Longtime fan favorite Eve 6 to play Providence

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- In an age when very young and impressionable performers grow up on screen or stage, three friends from Southern California were actually encouraged to finish high school before they released their first record.

The three — Max Collins on vocals and bass, Jon Siebels on guitar and Tony Fagenson on drums — are now known as the pop-punk band Eve 6, but they did as they were told then, and did not produce their first album until 1998, after they were out of high school.

“The people with RCA, the record label, said, ‘You don’t wanna go on tour with your parents!’ ” Siebels laughs at the memory in a telephone interview from a stop in Pensacola, Florida. “At the same time, the development of a rock band is unusual. We thought we needed time to be able to put together an album that could be competitive.”

That self-titled album was quite competitive, selling 2 million copies and going platinum.  But their meteoric rise in the industry — marked with a string of anthem radio hits, such as “Inside Out” and “Leech” from their debut album, and “Promise,” “On the Roof Again” and “Here’s to the Night” from their sophomore album, “Horrorscope” in 2000 — fizzled almost as quickly and the friends parted in 2004 to pursue individual projects.

A new label and renewed enthusiasm for the music they create collectively brought them back together in 2012 to work on the album “Speak in Code,” and they’ve been a staple on the summer package tour scene ever since. In 2014, Eve 6 was featured on the Summerland tour with Everclear, Soul Asylum and Spacehog. In 2015, they teamed up for the Under the Sun tour with Sugar Ray, Better Than Ezra, and Uncle Kracker.

“This year, we didn’t get chosen for a package deal so we figured we would go out for a few weeks on our own,” Siebels says. “Our agent booked 50 shows! It’s a nice way to have some fun, connect with our fans and play music.”

They continue to promote “Speak in Code,” which Collins calls “the strongest collection of songs we’ve ever had on one record.”

“There are aspects that sound familiar to Eve 6,” Siebels admits, “and there are aspects that show that time has gone by. It’s a nice happy medium.”

Noting that Eve 6 — which is named for a character in the television series "The X-Files" — is difficult to categorize, Siebels, who was a few years late to the reunion due to conflicting schedules with his musical project Monsters are Waiting, says their sound is based on the friends’ own musical interests growing up.

“We came up on the second wave of pop-punk with Bad Religion, Social Distortion, Screeching Weasel, and Greenday,” he explains. “What that wave became — a technical emo thing — I don’t really understand. It doesn’t resonate with me any more.

“Our music is considered pop in that it’s melodic and high energy.”

And even though Eve 6 plays all the old favorites for their fans, Siebels says he prefers their more recent material. It reflects, he adds, the maturity they’ve gained through the years. But fan enthusiasm is what drew him back to his original musical project.

“After going down some different paths, it hit me that there was this thing out there that people wanted and wanted to hear,” he says. “It just clicked and made sense to me. After such a long break, I was so happy to be playing with these guys again.”

Don’t mistake that to mean that the sound hasn’t evolved, however.

“Like anything over an 18-year period of time, there have been ups and downs, but we’re proud that we’re still the original lineup,” he says. “We’re older and maybe slightly wiser. And it’s a lot more tame and civilized out on the road these days.”

“Speak in Code” as a whole focuses on overcoming personal and professional obstacles. “Curtain,” the opening track, is a nod to the group’s return from hiatus and references the Britpop brother band Oasis. “Victoria” modernizes the classic Eve 6 sound in a hook-heavy anthem about one’s tendency to read too much into another’s recreational activities.

Eve 6 plays Fête Music Hall, 103 Dike St., Providence, on Thursday, June 16, at 7 p.m. Tickets for the all-ages show are $18 in advance and $20 at the door. For more information, go to www.fetemusic.com.

— Susan McDonald is a regular contributor to The Providence Journal. She can be reached at Sewsoo1@verizon.net.