Candlebox

In August of 2023 Candlebox released The Long Goodbye and went out on a tour announced as their last. It wasn't. As of October 2026 the band is on the road: thirty-two North American dates between the seventeenth of September, at The Pageant in St. Louis, and the thirtieth of October, in Sayreville, New Jersey, with The Mountain Goats, Sponge, The Verve Pipe, Sweet Water and American Blonde taking turns as support. There are eight new songs written, two or three of them intended as singles, and a new album planned for 2027. The tour is called "Can't Quit You", and the joke is on themselves.

What is interesting is that Kevin Martin doesn't hide behind nostalgia or behind audience demand to explain it. He says it the other way round, with an honesty that needs no gloss: "I was done… And then the minute you say that, your value becomes tenfold". There it is, stated by the singer himself, the entire mechanism of the farewell as a genre: announcing the end is what puts a price back on a band that had been playing for thirty years. Candlebox has spent its whole career as the case study in how the market decides what a Seattle band is worth, and this is the latest chapter.

Seattle, 1990, and a label from Los Angeles

Martin and drummer Scott Mercado started playing together in Seattle in 1990, and the group settled into its definitive line-up, by then under the name Candlebox, in 1991, when Peter Klett joined on lead guitar and Bardi Martin on bass. No primary source pins down the month, and it is better to say so than to invent a date: the available versions range between November of 1990 and December of 1991. They took the name from an image in "Tin Legs and Tin Mines", by Midnight Oil, a song from 1982. In the autumn of 1992 they were approached by Maverick, the label Madonna had founded in April of that same year together with Freddy DeMann and Veronica "Ronnie" Dashev, in partnership with Time Warner and with a sixty-million-dollar deal behind it. What got them signed was an eight-track demo recorded independently. And there lies the material root of everything that would come afterwards: Candlebox was from Seattle, but it wasn't on Sub Pop. It was on a Los Angeles label, Madonna's label.

The self-titled debut came out on the twentieth of July of 1993, produced by the band together with Kelly Gray, and it worked as few debuts of its generation did: it reached number seven on the Billboard 200, stayed one hundred and four weeks on the chart and the RIAA certified it quadruple platinum. It isn't Maverick's best-selling record —that is Jagged Little Pill, by Alanis Morissette, which in 1995 went to some thirty-three million copies worldwide—, but it was the label's first commercial success and its first quadruple platinum. Four singles came off it: "Change", "You", "Far Behind" and "Cover Me". The second, released in November of 1993, reached number six on Billboard's rock chart and number seventy-eight on the Hot 100.

The line Martin erased

"Far Behind" was the third single, released on the twenty-second of August of 1994, and the one that got them on radio and on MTV: number eighteen on the Hot 100 and top ten on the alternative rock chart. In a 1994 interview in Playgirl magazine, Martin explained where it came from: it was inspired by two friends who had died of heroin overdoses, one of them Andrew Wood, the singer of Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, who died in March of 1990. The song, he said, represents the loss of love between friends and the sense of emptiness that is left behind. The second friend is not named in any source, and it is best not to deduce who it was.

The nuance is what makes the fact worth something. The draft of the lyric named Wood directly, with a line asking his forgiveness for having treated him badly, and Martin changed it for a generic formulation precisely so that nobody would know for certain who the song was about. He told no one at the time. In other words: "Far Behind" is not the song about Andrew Wood, it is a song about Andrew Wood deliberately hidden, and the hit that turned Candlebox into an arena band was a mourning its author decided to disguise. Thirty years later, in 2024, the track re-entered a Billboard chart and reached number three.

Martin and Wood knew each other from working together at a Fluevog shoe store in Seattle, alongside Susan Silver, the manager of Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone and Alice in Chains. Martin recalls Wood urging him to keep going: there would be people who hated him and people who loved him, and it was what he had to do. It is worth leaving that there, because it explains the irony that defines this band's career: the man Andrew Wood pushed into doing this for a living wrote, after Wood's death, the song that would make half the critics accuse his group of scavenging Wood's scene.

Christgau gave it a "C"

Here one has to be precise, because the received account inflates the story. The accusation of opportunism did exist and it has names, and they are the names of critics. Robert Christgau, in The Village Voice, gave the debut a "C" and wrote that these "postgrunge scenesuckers aren't total pop-metal conformists—they're a tad more intense, with sharper drumming". Trouser Press went further and described the record as a final seal of best-selling irrelevance over the rotting corpse of the Great Northwest Noise. That one is, literally, the accusation of arriving late to eat the leftovers.

Martin is still annoyed thirty years later, and what annoys him is one specific label: "grunge lite". On another occasion he summed it up by saying that everyone thought they were some kind of coattail band, the sort that hangs on to somebody else's success. They got to four million copies certified by the RIAA and the price was reputational: in a city that had turned authenticity into currency, being on Madonna's label and selling a lot was evidence against you.

