Some hits are so humongous they simply never go out of style, such as Deep Blue Something’s irresistible “Breakfast At Tiffany’s,” an internationally-recognized earworm already well on its way towards total immortality.

However, there’s much more to the alternative rock/jangle pop group that helped define the 1990s with the gold-certified “Home” album, including the fact that original singer/bassist Todd Pipes, his brother/guitarist Toby Pipes, fellow guitarists Clay Bergus and Kirk Tatom, plus drummer John Kirtland are back with the “Lunar Phase” long-player, their first in 24 years.

It’s all going to be the subject of a unique show on Sunday, August 16 at the newly rebooted North Theatre, an acoustically excellent and more intimate performance space within the already regarded North Shore Center For The Performing Arts in Skokie, which as Todd tells Chicago Concert Reviews, marks Deep Blue Something’s first Chicagoland performance in nearly three decades!

Do you happen to recall the last time the band was here?

Todd Pipes: I want to say we came through there, it was us and Letters To Cleo, and it probably was in ’97. Now I could be forgetting, like maybe something we had done in the surrounding areas, but I think it’s been a very long time, which is odd because statistically, like according to Spotify, YouTube and Bandsintown, Chicago is our biggest town in America as far as followers and listeners, and we never get up there.

Why is that?

Pipes: I don’t know. Well, we just switched to a new booking agent and we’ve only just kind of started getting really active again the last couple of years. We didn’t play anywhere for a pretty decent amount of time, but yeah, you would think “send ’em to Chicago” as many of times as possible. I guess we’re gonna try to make up for it.

How about any memories of previous visits?

Pipes: I think every time we played Chicago, we played the Metro. We all love that venue. We always had a great time and there was just a great vibe. I do remember one time though, and this was, I think, the first time we played there, maybe the second. It was, at that time, the coldest day in recorded history and I didn’t have a coat. I had to walk down the street four or five blocks to try to find like a surplus store and I bought a coat. I wore it when we were on “The Tonight Show.” I still have it. I love that coat, but I almost died trying to buy it (laughs) cause we’re just some guys from Texas. You know, we have cold, but not like that, not that horrible, windy, deft cold. It was unbelievable! It was taking my breath away and I couldn’t see. I was just stumbling down the sidewalk (laughs).

This is going to be one of the first shows in the North Shore Center’s new North Theatre. What’s it like for you guys to basically break ground on a new performance space?

Pipes: We’ve actually gotten to do that a few times. It’s great because everybody’s excited. Sometimes from a technical perspective, we’ve ended up being helpful, like “hey, if you did this and this, this would be easier” cause everybody’s trying to work out kinks and stuff. It’s good to be a part of that kind of thing.

You play a lot of festivals and outdoor shows, but what’s it’s like for you guys to go inside and strip it down a bit?

Pipes: It’s usually really fun because the more intimate the setting, the more personal everything is. We like to talk, visit and joke around with the crowd as it is. I don’t care how many people. When it’s a small setting, we’re just having full on conversations with people. That kind of thing makes it more fun for us, and then also knowing that people are physically close like that, I think we play off of each other more when it’s a really intimate thing. The crowd sees how many little jokes and glances there are between us while we’re playing. It’s pretty fun.

Tell us a bit about the show you’ll be bringing.

Pipes: The main thing is, and it’s not something that we’re mocking other bands, but we are proud of the fact that it is all the original guys. It’s not just one dude or two guys. It’s all of us. In fact, it’s all of us plus an original, original, so it’s the four that a lot of people know, plus another original past that. We definitely play old stuff and then a few things from the new record. I would guess by August we may change up the rotation, but it’s a good mix of old and new. We definitely don’t come out [and say], “Hey, we’re gonna do 48 minutes of brand new stuff.” Nobody wants that kind of thing (laughs). It’s a good mix of old and new.

“Lunar Phase” is your first full-length project in 14 years. What accounted for the break?

