For much of the 1990s, you couldn’t switch the dial on your radio most days without hearing a song by Georgia-based alternative rock/pop band Collective Soul.

Known for such popular hits as Shine, The World I Know, Gel and Precious Declaration, the band recently spent its winter touring across the Great White North, and returns to Canada for a date at Casino Rama on Friday, April 18.

After negotiating their way out of their record deal in 2001, the band went on hiatus for a few years, returning in 2004 as an independent act with the album Youth, which featured the hit single Better Now.

In the fall, Collective Soul released their seventh studio album, Afterwords, which has spawned two singles, Hollywood and All That I Know.

The band, comprised of brothers Ed and Dean Roland (vocals and guitar respectively), Will Turpin on bass, Joel Kosche on guitar and drummer Ryan Hoyle, has been able to maintain its fan base, and expand upon it, even though it is no longer signed to a major label.

“I think there’s been a lot of people following along for a while. They were fans from the mid-1990s, and then we took a four-year break, and I think they have just kind of woken up in the past two years and said, ‘oh yeah, I remember them. I like them,’” said Dean Roland.

“There’s been a lot of that going on. Along the way, we’ve probably picked up some new ones for sure.

“I believe we have a pretty good mix of new and old. As for our demographics, we’re at the point where we’ve been around for, like, 15 years, and whoever might have been 18 to 25 years old then, has got kids, and they’re coming to the shows, and that’s always kind of trippy too, carrying along another generation.”

Roland said the band has a soft spot for Canada, a market that embraced Collective Soul almost from the moment their first album, Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid, and its catchy, memorable single, Shine, hit the airwaves.

“Yeah, (Canada) has been great for us. We definitely had fun coming up here and playing, which we did quite often. There was one tour, where we played Edgefest, probably late 1990s … it was Our Lady Peace and the Tea Party and several other Canadian bands. In fact, I think we were the only American band on there,” Roland said, with his Georgian drawl.

“And for the longest time, and we still get it once in a while, they think we’re Canadian. And I think it has to do with being associated with that bill and that tour.”

In the midst of the grunge movement of the 1990s, Collective Soul stood out for their hook-laden straightforward rock.

Whereas grunge and rap music were soaked in attitude, primary songwriter Ed Roland was creating memorable melodies, and songs that caught your ear from the first few notes.

“We’re a rock band. I mean, the basic elements of our band are melodic vocals and a rock riff. The focus is the melody. That’s the kind of music that’s attractive to us, that’s the type of music we listen to,” Roland said. “The influences range from U2 to AC/DC to Elton John.”

Roland acknowledges that his brother is the creative hub of the band, calling him a “naturally-gifted songwriter.”

“He writes from an honest, emotional perspective, and I think any good art comes from that perspective, I believe, because it’s an honest expression. He is definitely an amazing, amazing songwriter. To watch him work, or to work with him is really fascinating, because it seems so effortless,” he said, adding that the rest of the band is still part of the creative process.

“Maybe a couple of songs are in his head, but he’s worked through them and he knows where they’re going to go. But for the most part, he’s got just the basic ideas and then we go in and hash them out together. And then the lyrical aspect, usually nine times out of 10, that’s the last thing that happens. The music, we’ve recorded it, done all the parts, then he goes in and finishes writing the lyrics and recording his vocals.”

A couple of the songs on Afterwords came out of tragedy in the Roland family.

“They are two of my personal favourites. One of them is written about our mom, Good Morning After All, and Never Here Alone was about our father. There’s definitely some real inspiration going on in those songs,” Roland said.

“Our dad, he passed three years ago. Those kinds of things are a huge part of your life. To an artist, it’s an opportunity to use it as inspiration to create, if nothing else. It’s a double-edged sword, but that’s the beauty of life: with every sad thing comes a beautiful thing in the learning experience and the silver lining.”

The poignant song Georgia Girl was written about a former girlfriend of Roland’s brother.

“It pretty much tells her sad story. That was one of the very few songs where he had almost written it as a poem, where the lyrics came first and we added the music later, which is completely rare,” he said.

Roland and his bandmates are enjoying the freedoms associated with being an established act that is no longer encumbered by the demands and bureaucracy of a big record label. It seems almost absurd to call Collective Soul an indie band, but that’s exactly what they are.

“We were completely open to be able to draw this thing up how we wanted to. And it really couldn’t have been done any better. It was done exactly how I would have wanted it to be done,” he said.

“To be (self-financing), and to create when you want to create, and release it when you want to release it, to make the kind of music you want to make, and at the end of the day, we own it all. It put us in a really unique position, and I saw this huge opportunity that should not be passed up.

“We have the comfort of being an established band, and people know the songs and knew the name. There’s more work doing it on your own, but in the end, we had enough going on that if we completely screwed the whole thing up, we’re going to be okay.”

And the band has been more than okay; it has flourished in its new unshackled existence. Roland said he would like to grow the enterprise, including their own EL Music Group label possibly signing other acts.

Plans are already afoot for a new record, too.

“At this point, we’re doing about a year-ahead plan. We’re trying to figure out what makes sense. The good thing is we can kind of call an audible if we need to and make changes pretty quick to the plan,” he said.

"Right now, for instance, we have a couple of ideas that we haven’t settled on, that we may go into the studio in May and record a new record, or a Christmas album. We just know we’re slated to have something out, possibly late in the year.”

For more information on Collective Soul, click the links provided.

Showtime on April 18 is 9 p.m. For tickets, click the Casino Rama links or Ticketmaster.

-    Jim Barber is the Arts, Sports and Lifestyles Editor for the Barrie Advance. Contact him at jbarber@simcoe.com.