The early 2000s were a whirlwind for The Calling. At the turn of the millennium, the rock band was questioning whether their label would even give them a chance. By mid-2002, they had a 23-week Adult Top 40 No. 1 with the heartfelt hit “Wherever You Will Go.” In 2003, they were sued by former bandmates. And by the end of 2005, The Calling had almost completely vanished stateside.
But the roller coaster was far from over, even when it seemed The Calling might be. Over the next 15 years, the group’s lead singer, Alex Band, was faced with a Parkinson’s diagnosis and a near-fatal kidnapping. And while The Calling has been revitalized with a new lineup, it hasn’t been without more drama: Band and his estranged Calling co-founder, guitarist Aaron Kamin, have filed lawsuits against each other.
According to both Kamin and Band, it seems The Calling’s future was fairly star-crossed from the get-go. After signing to RCA in 1999, Band and Kamin (the two sole members of The Calling — more on that later) struggled to get the attention of label heads amid the pop explosion RCA was experiencing with the likes of Christina Aguilera and P!nk. In fact, both insist their career may have never taken off if it hadn’t been for the 2000 cult classic Coyote Ugly.
The guys had written “Wherever You Will Go” — which turns 20 this month — years before landing their record deal, despite its along chorus and smooth power balladry that made it a perfect fit for the ’00s minivan rock era. The song was overlooked until Kathy Nelson, then president of film music for The Walt Disney Motion Picture Group, heard it. “Kathy apparently said, ‘That song is a f–king monster. I need it in this movie I’m working on,’” Kamin tells Billboard. “She wanted to put us in the movie playing the song.”
“Once Coyote Ugly wanted it, the label was like, ‘Oh, this is a hit,’” Band also recalls, in a separate interview. “That was absolutely the catalyst — it woke up Ron Fair at RCA to go, ‘Okay, I guess this is good. Let’s make a record.’” “Wherever You Will Go” was officially released as a single on May 22, 2001, nine months after Coyote Ugly‘s release. The song reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Adult Pop Airplay Chart that December and reigned for 23 consecutive weeks — a feat only topped by Santana and Rob Thomas’ sultry turn-of-the-century smash “Smooth.” (It was also named the No. 1 Adult Pop Song of the decade on Billboard’s decade-end charts in 2009.)
What Band and Kamin quickly realized amid the “Wherever” success was that their approaches to capitalizing on it were conflicting. While Band says he was willing to do whatever it took to keep the song rolling, Kamin recalls being a bit more skeptical.
“I just wanted to be conscious and picky about what we did and didn’t do,” Kamin says. “Ultimately I thought if we wanted to have longevity, we needed to be true to who we are. And the more we did things that didn’t feel right or didn’t seem to make sense — like lip syncing on a children’s TV show in Denmark — it started to not sit very well with me personally. [Label execs] didn’t care if we lasted forever. They just wanted to see how hard they could squeeze us while we had a hit on the radio.”
Band had his own frustrations, too. “Nothing that was done when The Calling first came out, in the sense of publicity and promotion, was what I wanted,” he admits. “As much as TRL was awesome — and we were so welcomed there — it made us kind of look like a boy band.”
The Calling’s rather confusing structure has turned out to be one of their biggest pitfalls. Both Band and Kamin insist that The Calling has always been a two-man group at its core since its foundation, with the other members hired as session and touring musicians. That arrangement backfired in 2003, when Kamin, Band and their management company were sued by bassist Billy Mohler and drummer Nate Wood, who claimed they were owed money from their tenure and cited fraud and mismanagement. (Kamin calls the suit “totally without merit” and says it was “settled very quickly” with him, Band and their managers; Mohler and Wood could not be reached for comment on the matter.)
Between the lawsuit and Band and Kamin’s own conflicts, tensions were running high by the time The Calling released their sophomore album, Two, in 2004. Though its lead single, “Our Lives,” was featured at the 2004 Summer Olympics and the 78th Annual Academy Awards, the album never spawned a hit quite like “Wherever You Will Go.” “Some label guy called [“Wherever”] ‘the song that ate the band,’” Kamin says with a laugh.
The group did see international success with both of their albums (“Outside of America, we were 10 times more successful,” Band notes), but it wasn’t enough for RCA to keep pushing. Band says then-RCA CEO Clive Davis didn’t want The Calling to start on another album because of the confusion surrounding the group’s members, but also didn’t want him to make a solo project. After landing another Adult Top 40 No. 1 under his own moniker with the Santana collab “Why Don’t You & I” in 2003, Band knew he had to follow his solo aspirations.
Kamin suggests that the impetus for The Calling’s initial break was Band’s solo venture. “I remember he called me to his house to say, ‘I think it’s time I work on a solo record. I want to come back to The Calling, and once I do this, maybe it’ll be good for our future,’” Kamin says. “[He] pretty much [said] ‘I’ll call you when I’m done.’ And I never heard back.”
Band experienced his own label and legal struggles with his solo material, eventually teaming up with EMI to release his debut full-length album in 2010. But just as things were starting to look up, Band was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2011. Regaining his strength enough to play shows by August 2013, tragedy struck again when Band was kidnapped and nearly beaten to death following a show in Lapeer, Mich. Band’s injuries required jaw bone reconstruction and three implants. “It was honestly just a f–king nightmare,” he says.
