One of my favorite music writers on the internet is a fellow named Mike Ragogna, who writes a great weekly music column for The Huffington Post that usually shows up sometime near the top of each week.  Mike’s column features new release news, the latest press releases and best of all, really extensive interviews with a variety of musical and pop culture subjects.

I could geek out more, but let’s get to the point – a recent dispatch from Ragogna features a great chat with Toad the Wet Sprocket frontman Glen Phillips.  During the conversation, Phillips talks about the legacy of Toad The Wet Sprocket and notably, the possibility of new music from Toad:

MR: Might there be a new Toad album down the line?

GP: It’s possible. Certainly after last year’s experience, really honestly, we all felt great about it. It took us about 15 years to get to that point. We’ve got a lot of history. Whether we could turn that into something that is artistically viable, moving forward? There’s a whole lot of reason to do it because people apparently want it, and it would be an economically good decision. It needs a delicate balance. We need to be very careful about the next steps we make. And I have, I think we all have a whole of creative outlets that we’re extremely happy with. Dean and Todd have been co-writing in Nashville. Todd’s been producing people. Dean has been working on film stuff. Randy has been playing with a number of people. It’s like everybody has creatively-fulfilled lives. So, I think it’s a possibility, but I mostly see it as other people’s desire.

MR: You know, some acts have put their toes in the reunion studio album water by releasing live albums.

GP: Yeah, and I think we’re going to do some re-records pretty soon. We got our publishing back for the sake of easy licensing. We’re probably going to go in the studio just to do soundalikes of our own material, not to sell, but for use in licensing. So, I won’t say never. And we may find we just have an incredible time.

Ragogna also rounds up some Toad thoughts from bassist Dean Dinning and drummer Randy Guss for an article that overall, gives you nearly everything you could possibly want to know about Toad the Wet Sprocket, a band that Ragogna terms as “everyone’s favorite group” in the interview title.  If that’s not a true statement, it certainly should be.

I’m reminded often of a record store customer that I had at one point, who came walking up to the counter with a copy of A Decade of Steely Dan.  “This is a great album – there are a lot of really good songs on here.”  My silent thought:  but of course there are – it’s a frikkin’ greatest hits album!  Although I’m primarily an album guy, I do appreciate and enjoy a really well-assembled and thought out greatest hits compilation. As compilations go, you’d be hard pressed to find a better one than P.S.: A Toad Retrospective, which for my money is a picture-perfect representation of Toad the Wet Sprocket’s career.

I’m encouraged to hear word of possible new recordings, and if they could turn out a disc along the lines of Phillips’ Winter Pays for Summer, that would be a win in my book!  (And by the way, if you don’t own that album, it’s well worth the $3 bucks that it will cost you to acquire it used at Amazon.  Winter is the next best thing to a Toad album, until the day when/if we finally see a new Toad album!)

You can find Toad on the road once again this summer for a series of scattered tour dates – check out a list of upcoming dates via the band’s Myspace page.

The band’s classic album Pale turns 20 this year, and my good comrade Michael Parr wrote up a nice piece recently for Popdose, with news of forthcoming deluxe reissues for both Pale and Bread and Circus (both of which are currently out of print).  Can’t wait!