When Portugal. The Man was three years into the making of the album that would be Woodstock, John Gourley’s (guitar, vocals) dad couldn’t wrap his mind around what was taking so long. The band had about 40 songs with 3-8 different versions of each, but no record and no signs of stopping. At John’s dad’s home in Alaska, over beer and chicken wings, he laid it out simply: “don’t you just…write songs, record them, and put them out?” As if to remind them: if this is what you’re meant to do, shouldn’t you be doing it? It was in that same “dad talk,” as Zachary Carothers (bass) puts it, that he showed them his original ticket to Woodstock from 1969.

Immediately following that talk, naturally, Portugal. The Man threw out everything they had recorded and went back to the studio with fresh inspiration and vision. “Our record label was pumped on that…” Carothers jokes. The product: a 10-track record and a chart-topping single “Feel It Still” which grabbed the top spot as the biggest rock crossover hit since Goyte’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” in 2012.

We’ve been rocking with them since the “Purple Yellow Red” and even the “So American” days, so it really came full circle when the band opened their private concert with the former. But Woodstock is the contemporary Portugal. The Man we needed, inspired by an era of political unrest where music was used for both social commentary and escape that couldn’t be more applicable in the world we live in today.

In the end, John’s dad had it right. “The music matters more than anything,” says John. “It is just being creative. It is just going to a studio with your instruments.”