Band had played the Michigan show as The Calling, despite Kamin’s absence. Two months later, Band sued Kamin for just that: According to The Hollywood Reporter, the complaint stated that Kamin “essentially disappeared from the public eye,” and in turn the guitarist effectively abandoned any trademark rights over The Calling name. The complaint also stated that Kamin “simply refused to support The Calling on tour,” withdrew from the group, and was replaced by another guitarist. Kamin still maintains today that the portrayal of his abandonment is inaccurate: “I’m sure I could find you proof of all the tours that I was out and about on.”
Kamin says that the lawsuit was the first time he’d heard from Band since 2008, when Band was still pursuing his solo career. While he says his “heart sank” upon being sued, he started fighting it. “I don’t know why I was supposed to give him the rights to something that was a representation of our collective talent,” he says.
Though that case was dismissed before it reached a judge, the same issue arose a few years later when Kamin heard about a Calling reunion show from a relative. After he sent letters to Band to halt the use of the name without creating another lawsuit, Kamin says he had no choice but to sue Band. “It’s not cool to the fans. It’s not cool to me. It’s not cool to the legacy. And, I guess, under the law, it’s not cool to be doing what [he’s] doing,” Kamin says now. “I even had the old president of The Calling fan club [messaging me] saying, ‘Can’t you make this stop? I feel horrible about this.’
“It all felt very awkward and strange,” Kamin continues. “I don’t know that Joe Perry can grab another singer and just call himself Aerosmith, you know? He could be Alex Band — I think he could even be ‘Alex Band formerly of The Calling. But if he wants to be The Calling, I guess, [he could] give me a ring and let’s see what we could do.” The two had another mediation but never saw a judge.
Band’s argument is that Kamin has no ownership of The Calling name, as the original contract they signed listed them as their original name, Next Door. “We have no partnership agreement, we never did,” he asserts. (There is a listing on the Trademark Electronic Search System on the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s website, which lists both Kamin and Band’s names as owners. The status is “dead,” but Kamin says “When the name is continually being used in commerce — Spotify, Licensing, etc — the mark remains viable. Our last mediation settlement centered around this fact, and admonition that Alex or I could only have a limited use of the name without the other’s permission.”)
“Aaron and I have different viewpoints on what happened between us,” Band says. “We are not going to agree, and there’s no reason to keep dragging that out publicly. What’s done is done.” He adds, “What matters now for me is continuing forward making my music, celebrating the legacy that was started as The Calling, and creating new, meaningful songs for my fans.”
With no settlement from either mediation, Band is moving forward with his plans to revive The Calling. He has recruited three new members — bassist Joey Clement (Selena Gomez & the Scene), drummer Daniel Thompson (Face to Face) and guitarist Travis Loafman — who he insists are here to stay, unlike the past. “I’d had so many bad experiences that I couldn’t trust people — it’s different with these guys,” Band says. “This is the first time in my career, oddly enough, that I actually have a band.”
Band and the new members have already recorded two Calling albums: A full-length LP of original tracks (which Band teases are “far beyond the first album”), and a symphonic re-recording of eight Calling songs that have gone to No. 1 around the world, including “Wherever You Will Go.” Though he’s anticipating a 2022 release for the new album, Band is planning a live stream performance of The Calling’s first album Camino Palmero on July 10, the 20th anniversary of the album’s original release.
Kamin — who has spent the majority of his post-Calling days working as a writer and producer for other artists, including the Backstreet Boys, Leann Rimes, and Katharine McPhee — didn’t say whether he will try to halt Band’s latest Calling revival, but wasn’t shocked to hear about it. “Nothing surprises me anymore, unfortunately,” he says.
Despite the drama, both Band and Kamin have fond memories of The Calling’s heyday. They experienced Beatlemania-like chaos in countries like Brazil and the U.K.; beat out Shakira, Avril Lavigne, and The Strokes for best new artist at the 2002 MTV Europe Music Awards; and hung out with the likes of Bon Jovi, Christina Aguilera, and Michael Jackson. “It’s crazy to think we were part of that,” Kamin says. “Plenty of it sucked, but plenty of it was an absolute blessing.”
Band acknowledges that Kamin was an “absolutely vital” part of The Calling in the beginning (“there would be no ‘Wherever You Will Go’ without him,” he declares) and says he wishes there could be peace between them. In Kamin’s eyes, there’s one simple way to make that happen: “Just go do what you’ve gotta do, and if you want The Calling, then you know who you have to call.”
If Band did make that call, Kamin says he “couldn’t say no” to rejoining The Calling. “I would love the opportunity to share it with either people in my life that never got to be there with me on that trip, or people that were there who didn’t think it would ever go away,” he says.
“But I would say that the way things have gone in the past many years, it feels like there would be some healing required, or at least agree to disagree,” Kamin adds. “Let’s find a middle ground, because time is ticking for everybody. If we did have a last hurrah, we probably should do it sooner rather than later.”
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