Pipes: We all got involved in other things and the biggest thing was when we all started having kids. The band never ever broke up. People started businesses. We had other interests, and again, the kids, that’s pretty demanding time-wise. But once the kids got to this certain age, we thought, “Wow, let’s start playing stuff again.” Now the kids are older than that, so everybody’s wives are just like, “get out of the house, go play shows” (laughs), mine especially. She’s like, “Go and play. Stay gone as long as you want. Just get out there. Go have fun.” If I can be candid, I think the time off is what kept us all together cause we weren’t just out there slugging it out. We all did other things, and then when we got back together, you’re reminded everybody doesn’t get to do this. This is fun and it’s an honor that people want you to come and play, so appreciate it instead of just the grind of having to do it. I think that’s what kept the band together.

How would you describe the group’s subject matter at the moment?

Pipes: Same as always. Songs about love and death (laughs). I don’t know why we have so many songs about death, but it happens. I guess we go for those universal themes, but yeah, that’s typically the thing, love and death, and then on the new record, we’ve got one random one about Morrissey, [“Saint Morrissey”], so what can you do?

What about the sounds?

Pipes: Our goal for the new record was to not try to sound current. When we got together to rehearse the new songs it was, “Let’s not make the mistake that so many ‘legacy’ artists do and try to sound current.” You’re not going to. You’re not gonna gain a bunch of 15-year-old followers all of a sudden, and if you try that, then you may alienate the fans that you have, so let’s just be us and actually lean into sounding like a ’90s record on purpose. We went for a sound that was 1992, like The Connells, Teenage Fanclub and all that kind of stuff. Let’s just make the kind of record that we liked at the time.

What was it like when Deep Blue Something was in the process of getting discovered right around then?

Pipes: We were playing a lot. I think John kept all of our old itineraries, and that year before we got signed, I think we played 200 shows. We were playing all over the place. I do remember right before we got a record deal, I didn’t think it was gonna happen. I thought that we had tried everything. I didn’t see how we could make it any bigger than it was on our own, and then all of a sudden, it just found its way on to radio stations and we just started selling a lot. It was like all of a sudden, all these record companies that said “no” the year before, they’re all fighting each other to sign us, which was great (laughs), but it was a wild time.

Releasing “Home” and the surrounding period was certainly a major milestone for the band. What did you take away from that entire season?

Pipes: That the gatekeepers always tell you “no.” They all think that they have crystal balls, and they can tell the future and they don’t. It also taught us, more than anything else, that you have to be a unified front kind of against the world. It has to be you against everyone else and don’t fall into the temptation of taking out your frustrations on each other, which I think is easy for guys in their ’20s to do at the best of times, much less under that much duress. But you learned a lot of lessons. Never trust anyone (laughs), all that kind of stuff.

What do you remember about the extensive touring you did at the time?

Pipes: Two things, one, we rehearsed at one of those U-Stor-It places. The guy that owned it let us run an extension chord and he let us practice there, so it would either be just blistering hot or freezing cold, but we would practice for hours and hours, and it paid off like crazy. We had an album and a professionalism for a band that was seemingly as young as we were. We killed it when we played live. The frustrating thing was there were some countries, like Australia or Iceland, or Israel, where we were top two, and we never got to go there and play, or even the UK, where we went number one. We only played three concerts there and two of them were before the record came out. So it’s like we spent all that time trying to be this great live band, and for a lot of people, it didn’t really matter…

Even so, you shared several bills with superstar acts. Do any stick out in your mind?

Pipes: I think one of the most fun ones was Oasis, which was interesting because that was before we got signed. We were just a really big band in the area and they were coming through Dallas on their first tour. The promoter was really nervous cause they weren’t selling very many tickets, so our manager called me and said, “Hey man, this promoter, they’re kind of in a panic right now. There’s this British band coming through town called Oasis.” And I said, “Oh man, I just bought that CD, [“Definitely Maybe”], yesterday. I think that band is great.” And he said, “Well he’s looking for bands and everybody’s pointing at you all. What do you think? It’s kind of short notice?” I said, “Let me check with the guys, but I bet we’ll do it.” And of course, we said “yeah.”

The other guys didn’t know of them, but we played this place called Deep Ellum Live. It ended up being just slammed packed. It was a crazy night. I almost got arrested (laughs), which was a whole other story. We don’t need to get into right now. I almost got arrested on Oasis’ behalf, but again, we can talk about that maybe later. It was just a wild night that people still talk about. I don’t think they realized, even though the success we had in the UK, that they ever put together after the fact that was us. It was just some crazy band from Dallas that they played with. I could be wrong, but that was a good one.