What doesn't exist is worth stating with the same clarity, because it is a finding in itself: there is no quote from Eddie Vedder, from Chris Cornell, from Mark Arm or from Kim Thayil about Candlebox, neither for nor against. The trope that "the Seattle musicians attacked them" has no traceable source: the attack came from the critics, not from their peers. The only thing on the record, and it points the other way, is that in 2017 Candlebox covered "Say Hello 2 Heaven", by Temple of the Dog, in tribute to Cornell, who had written it for Andrew Wood.

One clause and thirteen years

The band broke up in 2000, and it wasn't from artistic exhaustion or because of a court case, though it tends to be told as a lawsuit. It was a clause. The contract with Maverick included a "key man" clause that required Martin to deliver a fourth album before he was free; since the label considered him, at certain moments of line-up turnover, the only remaining member, he was left trapped between Maverick and Warner by obligations he could neither fulfil nor cancel. There was no lawsuit by the band against the label: there was a contractual quagmire.

The figures of that quagmire are more eloquent than any adjective. It took Martin thirteen years to repay a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar advance to Warner Music, and he lost the royalty payments along the way: only from April of 2011 did he begin receiving those from Candlebox's first three records. By then the band had already restarted —in late 2005, consolidated in 2006, with a compilation and a new deal with Silent Majority Group— and had already released Into the Sun, in July of 2008, which reached number thirty-two on the Billboard 200. In other words: they went back to recording before they started getting paid for the records that had made them famous.

The names in the line-up moved around too, and it is worth tracking them because they explain the present. Mercado left the drums in 1997 and was replaced by Dave Krusen, Pearl Jam's original drummer, the one who recorded Ten in 1991 and who in 2017 entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Pearl Jam: the band accused of jumping on the Seattle bandwagon had, for three years, the man who recorded Ten on drums. Bardi Martin left in 2000 to study law and today works as a criminal defence lawyer in Seattle; he was replaced by Adam Kury. And Klett, the original guitarist, left around 2015 and came back in 2025, after almost a decade away, with Martin crediting him with reigniting the group's creative energy. In between came Lucy (1995, number eleven and a gold record), Happy Pills (1998, number sixty-five), Love Stories & Other Musings (2012, number eighty-two), Disappearing in Airports (2016, number one hundred and twelve) and Wolves (2021).

The farewell ended in Santiago

The farewell tour started on the tenth of June of 2023 at the Victory Theatre in Evansville, Indiana, and several summaries have it finishing on the twenty-third of September of that year in Sugar Land, Texas. The concert records say otherwise: there were later dates, among them the twenty-first of October at Harrah's Cherokee in North Carolina and a South American run that stretched at least as far as the twenty-eighth of October of 2023, at Club Chocolate in Santiago.

Which means the farewell was not only not definitive: it didn't even have a clear last concert. It frayed out into international dates with no ceremony, and the provisional full stop of a Seattle band that had spent thirty years arguing about its own legitimacy ended up falling in a club in Santiago de Chile. Three years later they were announcing thirty-two more dates.

What to remember

Candlebox formed in Seattle between 1990 and 1991, signed in the autumn of 1992 with Madonna's newly founded label and released on the twentieth of July of 1993 a debut that reached number seven on the Billboard 200, stayed one hundred and four weeks on the chart and ended up certified quadruple platinum. That earned them four million certified copies and a "C" from Robert Christgau. What gets told wrong is not the success, it is who attacked them: it was the critics, with names and with dates, and not the city's musicians, from whom there isn't a single quote. What also gets told wrong is the ending, because there was no ending: the 2023 farewell record and the tour that came apart in Santiago were followed, three years later, by a thirty-two-date tour they themselves christened "Can't Quit You", eight new songs and an album announced for 2027.

What remains is Kevin Martin's line, which is more honest than any press release: he was done, and the minute he said it his value went up tenfold. There is no cynicism in saying so, there is craft. Retiring turned out to be the best way of coming back, and it is worth having that written down somewhere the next time a band announces its last lap. When "Far Behind" plays and the chorus arrives, there is the name Martin decided to erase from the lyric so that nobody would know who he was singing to.

And because the song is born of two overdoses and not of a metaphor, it is worth saying: in Chile, anyone dealing with problem drug or alcohol use, their own or that of someone close to them, can call SENDA's Fono Drogas y Alcohol free of charge, on 1412.

