Goo Goo Dolls not out in the musical cold

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/music/s_705281.html By Rege Behe, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW Thursday, October 21, 2010 Every year, John Rzeznik, lead singer and guitarist for the Goo Goo Dolls, returns home to his native Buffalo. Not in summer, when the weather in Western New York can be sublime, but in the dreary months at the end and beginning of the year when the winds off Lake Erie cast a frigid spell over Buffalo. "My girlfriend and I live in Los Angeles and I go running off to Buffalo, and I always go in middle of winter," says Rzeznik in advance of the Goo Goo Dolls show Saturday at St. Vincent College. "It just provokes a lot memories and a lot of emotions. To use a cliche, it's getting back to your roots." Perhaps that attachment to home, and growing up in a no-nonsense city like Buffalo, is why the Goo Goo Dolls have remained a steady presence on the radio since "Name" became a hit single in 1995. The new album, "Something for the Rest of Us," has yielded another hit, "Home," which breaks the Goo Goo Dolls' own record for most Top Ten singles (14) on the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart. It is cut from the same cloth as other songs, such as "Black Balloon," "Iris," and "Big Machine," but also has a certain resonance, a rare gravitas for a popular song. Perhaps that's because Rzeznik does not write with anything in mind save his own emotions. "I try to keep the writing, for a lack of a better term, selfish," he says. "I try speak my mind and do my own thing. If it gets commercially successful, that's fine. If it doesn't, that's out of my control." With "Something for the Rest of Us," Rzeznik again plumbs his psyche, but with a different focus. Many of the songs reflect an unease with current events, be it the plight of veterans returning home from war or average families who are struggling to make ends meet. One song in particular, "Notbroken," came after Rzeznik received a letter from a woman whose husband was injured during the war in Iraq. "People share stories with me all the time about what they're going through," Rzeznik says. "To me, it's really gut-wrenching, sometimes, when you meet someone at a meet-and-greet, and there's 100 people there, and you get two minutes to talk to somebody. They tell you, 'My mother got diagnosed with cancer and she told me to tell you to quit smoking.' It's gut-wrenching. It's kind of strange that our music has become medicine for a lot of people." The band -- which also features bassist and vocalist Robbie Takac and drummer Mike Malinin -- recorded the bulk of "Something for a Rest of Us" at a studio in Buffalo. Rzeznik says his friends there help keep him on a even keel. "They all have gone on to have jobs and families," he says. "They're doing all right for themselves, but there's still that b.s. detector. ... I have to take a half hour of ribbing for living in California. They think I'm getting soft. But that's OK. I know they mean well." Rzeznik, however, says that after this tour he's planning to move back to the East Coast. And while he may or may not return to Buffalo -- he says his girlfriend's family lives in New York City -- he will relocate to an area where there's a chance of snow on the ground at Christmas time. "I really just love the winter," Rzeznik says.