The four singers in Big Time Rush spent the weeks leading up to the first date of their Forever tour in late June rehearsing and making sure they were ready for their first full tour in eight years. Fortunately, Kendall Schmidt, James Maslow, Logan Henderson and Carlos PenaVega had the opportunity to knock off whatever rust existed at the end of last year.
“We threw a tour together for December and we played a few shows,” Maslow said in a mid-June Zoom call with his bandmates. “That was pretty stressful, I’m not going to lie. But because we did that, (preparing for) this one has been a lot less stressful. It wasn’t like we’re starting over for the first time in many years.”
In fact, Henderson said being on stage felt as natural as ever.
“The first show we played together in many years was Jingle Ball in Philly,” he said. “We walk on stage and have 10,000, 15,000 people chanting Big Time Rush, singing along with the songs, and I’m watching these guys and like nobody missed a step. I know we all walked off stage going ‘Yeah, we’re definitely where we should be.’”
Credit: JORDAN KNIGHT
Credit: JORDAN KNIGHT
The group went on hiatus in 2014 at a time when they were still riding a wave of popularity. Much of the success came after Schmidt, Maslow, Henderson and PenaVega were cast in the Nickelodeon TV series “Big Time Rush” in 2009. The four portrayed hockey players from Duluth, Minnesota, who are selected to form a boy band, and the show chronicled the events and misadventures that followed in their new lives as a music group.
The show’s concept clicked, and the series ran for four seasons. The exposure in the show paved the way for Big Time Rush to become a boy band in real life, giving the group a built-in audience ready to buy their albums and see them in concert.
And the group sold a good number of their three albums — 2010′s “BTR,” 2011′s “Elevate” and 2013′s “24/7″ — while by 2011, Big Time Rush had become a headlining touring act.
But shortly after the release of “24/7,” the last episode of the “Big Time Rush” series aired, and after touring in 2014, the four band members put Big Time Rush on hiatus so they could pursue solo projects.
It became an eight-year break, although the group was actually ready by 2020 to announce and start their comeback. But then the pandemic hit and stopped everything in its tracks.
With reunion plans on hold, though, the group had the good fortune of seeing the four seasons start airing on Netflix in March 2021. Vega jokingly said he wishes he could say Netflix was all part of a big plan, but it was just coincidence. In any event, he feels the television show has introduced a new generation of young fans to the group and sparked renewed interest from fans who originally followed Big Time Rush.
In returning to the music scene, Henderson, Maslow, PenaVega and Schmidt plan to be more involved in all aspects of Big Time Rush’s career. Where Nickelodeon and Columbia Records gave the group plenty of resources for promotion first time around, Big Time Rush is now an independent operation. Nevertheless, Schmidt reported that ticket sales for the Forever tour have been strong.
“I think we’re one of the few independent artists who’s able to do a nationwide tour that’s doing as well, and we might be one of the only ones,” Schmidt said. “We’re really proud of it. We’re doing our music independently, we’re doing this tour independently. This is very much a fan-driven band. We take the feedback the fans give us and we make the most of it. It’s really exciting because we were always into this vision of wanting to be the creative force behind (the group), but now we actually get the chance to do that. What you’re seeing is 100 % (us).”
If things go as planned, fans will be seeing and hearing Big Time Rush for years to come.
“This is a reunion tour, but it certainly isn’t just one reunion tour,” Maslow said. “The band is back together and we plan on continuing to do our music and continuing to tour and continuing to grow. The sky’s the limit.”
The group has indeed been busy with music, releasing three singles so far — “Call It Like I See It,” “Not Giving You Up” and “Fall.”
But now the focus is on the Forever tour, and a live show that will be bigger and better than anything the four singers have done before, featuring a more elaborate stage set with five levels and a more cohesive presentation.
“I feel like this go-around we have the most put-together show we’ve ever had,” PenaVega said. “Things flow better, there’s not a lot of breaks in between songs. There are like a lot of transition pieces, and it really feels like one big solid show. Before they were great shows, but it was a little more free form. I think this is more polished.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Big Time Rush
8 p.m. July 24. $46.95-$291. Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park, 4469 Stella Drive, Atlanta. livenation.com.
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