One of the songs that took you to the “Top Of The Pops” after that was “Breakfast At Tiffany’s.” What are some of your favorite ways its made an impact?

Pipes: I guess the fact that everyone seems to know it. I think we’re almost to the ubiquitous level. The funniest was I was at the grocery store awhile back and I was standing in line. The song came on, so I’m very nervously looking around and trying to not make eye contact cause I don’t want anybody to know. The lady in front of me and the checkout lady both start singing out loud as I’m standing there. I’m looking at them and going, “They have no idea!” They obviously know the song. They’re singing it out loud in the grocery store checkout line and I thought “that is the ultimate.” It’s so funny and it’s great that the song has a life of its own, cause these people didn’t know I was in the band and I’m standing right there.

What is your relationship with the track nowadays?

Pipes: It’s fun. I’ve never understood those bands that say, “oh, we don’t play that song,” all that kind of nonsense. I don’t get it. It’s fun when we play it. Funnily, it’s not an easy song to play, like rhythmically it is sort of weird. You have to concentrate, especially when the crowd is singing and they’re trying to go too fast or too slow. You’ve got to try to hold it together. But when the audience is singing back, man, that’s the best. I’ll never get tired of playing it.

Did that particular hit being so huge ever present any challenges?

Pipes: Oh my gosh, yeah, it killed our second single. “Halo” was our second single and it was technically a Top 40 hit, but they’re trying to promote it and the radio stations were still playing “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” 200 times a week, so yeah, we kind of worked against ourselves. It is a difficult thing, but you just have to let it go. You can either let it be this beacon of life for the band or you can let it be an albatross, but that’s your choice. I just look at it as if we’re in a random situation and we’re playing, and people don’t know who we are, when we get to that one, they’ll know. It’s like a great passport, no worries.

After all that success, your follow-up album, “Byzantium,” was only released in a few countries like Japan. What happened there?

Pipes: So we were at odds with our record company. Everybody remembers, roughly around 2000, as being sort of the big panic time with Napster, but it was hitting the record companies already by ’98. They were all trying to figure out what was happening because sales plummeted. Bands are getting the same amount of airplay, all of this stuff is happening, but the sales violently dropped off and they couldn’t figure out what was happening, so there was a general level of panic several years before in the record company realm and we were caught up in that. A lot of records got put on hold because there were millions of dollars that were suddenly not there and everyone was really hesitant. You’ll notice like The Wallflowers didn’t have another record [for several years] and they were on the same label we were.

So we’re sitting there trying to negotiate either leaving the label or getting it put out. We just didn’t want it to be permanently shelved, and so at that time, in a couple countries like Japan, I wanna say Sweden, they didn’t get the red light. They just got the record and released it without the backing of Interscope. They were still panicking cause it was really hitting the United States market more than anyone else. Even though it got released in those other places, there was really no promotion behind it. In fact, we didn’t even know it had been released there and then we had to wrestle it back. Then we got on another label, so yeah, that was the drama with “Byzantium” cause logic would’ve said, “get a record out quick,” but there was panic going on.

Obviously the 1990s were a very different time for the music industry. What’s your perspective on then versus now?

Pipes: The best thing about it now is that you have much greater direct contact with your fans, like they’ll just send us a message on Instagram if they have a question or a comment, so the direct contact is amazing. The difference would be, to me, it’s much more difficult to promote things like a new record. In the past, you would immediately go and do a big radio station push trying to get stations to play it, and hopefully as they’re playing it, you get some sales. Now all of that is backwards. You’re trying to get plays and get on playlists, which is incredibly vague, and hope that later a radio station might pick it up because it’s getting such internet success. Everything is upside down, so that’s a little bit more difficult.

As Deep Blue Something gets back in the public eye, what are your goals this time around?

Pipes: I think the main goal for everybody is to have more fun with it. We were so hyper-focused on success and trying to overcome every obstacle that we didn’t enjoy it as much as we should have. Now it’s just, “let’s keep it fun,” and as long as we approach everything from that perspective, we’ll continue. That’s the main thing, just keep it fun and appreciate it.

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Deep Blue Something performs at the North Shore Center For Performing Art’s North Theatre on Sunday, August 16. For additional details, visit DeepBlueSomethingOfficial.com and NorthShoreCenter.org.