The Fray that will take the stage in Boulder on Friday night will not be the Fray you know.
The Colorado band, which went mainstream in the early 21st century with hits such as “Over My Head (Cable Car),” “How to Save a Life” and “You Found Me,” has not released new music in a decade. Now, they’re back with a new lead singer, new songs, and a shaved-down lineup, following the 2022 exit of co-founder and frontman Isaac Slade.
“The time away was a difficult gift,” said Fray singer and co-founder Joe King, whose songwriting and voice still carry the group’s signature, melody-drenched wistfulness. “I had to find who I was again outside of the band, and that wasn’t an easy process.”
What he discovered was gratitude for the Fray’s worldwide success early in its career, but also a renewed love of songwriting. It’s something he’d been doing since his aunt gave him an acoustic guitar in 8th grade, he said, right before he started his first high school band. Due to the pandemic and his bandmates’ geographic scattering, King craved collaboration. But he wasn’t planning on recording or releasing new music.
“We didn’t even know this was going to happen six months ago,” King said, adding that making music is a crucial mental health activity. “I just knew that if I didn’t write, I would destroy myself, so in essence it’s a way of saving myself.”
The Fray’s new EP, “The Fray Is Back,” is also a return for core members Dave Welsh (guitar) and Ben Wysocki (drums), who were itching to reactivate the band (note: the Friday, July 26, concert at Boulder’s Fox Theatre will also feature Kai Welch on keys and Dane Poppin on bass; see axs.com for tickets).
“It’s funny, because when Isaac expressed in 2016 that he wanted to go on hiatus, I was pretty resistant,” Wysocki said. “I couldn’t have felt more opposite because I was in a groove, and I was excited for where things were going. But being forced to sit down and take a break made way for some personal growth.”
That was probably overdue, the members realized in hindsight. For years, the Fray had been the brand name in Denver music, joining a select list of multiplatinum acts based in Colorado. Those range from John Denver and Big Head Todd and the Monsters to more recent, post-Fray entries such as Illenium, The Lumineers, and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats.
But in the first decade of this century, the Fray owned that category. The band was part of a wave of earnest pop-rock that crossed genres, alternately praised as deft and open-hearted, or denigrated by critics as toothless soft-rock. In The Fray’s case, the band had built itself up from a bedroom duo of high school buddies. Founded in 2002 by Slade and King, their silky songwriting and piano-forward songs eventually nabbed four Grammy nominations while the Fray continued to headline Red Rocks Amphitheatre, tour the world, and otherwise rep Colorado music to the masses in the mid-to-late 2000s.
Follow-ups — most recently, 2014’s “Helios” — failed to dent the charts the same way, even as Slade grappled with increasing panic attacks on stage. In 2021, the band was roundly criticized for performing a “questionable” version of the national anthem at the start of the NCAA men’s basketball championship game in New Orleans, The Denver Post reported. In 2022, Slade left the band to open a record store on an island off the coast of Seattle (Vashon Island), according to KING 5 News.
“Isaac had so much to do with the musical fingerprints of the band,” Wysocki said. “But three-quarters of us are still here, and so many of the decisions made on this EP were no different than every Fray album. … (Slade’s) loss is certainly influential, but the remaining majority is why we still sound like the Fray.”
Band members recorded their parts for the new EP remotely, though you’d never know from the first single “Time Well Wasted,” which features an intimate acoustic vibe, as well as a slight twang in King’s harmonies (he’s living in Nashville these days). “Not Now” is a propulsive, hook-laden anthem that seems likely to show up on a few TV shows, while “Angeleno Moon” (King also used to live in Los Angeles) would feel at home on The Killers’ “Sam’s Town” or another Americana-rock platter. The six-song EP will be released Sept. 27, a publicist said.
After this weekend’s cozy Boulder show, the band is launching a national tour that runs Sept. 27-Oct. 20, with a headlining concert at Denver’s Mission Ballroom on Oct 17. The new round of concerts, band members said, will quickly test the Fray’s traction with longtime fans.
“We were lucky to be in Denver and in music at the right time,” King said of the band’s early success. “But we had no control over timing. What we do have control of now is jumping back into music.”
“As much as we feel like we have something to say with this EP, we also realized we hadn’t been saying anything, to anybody, for quite a while,” said guitarist Welsh. “We weren’t able to play the shows we wanted to, or reengage with our fans. Now it’s like getting ready for a holiday gathering, where you get together and talk about the past, the present and the future. We haven’t had that family dinner in a while.”
Originally Published: July 25, 2024 at 7:01 a.m.
