The Set List

Jukeboxes, like music genres throughout time, have gone out of style. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t still serve their purpose. Just ask Georgia based rock/hip-hop group Rehab.

After a break-up and a hiatus of more than three years, jukeboxes in bars across the nation have given life to a Rehab song more than 10 years old, “Bartender Song,” and made it an anthem.

“It’s amazing and we’re very grateful and extremely fortunate to be in this situation with a 10-year-old song,” Rehab frontman Danny “Boone” Alexander said in a phone interview. “This type of thing doesn’t happen every day. It’s crazy. We were definitely surprised and I’m still surprised.”

Rehab — Boone, guitarists Mike Hartnett and Foz, bassist Hano Leathers, drummer Chris Hood and DJ Chris Crisis — re-released its 2005 album “Graffiti the World” in 2008 after Universal Records contacted the band because of the enormous amount of plays “Bartender Song” was receiving in bars throughout the nation.

But the song takes on a different sound than what the band was traditionally known for before its hiatus.

“(Our sound) is pretty much a mix-up of every member’s influences and contributes for a different style of music,” Boone said.

While Rehab did start in a genre exploding in the late ‘90s (the rap/rock fusion lead by Limp Bizkit, Korn and Kid Rock), label issues plus personal and creative differences proved too much and kept the original lineup from finding the success of similar acts.

“Me and the other (singer in the band), (Jason) Brooks, were having hard times with the label and sound,” Boone said. “They wanted us to have a different sound and we did albums that we thought were really representative of our music. We wanted to put it out and our production company called it garbage. When people are basically pissing on your work it gets frustrating and it just seemed like it wasn’t that important anymore and I decided to leave the situation.”

But after Boone left Rehab, it was not a breath of fresh air. In fact, he felt “pretty depressed and low” because Brooks had found success through his own MTV TV show — the utterly embarrassing “Trailer Fabulous.” Boone had only just started another musical project. However, his luck did turn up in the form of the band name he came up with a few years before.

“I started another (musical) project and when I was given the Rehab name back I decided that we already had a following with this group so we should just run with it,” Boone said.

Although the run started slow, Rehab is now off and sprinting to the top of the charts with its hit single and touring the nation, which will even include a stop at George’s Majestic Lounge on Sunday.
But don’t expect the band to shy away from fan favorites like “Bartender Song” and “It Don’t Matter.” Boone said it’s always great to see the crowd singing back at the Rehab shows. He says the shows are packed with crazy guitar solos and can be “real meltface.”

Fans might also expect to see new Rehab material at upcoming shows in ‘09. The band hopes to book a tour as an opener for a “big major tour.”

“We pretty much have a new album and got the songs, they just need to be mixed,” Boone said. “We definitely have a lot of different projects in the works, but the Rehab project is where we’re at right now. We have a lot of different stuff recorded and can’t really call it any (musical genre) yet because there are so many of them. Every album sounds completely different from the other one. We have our albums and they are all drastically different so we are going to keep doing that.”