Like the song, “Pause,” on Plain White T’s’ newest album, “American Nights,” band member and founder Tom Higgenson said he has taken a little time recently to pause and “smell the flowers.” That includes enjoying time with his 7-year-old son, he said. ” I’ve been able to spend a majority of my time at home with him. That inspired some of those lyrics in ‘Pause.'”
But the Lombard native will be back in the studio next year with the rest of the band to do another album, and they’ll head on a big tour this summer.
To end the year, the group will perform Dec. 28 at Genesee Theatre. Chicago area natives, with several of the group still living in the area, they’re calling the show, “Hometown Throwdown.”
“It’s our last show in 2016 so we’re going to make it a party,” Higgenson said.
“We’ve got a lot of friends in Chicago – we might try to wrangle a few friends from local bands to come and do a song with us.”
They’ll perform “Land of the Living,” a new song to be released in January, which will likely go on their new album, as well as “Hey There Delilah,” an acoustical melody-driven duet that earned platinum in 2007 and two Grammy nominations.
It might be difficult to believe, but Higgenson, whose group is known for its melodies and harmonies, started out writing rap songs.
He and a junior high school buddy performed an original rap tune at the eighth grade talent show.
“Everybody loved it so much, they made us do it again at the eighth grade dance. That’s when I kind of got the bug,” to perform, he said.
Higgenson plays drums and guitar, and formed Plain White T’s in 1997 with high school buddies Dave Tirio and Ken Fletcher. Tirio remains a member of the band.
Back then, “we weren’t necessarily trying to be a pop punk band,” Higgenson. “But all the bands we grew up with in our little scene in Chicago had this punk thing, so it just naturally made its way into our stuff.”
He said he was inspired by the Lemonheads, among other similar groups.
It took the T’s a while to get noticed, but a decade after they formed, they hit the Billboard jackpot with “Hey There Delilah.”
“We had so many people saying this is our song. We did [concerts at] all these Navy bases last summer – those guys were coming up and saying, ‘That song meant so much to me.'”
That’s what Higgenson likes to hear – he wants to produce songs that have meaning, he said. An automobile accident in 1999 which left him in a back brace for three months, gave him a sense of purpose, he said. “I thought, ‘I should be dead right now. I want to write songs that are going to matter and that are going to mean something to me.'”
The group’s fans, he said, “have gravitated toward the more acoustic, heartfelt stuff” over the years, and that’s fine with him. “I’m really melody driven,” he said.
Though “American Nights” didn’t do as well as he had hoped, he’s not discouraged. “We’re about to get into the studio next year – it’s the 20th anniversary of the Plain White T’s. Next year there will be a new album, and we’ll be hitting the road over the summer. We’re still in the process of writing and putting all the songs together.”
“We started with an idea of writing songs that could be timeless and played forever,” Higgenson said. “We’ve nailed that a few times. I think we can do it again.”
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance writer.
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Plain White T’s’ ‘Hometown Throwdown’
Where: Genesee Theatre, 203 N. Genesee St., Waukegan
When: 7:30 p.m., Dec. 28
Tickets: $25-$45
Information: 847-782-2366; www.geneseetheatre.com