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 Every year it seems like some band reunites for a big concert tour: The Police, New Kids on the Block, Stone Temple Pilots…Creed. This year, the music world was abuzz when Travis Barker, Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus--better known as punk rockers blink-182--announced they were getting back together and embarking on their first tour in five years.
Stopping by the Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre in Chula Vista on Sept. 16 and the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine on Sept. 17 and 18, blink-182 finally brings their highly anticipated summer reunion tour to Southern California with special guests Weezer (during the Sept. 16 and 17 performances) and Fall Out Boy and All-American Rejects (during the Sept. 18 show). Fans can expect to hear all of the band’s now-classic hits, songs such as “What’s My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things,” during their performance (“We have 15 singles, so an hour and 15 minutes into the show, we’re still playing the hits,” said guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge), and DeLonge promised ticket-holders will be “sick and tired” of the group by the time their two-hour set is through. All joking aside, DeLonge said he’s “proud of the blink-182 saga” and couldn’t be happier with the response their reunion tour has been getting.
“The band is just as gigantic as it’s ever been,” DeLonge told SoCal.com. “And really, it’s just us being ourselves. We’re just three retarded dudes, but we’re a testament that anyone can do whatever they put their minds to.”
 While the band has spent the past five years working on their own projects--DeLonge went on to become the guitarist and lead singer for the alternative rock band Angels & Airwaves; bassist Mark Hoppus started a new band, +44, with fellow blink-182 member Travis Barker; and Barker starred in the short-lived MTV series “Meet the Barkers” with his then-wife Shanna Moakler, amongst other things--DeLonge said “no one ever wanted to forget” their involvement with blink-182. However, it wasn’t until Barker’s near-death experience in a plane crash back in 2008 that the group was finally ready to give blink-182 another try.
“That’s the big question: how we got back together,” DeLonge said with a laugh. “Travis’ accident, though, really pulled us back together. Once we all got in the same room again, the question came up: should we play together again? Then our agents and managers started talking about stadiums…next thing you know, we’re scurrying to get this tour together. But yeah, that was the main reason. If Travis didn’t have that tragedy, we were all so busy with our own stuff who knows when this might have happened. The accident, though, gave us a chance to put everything under the rug.”
Even though DeLonge admitted that the band has changed a lot since the group last played together (“We’ve all been doing such different stuff,” he said. “Travis has his hip-hop thing, I’ve been busy working on the post-production of an Angels & Airwaves movie…there’s just so much going on. The question was how we were going to pull all this together; how we were going to bring our separate experiences into blink-182.”), DeLonge said the secret to blink-182’s continued success rests on the band staying true to who they once were.
 “Blink works one way,” he said. “It’s like when The Police play a concert--they don’t count on Sting to bring people to a show. They deliver the same [concert] experience they always have. And it’s funny, because we started working on a new song before this tour and the material sounds exactly like if it was a lost track off our last CD (2003’s Blink-182). It’s like we stepped back in time six years, and that’s a really good thing. It’s just crazy how natural all this has been.”
The band’s new track isn’t the only thing retro about their current tour; the ticket pricing seems to be a blast from the past as well. Blink-182’s summer tour is the first-ever national tour to offer lawn tickets at a $20 all-inclusive price for each amphitheater show while supplies last--that includes fees, taxes and even parking.
“We’ve always wanted low pricing at our shows; it’s just a punk-rock thing,” DeLonge replied when asked about the unique ticketing option. “We always try to keep our ticket prices low across the board, not only now because of the economy, but also because, as a kid, I never had any money. I remember I used to have this old skateboard as a kid and I was always so embarrassed because it was so beat-up--not because it had a penis stripe going down it (laughs).”
While the affordable ticketing option has definitely helped blink-182 pack each show, it’s not like the band needed the cheap ticket price to sell out their reunion tour. DeLonge said the response has been “so much bigger” than he and his band mates ever expected, and with the summer tour quickly coming to an end this October, the question that’s now before them is where blink-182 goes from here.
 “We’ve been busy documenting everything [about the reunion tour], so a documentary is in the works,” DeLonge stated. “Other than that, once the touring is done (the band is currently busy planning a 2010 European tour) we’ll just see how everything maps out. I have a lot going on with Angels & Airwaves, so the response to blink-182’s reunion has caught me a bit off guard. But no matter what, this reunion has just been amazing and a lot of fun.”
Catch blink-182 live Sept. 16 at the Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre in Chula Vista and Sept. 17-18 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine. All three shows start at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit livenation.com.
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