Blues Traveler's John Popper on 30 Years of 'Run-Around' — and Almost Dying in 2025

December 2, 2025·1 hr 10 min·5 clips

John Popper went in for a routine heart procedure and the doctor accidentally nicked his femoral artery, causing him to lose a liter and a half of blood.

Thirty years is the hinge. Hyatt starts with Blues Traveler inside a narrow 1990s opening, when mainstream radio still had room for bands that might have missed it in another era. Popper shows up ready to correct the record. He recalls an early Rolling Stone interview where a misprinted lyric bothered him enough that he began by fixing it, which says plenty about the rest of the conversation. The anniversary of Four, Run Around, and Hook is not really a victory lap. It becomes a way into Popper's thorny standards for performance, recording, and taste. He is sharp and funny about discomfort. A joke about slow self-destruction turns into a mild self-diagnosis of masochism, with jalapeno-heavy sandwiches standing in for his appetite for intensity. Hyatt keeps the critic's frame steady, nudging him back from tangents toward the albums, especially Popper's long-running frustration that the early records never quite caught the force of the live band. Popper answers like a working improviser. He can argue that every album and every performance leaves him unsatisfied, because satisfaction would mean the work had gone slack. Jerry Garcia becomes the reference point. Popper takes Garcia's idea that satisfaction would be a reason to quit and connects it to what he learned studying improvisation at the New School. The sound starts in the head. He wants the exact inflection, attack, and voice he imagines, even though noticing success can wreck the moment. Forgetting becomes part of the technique. The instant he thinks he remembers the words or nailed a riff, his attention gets in the way, so the best take may be the one where he is not fully watching himself. Records make that harder. A live performance can disappear into instinct, but an album keeps reminding the musician he is there. The near-death material darkens the room. By the end, Popper folds a motorcycle wreck and a brutal 2025 into a blunt little philosophy: nobody gets out alive, so comfort and risk both get a vote. He sounds changed, not softened. It is a warm, crooked anniversary talk where a hit song's birthday opens into craft anxiety, stubborn musicianship, bodily danger, and a frontman who refuses to let survival make him bland.

As heard by us

A blunt look back at Blues Traveler, survival, and Popper in full voice.

Rolling Stone Music Now uses Blues Traveler's Run Around anniversary to do more than tug at nostalgia. John Popper looks back at the 1990s run that carried the band through MTV and radio, and he does not sand off the rough edges.

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Why you'd press play

For the 90s rock fan who wants the anniversary story, the frustration, and the survival note.

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