Lit’s A. Jay Popoff on the new album, the new tour, overcoming tragedy

The second band to take the stage at this year’s Summerland tour is Lit, the southern California rockers who scored a number of hits in the late 1990s, including “Miserable” and “My Own Worst Enemy.” The band has been quiet for a number of years, mostly because of a string of personal tragedies. Lead singer A. Jay Popoff and his brother Jeremy lost their stepfather in a motorcycle accident, and the band lost one of its founding members, drummer Allen Shellenberger, to a brain tumor.

The past few years have been a “healing” time for the band and only recently have they taken to the microphones again.

But Lit’s reintroduction is ferociously energetic. Besides their spot on the Summerland tour and owning a successful rock restaurant (Slidebar in Fullerton, Calif., still going strong), the band recently released a new album of original material called The View from the Bottom. There’s also plans of touring Europe and Canada soon.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox talked with A. Jay Popoff about the hard years behind him and the promising years ahead. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

How did you get attached to Summerland?

We got the call from Art (Alexakis) from Everclear when he first started talking about putting a package like this together. It’s just a good bunch of dudes. We knew it was going to be a tour that made sense. Our new record we knew was going to be coming out right around that time. It was just perfect timing to get out here and bring out old fans and new fans that might have been a little too young to see us back in the day, and turn them on to the new music. Playing in front of probably some bigger crowds than if we were to sort of come out on our own and just do large clubs or theaters. This is a way to sort of get the music to a bigger group of people for the reintroduction.

I’m glad you played some new songs on the tour.

That was a big thing for us. I understand that the theme for the tour is bands with songs from the ‘90s. We’re not really done playing ball yet. It’s an opportunity to play songs that people are familiar with, but also, we’re out here promoting a new record. And that’s the main thing for us.

How did the album come together?

It’s something that we hadn’t visited in a while, having gone through some of the tragedy and bumps in the road that we sort of came across. On a professional level, losing our drummer. But also on a family and personal level, just a lot of time for healing. We just weren’t writing for Lit. We weren’t writing new music. … We continued to be creative, but it wasn’t until the five of us got together on New Year’s Eve — I can’t remember which one — but we decided that the time was right. Everyone was fired up.

The songs just started pouring out. It went from not feeling inspired to write to an overwhelming wave of creativity. And Lit music started flowing.

Does the new album speak to some of that tragedy?

We haven’t always written about things that were that close to home. Nothing really autobiographical in our songs, besides the party stuff, which anyone can really relate to. But we’ve never really gotten this heavy on our previous records. I think it was sort of inevitable that it was going to come out in these songs. Having lost such a major, instrumental part of the band, and a brother, it definitely was something I guess naturally came out in the songs. And it was also therapeutic for us to talk about it and share that with the fans.

Was there ever a time that you thought the last Lit album was, in fact, the Lit album?

No. It’s definitely nothing we ever spoke about. It’s a question that we’ve been asked recently by a couple of people. I think the best answer to that is that we’ve been a band for so long. Lit isn’t what we do, it’s who we are.

To think of this group of guys disassembled doesn’t really make any sense. I think we would be kind of lost without that. Even if it comes a time where we’re just doing it strictly for the fun of it, it’s something that I think we’ll all continue to do as long as we are physically able.

Do the concerts tire you out?

I think it’s something that’s kept us wanting to do it as long as we have. As soon as we hit the stage, it’s just like autopilot. I could be having a slow day and having a hard time getting out of bed, or having a hard time walking from the bus to the dressing room, but as soon as you hit the stage, I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline, the excitement, it’s probably a little bit of everything, it just sort of fuels that energy.

Did you ever have thoughts that Lit is different than the other Summerland bands?

Definitely. We’re definitely the rock band in the mix. All the bands on the tour are rock bands, but we’re just from a little different part of the ‘90s we come from. It’s a ‘90s tour, but that’s a 10-year span. We kind of caught the tail end. Our stuff blew up in ’99, and then we toured through the early 2000s.

We’re from the school of big arena rock. That’s the difference. I don’t know if the other bands on this tours are really as big of fans of the early Iron Maiden shows and some of the big rock shows like that. It seems to work well. I think it’s a good mix. I think Sugar Ray definitely brings the beach party to the bill. And Gin Blossoms have songs people know, and it’s definitely a lot more mellow than the Lit music. Everclear is just great songs, and it brings me back before our band had any success, and I was still watching videos on MTV. I was a fan of Everclear. It’s just a good mix of bands from an era that might have been the last of that sort of MTV generation of bands.

Do you like playing the old songs or the new songs?

I like doing everything. I think we’re lucky to be a band that has had successful songs. To watch the crowd light up when they hear a song that they’ve heard on the radio so many times, that’s just a great energy. So it’s fun for us to play those songs.

What’s the future for the band after Summerland?

There are other tour possibilities that are being talked about. We’re definitely going to go over to Europe. The record came out there as well. So we’re going to go over and do some shows there. There’s talk of a Canadian tour. … It’s still at the beginning stages of the promotion for this record. So we have a lot ahead of us.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

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