INTERVIEW: Blues Traveler’s lead axman shares his thoughts on live music and more ahead of Saturday show in Quincy

Published 4:21 pm Tuesday, July 21, 2026

This weekend, the Gem City Concert Series fires up the lights and sound on the bay in Quincy. Friday night will see rock stars Saving Abel hit the stage in Lincoln Park with guests Revel in Red. On Saturday, the Band Feel gets the evening started before the singular sound of Blues Traveler takes the city off into the July evening.

Chan Kinchla, lead guitarist for Blues Traveler, talked about his love of summer tours, whether or not it’s the right time to learn how to surf, and what it means to still hit the stage after nearly four decades with his friends and family in the band.

Mike Sorensen: I appreciate a few minutes of your time, I imagine you got don’t get a lot of free time when you’re on the road.

Chan Kinchla: It’s kind of funny, actually. There is a lot of hurry up and wait, so It kind of seems like free time. Today I’m off so I’ve got plenty of time, but on tour there’s a lot of downtime. But a lot of that gets spent kind of getting your head straight so you can be super energetic and out there when you perform. At least that’s for me. I only have a limited amount of energy, so I like to spend the days kind of quiet. If I go to dinner before a show, or I spend a lot of time talking to someone before the show, a lot of times I’m a little mentally tired. Maybe that’s different for other people, but I’ve got about two hours of rock, and that’s about my energy limit. I can’t waste it on chat before the show.

MS: I can’t believe it’s been almost 40 years for you guys at this point. Is this what you expected to still be doing when you guys started this back in the day?

CK: Obviously, we’re very grateful that we’re still able to do this. And traipse around the country, giving people a fun night, hopefully, and we certainly enjoy it. But I think when we started in Brendan Hill, our drummer’s basement in Princeton, New Jersey in ’86, ’87 my dream was always to be just a cool touring band. So I think we always had this vision that that would be our lifestyle when we were kids. You’re naïve when you’re young, and sometimes that’s helpful. It Can be a daunting proposition, but when you’re young, you don’t give a bleep. So the band was kind of our first love, was just playing and improvising, and playing live in front of people. All the rest comes secondary. I obviously love making records and recording songs, and I think we’ve done that well over the years. But when you get past the verisimilitude and roller coaster of this business, we could always just get out and play rock shows. That was kind of our priority, and it kind of kept us focused. When tours were quiet or things weren’t quite going great in like pop or commercially, we still had a great live thing. And that was really our first love anyway.

MS: I have I’ve been very fortunate to have gotten to see you guys four different times in the last couple of years, with my camera in hand. It’s always an amazing time. I’ve seen you guys both playing on your own tours and opening with other bands. Is there any difference for you when you go out on the road in those two situations?

CK: Not particularly. Once we get on stage, we’re always going to just go for it the way we go for it. We’ve been playing so long, we’ve played in so many different situations where we’ve been on big bills, we’ve done our own shows from theaters to red rocks and I don’t think we’re too precious about where we are.

The closing thing, that’s a little more responsibility to really kind of buckle down the fort. Especially if there’s like three bands, you’ve got to really stay focused to keep people in the audience riveted. Sometimes you’ve got to adjust it that way, but honestly, once Brenden counts it off and we start the show, we’re just kind of gonna follow the muse, and see where it takes us. We’re not too precious or conscious about what it’s going to be.

MS: You were talking about your downtime and the time off that you get with you guys, you guys have toured so much, is there anything that you look for in cities when you got when you’ve got some time to yourself?

CK: I just try to take it easy. A lot of other guys like to get out, but I’ve done pretty much all the things over the years. I love to get up and play little, work on my guitar. I try to get a little exercise, play some video games. Honestly the toughest part of tour is that you’re just constantly surrounded by people. So a day off is to just to kind of unwind, get your own time, get a little solitude soaked.

Also, laundry’s really important.

MS: The times that I have seen your shows, it’s been down in St. Louis.

