by Adam Aiken
Wheatus will be playing a couple of gigs in East Anglia early next month as part of their extensive autumn tour.
The New Yorkers are currently playing their first UK and Irish dates in nearly five years.
They’ll be at Cambridge Junction on Sunday, November 5, and Epic Studios, Norwich, on Monday, November 6.
Frontman Brendan B Brown said: “We toured the UK, Ireland and Europe 18 years in a row from 2001 to 2019, some years more than once. The pandemic has paused that tradition since 2020.
“This opportunity to return is more precious to us than all the other years combined and we’re gonna throw the kitchen sink at it.”
It’s now more than two decades since Wheatus released their self-titled debut album, which included the ubiquitous Teenage Dirtbag. The song was given another lease of life recently when it spawned a TikTok trend, “Teenage Dirtbag photos”, which got more than two billion views in less than a month.
That debut album will be re-released next month as an expanded 20-track edition.
Brown said: “We found demos of 10 more songs from throughout the band’s history that had such an album-one vibe that they never made it onto our more recent records. So now we’re giving them a proper chance to be heard.
“The new 20-song expanded version of the album will feature the originally conceived tracklisting and sequence, plus the extra 10 songs that have finally found a home on a record.”
Meanwhile, they have put out the digital five-track EP Just A Dirtbag Christmas, which includes Christmas Dirtbag – a Santa-themed version of the mega-hit.
Click here for tickets for the Norwich show and here for Cambridge.
