From Houston's Chron.com:

blink-182 mends fences, back on tour

Sept. 23, 2009, 3:52PM

On Enema, the band — Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker — embraced the pop side of pop-punk, scoring its biggest hits and becoming a household name outside the Warped Tour crowd.

In 2004, at the height of the band's popularity and artistic execution, guitarist DeLonge quit the band, claiming he was burned out. After Barker survived a 2008 plane crash, DeLonge reached out to his estranged bandmates. The rest is reunion history. Following five years of being apart as a band and friends, the three have begun to mend their relationship.

“It has been easy … organic,” DeLonge said. “I think we had initial conversations and right away put everything in perspective, and everyone was instantly fine with the years that have passed. The best thing for us to do was to get on our instruments and start playing because that is where we felt the chemistry (would) come right back out again.”

Numerous rehearsal sessions and high-profile late-night TV gigs have the power trio gearing up for a return to being a fully functional band. While initial performances appeared off, the band is slowly hitting its stride as a live act once again.

“I think that, to be honest, in many ways, it comes so naturally. ... Getting us in front of an audience is the truest way to get the band firing on all cylinders,” DeLonge said.

The highly anticipated reunion tour spans more than 50 North American dates and features an elaborate stage setup, put together by the same team that worked on Kanye West's acclaimed Glow in the Dark tour. The band hopes to release new single Up All Night sometime after the tour.

“(Up All Night) sounds like the missing track of our last ‘untitled' album,” DeLonge said. “It has elements of Pink Floyd, Rush and even Boxcar Racer and Quicksand all in the same song. I think people are going to love it.”

DeLonge's post-blink endeavor, the ambitious arena-rock opus, Angels and Airwaves, will still function as a band even though blink-182 is the priority.

“(Angels and Airwaves) is my life; blink is being written into it,” DeLonge said. “(Angels and Airwaves) will pick up full speed after the blink tour. I mean, there is still a whole future to be written with blink, we just don't know exactly what it is and how it works yet. I'm just trying to get this blink tour to be the best it can be first.”

After the blink-182 tour, DeLonge plans to release a new Angels and Airwaves album, Love, to coincide with the documentary/movie of the same name, which will all be released for free on Valentine's Day 2010.

“It is the work of my life, absolutely, and I think people are going to freak out when they see the film and what it is all about, and it is definitely worth the wait,” DeLonge said. “No band does this. No band has ever done this; I think it is very revolutionary. I'm excited.”

In his time off the stage, DeLonge formed Modlife, an online subscription service that allows bands and other multi-media artists their own user sites to connect with fans, stream live concerts and post their own music. DeLonge's shoe company, Macbeth footwear, has also grown its line of artist-inspired vegan-friendly shoes.

“We just released a shoe from Mike Dirnt of Green Day, we having stuff coming up from Davey Havok of AFI, Frankie from My Chemical Romance, a special shoe from Muse and a lot of rad stuff,” DeLonge said. “It has taken a few years for people to realize Macbeth is a really good shoe company, and we are trying to work with the coolest bands possible. The shoes are awesome, and I think people are finally catching on, and it is doing better than it has ever done. We are securing a place in shoe history.”

The tour stops at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion at 6:30 p.m. Thursday and fans can expect a setlist rich in the band's catalog.

“We have so many singles, we are going to power through those,” said DeLonge.

As the blink-182 matures to even more of a power trio, the band still looks forward to playing the older songs like Carousel and Josie that made them staples in the SoCal punk scene.

“It super brings back memories and sounds really good, like power-pop punk,” said DeLonge. “It's rad, really powerful, and it just brings back all the memories you have of being young and wanting to break something.”

DeLonge has his hands full with two functioning bands, a family, Macbeth, Modlife and the ongoing blink-182 tour. Taking on such a huge undertaking would be a daunting task for DeLonge circa-2004, but the guitarist is ready to take on the challenge.

“Fifty dates is a lot, and no matter how bored or burned out you get it all changes for that period we are on stage,” DeLonge said. “The biggest thing that would hurt a tour is if tickets aren't selling and you feel like you are stuck and you don't know what you did wrong. But this isn't the case with this tour; it is the biggest tour of my life.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/music/6633009.html