Colorado band The Fray to celebrate How To Save A Life 20th anniversary tour with first Aus shows since 2012

You might not recognise their faces, but no doubt you’ve heard their music. Colorado-based band The Fray shot to global fame in the noughties with hits You Found Me, Over My Head (Cable Car), and How To Save A Life — the latter doubling as the title of the group’s first album. Their emotional rock ballads seamlessly found a home on screen, becoming soundtracks to the heart-wrenching plot lines of TV dramas Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, Lost, and One Tree Hill. This propelled the band to even greater heights. Two decades later, the group are celebrating their How To Save A Life 20th anniversary tour with their first visit to Australia since a 2012 co-campaign with Kelly Clarkson. But the band have not exactly been avoiding a return to the stage Down Under. As drummer Ben Wysocki suggests, for the last decade, they’ve barely played anywhere. “Our hiatus was not completely intentional, and we sort of ended up in a place where we needed some time away, just by kind of an organic evolution,” he tells PLAY from Nashville, ducking out for sushi between rehearsals. “I felt pretty resistant to it at first, because I think the time that was introduced around 2016 I felt really like my personal connection to the band . . . I felt like I was just getting warmed up.” With a two-year-old daughter at the time, Wysocki admits he and other band members quickly became thankful for the forced break. And they’d earnt it, releasing four studio albums on their way to four Grammy nominations across more than a decade’s work. “There was a lot of personal growth that needed to happen that I wasn’t aware of,” Wysocki says. On the road in the US with guitarist Joe King and vocalist Dave Welsh, core members and childhood friends, the trio are giving American fans a taste of their aptly titled 2024 EP, The Fray Is Back, in a long-awaited return to performing. However, not all members of the band have actually returned. Co-founder and frontman Isaac Slade announced his departure in 2022, though he had informed his bandmates several years earlier of his exit plan. Fans might now argue The Fray’s sound will never be the same, despite their new music appearing to have retained the familiar piano riffs and resonant melodies that became their signature. And there’s “a good chance that there’ll be some new music” by the time they reach our shores. However, the more pertinent question might be: how will a change in physical DNA alter the band’s identity and evolution? “First of all, there’s an obvious hurdle of overcoming expectations from the public, of what The Fray was when Isaac was in it, and the association with that, with him as the frontman,” the drummer says. “But you know, I think there’s only so much we can do about that, and people’s perception is kind of out of our control. So all we can own is what we put into the music now.” Wysocki says out of respect for their back catalogue, they can’t exactly wipe the canvas clean and start over. “We owe it to the fans to honour who The Fray is and their experience,” he says. When he gazes into the audience now, perched on his drum stool metres back from the edge of the stage, he says it’s a “trip” to see so many young people who were only toddlers when their first album was released. Perhaps more bizarre, the drummer teases, is experiencing his own music sung back to him in the arena of everyday life as a passive listener — Something Jon Bon Jovi or Maroon 5’s Adam Levine could only dream of. “When I’m in public and a song comes on in like the grocery store or in an airport or something, it’s really interesting, because it’s almost like an out-of-body, really surreal experience,” Wysocki says. He recalls one moment at a casino when the band’s music played throughout the floor. “There are people singing along around us, like sitting at slot machines, kind of oblivious, and it’s just wild. Because you can watch your music, and you can watch these people literally living a life with your music that has nothing to do with you,” Wysocki says. For people who have waited 13 years to see the band live once more, Perth holds a certain geographical significance as the “bookend” tour stop. Essentially, it’s their party town. “We’d get there either a day early or at the end of a run, we would hang and party at the end in Perth,” Wysocki says. “I remember hanging at Little Creatures in Perth, Fremantle, and having a great time.” The Fray kick off their Australian tour at Perth’s Metro City on December 3, followed by shows in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney.