Yes, Fastball is going to play “The Way” when it’s tour hits the North Charleston Coliseum on June 6. After all, it is kicking off a show that’s bathing in late ’90s/early ’00s nostalgia in the Last Summer On Earth tour with Guster and Barenaked Ladies.
“The Way,” with its insistently catchy refrain of “Where were they going without ever knowing the way,” is Fastball’s biggest hit. It helped the band’s 1998 album All The Pain Money Can Buy go platinum.
And for most casual pop radio listeners, that was it. Fastball never really scaled the pop charts again, though singles like “Fire Escape” and the ballad “Out Of My Head” were hits on Billboard’s “Adult Alternative” charts.
And yet, Fastball just celebrated its 30th anniversary as a band. It put out its ninth album, Sonic Ranch last year, and now it is touring with longtime pals Barenaked Ladies.
Some one-hit wonders have expressed ambivalence or even resentment towards those lone hits.
Not Fastball.
“It got us in the door as far as being played on the radio,” said lead singer Tony Scalzo, who wrote the song, “and we were able to get a few more singles on the radio at the time. We needed that song to get us going.”
And the truth is that Fastball has never really gone away since 1998.
“The Way” has been streamed over 100 million times, and the band has over 1 million followers on Spotify. And in fact, that aforementioned ballad, “Out Of My Head,” has had a second life in unexpected places.
“That’s a song that’s been picked up for different reasons by different entities,” Scalzo said. “Machine Gun Kelly and Camila Cabello did that ‘Bad Things’ song where they used these elements of ‘Out Of My Head,’ and that really put that song back on the map. And then just a couple of years ago, the Ted Lasso series featured it at the beginning of one of the episodes.”
Fastball is one of the few bands that sings the praises of streaming these days.
“Things are going really well, and that exposure is getting people to stream us much more on Spotify and Apple Music,” Scalzo said. “It doesn’t really seem to help a lot of new bands that are struggling, but for a band that has already had hits, it keeps you on the map and you can build on it. So we’re pleased with what the streaming situation has done for us.”
Having said all that, Scalzo said he’s aware that some, if not most, people will always regard Fastball as a one-hit wonder, and that doesn’t bother him a bit.
“You need to know who you are individually and as a band collectively,” Scalzo said. “You need to ask your fans what they want and communicate with them. And when you realize who you are and what people’s perception is of you, then you have to accept that and work within those parameters.”
Whatever Fastball is doing, it seems to be working. The band played a show in Texas recently and Scalzo noticed something out in the audience.
“It’s become multi-generational,” he said. “Our old fans are out there, and they’re generally in their late ’40s and ’50s. But we’ve been seeing a lot of younger people at the shows lately. I think parents come and they bring their kids to try to indoctrinate them.”
Scalzo added that Fastball has been together for 30 years with all three original members because it stays focused on the task.
“You have to treat it like a job because that’s what it is,” he said. “It’s a career. We’re a band that’s had the same guys for three decades, and we’ve been able to find ourselves on the same page.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Barenaked Ladies, with Guster and Fastball. Doors open at 6 p.m., June 6, North Charleston Coliseum, 5001 Coliseum Drive. Tickets are $53-$198: northcharlestoncoliseumpac.com.
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