CK: Yeah, we’ve had some great shows down there.

MS: As much as I love it, and love all my friends in St. Louis, you can only see the Arch so many times and still get excited.

CK: Yeah, I’ve done that. I went with my kid last time, and that was pretty cool. We went all the way up in it, but that was years ago. He’s 22 now and he was just a little guy, so that was probably 15 years ago. But yes, the Arch is pretty friggin’ cool. I do love the Mississippi River right there, too.

MS: Well, when you guys are here on Saturday, it’s not the river itself, it’s our bay, but you will literally be right there. You can throw a rock and hit the water from where the stage will be.

CK: That’s why we love touring in the summer. There’s usually a backdrop of nature or just a beautiful summer night. When we get to play somewhere near forests or the mountains or along a body of water down the beach, that’s just super cool. The body water really adds the best backdrop. Honestly, sunset over body water is the best light show ever.

MS: You were talking about shows on the water, I saw the bio that you’ve got on the band’s website and it said that one of your aspirations was to learn how to surf. Have you conquered that quest?

CK: Unfortunately, that’s still on my list,. I’m pretty good at body-surfing, and I live here in Los Angeles, so I’m not that far away. But you know, you get older, and there was a back thing, that’s all fixed now. And then I had a knee thing, but that’s better. Now I think I’m at a 100%, so maybe now’s the time to take it up. We’ll see.

MS: Your brother (Tad Kinchla) is part of the band now, too. What’s that like being out on the road with him?

CK: He joined when our original bass player, Bobby Sheehan, passed away in ’99 and so Tad joined the band right after that. It’s a blessing, it’s been really cool to play with my brother. We started as a high school band, and we grew up together in Princeton, New Jersey. So Tad’s always been close to us, and it’s just more of that family vibe. I think that’s another reason why we’ve managed to keep it going for so many years and without having the obligatory breakup years.

MS: I talked to some of the guys in Collective Soul with brothers playing guitar, and it always makes me wonder if it was your parents telling you to “take your brother outside to play with you.”

CK: Our parents always had a great record collection, and so there was always musical around, but we weren’t like a terribly musical family. But me and my brother just gravitated towards it. I was the older brother and I picked up guitar first, so maybe I did it first, and my little brother copied me. Now the fight’ll be on!

MS: If anybody’s coming out to see you guys for their first time this weekend, what would you tell them they should expect from a Blues Traveler show?

CK: We always have a great time, and we want the crowd to have a great time. It’s not rocket science, it’s just a moment to kind of dance, hoot and holler, and just enjoy a nice summer night and kind of get away from everyday life.

A good rock show, with the lights and all the other people and the yelling and the noise, it’s such a kind of magical, mystical experience. You can only get that at a show. It can’t be recreated anywhere else, so I always think it’s one of the last little bits of magic. Why is it so great? What’s going on? No one knows, but we all know it’s fun.

MS: It’s like pizza, right? Even the bad ones are pretty good.

CK: Yeah, exactly.

MS: Is there any thought or encouragement to come out that you’d want to let our readers know about or anything they should look for coming out soon?

CK: There’s nothing like a live concert under the stars. That’s as good as it gets.

And as far as things I want to add, I guess I can give a shameless plug. In my downtime, I have recorded an acoustic record, “Mr. Sunshine,” under Chan Kinchla, coming out this November or December, so there’s shameless plug, but you asked.

MS: Hey, those are the best kind of plugs. If you don’t speak up for yourself, who else is going to, right?

CK: We learned way back when we started out New York City, the rule is within 5 minutes, people should know your band’s name, when you’re playing next, what you have coming out, and you’ve got to have flyers in your back pocket. You’ve got to hustle if you want to get lucky.

Blues Traveler headlines Saturday night at Quincy’s Lincoln Park. Follow Gem City Concert Series on Facebook for the latest news and updates and to get tickets for both Friday and Saturday shows. You can also follow bluestraveler.com for tour information and more.