. Third Eye Blind isn’t anybody’s hobby. It’s something we have to do.
MR. HUNTER: I don’t think Stephen Jenkins would claim that he and his bands were victims of ’90s major-labels -- "I wanted to hang out with Tom Ford!" he told me recently. No multi-platinum guns were aimed at anybody’s head. I just think there’s a bunch of new fans for whom rock-star flash matters but is hardly decisive. So for 3EB right now, image and motive and music are all in much finer alignment. When they say they’ve been reinvigorated, they’re not kidding: When Jenkns talks about his new songs right now, he doesn’t sound like the leader of a big ’90s band updating his music; he sounds much more like some unsigned twentysomething with last night’s new demo in his jacket pocket. He was, after all, a songwriter who originally went to work after being inspired by Camper van Beethoven. And theirs was not exactly a let’s-tear-up-the-charts mentality. That Third Eye Blind’s music did, in fact, happen hugely shows only that then -- as now, if in a different manner --- Third Eye Blind can convey their more challenging ideas in ways that resonate with people. That’s a bad thing?
MR. HARGREAVES: I think in the past we felt what we did, but had no idea what we were doing. I think we didn’t realize that we were creating instead of emulating something. I don’t know who our antecedents were. Now we don’t need them, because what we make is just Third Eye Blind music.
MR. JENKINS: In the past, I had trouble feeling authentic. You realize that you’re managing all this fancy crap -- the right parties, the right friends, all that kind of stuff. It feels expensive and lonely instead of being in the mix of things. But then I kind of got to feel that luxury was repellant, that that’s not it at all. Bizarre and consumerist -- that’s how music began to feel, that’s how it felt with Pro Tools, and the ability to instantly recall mixes to be tweaked just so. I realize now that I want things to be hand-made and precious and intentional. So we built this studio -- you should see it --- where technology is not for convenience, but for the craft, for the making of something. One of the things that we want to do with ’Ursa Major’ is to let fans kind of watch us make it. We’re going to record and share the process of making the album. ’Ursa Major’ is the constellation of the bear, which is astronomy, and that is about trying to understand things as they are -- seeking out, wanting to know your universe. It’s also astrology, which is saying we can’t understand these things and need narrative and stories to make sense and have value to put into our lives. And Ursa Major is the bear waking up, hungry for spring and ready to feed and thrive.
MS. PELOSI: All these kids had their hands in the air, and they were mouthing along every word of Stephan’s songs! What I do with my life now is I go to political events and watch politicians give speeches and try to stay awake. You go to something like this and you see people so enthusiastic and excited and inspired. It’s just a strange contrast, because it’s being done with rock and roll songs.
MR. HUNTER: In the Third Eye Blind story, the most vital question always is this: Does the quality of the band’s music support popularity? The answer is: absolutely.
MR. JENKINS: ’Ursa Major’ is also about looking up in the sky. To me, that’s like bonfires. I live on the ocean and I have this big fire pit, and I have friends out there. And we’ll sit out there and play guitar, and look up at the sky. My point about using technology is that we sort of get to involve people in that process, like sitting around and looking at the sky, which is like a bonfire. ’Ursa Major’ is also the bear, which to me represents all these other more social issues. The bear is fierce and it is fragile. To me, it’s like representative of when people have told me not to involve your politics in what you do. This conflicts with my recent appearances in support of Senator Obama. Now I’m like, fuck that. I do have a set of values. I do have a set of beliefs.
MR. HARGREAVES: Stephan is writing in a more outwardly political ways these days. But then, the fact is that we are all living in a different world.
END
res ipsa loquitur
translation: the thing itself speaks
. . . Mephistopheles
Third Eye Blind is my crutch, my drug, my lover. It is my past, my present, my future. It is a marker to the moments in my life.
. . . Red Balloons & Ennui
Third Eye Blind is an ever burning candle in a room of marvelous darkness.
. . . bfloMatt
As Michelle Wells says, "Some people get married and have babies, some people do drugs, I have Third Eye Blind."
Whether you’re swinging your fists and on your knees pleading, Third Eye Blind is the sound behind you and the drive inside.
. . . Mike
Third Eye Blind fills the void that others don't realize they have.
. . . .Brad
To me, third eye blind is a collective pulse. It's the pulse of the outsiders, the loners, the lost, the found...the people who want more.
. . . Lunarsa
Third Eye Blind is living for and in the beauty of moments, wonderful or horrible, significant or not.
. . . Cassiopeia07
Meaningful melodies and dark secrets, both as numerous as the stars.
. . . Jamskool
Third Eye Blind tells our sense of the dark side of the pursuit of happiness
. . . Splain
Dirty Little Ditties. A Place where Honesty and Music Collide.
. . . Metaldave
Third Eye Blind is our movement.
. . . jessdonof
Soul cracking humanity and excruciatingly good timing.
. . . Voto
3EB is my religion, It is my relief. It is my little red escape car, whisking me far away from here.
. . . JustAnOldFriend
Third Eye Blind is a sanctuary. A place I go to when I need peace. It always brings a smile to my face and memories to my mind. It helps me dream, but brings me back to reality.
. . . gatheringdust
Third Eye Blind is the slut in church.
. . . Doug
Third Eye Blind. It's an orgasm that spasms in the soul. It's a catharsis of emotion that leaves you weak and resonating, in tune with the world.
. . . shenney
Third Eye Blind is a history of deep scars, what makes us beautiful, what makes us ugly, and what makes us finally feel we are the same.
. . . Alya
Third Eye Blind was the catalyst for my sexual awakening, the kick in the ass I needed to realize it was ok to speak my mind, and the music that taught me there is beauty in both joy and pain and that you need both to get by.
. . . JBax33
The song for those who fear to sing.
. . . Snaredmoose
Third Eye Blind says what I want to say, just much more eloquently.
. . . Jecker7
To say "their music helped me" sounds credulous to anyone on the outside. Quite honestly, a twinge of my own self says "You sound like a pathetic groupie." And maybe that is the case. But play me the intro to "Wounded" and let me tell you where that rhythm and those lyrics found this girl who once held a knife to her own wrists, crying in a bathroom. Play me "Motorcycle Drive-by" and I'll show you what it feels like to scream the lyrics "So alone alone and I and I, I've never been so ALIVE!" at the top of your lungs with your windows down, hair whipping everywhere, driving away from an abusive, destructive, devastatingly hurtful relationship. Let me hear the notes to "God of Wine" and you will hear what it feels like to heal from oneself. "I know, I know I can't keep it all together. There's Someone who understands you more than I do..." These aren't just songs. These are people. These are hearts. These are ideas and hopes, trust and healing broken hearts standing behind and believing in more than notes on a page. This is inspiration. This is life. This is being a part of something bigger than ourselves. This is what it is to swell inside and to overflow in ways that will go on past the days we claim as our own. This is music."
. . . Bethany Hamm
