In the world of professional sports, the saying is that no one ever beats Father Time. The adage extends to entertainers, making the idea of farewell tours ever more ubiquitous as performers age. And while this year’s Cosmic De-Evolution Tour, which pairs the B-52s with Devo, is billed as a farewell tour of sorts, the subhead on the tour name read “One Last Orbit (Maybe?),” casting the idea that, at least in the case of The B-52s, fans might not be seeing the last of them.
It’s more about reducing the wear and tear of being on the road, according to founding member Fred Schneider. When asked if it was a matter of the band just not hopping on a bus again, Schneider scoffed at that ever having been a reality for the band.
“In 2022, I swore I’d never get on a tour bus again,” he said with a chuckle during a recent interview. “I’m not getting on a bus to go from one date to another for more than six hours. That’s just not my kind of life, and it wasn’t any of our kinds of lives. We were careful to say to our fans that we would do more shows after our final tour and still perform in special situations that don’t require all of the awful tour travel.”
Given The B-52s’ penchant for a unique sound-fusing pop-culture camp, kitsch and weird guitar tunings that have the Athens outfit coming off like the house band for a John Waters movie, Schneider said fans will still experience the usual shenanigans they’ve come to expect whenever B-52s play a show. The last two stops of the tour will be in Southern California at the North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre in Chula Vista on Oct. 30 and Acrisure Arena in Thousand Palms on Oct. 31.
“What they always get, which is a real kick-ass rock show, not a funny pop show,” he explained. “They can sing and dance along and have a great time. We’re the best excuse to let off steam.”
A New Jersey native, Schneider never intended to be a musician. A move to Athens, GA was prompted by the twin desires to pursue a career in ecology while escaping New Jersey.
“I wanted to be a conservationist, and for some reason I thought taking wildlife management would have something to do with conservation — and it didn’t,” he pointed out with a laugh. “I was stuck at the forestry school for two years, where I became the hippy of the forestry school, which is ridiculous. I wore Sears polyester bell bottoms and a polyester shirt and had long hair. I looked terrible.”
On the brink of quitting school, Schneider switched to journalism after getting high marks from a class project. That eventually led him to connect with future bandmates Ricky Wilson and Keith Strickland around 1976.
“Just as I was about to drop out, we had to do projects for creative writing,” Schneider said. “A friend said they were going to do a book of poetry and I thought that sounded easy. I was getting out of school, so I decided to do a book of poetry. I ended up really liking what I was writing. You had to read in front of the class and that’s something I’m always nervous about doing. My poems were so out there that everyone sat there stone-faced except for a friend of mine who burst out laughing after each one. The poems had a really dry sense of humor. The teacher said they didn’t understand any of it, but he said he knew I was really serious, so he gave me an ‘A.’ I brought some of those ideas to the band eventually.
“I fell into music and hadn’t planned on it. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to be. I was more of a writer, but I couldn’t have sold what I wrote. I brought my writing ideas and things to the band and I think that was more of my contribution,” he said. “It turns out that I would more recite my lyrics — talk/sing — because I never really sang. I didn’t sing in grammar school hardly. I didn’t sing in high school or college at all. I didn’t sing in college until I did some basement tapes with Keith [Strickland], but I’m not really singing on those. Well, finally I took voice lessons, so I can sing. I just have my own style.”
While The B-52s have no plans to record new material, the band still plays select dates. Schneider says fellow band members Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson and Strickland are working on their own projects. Schneider, last year had “Vampire Vamp,” his Halloween song with Ursula 1000, get re-released along with his Christmas album “Destination Christmas.” (“To sum it up, the ‘New York Times’ did a capsule review where they said, ‘Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse at the North Pole, it does.’ That is the best review a person who doesn’t like typical Christmas music could get.”) As for his band’s longevity, he chalks it up to the equanimity practiced by all the band members.
“We have a shared sensibility in addition to having shared everything equally,” he said. “We shared writing credits, except for one or two albums, which we changed. If I’m not on a song, I would go promote whatever single was out — stuff like that. We shared royalties equally. We didn’t really have a leader. I wasn’t about to be told what to do by anybody, and I don’t think anybody else was. We had some really great ups and some really bad downs, but we stuck together. And now Kate, Cindy and I connect more than we’ve ever done on stage, and it shows.”
If you go
- What: The Cosmic De-Evolution Tour with the B-52s and Devo
- When: Oct. 30-31
- Where: North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, Chula Vista; Acrisure Arena, Thousand Palms
- Details: LiveNation.com