Virginia lawyer Brian Glass said it best. The longtime O.A.R. fan relived his youth watching the band belt out 1997 college anthem “That Was a Crazy Game of Poker” during their Three Decades Tour, and the clip he later posted on Instagram still moves frontman Marc Roberge.

“There was a last time you put your arms around your college friends in a dirty basement and sang this song at the top of your lungs for 8-15 minutes,” Glass captioned his post. “You just didn’t know it would be the last time.”

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The words perfectly encapsulated the deep nostalgia ingrained in the music of O.A.R. (Of A Revolution). In 30 years, they’ve overcome industry changes and rock and roll temptations. The struggle to balance family lives with success was so arduous they revamped their touring lifestyle to keep the group alive. But as the rockers celebrate their legacy with an anniversary tour and new album, Three Tinted Windows, that same sentimentality still drives their music today.

“Back then, we wanted to represent neighborhoods—ghost riding your bike into the front yard, sunset with your friends on the driveway. Everything we do goes back to that,” Roberge tells SPIN during an exclusive interview in Los Angeles ahead of the October 23 release of Three Tinted Windows. “When someone’s telling me [about] the last time they listened to ‘Poker’ at the end of the night and didn’t know it, we also didn’t know the last time we’d catch a firefly in a bottle, but we still try to take that feeling into this current time. What’s that feeling now? Walking on stage together as the sun’s setting. 

“That post hits hard because life is fragile and fleeting, but the purest part was childhood and coming up with your best friends in high school. We’re trying to put that in the music forever.”

Childhood is when it all started for Maryland natives Roberge (lead vocals, guitar), Chris Culos (drums) and Richard On (lead guitar, backing vocals), who were later joined by bassist Benj Gershman (who has stepped away from the band) and Ohio’s Jerry DePizzo (saxophone, guitar, backing vocals). The teens created a unique sound by merging their diverse musical tastes, like Culos’s love for Beastie Boys and Nas and DePizzo’s Nirvana and Soundgarden influences. On says there’s a riff inspired by the Cure in every O.A.R. song he’s worked on, while Roberge lights up recalling how his first cassette—the self-titled debut by New Zealand band Crowded House—changed his life.

“I played it so much my brothers hid it from me,” he laughs. “They called it Crowded Shack, just to be brothers. When he sings, ‘She came all the way from America,’ I was like, ‘From America?’ I was so isolated and didn’t know there was a world out there. Because of Crowded House, I became interested in songwriting.”

The pals would convene at Roberge’s home after school and watch a Genesis concert VHS owned by his older brother Jeff Roberge, who became drummer for Foxtrot Zulu. But it was covering Pearl Jam and Eric Clapton during an eighth grade talent show that cemented their musical dreams.

“I remember holding the railing of the steps onto the stage and my legs started [shaking],” Roberge recalls. “But as soon as we started playing, it felt incredible. We went from three best friends sitting in a hallway nervous, to getting hooked.”

“It was quite the flip-flop,” agrees On. “Going from being completely nervous and nauseous to feeling invincible on stage together.”

Culos jokes the raucous crowd of family and friends remains the loudest they’ve ever played for. Classmate Joe Lewis was in the audience as the trio made their unforgettable debut. “People were pumped,” he remembers. “They blew everyone else out of the water. Looking back, I can’t believe they wrote songs that good at that age. Marc was singing about having a wife and none of us had girlfriends, let alone were married, at that point!”

More than 30 years later, Lewis, a TV producer, proudly watched the group perform at L.A.’s Greek Theatre, where they paid tribute to early influences with covers of U2’s “With or Without You” and Stone Temple Pilots’ “Plush.” They’ve also covered Tom Petty, Guns N’ Roses, and Green Day during the tour.

The dark paths trodden by many of those influences weren’t lost on the group as they built their following while attending Ohio State University. Playing frat parties and college bars, soon they were releasing 1997 debut The Wanderer, earning RIAA Gold certifications for “Love and Memories” and indulging in rock and roll shenanigans.

“The first phase we ran into was, ‘Oh, we’re supposed to party and stay up all night? Let’s do these things,’” says Roberge. “We did every fun rock and roll story you could have as a touring musician in the ’90s to 2000s, but we also saw the fallout around us. Some people didn’t survive. I’m grateful we learned from that and entered the next phase of ‘health is wealth.’ We 180’d on everything that was leading us in the wrong direction.”

However, the phase that would test the band most was still to come. As career milestones stacked up, like selling out Madison Square Garden and having 2008 single “Shattered (Turn the Car Around)” climb the charts, the guys were almost 30 and struggling to build and nurture family lives while keeping their musical momentum pumping.

On began to realize how much a healthy home life dictated road life. “It was a struggle for all of us, starting a family, then three months later, you’re gone,” he says. “Our mindset back then was, ‘Go, go, go,’ and it took a while to figure out we couldn’t go on like that because things were getting rocky on the road. [We realized] when things aren’t good at home, they’re not good on the road.”

