Nearly a decade after their last album together, multi-platinum pop-rock band The Fray weren’t dead, but it’s safe to say they were on life support.
Beloved for their 2005 debut album How To Save A Life, the Grammy-nominated Colorado band had announced that they had parted ways with lead singer Isaac Slade in 2022, after officially going on hiatus in 2019, and going into lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“We really had a couple years of soul searching and discussing and planning, on the heels of Isaac leaving the band,” The Fray drummer and principal member Ben Wysocki told Revue. “We played a couple shows here and there, like there were some private shows and this random one in Busch Gardens, and a couple of low profile shows. But last fall, we started the tour in Washington, D.C., and the first show back was really surreal. Like, none of us really knew what to expect, to be honest. We were excited to be back in front of people, and we hoped the fans were too. But that first show just really blew our minds. We felt super grateful to even just be able to be stepping back on stage again in front of fans, in front of a full room. That’s an honor anyways. Here we are 20 years into the game after some bumps in the road, and it was incredible.”
Wysocki, along with fellow principal members vocalist/guitarist Joe King and lead guitarist Dave Welsh, decided to carry on without Slade. Instead, the band opted for King to take over on lead vocals. Having worked as co-songwriter and backing vocalist since the very beginning, the band knew that King’s voice was always at the core of The Fray, but didn’t know how fans would respond to the change.
What they found was life-affirming and inspiring: full audience singalongs night after night, tears from emotional fans in the front row, and multiple generations sharing in the love of their music.
“When you start a band, and when you’re in a band, so much of it is self-promotion,” Wysocki said. “You talk about yourself all the time. There’s pictures of you, you’re on stage. But when the songs have taken on a life of their own, songs like ‘How to Save a Life’ or ‘You Found Me,’ or even ‘Look After You,’ people have a relationship with the songs that have nothing to do with us. We are just kind of the vehicle to get this song to these people. And it’s really humbling and amazing. There’s a lot to be said for that as far as art in general goes, like the separation between the creation and the creator as being completely different things. But I don’t think we had any idea what any of that meant when we were starting, because we were just teenagers in a band, right? You know, and then the music became something so much bigger.”
One of the things that exploded The Fray’s music came when the song “How To Save A Life” featured prominent placement in the perpetually popular ABC medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy.” The song’s association with the show has served as a gateway for countless fans to find the band’s music, even though it came back at a time when that wasn’t as common of a move for bands as it is today.
“I’d like to think that we had a lot of wisdom in that, but there was no way to know what that was going to do,” Wysocki said. “I think for us it was just like, ‘Oh this show that seemingly is very popular wants to use your song.’ And we’re like, OK, that’s cool. Back then we definitely had this filter of, if something isn’t totally embarrassing, [that's fine], or the association to the story that our music’s being used with still has to be something that we felt like would represent us. But that was at a time where our music was being licensed to a lot of different things. Like, it was in a Transformers movie, and it was on all these different TV shows. And so we didn’t really know that ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ was going to become such a bigger thing for us. We had no idea. Looking back with hindsight now, there is something to be said for being open and trusting the team around you, because as artists, there’s only so much that we really know, and so you just have to stay flexible and not get in your own way.”
Following their instincts, The Fray released their first new record in a decade with the release of the EP “The Fray Is Back” last fall. Their first new music since the release of the single “Singing Low” off their 2016 greatest hits compilation Through The Years: The Best of The Fray, it was a culmination of songs left from an unfinished album, and new creative work from the now trio.
“We’d been holding our breath for a while, and then when the three of us decided to make new music again, we exhaled all of this stuff,” Wysocki said. “There’s certain songs on that EP that feel like very much like a Fray song, very second nature, very natural to us… And then certainly some other songs that represent a whole new expression. A song like ‘Angeleno Moon, or ‘Time Well Wasted.’ Those feel different. Like a different voice, a different creative shape.”
In between shows, The Fray are in the studio hashing out more new music, exploring new sounds and new spaces, as they continue to head in a new direction.
The band will also continue to reconnect with their past when they celebrate the 20th Anniversary of How To Save A Life later this year.
“Just after we come to Grand Rapids, we’re going to officially start the anniversary tour,” Wysocki said. “And so we’ve been digging out some old songs from that first record that we haven’t played in a while. About half of the album we have been playing a lot, over the course of our career, but the other half not as much. We’ve been digging out some of those, and dusting them off, and re-familiarizing ourselves. And so there’s a kind of muscle memory when we play these songs because they’re so ingrained somewhere way back in there. But then at the same time we’re grown men now with so much life and love and loss and experience and mistakes and triumphs, and all this life that we’ve lived since the birth of these songs, that now to play them is totally different.”
The Fray – The Fray Is Back 2025
GLC Live at 20 Monroe, 11 Ottawa Ave. NW, Grand Rapids
June 27, 7 p.m. doors, 8 p.m. show, $53+, All Ages
thefray.com, Glcliveat20monroe.com
