Gin Blossoms w/ Big Head Todd and the Monsters live at AVA Amphitheater. Tickets go on-sale Saturday, August 4, at 10am. 

Gin Blossoms Bio:

In the late 80’s, Gin Blossoms started to grow a huge following as the #1 local music draw in Phoenix and certainly were the hometown heroes of their favorite hang, Tempe, Arizona.

Gin Blossoms indelible jangle-pop sound was evolving during radio’s diverse mix of hair bands and grunge music superstars. They qualified to perform at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin Texas in 1989. That same year College Music Journal dubbed them “The Best Unsigned Band In America” and added an invitation to perform on MTV’s New Music Awards in New York City. Their breakout record New Miserable Experience was where their rise to fame began. This album kept the band on the chart for almost 3 years with singles “Hey Jealousy,” “Allison Road,” Until I Fall Away,” “Mrs. Rita,” and “Found Out About You.” The crossover hits on New Miserable Experience played on 4 radio formats and, to date, have sold over 5 million records.

Those hits were followed up by “Til I Hear It From You” which rocketed to #1 and moved the Empire Records smash soundtrack to platinum status. The track also became Canada's longest-running #1 hit of 1995, its #1 tenure lasting six weeks. This song was co-written with the great Marshall Crenshaw and Billboard described it as “the closest thing to a perfect pop song to hit radio in recent memory.” Their next gem “Follow You Down” spent ten weeks in the top 10, and "As Long As It Matters" earned the band a Grammy nomination for "Best Performance by a Duo or Group” making their Congratulations I’m Sorry record another multi radio format favorite and multi-platinum success.

Having dominated radio and MTV playlists for most of the 90s, Gin Blossoms took a brief turn of the century hiatus, a provisional parting of the ways that singer Robin Wilson chalks up to “personal dissatisfaction and the mistaken impression that we could perform at that same level with another group.” The brief break allowed guitarist Jesse Valenzuela and Wilson to re-energize via solo recordings, new combos, and production credits for an array of local Arizona acts. However, Gin Blossoms’ idiosyncratic magic proved impossible to ignore for long, and on New Years Eve 2001 in their hometown of Tempe, the band reconvened and never looked back.

“There’s a certain civility among us now,” Valenzuela says. “None of us are as brusque as we once were. We’re too old to have shouting matches.”

The revivified band hit the road hard, earning a well-deserved reputation as one of the busiest touring acts in the world, playing close to 150 shows a year. Those chops were readily apparent on 2006’s Major Lodge Victory – Gin Blossoms’ long awaited fourth album and first new recording in almost a decade. Rave reviews followed, as did a top 10 Triple A smash in the album’s lead single, “Learning The Hard Way.” The album’s second single, “Long Time Gone,” quickly became another favorite among both fans and the critics and Major Lodge Victory made Billboards Top 10 Independent Albums. Next, Gin Blossoms recorded “No Chocolate Cake” and released the single “Miss Disarray” which is now one of the most requested songs in the band’s live set and the album reached #1 on Amazon’s sales chart.

These talented tunesmiths promise the inevitable arrival of new material and as they approach their third decade, Gin Blossoms remain a rare breed – rock ‘n’ roll lifers, destined to continue creating, crafting, and performing for audiences ever rapt by their glorious catalog of material. “We’re entertaining and we have chops,” says Wilson, “but it really comes down to the songs. The reason we’re still here is that we have good songs. When young musicians ask me for advice, what’s the best thing to do to further my career, I always say, ‘Write good songs.’ It always comes down to that.”

The band’s fusion of Pop, Melodic Rock, Folk and Country elements took the airwaves by siege, making the band an MTV playlist hostage for almost a decade and the group a natural 90’s mainstay. From their breakout album through today, Robin, Jesse, Bill and Scotty have sold over 10 million records and are one of the most in demand 90’s live artists who began at the end of the grunge era. In 2017 the band went back in the studio recording a new album. Fans will get a taste of the new album as it works its way into their live set.
 

Big Head Todd & The Monsters Bio:

A rock band with an easygoing jam band sensibility and a taste for the blues, Big Head Todd & the Monsters have proven to be one of the most enduring bands in their genre, still attracting fans to their live shows over 30 years after they first started playing out. BHT formed in Boulder, Colorado by Todd Park Mohr on guitar and vocals, Rob Squires on bass and vocals, and Brian Nevin on drums and vocals. The three had been friends in high school, and they formed the band in 1986 while they were attending the University of Colorado. The band quickly found an audience in their home state, and were soon touring regularly on the West Coast and through the Mountain States. In 1989, the group released their first album, Another Mayberry, which was issued through their own label, Big Records. A collection of live recordings, Midnight Radio, was BHT's second release in 1990.

As their following grew, major labels began to take notice, and the band struck a deal with the Warner Bros.-distributed Giant Records. The group's first album for Giant, 1993's Sister Sweetly, went platinum in the wake of the successful singles "Bittersweet," "Circle," and "Broken Hearted Savior," and BHT signed on as one of the headline acts for the 1993 edition of the H.O.R.D.E. touring festival. The band wasted no time releasing a follow-up, with Strategem appearing in 1994. After an extensive round of touring, they returned to the studio to record 1997's Beautiful World, which included guest appearances from John Lee Hooker and P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell. A live set recorded during one of their H.O.R.D.E. dates, Live Monsters appeared in 1998. By the time BHT released Riviera in 2002, Giant had gone out of business, and the group revived the Big Records label to distribute it.

The group expanded to a quartet with the addition of Jeremy Lawton on keyboards and pedal steel guitar; he joined the lineup in time to record the 2004 concert album Live at the Fillmore. The same year, BHT also issued a studio album, Crimes of Passion, released by Sanctuary Records. In 2005, the band released a digital single of the song "Blue Sky," which was written and recorded to honor the members of the Discovery Space Shuttle mission; it later became a campaign song for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. The album All the Love You Need followed in 2007, which found them returning to their Big label, and Rocksteady followed in 2010. BHT indulged their love for classic blues with their next album; credited to Big Head Blues Club -- 2011's 100 Years of Robert Johnson was a set of tunes honoring the centennial of his birth, and featured guest appearances from B.B. King, Charlie Musselwhite, Hubert Sumlin, Cedric Burnside, and others.

BHT returned to their traditional style for 2014's Black Beehive, and another concert set, Live at Red Rocks 2015, appeared the following year. Another Big Head Blues Club release appeared in 2016: Way Down Inside was a tribute to the songs of Willie Dixon, with the group joined by Billy Branch, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Mud Morganfield (the son of the legendary Muddy Waters). Big Head Todd & the Monsters returned with the self-produced New World Arisin' in November 2017.