Blues Traveler’s John Popper has been through it all — from crashing motorcycles to throwing bottles of piss at his own crew to cranking out hit after hit with a harmonica strapped around his neck. But here he is, 30 years deep into a career that’s had its share of ups, downs, and every possible weird turn. With the band’s latest album Hurry Up and Hang Around, Popper’s not just reflecting on three decades of road-weary storytelling — he’s throwing down some of the best work they’ve done in 15 years.
“We were all ready for this thing to suck,” Popper says with a laugh. “But it turns out we had some stuff.”
When Blues Traveler dropped Hurry Up and Hang Around in 2018, it marked 30 years since the band first dragged their jam-rock sound out of New Jersey basements and onto national stages. The album is tight and fresh, the kind of record you make when you’re not so much desperate to prove yourself but just to see if you still have it in you. Turns out, they did. A good chunk of the credit goes to producer Matt Rollings, who Popper calls the guy who whipped them into shape. “He really brought out stuff in us that we didn’t know we had. I gotta give him a lot of credit for the record,” Popper admits.
This time around, it was about finding the magic they’d lost somewhere in the cookie-cutter process that had infected the band for years. “We had this system, and it started feeling like a machine,” he explains. “From North Hollywood Shootout to Blow Up the Moon, it was like we were stuck in a rut, cranking out songs without a spark. But this time, everything felt urgent and real.”
Urgency isn’t new to Blues Traveler — they just haven’t always had it in the way they needed. Back in the early ‘90s, they were already road warriors by the time Save His Soul came out in 1993. The album, packed with dense, heavy tracks like “Defense & Desire” and “Maybe I’ll Follow You,” dropped right as Popper was navigating life from a wheelchair. A brutal motorcycle accident had him laid up for two years, a time marked by dark turns, self-doubt, and one particularly memorable night when he hurled a bottle of urine at his own monitor engineer. “It was just a brutal existence. I was so beaten down. I didn’t know how to keep going, but I had to,” he says. “And then Four happened.”
Four catapulted Blues Traveler from the fringes into mainstream ubiquity, thanks to the bulletproof combo of “Run-Around” and “Hook.” For all the pain and struggle that preceded it, success came like a wave. “The day that album went gold, our first album went gold at the same time. That’s how long we’d been grinding. It was just insane,” Popper recalls.
But it hasn’t all been triumphant comebacks and gold records. In the years since, Popper has faced a messy divorce and the challenges of fatherhood, forcing him to reframe his priorities. “It’s weird realizing you’re not just supporting yourself anymore. There’s nobility in it, but it’s also humbling. I went from being a guy just trying to survive on the road to actually having to think about school tuition. It’s real life, man.”
Even now, with the new album out and the tour wheels spinning, Popper’s determined to keep pushing the band forward. “I’d rather be on stage than anywhere else,” he says. “There’s just something about surviving all this shit and still being here to play these songs. I didn’t expect it to be this way, but it is, and I’ll take it.”
Blues Traveler might have started out as scrappy New Jersey kids with more ambition than sense, but three decades on, they’re a rare breed: survivors with stories to tell and music that still means something. Popper’s not looking to wrap things up anytime soon. After all, there’s always another road to travel.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below!
