Jax: Toadies at FIVE (Oct 14, 2026)

October 14, 2026 Wednesday
Toadies
at FIVE
fivejax.com

Toadies is on the last leg of their tour – stopping by FIVE, in Jacksonville, Florida, on October 14, 2026. The band recently announced the first ever vinyl release of their 2001 album Hell Below/Stars Above. As a recent phonograph convert, I’m happy to see more music being released on this century-old technology.

We saw Toadies in June 2026 and wrote, “Toadies took the stage over with the instrumental “Ash’s Theme” (from the new record), but Toadies leader Vaden Todd Lewis promised “lots of songs you can sing along to for the rest of the night” — starting with Rubberneck‘s “I Come from the Water”. And while 1994’s alt-rock classics ran shoulder-to-shoulder with new stuff (2026’s Charmer) and fan-service deep cuts (a song from that abandoned 2000 album Feeler, plus three from the actual 2001 followup Hell Below/Stars Above), the eras blurred together, as they frequently do. Lewis is 60 now, and the deranged edge he lent to “Possum Kingdom”‘s haunting refrain (“do you want to die?”) is a little lower and more craggy, but Toadies’ vision of hard-rock-with-dark-themes shines through. We got 10 songs from the new album, and they sound just as urgent and compelling live as they do on the record. (That’s no coincidence: it was one of the last projects that audio vérité legend Steve Albini recorded before his 2024 death.) The new stuff is plenty weird — there are just as many crooked corners and 7/8 surprises, but the sophisticated progressions and maturity of the songwriting hide tricks. And there’s old fashioned amplification: “Get Out of Your Head” hit 109 decibels where I was standing, and caused my hearing protection to glitch on me. “Normal” got a short but earnest introduction, framing the new album as Lewis’s statement about depression, self-harm, and suicide, urging people to get help. He also assured folks to be less afraid of what treatment and recovery really look like: “I’m here today because I got help, and I’m still weird as fuck. It’s just that the ‘fuck you’ voice in my head got a little quieter.” They left the stage after “Tyler”, but you know what it means when, as the band leaves, the lights dim, and the roadies come on stage, crack open fresh beers, leaving them by newly tuned guitars. There would be more. ”

Local H and Emily Wolfe to open.

Tour Dates