Sixpence None the Richer’s Leigh Nash on the band’s reformation, upcoming Knuckleheads gig

Sixpence None The Richer. // photo credit Ben Pearson

While not quite reaching the heights of fellow crossover artists DC Talk, alternative music act Sixpence None the Richer came out of the Christian music scene to secular success. Thanks to the still imminently popular single “Kiss Me,” alongside covers of The La’s “There She Goes” and “Don’t Dream it’s Over” by Crowded House, all of which saw regular airplay and inclusion in popular teen entertainment like Dawson’s Creek and She’s All That.

The band has had lineup changes and pauses over the years, but Sixpence None the Richer’s new record, Rosemary Hill, sees the band’s core lineup reuniting for the first time in years.

That breakthrough lineup of singer Leigh Nash, guitarist Matt Slocum, drummer Dale Baker, and bassist Justin Cary performs at Knuckleheads on Monday, October 14, in support of that EP as they embark on their first major tour in well over a decade. We took the opportunity to hop on the phone with singer Leigh Nash to discuss the new music and the legacy of Sixpence None the Richer on the day of Rosemary Hill‘s release.

The Pitch: It’s absolutely amazing that you’ve got this brand new EP and you’re headed out on the road and it’s the original lineup. It’s a very big deal for people my age.

Leigh Nash: Oh, thank you. It’s a really big deal to us, too. I can’t even really put it into words. I’m packing for this tour. My mind is just blown away and all over the place because I don’t remember really how to do this, but I feel like as soon as we get on that bus, it’ll be like, “Oh, okay. It’s been 20 years, but it’s like riding a bike.” That’s what I’m hoping happens.

Is this your first tour tour in years?

No, I’ve toured all through the years. Over the years between records, I’ve definitely toured a lot, but not at this level. We’re doing, I think, about 50 dates in 60 days. Something like that, and that’s an insane amount of dates in a short amount of time but, I haven’t been on this kind of a bus, really well put together tour since the last time Sixpence did this.

Sixpence None the Richer was part of this very specific group of band in the late ’90s and early 2000s, who I feel like don’t get enough credit in terms of crossing over. I feel like you all get left out of the discussion. Amy Grant and folks like that tend to get lauded, but I feel like Sixpence or even bands like MxPx are cornerstone bands, pardon the pun. What was it like for you all to come out of one world and into the wider world as musicians and then try to navigate both of those spaces?

Matt and I, we were doing an interview for a Stryper documentary the other day, and we started talking, which is awesome in and of itself, but but we got on this subject, and I wish I could go back to that moment and just insert the answers that we gave, but I think, when we first started, we were so naive about what we were getting into.

As a band stepping into that Christian market, we didn’t understand it, we didn’t really know what all that entailed. Of course we didn’t, we were so, so young. But we all grew it really quickly. I think just fundamentally we just did not want to be in an industry that had a cap on it. We just didn’t see the point so, as we outgrew it, we probably made a lot of people mad. I know we did.

But now, from this vantage point, I’m in my 40s now and I wish that I had the wisdom that I do now, just to kind of just let go. It really, really bothered me at the time at a time when I was not mature enough to really understand what was going on. It doesn’t have anything to do with faith and then again, it has everything to do with it, but it’s just an industry.

I hope I didn’t just give you a word salad there, but I guess the question of, “Are you Christians, are you in a band, or are you a Christian band?”–that question just got incredibly tiresome over the years. It had a hand in the exhaustion that led to our kind of breaking up there for a while. It’s like, “How are we going to ever get over this stuff? We can’t seem to make anybody happy.”

All that ridiculousness it’s gone now, and we can just be the band that we are and leave that part in the past, but it’s an important part of our past, and I do understand that. But it’s complicated. It was a tricky little business back then.

There’s also trying to navigate all that where songs that you’ve recorded are getting slotted into things like major movies or Dawson’s Creek or something like that. How does that change things, because I think it means that people come to you in a much different way than by seeing you play live or hearing your song on the radio?

Right, right. It really helps to introduce our music to a much wider audience. A much broader audience, and now, that’s great for any band. It was really, really exciting. It was funny. I was a little bit, like a couple of years older than the people that were getting into Dawson’s Creek, so I’ve never seen an episode, but I was just right on the cusp of that would have been interested in that show.

Now you’re back together, and you’re touring with the original lineup. What have you taken that you’ve learned in the intervening nearly 20 years?

We decided that when we talked about doing this and started to get the wheels turning again and write new music, it was just because we felt like we were stronger and, hopefully, smarter and wiser and better at our jobs. I think that I’m singing better or as well as I have in the past, hopefully better, and I know the guys have all gotten stronger at their instruments and their gigs as musicians.

It’s kind of a question, like, “If everybody has the energy to do this, why aren’t, why aren’t we doing this as hard as we ever did?” So, that’s kind of what we’re attempting to do. Yeah, we’re an older band now, but I think it makes us stronger. As far as what we had to offer the world is concerned, we’ve got some wisdom under our belt now—different kind of wisdom.

Not only do you have a new EP coming out, “Kiss Me” is getting used in a K-pop song. How did you respond when that got brought to you at some point?

Yeah, it’s been on our radar for a while. It is really crazy, the timing. The fact is that there’s absolutely zero connection and that Lisa’s song came out, what, yesterday? There’s absolutely zero connections.. I mean, no thought at all went into this. So, I either have to look at it as a happy accident. I don’t even know if it’s happy. It might be a bad thing for us. I’m not sure. I think it’s good.

I think it’s a really positive thing. But maybe it’s, you know, another one of the little miracles that Sixpence has gotten to experience over the years. But yeah, it’s pretty crazy to see this song affecting an entirely new generation. There are a lot of people that think it’s a brand-new song, and I think that’s adorable, too.

Sixpence None the Richer plays Knuckleheads on Monday, October 14. Details on that show here.