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Sources

Candlebox is an American rock band from Seattle, Washington. Kevin Martin (lead vocals, b. 9 April 1969) and Scott Mercado (drums) started playing together in 1990; the definitive line-up, by then as Candlebox, came together in 1991 with the addition of Peter Klett (lead guitar) and Bardi Martin (bass, b. 12 June 1969, Olympia, Washington). The available sources range between November 1990 and December 1991 and there is no primary source that pins down the month. The name comes from an image in "Tin Legs and Tin Mines", by Midnight Oil (1982). Maverick Records was founded in April 1992 by Madonna, Freddy DeMann and Veronica "Ronnie" Dashev in partnership with Time Warner, with a 60 million dollar deal; the label approached Candlebox in the autumn of 1992 after hearing an independent eight-track demo. "Candlebox" was released on 20 July 1993 by Maverick (distributed via Warner Bros./Sire), produced by the band and Kelly Gray: no. 7 on the Billboard 200, 104 weeks on the chart and 4× Platinum from the RIAA (the RIAA's public database shows 21/09/2004 as the certification date, which is in all probability a catalogue recertification, not the date the record crossed 4 million). It is not Maverick's best-selling record —that is "Jagged Little Pill", by Alanis Morissette (1995), with some 33 million worldwide—, but it was the label's first commercial success and its first quadruple platinum. Singles from the debut: "Change" (1993, chart position unconfirmed), "You" (November 1993, no. 6 on Mainstream Rock and no. 78 on the Hot 100), "Far Behind" (22 August 1994, no. 18 on the Hot 100, top 10 on alternative rock, and between no. 3 and no. 4 on Mainstream Rock depending on the source) and "Cover Me" (November 1994, position not documented). In 2024, thirty years later, "Far Behind" re-entered a Billboard chart and reached no. 3. In an interview in "Playgirl" (1994), Kevin Martin stated that "Far Behind" was inspired by two friends who died of heroin overdoses, one of them Andrew Wood, of Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, who died in March 1990; the second friend is not named in any source. Martin has said that the draft of the lyric named Wood and that he changed it for a generic formulation so that it would not be known. Martin met Wood while working at a Fluevog shoe store in Seattle alongside Susan Silver, manager of Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone and Alice in Chains. On the accusation of opportunism: Robert Christgau ("The Village Voice") graded the debut a "C" in 1993; "Trouser Press" described it as a final seal of best-selling irrelevance over the corpse of the Great Northwest Noise; Martin has stated his annoyance with the "grunge lite" label and with being seen as a "coattail band". There is no documented statement by Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, Mark Arm or Kim Thayil about Candlebox, for or against. In 2017 the band covered "Say Hello 2 Heaven", by Temple of the Dog, in tribute to Chris Cornell. Discography with Billboard 200 positions: "Lucy" (3 October 1995, Maverick, no. 11, certified Gold), "Happy Pills" (21 July 1998, Maverick, no. 65), "Into the Sun" (22 July 2008, Silent Majority Group, no. 32), "Love Stories & Other Musings" (3 April 2012, Audionest, no. 82), "Disappearing in Airports" (22 April 2016, Pavement Music, no. 112), "Wolves" (17 September 2021, Pavement Music) and "The Long Goodbye" (25 August 2023; the label appears as Round Hill Records on Wikipedia and as Pavement Music in part of the coverage). The 2000 break-up originated in a contractual "key man" clause that required Martin to deliver a fourth album; there was no lawsuit by the band against Maverick. Martin took 13 years to repay a 250,000 dollar advance to Warner Music and only from April 2011 did he begin receiving royalties from the first three records. The restart took place in late 2005 and was consolidated in 2006, with a compilation and a deal with Silent Majority Group. Line-up changes: Scott Mercado (drums, 1990/91-1997, return in 2006 until around 2015 and a brief return in 2018); Dave Krusen (drums, 1997-1999 and 2015-2017, plus 2018), Pearl Jam's original drummer, recorded "Ten" (1991) and entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 as a member of Pearl Jam; Bardi Martin (bass, until 2000), today a criminal defence and personal injury lawyer in Seattle, replaced by Adam Kury; Peter Klett, absent since 2015-2016 and back in 2025. "The Long Goodbye Tour" started on 10 June 2023 at the Victory Theatre in Evansville, Indiana; several summaries have it closing on 23 September 2023 in Sugar Land, Texas, but setlist.fm records show later dates, including 21 October 2023 at the Harrah's Cherokee Casino Resort (North Carolina) and a South American run until at least 28 October 2023 at Club Chocolate in Santiago de Chile. As of October 2026 the band is active: "Can't Quit You" tour of 32 dates in North America, from 17 September 2026 (The Pageant, St. Louis) to 30 October 2026 (Sayreville, New Jersey), with The Mountain Goats, Sponge, The Verve Pipe, Sweet Water and American Blonde as support; eight new songs written, two or three planned as singles and an album announced for 2027. No member of Candlebox, current or past, has died as of the closing of this fact-check. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, the RIAA's Gold & Platinum database, Robert Christgau, Trouser Press, Songfacts, American Songwriter, Billboard, Bravewords, Consequence, Blabbermouth, Sonic Perspectives, Loudwire, Encyclopedia.com, AllMusic, Tribune Chronicle, Dallas Observer and Setlist.fm.