Goo Goo Dolls release new music in conjunction with summer tour | Robby Takac interview

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) -- The Goo Goo Dolls are coming home on Aug. 9, with a show at Buffalo's KeyBank Center near the midpoint of their Summer Anthem tour. Having just released a new single, they also have plans for a new record, what would be their 15th studio album.

"We're going to be kind of like, right in the middle of the tour at that point, so the band should be pretty raging," Goo Goo Dolls bassist Robby Takac said. "That feels good. Once again, as you mentioned, it's great to play in the city.”

Takac said the confined atmosphere of the arena is nice, as opposed to any potential weather excitement they may face at some of the outdoor venues they're playing this summer, including the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colo.

"It's always a lot of fun, you know, looking out, seeing faces," Takac said. "You're constantly thinking to yourself, 'My God, I can't believe this is actually happening. Like, I'm here at home and this is real. Pinch myself.'”

Regarding the madness of playing outside, Takac spoke on the renowned 2004 concert at Niagara Square, starting with the planning stages and having to shut down the streets that come into the Square, as well as taking down light poles and traffic signals. Then came the weather.

"That day, the weather -- and it was the advent of HD cameras, so we had all these brand new HD cameras there, and all they were all just dropping because they were not good in the weather," he recalled. "So we ended up editing in footage from friends, video cameras and anything we could find to finish that video.”

Takac said he doesn't think it could have turned out any better, despite the weather.

"When you talk about something successful, it's always the thing that you can say, 'You know the one that...' And you got to be able to say, 'You know, that one in the rain,'" he said. "That's what made that thing stick out, that's what made it that exciting. And, you know, on top of the fact that it's full of fun Goo Goo Dolls songs.”

Takac and Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik also recently spoke about the concert on the Zach Sang Show.

The band also a new record on the way. Takac discussed the process of putting the new work together.

“We had a real busy year last year. We thought that we would not be quite so busy, but we but we ended up really busy, so this record was kind of done in chunks,” Takac said. “We did it with Greg Wattenberg in New York; he's done the last few records with us. And I did a little bit of it at my place in Buffalo, too, which is convenient that you can do these days, especially when you're away from home a lot.”

The first single, “Nothing Lasts Forever,” released Friday morning. Takac said the second one should be coming shortly after, with hopes for the full album to come soon.

Though the Goo Goo Dolls haven't put out an album since their 2022 release of "Chaos in Bloom," they did release the single "Beautiful Lie" in February 2024 and this past January, Takac was featured on a cover of The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" from Buffalo band Letter to Elise.

"I was watching a Bills game and [the song] was playing on the screen, and I was like, 'Wow, this is a great song, man,' and I was like, 'Man, somebody here should do this song,'" he said. "And then I'm like, 'Wait a minute — that's what I do.”

He said the song needed to come together fast. He knew Letter to Elise had been working on a new record of their own at the time, so he reached out to them about working on the cover. Letter to Elise frontman Elliott Hunt has always been a huge fan of The Killers, and the group agreed to record the cover.

"The producer we worked with, he was in Los Angeles, so we did it over Zoom," he said. "And it just came together quickly, I think we had it out within, like, hours, you know, of recording it, yeah. Yeah, it was wild.”

Takac capped the story with a hearty "Go Bills!”

As for the Goo Goo Dolls' music, Takac said the resurgence of their hit "Iris" has been very noticeable as of late, with the band playing the song with Mattie Pruitt on the May season finale of American Idol, Taylor Swift and Billy Joel featuring Rzeznik for a performance of "Iris" at recent concerts of theirs, covers being released by the likes of Phoebe Bridgers & Maggie Rogers and Machine Gun Kelly, the song being featured in the Marvel film "Deadpool and Wolverine," and a viral moment on TikTok. The song is fast approaching 5 billion streams worldwide.

"We used to see every once in a while, it would go to number one in, you know, Malaysia, 'Iris' would go to number one," Takac said. "And you'd be like, 'What happened?' And you'd be able to kind of track it down, you know? 'Oh, it was on Malaysia's Got Talent,' so people got to see it and it sort of happened or we get into movie like you said and, all of a sudden, people would start paying attention again.”

He said over the past couple years, it seems that the “Iris” renaissance occurs on a weekly basis.

“It's always been, and it continues to be, a great springboard for what we continue to do, and it's sort of a great reminder that we're here,” he said. “[It’s] a reason to look our way, so I think it's great.”

Outside of his work with the Goo Goo Dolls, Takac is also busy with Music is Art, now in its 23rd year. 

“It started out like a pretty small organization,” he said. “We had one party every year with a couple of stages and some artists and did a little bit of work in the schools.”

He noted how the Music is Art festival, the arm of Music is Art people are most familiar with, has grown considerably, with last year’s festival consisting of 23 stages at Terminal B on Buffalo’s Outer Harbor, featuring 98% local artists and musicians taking part in a day showcasing the creativity of the city.

In November, Music is Art established the Eighth Note Membership Circle to perpetuate its mission of building community through music and creating opportunities for artists year-round. It also helps keep the festival free.

“We operate throughout the year as well, and that's what a lot of people don't know,” Takac said. “That's a lot of what this Eighth Note is about: kind of keeping things and interests and awareness going between festival dates.”

In addition to Eighth Note, the WNY Music Industry Alliance, which started online during the COVID-19 pandemic, uses music relationships and resources to put together new projects. Music is Art also funds an instrument donation program, which has, in Takac’s estimation, added $1 million worth of instruments into schools over the past few years, as well as funding the Lance Diamond Memorial scholarship for high school music students.

Takac also addressed the nonprofit’s establishment and the desire, prior to its founding in 2003, to bring artists 

“When Music is Art started out, Buffalo was in a much different place,” he said. “There was not a lot of funding for anything at that point, and so that's sort of what this was borne of — people who understood the value of art, music, and such, just to kind of push it along a little bit as we were waiting for things to turn around, which they did.”

He noted that back then, there were four or five festivals taking place each year in the city, and now there are dozens.

“You can see that growth... I mean, that happened,” he said. “The growth at the AKG, the public art incentives that are all over the city. Like, you see these things are happening. Still an awful lot of work to do, there’s still an awful lot of stuff that would be great if we could see happen, but it's nice to see over the years that people seem to be understanding a little bit more the importance of this type of thing to a huge part of our community.”

The Goo Goo Dolls' reach in the community stretches beyond the art world, as well. On June 27, Takac and Rzeznik helped make the ninth overall pick for the Buffalo Sabres in the 2025 NHL draft. The band, of course, supplied the theme for the Sabres' 2007 playoff run, when "Better Days," originally recorded as a Christmas song, took off as a Buffalo anthem. The pair will also be featured as bobbleheads at a Bisons game later this year.

As for the upcoming show, Takac said it is selling great and said it will be a great night.

“I'm super excited,” he said. “Dashboard Confessional is a great band and I think the show in general is going to be amazing. So I can't wait to get home for a couple days.”

Tickets to the show are available at this link. The full interview can be seen in the video player above, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.