The Orange County Register (April 12th 2015)
No Doubt plans a family affair in the desert
The carefree days of piling into a van and heading to Las Vegas for a quick-and-all-out-wild weekend gig are long gone for the members of rock band No Doubt, bassist Tony Kanal, who is now 44, admitted during our interview. He recalled the first time the group from Anaheim played in Sin City, serving as an opening act in the late ’80s at the Shark Club, and Kanal hadn’t yet turned 21.
“I had to wait outside until it was our set time, then go in, play and get back outside,” he said with a long sigh. “We’ve had those experiences as a band and you fast forward to just the crazy rock ’n’ roll nights, where you’d try to outlast each other and see who could drink the most. Fast forward to now and it really is amazing and nice how family-friendly Vegas has become.”
Kanal and his bandmates – vocalist Gwen Stefani, guitarist Tom Dumont and drummer Adrian Young – will be returning to Vegas to headline the first North American installment of the legendary Brazilian-based Rock in Rio festival at the City of Rock at the MGM Resorts Festival Grounds on May 8. They’re also making the event a family affair, with all of their offspring in tow. Kanal had to count the number of children, stopping at a dozen who now crowd the sides of the stage at No Doubt shows, including those of touring members Stephen Bradley and Gabrial McNair.
“From our perspective,” Kanal said, “to look off and to see them watching, it’s pretty great. It’s an awesome feeling to have gone through all of the experiences we have together as a band and to now see our own kids there watching us.”
No Doubt formed in Orange County in the mid-’80s, releasing two modest-selling studio albums before the third, 1995’s “Tragic Kingdom,” sold 10 million copies in the U.S. and reached the top of the charts. The band put out two more albums over the next six years, played in arenas throughout the U.S. a few times over and won a couple of Grammy Awards.
However, No Doubt was put on hold while Stefani embarked on a solo career, which spawned two albums, “Love. Angel. Music. Baby” in 2004 and “The Sweet Escape” in 2006. She also married Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale and the couple now have three children. Kanal, Young and Dumont kept busy as well, playing in other projects, producing records and lending their talents to other musicians’ albums in the studio.
The band got back together in 2009 for a U.S. summer tour and in 2012 released its first record in more than a decade, “Push and Shove.” The album was preceded by a series of sold-out shows, dubbed the Seven Night Stand, that November and December at Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles.
No Doubt recently stepped up and replaced U2 as the headlining act during one of the nights of KROQ’s Annual Almost Acoustic Christmas at the Forum in December, after U2 vocalist Bono sustained serious injuries during a bicycle accident. After that performance, the band revealed it would also be headlining a few festivals during the spring and summer, including the free Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on May 1, BottleRock 2015 in Napa Valley on May 31, Jazz Aspen Snowmass in Aspen, Colo., on Sept. 5, Kaaboo at the Del Mar Racetrack and Fairgrounds on Sept. 18 and, of course, the stateside inauguration of Rock in Rio.
The Las Vegas festival will be held over two weekends. May 8-9 offers performances by Metallica, Linkin Park, Rise Against, Deftones, Orange County’s own Of Mice & Men, and more, while May 15-16 features Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Empire of the Sun, Jessie J, Tove Lo and rising L.A. outfit Echosmith.
“It’s exciting because No Doubt has never played Rock in Rio before,” Kanal said of the globally popular fest that celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. “It’s actually an honor to be a part of such an iconic festival and the really cool thing is that the lineup is so diverse and it’s got something for everyone. I’m definitely planning on staying and checking out a few of these other artists and taking my daughters to experience some of these bands for the first time.”
Though soon No Doubt will spend a good chunk of time together playing these shows, Kanal said the band is not working on new music. With Stefani focusing on a forthcoming solo album, Kanal added that he’s just glad that all of their schedules aligned to make these upcoming gigs possible. That’s not to say, however, that there won’t someday be fresh material from the band, which even after all of these years and some time apart, keeps finding its way back together.
“There’s a real family aspect to No Doubt,” he said. “We all grew up together and we’ve experienced so much together. At the end of the day, there are only three other people that have been through the same kind of journey I’ve been through and those are my band mates. It will always come back to that. No matter where life takes us, we’ll always have that place we can return to. When we’re onstage, it’s so much fun to still play together. It always feels like home.”
During his downtime, Kanal, who resides in Los Angeles, hangs out with wife Erin and their two daughters, 4-year-old Coco and 1-year-old Saffron. They still make numerous trips to Orange County so the girls can visit their grandparents, and the Kanals hit up Disneyland as often as possible. As with many families of young girls, Disney’s “Frozen“ plays constantly in their home and in the car, and Coco will throw on a set of headphones and belt out the parts she knows from the popular soundtrack.
“She hasn’t really made the connection that everyone can hear her singing when she has headphones on,” Kanal said. “She’ll just sing to herself and, oh man, it’s the most beautiful thing.”