For the second time in as many albums, Blues Traveler has disappointed me. It’s kind of sad, because these guys, even more than Phish or the Grateful Dead, were my first real musical love (well, my first “mature” musical love — I refuse to count Bon Jovi). I remember the first time I heard them. I was laying in the back seat, driving home from Plymouth State in New Hampshire, with both of my brothers in the front seat. My oldest bro put Blues Traveler’s first album in the tape deck, and the first song, “But Anyway,” just blew me away. I remember putting my ear up against the speaker on the door so I could hear them over my middle bro’s loud-ass voice. Ever since then, Blues Traveler has always been the shit in my mind.

Their first, second, and third albums were awesome. The third, Save His Soul, is probably my favorite out of all of the band’s albums. The opening tune, “Trina Magna,” was, for a long time, where I turned when I needed to be reminded about my philosophy of what’s going on around here, “They were just like you and me, guessing their asses off, as if we couldn’t tell.” Add on “Letter from a Friend,” “Go Outside & Drive,” “Whoops!,” “Bullshitter’s Lament->Conquer Me,” and the underrated “Fledgling,” and you’ve got yourself an awesome album.

This was followed by Four, which came out in 1994, the same as Phish’s Hoist and Dave Matthew Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming. 1994 was the year that jam bands went mainstream. The frat boys came stumbling drunk out of the woodwork, and all of them were singing “Runaround.” I didn’t quite get it, either, because Four just wasn’t as strong as the three previous albums. Besides “The Mountain Wins Again,” with Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes sitting in on slide guitar, “Hook,” and “Brother John,” the songs just weren’t that good. And that includes “Runaround.”

Don’t get me wrong. I still knew every word to every song, and could warble along to every harmonica solo, but it simply didn’t impress me as much as the previous albums.

Luckily, they followed up with Straight On ‘Til Morning (actually, there was a live album follow up — most of which was taken from a show I saw at the Orpheum in Boston, but there were no “new” songs on it, so I won’t count it here). I think a lot of people forget how good of an album this was. There were some real zippy tunes, like “Felicia,” “Psycho Joe (Goes To the Electric Guitar),” and “Last Night I Dreamed,” some Popper sentimentality songs, like “Canadian Rose” and “Yours,” and some interesting lyric songs, like “The Battle of Someone.”

After Straight On… the band disappeared from the studio for a while.This was the period where John Popper was busted with illegal possession of firearms, Bobby Sheehan was busted with cocaine, and where Popper came out with his solo album, Zygote (which was pretty good, but I won’t go into it here).

And then Bobby Sheehan died of a drug overdose. Less than a month later, John Popper appeared on Howard Stern and bet that the band would stay together. Two months after that, they announced that Tad Kinchla, brother of Blues Traveler guitarist, Chan Kinchla, would take Bobby’s spot in the band, and then a month of so after that, they announced the addition of a fifth band member, keyboardist Ben Wilson.

In the meantime, the band released a download-only EP, entitled Decision of the Skies: A Traveler’s Tale of Sun & Storm. If you’ve never heard this EP, download the songs now! The first tune, “12 Swords,” is classic Blues Traveler. Acoustic strumming, lyrics that strive to be both epic and personal, and just the right touch of piano. The second, “The Sun & The Storm,” pops right out of the slow first tune. Popper does that “harmonize with yourself” thing, and Brendan Hill puts together a really nice rhythm behind it all.

The third tune, “Traveler Suite,” is the epic that the first tune strives to be. At 20:18, it’s monumental. Like a symphony, it’s got eight movements in it. The opening (Part I: Intro) moves from pretty strumming to a rocking old-school guitar solo. The lyrics kick in at about 4 minutes for Part II: Setting Sun. Pretty stuff. Nothing too intense or too slow. At about 7 minutes, for Part III: Color Me Gone, the song dissolves into high squeals, children’s laughter, and a surround-sounding harmonica. There’s thunder. A pulsing beat, and then Popper’s voice sneaks in underneath it all. The drums kick in and all of a sudden you’re an eagle soaring above the bloody battleground of a medieval war, “unto the breach and into the flame, when I play!” The squeals come back, and then we’re back to a nice, classic song structure for Part IV: Low Branch. The lyrics in this part are recognizable to BT fans, as parts of them have been used by Popper as lyrical filler for years. Then the song kicks into an orchestrated guitar instrumental for Part V: Pancho. Chan (if indeed it is Chan and not Popper) plays uncharacteristically. Usually, he’s got a rough sound, but he’s gorgeous here. Then Popper starts singing again for Part VI: Low Branch Reprise. The piano through here is very New Orleans-y, and Chan comes back with a more “Channy-sounding” solo. Part VII: Color Me Gone Reprise kicks in with full amphetamine force. Chan and Popper do a call-and-response thing between the guitar and the voice, before the song fades into and out of the final movement, Part VII: Setting Sun Reprise. It really is a great tune. Download it now.

