BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Alternative rock band Lit realizes that its 1999 song “My Own Worst Enemy” was its crowning moment – topping the Modern Rock chart for 11 straight weeks and winning Modern Rock Track of the Year at the Billboard Music Awards that year.
- Alternative rock band Lit will perform at 7 p.m. on Oct. 16 in Musikfest Cafe at SteelStacks, Bethlehem
- The tour is in support of the group's new album, "Tastes Like Gold," a return to its 1990s alt-rock sound
- Since its biggest hit, "My Own Worst Enemy" in 1999, the band has released five albums, including a country music disc, "These Are the Days," in 2017
And the song has continued to find listeners since then: Just two years ago, more than 20 years after it charted, the song reached double-platinum status.
But unlike most 1990s and 2000s alternative bands, Lit has chosen to not simply rest on its achievements. Instead, it has continually released new music that even has swung wildly in new directions.
Its 2017 disc “These Are the Days,” for example, took a decidedly different dip into country music. And its new album, “Tastes Like Gold,” released in June, steps back to recapture the alternative vibe of its heyday.
Lit likely will cover the span of its output Sunday when the band plays Musikfest Cafe at SteelStacks with 2000s chart-topping rockers Hinder and Alien Ant Farm, as well as Kristopher Roe, frontman for early 2000s punk-rockers The Ataris.
“We hit the stage with a kind of, ‘Here’s another offering, another chapter of Lit,’” bassist and backing vocalist Kevin Baldes said in a recent telephone interview before the tour started.
“We have to play some of our oldies, you know, a bit, and I hate to call them ‘oldies’ – songs that were released, you know, years ago. We kind of have to play those – and luckily we have those to play.
“But we do play new stuff, and we play it with such energy that, hopefully, people see that energy and gravitate toward it and then invest in the music – they go on Spotify, or Apple Music, or wherever they get their music, and hopefully they’ll give it a listen and dive into it a little bit more.
“ ‘Cause I feel like we have a lot to offer, still.”
“‘Cause I feel like we have a lot to offer, still.”Kevin Baldes, bassist and backing vocalist of Lit
A blessing of a song
Lit released its debut album, “Tripping the Light Fantastic,” in 1997, but it wasn’t until 1999’s “A Place in the Sun,” that the band had chart success, fueled by the single “My Own Worst Enemy,” a song that satirizes alcohol overindulgence.
“That song is primarily about overdoing it, and the next day you’re kind of rubbing your head and going, ‘What in the hell did I do? Oh my God,’” Baldes said.
“I think it has a universal message that I think a lot of people gravitate toward. I mean, it’s been years since that song came out, and ever since that song came out, people always, to this day, come to us [and say] ‘That’s my song. You guys wrote that about me!’
“We hear that all the time, so after a while hearing that, you kind of get the sense that you kind of nailed it on the head.
“And unfortunately, or fortunately, that still happens in my band,” Baldes said with a laugh. “So we still live that song quite often, and we still, every single show, have people coming up to us [saying], ‘You wrote that song about me.’”
Baldes said Lit – which also includes lead singer A. Jay Popoff, guitarist Jeremy Popoff and drummer Taylor Carroll – didn’t write “My Own Worst Enemy” looking to have a hit.
“It was just another song in the batch of songs that we were writing at the time and it was written from the heart, and we wrote about stuff that we knew,” he said. “It’s funny – when Lit broke with that song, it definitely wasn’t the flavor of the year and it was the No. 1 song in that category.
“So it was a blessing, man. We were super blessed to have that song. And that song, it’s opened many doors and it took us around the world multiple times.”
Different styles
But the fact is, Lit had two other hits from “A Place in the Sun” – “Zip-Lock,” which hit No. 11 on the Alternative chart later in 1999, and “Miserable,” which hit No. 3 on that chart in 2000. That helped propel the album to platinum sales.
That may explain why Lit has found it easy to move forward with its music rather than be trapped by past success, as other bands of the era have. It has since released five albums of new music since, with 2001’s “Atomic” being the most successful, charting almost as high as “A Place in the Sun.”
In 2017, it released “These Are the Days,” a musical departure that saw the band blending alternative rock with country rock.
Baldes said it came about because Jeremy Popoff ventured to Nashville because the band’s manager lived there, “And she was, like, ‘Why don’t you come out here and spread your wings and just meet some people and try your hand at writing with these guys out here?’”
In Nashville, Baldes said, Popoff “built relationships and he built a catalog of songs where they weren’t getting cut. And so some of those songs ended up on our plate, and we went into the studio and we recorded them.
“And next thing you know, we had a handful of songs that were recorded and kind of finished. And we were, like, ‘Well maybe the next album is this.’ You know, it’s a democracy with our band, [and] A. Jay and Jeremy wanted to do it, and I didn’t argue.
“It had some great songs on it – I mean, people swear it’s like the greatest album ever. I’m not a huge fan of Lit going country, but I will admit there’s some great stuff on that album.
“And we did it and it was fun, and it was just another cool, different type of chapter in the Book of Lit, you know?” he said with a laugh.
Back to alt-rock
But Baldes said that with “These Are the Days,” “I think across the board, Lit fans were, like, ‘What are you guys doing?’ So I think we had to get back to what people were used to.”
The result is “Tastes Like Gold,” a return the band’s original alternative rock approach.
“The funny thing is, most of Lit’s albums have kind of – most of them are rock albums, first and foremost – but then they kind of waver all over the place of what type of rock that is,” Baldes said. “So I think ‘Tastes Like Gold’ falls right in line with the rest of the stuff that we’ve put out.”
Baldes is so happy with the new disc, he said “oddly enough, for the first time ever, with all the albums we’ve put out, I’m the guy in the band really trying to push a lot of the new songs to be in the [live] set.
“And a lot of people don’t want to hear that, that are fans of maybe the old music that we’ve released. ‘I don’t want to hear new songs; I want to hear stuff off of the [2004] self-titled album or [1999’s platinum] ‘A Place in the Sun.’”
“And we do something from every album, but I really love this new album, and I would really argue to say it’s right up there with ‘A Place in the Sun.’”
Memories of SteelStacks
Lit’s show at Musikfest Cafe represents a return to Bethlehem’s SteelStacks campus. The group played before more than 1,000 people at the Levitt Pavilion SteelStacks as part of The Summerland Tour with Sugar Ray, Everclear and Sponge in July 2016.
For that show, Lit’s set was probably the night’s most memorable.
But it’s for another reason that Baldes says he remembers playing in Bethlehem.
“Dude! A. Jay gave Art [Alexakis] from Everclear a haircut backstage, and I took pictures of it!” Baldes said.
“Yeah, I got weird memories. And once you said it was the steel mill, I was, like, ‘Dude, I remember that place. That place was awesome, so I walked around taking pictures of steel and bulbs and stuff. Yeah, it was super cool, man. That was a nice venue.”
LIT, with Hoobastank, Alien Ant Farm and Kris Roe of The Ataris, 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16, Musikfest Cafe at SteelStacks, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem. Tickets: $35 general admission standing, $55 balcony seating, www.steelstacks.org, 610-332-1300.