Roberge later expressed such heartache in 2016’s “I Go Through,” singing, “My kid, he asked me, ‘Daddy, when you coming home to me from work?’ If I’m being honest, man, that hurt.” Like On, the father of four realized he couldn’t continue the band’s relentless touring lifestyle. “When I saw a poster that said, ‘O.A.R. are always on tour,’ that made me anxious. We went, ‘We can’t say that anymore.’”

The rockers insisted on arranging their touring schedules so that days off were consecutive and allowed them to fly home. “Dialing in the routing was a gamechanger for us and for the longevity of the band,” On reflects. “To be here 30 years later, that was a big part of it.”

Today, they’ve found peace balancing fatherhood with touring. Culos describes home life as a blur of “school, work, date nights, gymnastics, dance, piano, and vocal lessons.” Music’s in the genes and as the group chat with SPIN, their kids run around backstage playing with instruments. “They each have interest in the arts,” says Roberge. “We’re lucky to have a diverse group of kids who love so many different things and aren’t feeling pressure to be part of this music thing. But if they choose to, it’s on! It’ll be great.”

Until then, O.A.R. continue living out their own musical passions with Three Tinted Windows, their 11th studio album which Roberge describes as “painting the picture of bygone days of family, friendship, and neighborhoods.” Part of capturing the essence of their past meant recording in four-song batches at Roberge’s New York studio.

“Technology’s gotten so great that we can record from our home studios and it still sounds like O.A.R.,” says Culos. “But with this one, it was important [to get together] for the fun of it and have that spirit going into the album, tour, and everything moving forward. It felt like making an album the way we used to.”

Melancholic title track “Three Tinted Windows” chronicles a “band of brothers writing their way out of a town they love,” while reggae-infused anthem “Legacy” evolved as G. Love (Garrett Dutton) came on-board. “G. Love calls me saying, ‘I’ve got a few hours,’” says Roberge. “In his car on the way to the session, he’s writing a verse to some unknown song he’s barely heard, then comes in and records. The song comes from a place of pride for being in the music industry and being a dad. The main message G. Love brought was that it’s okay to brag about being a good dad.” 

Roberge meanwhile wrote Billy Joel-inspired “Touch” about being away from wife Nasim, while DePizzo’s favorite track in “Crew,” which he sees as “all the music we listened to in the ’90s rolled into one song.”

Naturally, their own “crew” has changed over the years. Most notably, Gershman has been absent, having fought to be able to hold an instrument or pick up his son again after a debilitating battle with long COVID and resulting autoimmune disease. The mental toll saw him launch a podcast called What Could Be Bad.

“He was involved in the beginning of the album, but it was built over years with a lot of sessions where he wasn’t involved,” says Roberge. “But Ben’s brought so many amazing things to this band. What he gave to this band [make] the threads of who we are and we’re so thankful for all the years we worked together. We look forward to hopefully doing that again, but right now we don’t know.”

The band’s stage crew remains strong with Colton Parker having stepped in on bass and wowing audiences while belting out Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody.” Charismatic trumpeter Jon Lampley has garnered his own following on O.A.R. fan groups, while keyboardist, percussionist, and backup vocalist Mikel Paris brings the electric energy of a DJ revving up the crowd. Then there’s the fun line up of openers the tour (which is benefiting veterans and their families by donating proceeds from fan experiences to the Robert Irvine Foundation), has welcomed like Lisa Loeb, KT Tunstall, and Gavin DeGraw, who Roberge is “laughing my ass off with the entire time.” 

Both DeGraw and Tunstall, who are opening the next leg of shows in Florida, were among the acts set to join O.A.R. at Oceans Calling Festival, which was called off due to weather conditions in September. No one was more crushed about the cancellation than DePizzo and Roberge, who founded the festival on Maryland’s Ocean City boardwalk in 2022. The pair initially presented the idea of a ski town festival to promoter Tim Sweetwood, who suggested an event in their home region instead. Having spent their youth dreaming of taking their music beyond Maryland and Ohio, bringing it home to invigorate the place that shaped them was a surreal feat.

“I grew up in Ohio and we’d pack a minivan with the family and drive all day to Ocean City,” says DePizzo. “To have this incredible festival and the incredible partners is a dream come true.”

Others on the bill included Goo Goo Dolls, My Morning Jacket, Third Eye Blind, and Matchbox Twenty, whose frontman Rob Thomas and guitarist Kyle Cook had planned to join the band for a performance of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “American Girl” as part of a special O.A.R and Friends set.

There’s still a chance for the collab to go down as O.A.R are joining Matchbox Twenty for a string of dates on the “3AM” rockers’ 30th anniversary tour next August. Oceans Calling is also expected to return in 2027.

What would the band tell those young lads running around Ocean City chasing their musical dreams—or their kids if they pursue music?

“Take big risks,” says Roberge, who also has upcoming holiday shows with Lampley. “It’s the only way to learn about losing, pain, winning, joy.”

Adds DePizzo: “I’d tell them, ‘You know what you’re doing, so keep doing it.’ So much of early life’s riddled with self-doubt. Experience builds confidence. But there’s not much I’d do differently today than what we did as teenagers. There’s just more people around now.”

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