The last tune on the EP is “The Path.” This one’s not bad, but it’s also nothing too special. After “Traveler Suite,” Blues Traveler would have to go far to outdo itself. Popper’s harmonica sounds “poppy,” by which I mean, it pops, like a wa-wa pedal on a guitar. It sounds like squishy farts, but you know, more musical.

The EP, however, was never sold in stores or (I don’t think) at shows. If you weren’t a dedicated fan, Blues Traveler’s first album after Straight on… was Bridge. This was the coming out album for the new bassist and keyboardist. There’s not a bad song on it. From radio-friendly tunes like “Back in the Day” and “Girl Inside My Head” to the sonic sounds of “All Hands” to Popper’s emotional confession on “Pretty Angry,” in which the singer discusses how Sheehan’s overdose affected him (”You let me go, you let me down, and I guess I’m still pretty angry, and I don’t want to be. I don’t know what was the bigger waste of time, missing you, or wishing it was me.”), the album is just top notch. The new keyboardist sounds great, and the new bassist, while different, works. After Bridge, I was bullish on Blues Traveler’s future.

And then they were dropped from their label. As great as Bridge was, it only sold 100,000 albums. But maybe “dropped” is wrong. One person, going by the name Cheshire Cat, commented on a news item about the situation:

the band wasn’t dropped by A&M Records after “Bridge” came out. Blues Traveler had already dropped A&M the previous year and decided to go with Interscope. The reason that the band was dropped was because Interscope thought that they had signed a pop rock band (based on the success of “Run Around and Hook”) and promoted them as such. When the band finally realized that they had signed on with a bunch of bottom line obsessed bean counters and not a responsible, long term thinking record label they asked out of their deal with Interscope. The band is now extremely happy with their partnership with Sanctuary Records.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m extremely happy about the new deal.

The first album on Sanctuary was Truth Be Told. With this album, the band decided to concentrate on its song-writing skills — or at least that’s what they said. Tad Kinchla (the new bassist) said, “After [Bridge], we really wanted to take the time to build each song.” I didn’t quite get what they were driving at. I always thought that they wrote awesome songs. The harmonica and guitar always played well off each other, the drums were always tight, and the bass (regardless of who played it) was almost always perfect. But apparently, the band wasn’t happy. So we got an album of songs that seem to struggle between wanting to be mainstream and wanting to have musical integrity. The result is an album that just never comes together. The harmonica — the defining sound of Blues Traveler — doesn’t even appear until the fourth track! All in all, there are, at most, two good songs on the thing: “Eventually (I’ll Come Around)” and “Mount Normal.” The rest can be forgotten without any loss.

And now comes new the album, ¡Bastardos!. Produced by ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, ¡Bastardos! seemed like an intriguing idea. From what I saw in the Wilco DVD, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, Bennett seemed to be the type of artist that understands the difference between making a song in a studio and playing it live. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is just an unbelievable piece of art, comparable, in my mind, to The Beatles’ Abbey Road. With this guy spinning the knobs, I thought ¡Bastardos! would be off the hook.

The beginning of the first tune, “You Can’t Stop Thinking About Me,” hints that Bennett’s influence may live up to its promise. Popper’s voice is overlayed with a bunch of effects, so it sounds like it’s coming out from under your bed. Hill’s drums sound like they are underground. It’s pretty cool. But then the chorus kicks in, and we get a guitar solo, and well, the whole thing just kind of fades into nothingness, but not in a cool way.

The second song, “Amber Awaits,” sounds like some band is covering a lost song from Blues Traveler’s early days. It’s about a girl, of course. It’s got hints of “Felicia” behind it, a little bit of “Gina,” and a little bit of “Love of My Life.” There’s a short and sweet harmonica solo and a bit of funky/country guitar. This one also fades into the cold. You can almost hear the band discussing its potential as a radio hit.

The third tune, “After What,” is boring at the beginning. They try to add some color in the chorus, with a resounding keyboard, but is it enough to save it? The guitar riff sounds like its been ripped off of some late-nineties alternative band. Popper’s voice is lost, and his harmonica is deep in the background. In the middle of it, the band breaks down into something that sounds like it could build into a really hot tune, but they cut it off before it has time to breathe. And again, it fades…

…into the fourth tune, “Money Back Guarantee.” This is a slow one, but not a ballad. It’s slow like the space between thunder strikes. Popper is joined by some chick on backing vocals, but it doesn’t work for me. If I’m not mistaken, there might be an accordion in the background of this. It’s a weird, sprawling tune. It almost wants to be gospel blues, or maybe a power ballad. Whatever it is, I don’t think I like it.

