'Teenage Dirtbag' singers Wheatus to play at Bristol venue
The legends behind the popular 2000 hit single 'Teenage Dirtbag', Wheatus, are coming to Bristol this Autumn as part of an extensive UK and Irish tour. It's the first shows on these shores in more than four years and the band have had to add extra dates and upgrade venues in many places, due to demand.
It's been more than 20 years since Wheatus released their million-selling debut album 'Wheatus', as well as their popular single 'Teenage Dirtbag'. To celebrate the milestone, the band will release a specially expanded 20-track edition of their debut album on December 1, 2023 and, before then, will embark on a hefty tour.
The band will be coming to Bristol's Thekla on October 15. The last few remaining tickets for Bristol and other stops on the tour, are on sale now via the official Wheatus website.
The promo video for 'Teenage Dirtbag', featuring clips of Mena Suvari and Jason Biggs from the 200 teen rom-com movie 'Loser', has almost amassed 250 million views on YouTube. You can watch the 'Teenage Dirtbag' video here - and we dare you not to sing along.
Wheatus, who hail from New York, have now released six studio albums and two live albums across their career. Commenting on the new UK & Irish tour, Wheatus frontman Brendan B Brown says, “We toured the UK, Ireland and Europe eighteen years in a row from 2001-2019, 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”.
Talking of the new 20-track expanded version of the band's debut album, Brendan went on to say: "We found demos of ten 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 twenty-song expanded version of the album will feature the originally conceived tracklisting and sequence, plus the extra ten songs that have finally found a home on a record.”
The past twelve months have seen Wheatus explode back into the mainstream with the “Teenage Dirtbag photos” TikTok trend going hugely viral across social media, with more than two billion views in less than a month. The song has been shared and celebrated recently by Lil Nas X, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, Chevy Chase, Jon Bon Jovi, Victoria Beckham, Alice Cooper, Millie Bobby Brown, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brooke Shields, Mark Ruffalo, Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera, Heidi Klum, Mark Ronson, LL Cool J, Tony Hawk, Sammy Hagar, Nick Kroll, Lupita Nyong’o, Machine Gun Kelly, Anderson Paak, Jessica Alba, Mick Fleetwood, Sheryl Crow, Chris Pratt and Jamie Lee Curtis, among countless others all pushing the hashtag #teenagedirtbag.
Against all odds, this newfound frenzy around the now 23-year-old anthem has led the band to recently perform on some of the most prestigious stages of their career. They’ve supported Everclear, Hoobastank, Living Colour, Phantom Planet, The Wallflowers, Eve 6 and Dashboard Confessional at various dates around the United States.
They've also been performing at high-profile American music festivals such as Audacy Beach Festival (also featuring Muse, Jack White, The 1975, Machine Gun Kelly, etc), Adjacent Festival (also featuring Blink-182, Coheed & Cambria, Turnstile, Jimmy Eat World, with Wheatus taking the stage just before Paramore), and the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball (where Brendan sang “Teenage Dirtbag” at Madison Square Garden alongside rising pop star Jax).
Wheatus were also the surprise musical guests on the 2023 series finale of ITV’s Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway - filmed live at Universal Studios Orlando & watched by millions. And if all that wasn’t enough, a brand new remix of “Teenage Dirtbag” was used as part of an enormous marketing campaign to promote Season 2 of the hugely popular Disney Freeform/Hulu series ‘Cruel Summer.’
As the band rightly conclude, “Teenage years may be fleeting, but it seems ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ is for life!”
