Sugar Ray

About Sugar Ray

Beyond sales of 10 million records, four top 10 songs, over a billion streams, and millions of tickets sold, Sugar Ray—co-founded by Mark McGrath [vocals] and Rodney Sheppard [lead guitar]—embody the endless summer of popular music and culture. How many artists still pack amphitheaters a whole generation removed from their genesis? How many acts can claim sharing the stage with The Rolling Stones, KISS, and Sex Pistols, collaborating with Run-DMC, and being interpolated by Post Malone? Just Sugar Ray…
1994’s Lemonade & Brownies took the guys around the world and earned cult classic status for its frenetic and unpredictable hybrid. It set the stage for FLOORED in 1997. The latter’s immortal lead single “Fly” [feat. Super Cat] made them a household name. 21 years down the road, Post Malone incorporated “Fly” in “Sugar Wraith” on the triple-platinum beerbongs & Bentleys. Helmed by GRAMMY® Award-winning producer David Kahne [Sublime, Paul McCartney, The Strokes], FLOORED earned the band’s first gold plaque and eventually went double-platinum. Two years later, 14:59 bowed in the Top 20 of the Billboard Top 200, went triple-platinum, and gave us “Someday,” “Falls Apart,” and their second #1 “Every Morning.” In 2001, Sugar Ray crashed the Top 200 at #6 as “When It’s Over” staked out a spot on the charts. It added another platinum plaque to their walls. Enjoying a renaissance, Sugar Ray headlined the Under the Sun Tour 2013-2015. They inked a deal with BMG in 2019 and dropped their seventh full-length, Lil Yachty. In addition to features from Rolling Stone and Billboard, NPR claimed, “The Newport Beach natives returned to their signature uplifting and airy rock sound.” It only set the stage for more touring and music. No matter how much everything changes, we’ve got Sugar Ray forever.

About Soul Asylum

Since the ’80s, Soul Asylum have been a group known for their raucous and emphatic combination of punk energy, guitar-fueled firepower, and songs that range from aggressive to heartfelt. All of these things are present in spades on the Minneapolis band’s gloriously, joyously loose 13th studio album, Slowly But Shirley.
For Slowly But Shirley, it also helped that Soul Asylum—which also includes drummer Michael Bland (Prince / Paul Westerberg), lead guitarist Ryan Smith and bassist Jeremy Tappero—turned to a familiar name for production: Steve Jordan, who had also produced the band’s 1990 effort And the Horse They Rode In On. Back when they first worked together, the members of Soul Asylum were still figuring out how best to capture their sound in the studio—and Jordan’s approach of having the band play live together in one room was ideal. “He taught us a language of players playing music in the studio,” Pirner says. “Which we were not at the time. We still didn’t really understand what you were supposed to do in what order.”
Decades later, both parties are in different places. Jordan is currently the drummer for the Rolling Stones, and Soul Asylum remains one of the most inspiring and hardworking bands in the rock scene, having broken through commercially with the double-platinum 1992 album Grave Dancers Union, which contained the Grammy-winning Billboard Hot 100 Top 5 hit “Runaway Train” and No. 1 Modern Rock smash “Somebody to Shove.”