Interview: Lit Guitarist Jeremy Popoff

With Lit’s latest album, “Tastes Like Gold,” the band is proving the saying “you can’t go home again” doesn’t apply to music.

In the 20-plus years since Lit blasted into the rock mainstream with the iconic hit song “My Own Worst Enemy,” the band has done albums that have detoured from the energetic pop-rock of their first three albums. The band’s 2012 effort, “The View from the Bottom,” found Lit slowing their typical tempos and going for more of a mainstream rock sound.

An even bigger departure came with Lit’s next album, the 2017 release “These Are The Days.” On that album, the band blended country with their rock sound and crafted a set of songs that wouldn’t feel out of place on today’s country radio.

Lit guitarist Jeremy Popoff is grateful that the band’s audience seems to have tolerated the forays into other types of music.

“It’s always nice when fans or people that love a band give that band freedom from time to time to explore different, push the envelope here or there or explore different genres,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It kind of allowed us to venture off and explore new territory to then sort of discover what home felt like. We kind of had to leave the nest to go like ‘Ah, you know what, let’s go back to that (original sound).”

That’s exactly what has happened with “Tastes Like Gold,” Lit’s seventh album. Made during the pandemic, it sounds very much like the work of the band that broke through in a big way with their sophomore album, 1999’s “A Place in the Sun” and its hit singles, the aforementioned “My Own Worst Enemy,” the top-three hit “Miserable” and “Zip-Lock” (which reached No. 11) on the alternative rock chart.

The latest album opens with a suitably caffeinated and catchy anthem, “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” and the energy and melody don’t falter after that, with rockers like “Mouth Shut,” “Kicked Off A Plane” (a real-life tale of being bounced from a flight for having a verboten extra ingredient in the beverages certain band members brought aboard), “Get Out of My Song” and “Here’s To Another” interrupted only by a pair of ballads, “OK With That” and “Hold That Thought,” that bring balance to “Tastes Like Gold.”

“It was fun to do,” Popoff said of the “Tastes Like Gold” project. “And the fact that we were able to put ourselves back in a headspace where we were able to write just simple, catchy party rock songs that weren’t about politics and viruses and things (was nice). I know a lot of bands did, a lot of bands went to a dark place, and rightfully so. Somehow, we found something else out of all of that that allowed us to make what we thought was the right Lit record for the time.”

Popoff and his brother, Lit singer Ajay, wrote 10 of the 12 songs on “Tastes Like Gold” with a new pair of collaborators, Carlo Colasacco and Eric Paquette (aka Youthyear). Popoff credits Colasacco and Paquette with helping he and Arjay find their stride in writing the kind of rocking pop songs they had in mind for “Tastes Like Gold.”

“It was neat because the process was here are two guys that are a lot younger than us and they grew up listening to Lit, and they were big Lit fans,” Popoff said. “So we were able to sort of pose the question to them, too, ‘What does Lit mean to you and what do you feel like it would mean to you today? What kind of record would you want to hear as a Lit fan from 20 years ago?’ That was kind of the angle, what does that sound like to us today? So it was neat to be influenced and inspired by guys that we had influenced and inspired growing up.”

The partnership started out organically when Calasacco, who had done a writing session with Jeremy Popoff a year or so earlier contacted him to see about trying another session. That first get-together didn’t yield any songs, but they enjoyed working and hanging out together.

“He just hit me up and said ‘Hey man, I’d like to try getting together with you again. I’ve got maybe a couple of ideas. I know we didn’t get anything last time, but I think we could do something cool together,’” Popoff recalled. “I was like ‘Sure, we’re actually moving to Nashville full time, and when we get settled, we’ll hit you up.’ So we did, and the first day, he had this idea for a song that ended up being ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah,’”

Soon Paquette, a friend of Calasacco’s, joined in the process and more songs started to flow.

“We all just hit it off and then one song turned into two, then turned into four, you know, and they were making these demos as we were writing the songs,” Popoff said. “It started out as a songwriting meeting and it turned into a full (partnership). They ended up producing the record with us.”

Now Lit, which also includes bassist Kevin Baldes and drummer Taylor Carroll, is back on tour. Lit’s set will feature some songs from “Taste Of Gold” and a good number of hits and fan favorites.

One song that will definitely be in Lit’s set will be “My Own Worst Enemy.” The song, which spent 11 weeks atop the alternative rock chart when it was new, has become a signature song, not only for Lit, but for the entire alt-rock music scene of the late 1990s/pre-9-11 2000s. The song has become a regular selection in sets played by rock cover bands nationwide, at karaoke nights, and even at wedding receptions. It’s been featured in the “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” video games, and now it’s the subject of a new four-part podcast, “My Own Worst Enemy,” where various musicians, radio professionals, musicologists and members of Lit themselves examine the phenomenon that is the song.

Popoff admits he can’t explain why “My Own Worst Enemy” has become such an enduring and iconic hit.

“I can’t put my finger on it still, even after the documentary and after the experts sort of tried to peel the onion, I think we’re all still scratching our heads going ‘What is it about this song?’” he said. “I guess it’s just one of those crazy, freak-of-nature kind of things. It’s not something that we’ve ever taken for granted. We still love playing it, and it’s still a huge blessing for us. It’s given us a career. And financially, it’s paid our bills for going on 25 years, and it’s been pretty incredible.”

Lit comes to Jannus Live on Sunday, Jan. 28. Click here for ticket information.