The reformed Fountains of Wayne staged their first full concert in 12 years Saturday, with the New Jersey power pop rockers delivering an hour-long set in Boca Raton, Florida.
Earlier this year, the surviving members of Fountains of Wayne — singer Chris Collingwood, guitarist Jody Porter, and drummer Brian Young — announced plans to reunite for a gig at Milwaukee’s Summerfest in July. The group, with Eve 6’s Max Collins filling the void left by the death of founding bassist Adam Schlesinger, then added a few more shows, including the gig Saturday at Boca Raton’s Mizner Park Amphitheater.
Saturday’s concert featured a 15-song setlist culled entirely from the band’s acclaimed first three albums — 1996’s self-titled LP, 1999’s Utopia Parkway, and 2003’s Welcome Interstate Managers — including the hit “Stacy’s Mom” and classics like “Radiation Vibe,” “Sink to the Bottom,” and “Hackensack.”
In addition to the Summerfest gig, Fountains of Wayne will also play Ocean City, Maryland’s Oceans Calling Festival on Sept. 26.
Schlesinger died in April 2020 at the age of 52 due to complications from Covid-19. Soon after, amid the coronavirus quarantine, his bandmates reunited — with help from Sharon Van Etten — for the first time since 2013 to virtually perform on a New Jersey pandemic relief fund’s benefit livestream.
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Following Schlesinger’s death, his longtime friend and bandmate Collingwood paid tribute to him in a Rolling Stone interview. “Adam’s greatest skill was distilling a genre to its essence and recreating it flawlessly, something he understood about himself and said all the time,” Collingwood said.
“That kind of ability comes from being fluent in the language of pop music, from years of listening analytically and being able to play many different instruments. It wasn’t until after FOW that I realized some of my guitarist friends have no idea what their drummer or bass player is doing at any given moment. Adam could have played every instrument on every FOW song, and it seemed to me he carried around in his head some idealized version of each of his songs that nothing real could measure up to.”