Still tramping along
LEGENDS: Three Supertramp originals will be joined
by four others for N.B. dates

It has been 23 years since Supertramp's international smash album, Breakfast in America.

It has been 20 years since the British quintet recorded its last album with its original line-up intact.

And it has been 17 years since the group had its last hit of any magnitude, Cannonball, from 1985's Brother Where You Bound.

In the ensuing years, the band has released just three albums of new material: 1987's Free As a Bird, 1997's Some Things Never Change and a new nine-song release, Slow Motion.

Founding member Rick Davies and Supertramp have soldiered on through defections, line-up changes and a lack of hit records through all those years, not counting a decade of inactivity between 1987-97.

The singer-songwriter and his seven-member band kick off its first North American tour in five years at Mile One Stadium in St. John's on Aug. 20. After playing Halifax's Metro Centre on Aug. 22, Supertramp does a two-city New Brunswick tour: Aug. 23 at Saint John's Harbour Station and Aug. 24 at the Moncton Coliseum. (Tickets are available for both shows.)

Joining Davies will be original Supertramps John Helliwell on saxophones, drummer Bob Siebenberg and four other musicians. Cliff Hugo replaces Dougie Thompson on bass and two musicians fill the shoes of long-gone singer-songwriter Roger Hodgson who was responsible for the band's biggest hits. Mark Hart plays keyboards and guitar and Carl Verheyen plays guitar. Rounding out the band is percussionist Jesse Siebenberg, son of drummer Bob.

Founder Rick Davies explains the long stretches between albums and tours this way: "When you have been around for 30 years, you tend to slow down and have another life outside Supertramp. After so long, people can only stand so much of you."

Supertramp, in fact has been around since 1969, releasing its debut, self-titled album the following year. Over the next decade the band released five more original albums, selling tens of millions of copies, becoming one of the biggest touring bands on the planet. Its music was very much of its time, melding perfect pop hooks with art-rock pretension.

Its hits long behind it, the band takes it easier these days, recording and touring only sporadically.

"We take it as we go," Davies said over the phone from his home in East Hampton, N.Y. "We don't have a master plan. There is still plenty of music left in us and the people who play it are still healthy and have a desire to go out and play once in a while."

Just like that. Still, it can't be easy being a band trying to promote an album on these shores with only its Web site to distribute it and virtually no airplay to back it up.

Davies makes no bones about it. It is tough, especially when the band's hits from decades past are clogging up the airwaves, meaning its new tunes can't get an airing. What it can do, though, is hit the road and get its music to the people the old-fashioned way.

"It's hard for any band of our era now, especially with MTV and videos. Fortunately, we have a huge fan base that remembers us. A lot of kids in Europe come along to see what their fathers and mothers listen to."

Supertramp just finished a European tour. After a brief rest, it will hit these shores, playing music from Slow Motion and its extensive back catalogue.

Several of the cuts on Slow Motion, like the title track, have that classic Supertramp sound with Davies' electric piano up front. And when John Helliwell's tenor sax cuts in for a solo, it sounds like the band hasn't missed a beat during its long absence. Other tracks come across as cliché-ridden and overly long. A Sting of the Tail even has a harmonica riff lifted right off of School, from 1974's Crime of the Century, one of the band's best albums.

Davies said that Supertramp sound is just the way he writes, not any conscious effort to cash in on past glories. "When I start writing, I sit down at the piano, synth or Wurlitzer. So it's what comes out."

Davies, of course, is the principal songwriter now. When Hodgson, the man who wrote and sang most of the group's biggest hits, left in 1983 there was a big question mark hanging over the band.

"It was a question of, 'Are we strong enough to continue or should that be the end?' " Davies said.

The answer was obviously yes, although the singer answers questions about Hodgson with what sounds like a heavy-hearted resignation. After all, it will always be impossible for Supertramp to escape Hodgson's looming spectre since his high-pitched tenor was featured on so many of the band's hits: Give a Little Bit, The Logical Song, Dreamer, Take the Long Way Home, Fool's Overture, Breakfast In America, School, the list goes on.

Davies said Hodgson had complained about being in the band since 1974 when Supertramp had its first hit album.

"He had been warbling about breaks since Crime of the Century. He had a job that most people would chop off their right arm to do and he was quibbling about being there."

Supertramp recorded its biggest album, Breakfast in America, in 1979. Four years later, Hodgson left after a successful double live album (Paris) and a patchy studio follow-up to Breakfast . . . Famous Last Words.

That album title proved prophetic as Hodgson left shortly after the Famous Last Words tour.

Davies still sounds bitter and confused about the split.

"We had our biggest moment, he wanted to leave and it didn't make any sense to me."

The band stayed away from Hodgson's material for years but has started to play some of those old hits with new band members taking over his singing parts.

"We include a few of them," Davies says. "Yeah, we do them with taste."

Davies said the decision wasn't an easy one.

"It took a while to instigate. It took a little getting used to. When you are up there (on stage) for two hours, 10 minutes it gives the audience a break."

Asked if fans get their money's worth with substitute singers taking Hodgson's old parts, Davies issued a challenge of sorts.

"Come see us."

BY GRANT KERR
Telegraph-Journal