Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Dean Dinning talks ’90s pop culture ahead of Saturday’s Grinders show

Toad the Wet Sprocket. // photo credit Chris Orwig

Long-running alternative rock favorites Toad the Wet Sprocket are bringing their Good Intentions tour to Grinders on Saturday, August 2, with fellow ’90s veterans Sixpence None The Richer and The Jayhawks for what is sure to be an evening of harmonies, chill tunes, and intense audience sing-alongs.

Additionally, for each summer tour, the band partners with a charitable non-profit and this year is no different, with Toad the Wet Sprocket spotlighting the National Parks Foundation “to support and protect our natural treasures.” Think of it like a throwback in terms of the bands performing and the days when the likes of Rock the Vote would head out alongside a tour to spread awareness.

We spoke with Toad the Wet Sprocket bassist Dean Dinning ahead of the band’s Kansas City stop about all of this, along with how they’re one of those bands which has a surprisingly deep roster of hits.

The Pitch:  I love the fact Toad the Wet Sprocket is a band where people are like, “I don’t know that many Toad the Wet Sprocket songs, I don’t think,” and then it’s always like, “Oh, I know a lot of Toad the Wet Sprocket songs” once you start playing them.

Dean Dinning: Yeah, we always used to say more people know the music than know the name, and it’s true. It’s a double-edged sword because every time, I think it’s great that they know the music. I mean, we always knew the name was gonna be a challenge from the beginning.

I think people can’t really imagine that a band with that crazy a name is not a crazy-sounding band. It’s not Primus. It’s pretty straightforward: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, and songs and things like that. For a long time, I’ve said the name is the most unusual thing about us.

That’s a very good way of putting it. I feel like a lot of people my age discovered Toad the Wet Sprocket through radio, but your rise coincided with the golden age of soundtracks, which was a great way to discover new music. What was it like for you all? You’re in like both very big movies and cult movies–everything from So I Married an Axe Murderer to being on Friends. How was that for you: as your star is rising, also being connected to all of these other big deal pop culture things?

I think we figured out pretty early on that it was a good thing to have your song in a movie from the era that you’re in, ’cause then you’re tied into the pop culture permanently. You’d be surprised at how many people found out about us or heard of the music for the first time, like you said, from hearing it in a movie or a film.

Friends definitely had the widest reach of anything we did. However, many people are unaware that the key factor in “All I Want” becoming a hit song was its use in a 1992 Olympics commercial. There was a show that NBC was doing. It was called The Round Table. The show never made it, but the commercial for the show aired during the Olympics. And you know, there’s a feeling out there–sometimes people say a song has to be heard by the public a certain number of times.

It has to achieve a sort of saturation point for people to even know whether they like it or not. And man, I’m telling you–people heard it hundreds of times during the Olympics, and I think by the time the Olympics were over, they decided they liked it, and that is why we’re still here today. It can all be traced back to that moment.

Next year will mark 40 years of Toad the Wet Sprocket. Being in a band for more than two-thirds of your life at this point–what is that like, to have your career be playing music with people you like for so long

I mean, we started doing this when we were in high school. This is the kind of career that you have to start when you’re very young. We didn’t really plan on on it going as far as it has. God, we’ve just been continually surprised along the way. Surprised when we made our first record ourselves for $650 and then sold a thousand copies of it out of the trunks of our cars. Surprised when people in LA start hearing it.

Then we end up getting signed to not just a tiny record label, but Columbia Records–the biggest record label in the world. They’ve got a new alternative department. They really needed an alternative band. We really needed a good record label, a match made in heaven. We didn’t know it at the time, but we had a great working relationship with them. They didn’t give up on us.

“All I Want” was the third single off of our fourth record that we put out with them. They had patience, which a lot of people don’t get as many chances as we did. We really had a lot of luck along the way. And as I get a little older, it’s good to spend as much time as we do around people who’ve known us for a long time. There is really something to that.

The qualities that brought us together are all still there. When we’re back together, we just fall right into it. It’s pretty amazing. I think it’s a great thing. A lot of people can’t hold it together. A lot of people can’t keep it together, but somehow we’ve managed to do it and we’re all incredibly thankful.

On this tour, you’re playing with some of your contemporaries who have also held on for a long time. On the KC date, it’s the Jayhawks and Sixpence None the Richer. What’s it like when you do these tours and you get to play with fellow ’90s alt-rock lifers?

Let’s just take Sixpence, for example. A few years ago, we had Leigh Nash come out. The band was not back together. She was performing solo with her and a guitar player. They came out, opened some shows for us. The response was fantastic, and she’s a lovely person. We got on so well and had such a good time together, and I don’t know, but maybe seeing us making it work after all these years might’ve inspired them to say, “Our kids are out of the house, people have not forgotten us, let’s give it a go. What have we got to lose?”

This tour benefits the National Park Service. How did you get started having a recipient for each of these summer tours? What was the inspiration for it all?

It originally came from a song of ours that was on Fear called “Hold Her Down,” which is a song that dealt with the subject of sexual assault. It was a very uncomfortable song. One of the ways that I feel like we made ourselves feel good about playing that every night, or that being a part of what we were doing, was that we had a table in the lobby from a group called RAINN, which was the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network.

It was all about people being able to get information, and we turned something that could have been a negative into a positive. We started that very early on. We were always really into bands like U2 and the Alarm that had social consciousness. You wanna make it about something more than just the music and, and I mean the music is enough, but you know, if you can build awareness at the same time, you do have a lot of people there all together.

All they have to do is sign up for something at the table as they walk by or get some information. It’s just a good thing to do. For every community that we go through, we started doing things like that, and so this is just an extension of what we’ve been doing all along.

The National Park Service, at this point in time, is a very timely cause.

Oh my God. Of course. I mean, I can’t believe what I’m hearing coming from people on the ground. I don’t think these people understand. I went to every national park in the country when I was a kid. My parents had an RV. They were older, and so when I was a kid, we took these long camping trips, and I’ve been to every national park in this country.

It was a huge part of my growing up, whether it was going to the ranger program at night and learning–a huge part of my education happened in America’s national parks. I can’t believe that someone would look at the numbers on a balance sheet and decide, “Well, this doesn’t have value. Let’s get rid of all of these people.”

These people dedicate their lives to this profession and being park rangers and giving talks and things like that, and it just disgusts me that they would cut something like that. I mean, that’s the real America right there, these beautiful parks, so we’re gonna do what we can to get some of that funding back.

Toad the Wet Sprocket plays Grinders on Saturday, August 2, with The Jayhawks and Sixpence None the Richer. Details on that show here.