Nolen Ryan
Audio By Carbonatix
Over the course of 24 days, the State Fair of Texas has provided a nostalgic lineup with something for everyone. We’ve had TLC, Brian McKnight, Village People and Paul Wall hit the Chevrolet Main Stage. As the closing weekend approaches, you’ll get a chance to fill your nostalgia cup one more time with Grammy-nominated band Hoobastank, who will perform on Saturday.
As we catch up with Doug Robb, lead vocalist and founding member of Hoobastank, you immediately want to ask him everything about “The Reason,” their 2003 song that recently surpassed one billion streams on Spotify and YouTube. We’ll get into the past a little bit later, but for now, we wanted to talk about the present. They were working on new music in 2024, and inquiring minds want to know what’s been going on since their last album, 2018’s Push Pull.
Robb explains that during the pandemic, he was going through a lot of personal things that made him not want to write music. He says his bandmates, Dan Estrin (guitar) and Jesse Charland (bass), kept writing. It was around 2022-2023 that Robb felt comfortable writing again.
“I always heard early on in our careers that you have your whole life to write your first record with your experiences,” Robb says. “And then you only have like two years of experience to write your second record, and it kind of gets smaller and smaller. If I can be honest with you, I do feel like there was a lot of personal lyrics amongst the first few albums, but then, with albums three, four, five, six, it started to get a little detached from me. I felt like I was writing more to the vibe of songs and not really anchoring things in personal experience. And while I still like some of the songs, I kind of feel like people can tell. I think authenticity resonates.”
Give credit to his band members, which includes Chris Hesse on drums, who gave him plenty of material to work with. At the start of 2023, Robb says they were compiling so much music that they ended up with about 30 to 40 songs. “We have multiple albums’ worth of music, and we kind of just said, ‘Well, we should start thinking about how to get this out.’ So slowly, we’ve been whittling down songs to what we think would be cool. And now we’re juggling what to do as far as recording and putting stuff out. I don’t wanna be as bold to say like, ‘Oh, new music’s coming out on this date.’ But it’s definitely something we have in our pockets and we’re just figuring out what we want to do.”
Robb compares his writing process right now to the mindset he had when making the band’s first album. He’s enjoying the loose format of not being attached emotionally to lyrics and blocking out the noise of what he thinks people want from the new Hoobastank. “If we as band members like the song, that’s a win. That’s what’s gonna be good enough. And some people will enjoy it and some people won’t, but that’s OK,” he says.
“My job has always just been to do what feels real. And then if people want to say it’s fresh, great. If people want to say it’s rehashed, that’s also fine. I’m just trying to control what I can control. I don’t want to chase what I think might be fresh or what will be fresh. I wanna do what I like and let the chips fall where they may,” he continues.
There have been many conversations about rock making a comeback. While rap remains the most popular genre in the U.S., we’re seeing a cyclical effect of rock thriving in 2025. Bands like Hoobastank are getting more love because music listeners were saturated with a different genre, which opens the doors for a resurgence in another genre to happen.
Especially this year, when several tours celebrating a milestone anniversary have gathered fans old and new to reminisce on younger days, Hoobastank is grateful that both their self-titled album and The Reason have stood the test of time. What they did in the early 2000s just shows there’s a place for all of us.
“I’m not too arrogant to think that we made some extra special thing with our first record or second one,” he says. “We were honest with what we did; our intentions were pure. The music was never written by anybody outside of the band. It wasn’t made under the influence of record companies saying, ‘You need to do this, you need to do that.’ It was just what we were doing at the time. And then the rest was timing. It’s not under my control whether the public is ready to hear what I have to say or what style of music we’re doing. It was lightning in a bottle.”
Doug Robb, “Serious Musician”
Hoobastank and The Reason are both platinum-selling albums. Their third album, Every Man for Himself, also went gold. Looking back at how he started, Robb had a love for music even at a young age. He was into the David Lee Roth years of Van Halen, Metallica and Anthrax. When he got to high school, he says his taste veered into anything from Seattle. “I loved Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, that was like, it. I was so into it,” he says. “And Faith No More was probably my favorite band of all, but I still was never like, ‘Dude, I’m gonna be in a band.’”