The fifth tune, “Can’t Win True Love,” starts out with a weird electronic sound. Popper sings a few words. The keyboard hums. The high hat comes in. And then the rest of the band. And some horns. It’s got a strange middle, with a very Ray-Manzerek-from-The-Doors kind of organ sound to it, but played through the mouth of a warbling bird. Popper’s second harmonica solo on the album comes in, but it only lasts like seven seconds. It’s followed by his voice, and it is perhaps on this song when you can really start to hear the age in it. He’s not hitting the notes like he used to. Instead of sounding fuller, he just sounds loud. I hate to say it, but it’s almost as if his giant belly was like the bottom part of a bell, but now it’s gone.

The sixth song, “Nail,” feels like a three-minute song at the beginning. It drives forward like a train, but doesn’t seem to go anywhere. About a minute into it, the train goes off the rails. There’s a silence, and then everything goes sonic for another minute, before returning back to the opening. Again, a lot of promise with not a lot of delivery.

The seventh tune, “Leaning In,” is very Elton John-y. The piano is the dominant instrument; there are some strings; and a slow harmonica. Most of the song is Popper just repeating the title over and over. What feels like the bridge is a nice little harmonica solo, but then, just as it starts, the whole song fades out into nothing. Why? I have no idea.

“She and I” is a nice little song. It’s got a horns intro. A minimalist sound to almost everything before the chorus, and then everyone gets excited, before the horns take over. The song reminds me of Sunday night concerts at Harper’s Ferry in Brighton, MA. The music is too good for a Sunday audience, but not quite good enough to attract a big crowd on Friday night. The keyboard solo is very…smokey. The jam band tries to break out a little on this one, but nothing comes out of it, by which I mean, it’s just a lot of noise.

The ninth tune, “Rubberneck,” is the tune where Popper’s voice finally sounds strong. He goes from the rumbling to the soaring, sounding very full throughout all of it. It still sounds older than his original voice, but it’s got the power that I’m used to. Unfortunately, the song is not impressive. The harmonica solo mimics the structure of the lyric, so it’s not very interesting. It’s about at this point on the album where I start to get sick of the keyboard.

The tenth song, “Nefertiti,” is a throw-away. Anything that might have been cool on it sounded cooler when I heard it the first time on “All Hands.”

Let it be noted that we’re now ten songs into the album and I’ve yet to make a comment on any of the lyrics. That’s because there’s nothing impressive about them, by which I mean, they leave no impression. And this is what they come up with when they concentrate on “song writing.”

The eleventh tune, “What Could Possibly Go Wrong,” is kind of cool. The beginning has one of those things where Popper matches his lyrical rhythm to the drums, almost like a Puddle of Mudd tune or something. But then, we get what sounds like a sythesized-xylophone and all connections to Puddle of Mudd goes away and we’re left with a weird, Billy Joel-like thing. It’s a very strange combination. I have a feeling this will be one of those “must listen to a bunch before you get it” kind of things.

The twelfth song, “That Which Doesn’t Kill You,” is a neat little thing. There’s a funky little bass line, and Chan actually gets a nice guitar solo, which is followed by an old school harmonica solo. The song has a kind of lounge feel to it. And just when you’re about to get bored with it, Bennett throws in some nice sonic effects to keep you on your toes. Again, the keyboard has worn out its welcome, but the rest of the band is finally getting some face time with the listener, so you can almost excuse its presence. This is perhaps the best song on the album, but that isn’t saying much.

The thirteenth tune, “She Isn’t Mine,” is a weird “what it’s like to live in Texas” kind of song. A cowboy-like acoustic strumming. A slow march on the drums. A keyboard the strives to sound like a plains wind. A harmonica with a campfire feel to it. Bennett throws in just enough reverb at certain points to conjure up thoughts of dry lightning. Kind of interesting to listen to.

The final song on the album, “Children of the Night,” starts off with a promise in the form of a guitar intro. But Popper’s voice sounds stretched again, and whatever is hoped for disappears before the song is even 45 seconds old. The sound overwhelms the music, so you notice its failures instead of its successes. Popper even howls like a wolf at one point, but its more sad than anything else. About three minutes in, we get a weird, harmonica-solo through a vacuum tube kind of sound, which is overtaken by a rich guitar, but all of which gets muddled behind Hill’s cymbals. Then the keyboardist tries to join in the fun, and we’re wading through a swamp of sound. Way too much going on in this one. At about five minutes, the song breaks down into squeaks and squeals. The only thing we have to grab onto is the drums. Everything else is feedback, but not in that exciting Wilco kind of way. It reminds me of “The Tiding,” the intro tune on Blues Traveler’s second album, except “The Tiding” drops into a kick ass bass-line and the incredible tune “Onslaught,” where this just ends in what might be John Popper sneezing into his harmonica. It doesn’t work for me at all.

At the beginning of 2006, 16 years after I first fell in love with Blues Traveler, I’m starting to reach the conclusion that I won’t buy their next album. And that makes me incredibly sad.