When was the last time you went to see your favorite band perform live and they didn’t play your favorite song? Maybe they didn’t even play the top three songs you expected to hear (we get it, you like the underground tracks the most). You probably walked away feeling somewhat let down.

Well, what if that band played the gig without a setlist, only to build it by taking audience requests? That’s exactly how Wheatus, the band most known for their song “Teenage Dirtbag,” approaches every show. That’s also how the band will play their sold-out show next Tuesday, April 15, at Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room.

While this means you can’t linger in the pit and ask for that coveted sheet of printer paper at the end of their set, it does mean that you could probably hear every Wheatus song you want to that night. Their shows have been performed like this since the mid 2000s, Brendan B. Brown, the lead singer of Wheatus, said. In order to play this style of show, Brendan said that the band rehearses for around eight hours a day, usually three or four days a week. By the end of their rehearsal process, the band has a repertoire of 60 songs, give or take, “that people can just call out,” he said.

Brendan’s show philosophy is centered around the audience’s experience. Shows aren’t about checking boxes, as he puts it. Instead, they’re about giving his audiences, the people who allow Wheatus to do what they love every night, the experience they want.

“I just walk up to the front of the audience when we take the stage, and I say, ‘What’s the first song?’ And somebody shouts something, and I can hear it, and then we play that one. And we go from there,” he said. “It’s way better than having a setlist for us because we never get bored. The audience never knows what’s coming, so it’s totally unpredictable.”

Before Wheatus transitioned to this method of performing, Brendan recalled moments where fans would approach him after the show, wishing he had played one of their favorite songs that was left out of the night’s setlist. “It started occurring to me that I’m approaching this from the wrong angle,” he said.

Even without a setlist, though, someone’s favorite song might still be excluded from the performance. Brendan, still committed to giving his audience the best experience possible, said, “If there’s something you wanted to hear and I didn’t play it for you tonight, if you really want to hear it, I’ll do an acoustic after the show.”

Wheatus formed in 1995, went on tour for the first time in 2000, and has been touring ever since.

“The first tour, we were flying by the seat of our pants. Everything was happening really quickly. We didn’t have a lot of time to develop the skills that we needed to be traveling the way that we were and performing the way that we were,” Brendan remembered.

On this first tour, imposter syndrome was an unwelcome guest. “We constantly felt like somebody’s going to discover that we’re not the real thing,” he said. Now, Brendan’s current touring experience “couldn’t be more different” from what it was during his first tour, 25 years ago. The way he described the current band dynamic is that of a hardworking, tight-knit family. As a result, he mentioned that shows run much more smoothly.

Imposter syndrome, especially at universities like WashU, is a feeling commonly experienced throughout the student body. Students, however, are not alone, because Brendan mentioned that even Wheatus felt imposter syndrome at the beginning of their career. Knowing that a band with a major hit still waded through the waters of imposter syndrome can help put students’ feelings into perspective.

Wheatus confidently overcame it by approaching their recording process in a new way. “We started making records for ourselves and trying to prepare our live show in the studio. The first record we made in my mom’s basement” –– is there a more perfect place to record “Teenage Dirtbag”? –– “we had no idea what it would have to be like to tour it … But when we made our second record, we had been on the road for [about a] year, and we made that record knowing what we were going to have to do with it.”

By their third record, Wheatus was confident in their process. “We recorded it live in the studio, standing there, playing as though we were on stage,” Brendan said.

The band went independent in 2003 after being dropped by Sony Music. Since then, they’ve been self-managed and self-distributed. After five years of being independent, they decided to never go back.

“We got dropped by a major label, and it was something that we actually wanted, because the relationship had really gotten pretty sour,” Brendan said.

The way music was distributed was changing rapidly, something the band kept in mind when going independent. Brendan mentioned that he worked for a virtual private network firm in the ‘90s which made him privy to the notion that the music industry was about to change. Limewire and Napster soon changed the music industry forever, with streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music coming not long after. “So we stayed independent, because we were kind of waiting to see what was going to happen,” he said, adding that he was also weary of record labels after their first deal went poorly.

Despite his own rather negative experience with major labels in the industry, Brendan looks to the future of the industry with the hopes that the next generation of artists will improve it.

“I really hope that the music industry keeps getting younger and smarter and more compassionate,” unlike when he started and felt like the industry “was old, very old, and very greedy, and very cruel.”

Fans can possibly expect a seventh album from the band in 2026 “which has been on the backburner for a very long time,” Brendan mentioned, adding that a movie about the band titled “You Might Die” is currently also in the works. Wheatus is on tour for the rest of the year and is performing in St. Louis next week.

B-SIDES WITH BRENDAN B. BROWN: 5 FURTHER QUESTIONS

What was the most unexpected inspiration for a song you’ve written?

“That’s a really tough question because you’re always kind of surprised by what makes you write a song.” Brendan recounted one of the times he was with One Direction (a band that frequently covered Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag”) at an afterparty. Liam Payne was sitting in a corner looking pensive, with something obviously on his mind. Brendan approached him, checking in on Payne when he replied, “I can’t stop thinking about all the kids who can’t come to our shows or that live in places that we’ll never go,” Brendan recalled. “It sounded really conscientious and compassionate to me and I was surprised that somebody his age would be compelled to ponder that kind of stuff. So I wrote a song called ‘Tipsy’ about that.”

Are there any other moments similar to this that you’ve had where you just learned a lesson that you’d want to share with other people?

“Our sixth record is a song that I wrote when I realized that you’re not always friends with the right people. Just because you call them a friend, the circumstances under which you made friends with them might not have been great, and sometimes you have to evaluate it later in life, when you get older and you the relationship changes, and you kind of look at and go, ‘I’m not really sure why we were friends in the first place’… That was something that I discovered later in life, and felt compelled to write, to try and describe.”

Do you remember the first time that you picked up a guitar and you just came up with a really great lick that you were proud of?

“I remember the first little lick I ever wrote, I can still play it. That’s kind of silly, you know, it’s just a silly little lick. But the first time I came up with something great that I really thought was a very good song, or was a song, was when I was 16. I wrote a sort of classical piece on guitar, and that felt right to me. That felt like, ‘Wow, I can do this, like I actually did a thing,’ you know?”

Most people are surprised when they find out that you sing the high-pitched part in “Teenage Dirtbag.” What’s been the most surprising thing you’ve learned during your time in the music world?

“The most interesting thing that I’ve ever learned being in the music world is probably that you’re not as good as you think you are, and you’re never as bad as you think you are. That your expectations are often wrong, that you’re often wrong about yourself.”

What’s the key to band bonding when you spend so much time on tour?

“Just to look out for each other. Notice each other’s needs and kind of prepare for them.”

Wheatus is playing at Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room April 15 at 8 p.m. to a sold-out audience.