Robb subbed in as a bass player for his best friend’s band, who was the lead singer. He did it as a favor, figuring he could play bass after teaching himself how to play guitar. “We played in a school battle of the bands. We ended up winning. And it was so much fun,” he says. “It was terrifying, but I wasn’t in a place where I’m like, ‘Dude, I want to start a band.’”
Robb and Estrin were the “serious musicians” in their bands after the groups battled each other, he says, knowing that Estrin was going to do it for a living while he still wasn’t sure. They teamed up, started to write music together. The idea of becoming a professional musician, an impossibility at first, was becoming possible because of Estrin, who was determined to start a band. “I think I just went along purely out of FOMO,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Shit, this is really fun doing this, writing music and recording in our garage.’ He wants to keep doing it, but on another level. Like shit, I should do it because I’m terrified to do it and I don’t want to be left out. That’s how it happened. I became the singer by default.”
Robb says his original instrument was a guitar, but he knew Estrin was a better guitar player than he was. “I’m like. ‘I guess I’ll sing. I can hold a tune.’ I was writing all the lyrics and melodies for my old singer in the band I was in. It just kind of went from there. It’s like on-the-job training, just learning how to sing, write music and be a frontman.”
30-plus years later, after Hoobastank formed in 1994, their songs still resonate with people. Their fans are all grown up, fond of hearing their songs like we’re warped back to the MTV’s TRL days. “Crawling in the Dark” speaks to kids in the emo scene, relatable in 2025 the same way it was in the 2000s. “On the Venn diagram of genres, I feel like we blend into a lot of things,” he says. “I know it was released at the end of 2001. This was shortly after 9/11. The pulse of the nation was a lot of uncertainty and not knowing what the future holds. That’s what the song is about, just feeling lost and not necessarily needing answers, but wishing that you could have some.”
“The Reason” hits differently for a generation who are just learning about them through TikTok. Hoobastank joined TikTok in 2021, going viral for doing the trend of sharing their own embarrassing moments. With over three million views, it’s Robb mouthing “I’m not a perfect person,” poking fun at himself for naming the band Hoobastank while looking at his plaque.
“The Reason” remains a fixture in pop culture, soundtracking anything and making it better. When we bring up “The Reason,” we remind Robb about Karaoke Revolution and our days of singing his songs as teenagers. “I did like an interview with PlayStation Magazine or something like that and I tried to do ‘Crawling in the Dark’ and I scored terribly,” he remembers. “I just was like, ‘Ugh, dude, I sucked at it.’ But I nailed Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun.’”
For Robb, listening to old Van Halen as an adult sparks moments of joy where he’s hearing intricacies in production and other things he didn’t catch when he was a 12-year-old. The same effect happens when people go back to “The Reason” and have new interpretations of the song’s meaning.
“People have always asked since then, like, ‘Who is it about?’ And I would say it was about nobody in particular because I thought they were asking, ‘Well, who is the you in ‘The Reason?’ Who is the you? Who are you talking about? Who is the significant other?’ I would tell people it’s multiple people that I had been in relationships with,” he says. “Somebody along the line said, ‘Well, then the song is about you because you’re the variable that changed this.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re right!’ There’s like five years of therapy in 30 seconds. The song is about me. It’s about my struggles with going through the same thing over and over with different people.”
Hoobastank remains active and continues playing together. They don’t want to look too deeply into what keeps their name relevant, breaking down all the reasons to recreate their success. They would rather move forward and make music, living in the moment and continuing to be here for the ride.
“I’m proud that we’ve been able to keep our integrity,” Robb says. “I’m proud that we don’t take ourselves very seriously. We take our music very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves very seriously. I’m proud that we are a very self-aware band, that we have thick skin and that at the end of the day, none of this matters. That sounds a little morbid, but I mean it in the most positive way.”
Hoobastank will perform on Saturday, Oct. 18, at 2:30 p.m. at the Chevrolet Main Stage at the State Fair of Texas, 925 S. Haskell Ave. The concert is free with your fair admission.
