Scott Anderson knows something and he’s not ready to share it just yet.
While the Finger Eleven frontman and his bandmates produced six albums in the first 20 years of their career – seven if you count their debut as The Rainbow Butt Monkeys – it is quickly closing in on the 10th anniversary of their last release, 2015’s Five Crooked Lines.
Though they’ve provided a teaser with a lead single that lives up to its name, Adrenaline, how the band has evolved in the last 10 years is still a bit of a mystery.
After wrapping up a run of shows over the next couple of weeks, the Burlington band will return to the studio to finish recording their long-awaited album.
And then begins Anderson’s favourite time in the creative process.
“It feels like I’m sitting on this secret that I’m so giddy about,” he says. “It’s the world’s best album at that point and I don’t have to worry about anybody else’s criticism or negativity. I know it’s awesome. I can’t wait for the people to hear it, but it belongs to the band for that moment of time.”
Finger Eleven fans may have started to wonder if they’d ever see another album, but there was never any doubt in the minds of the band.
“I guess real life kind of got in the way of finishing a record,” said Anderson, who became a father and suddenly began to appreciate his bandmates’ stories of sleepless nights.
“We never stopped working on music. This forthcoming record is all the ideas we had. It’s a little wild that it took 10 years. I don’t have any legit excuses except that real life got in the way.”
Anderson admits there were times he worried whether the band’s audience would wait for them. He said as time passes “there’s bands you take with you and others that you don’t.”
Any doubts were erased when Finger Eleven released its Greatest Hits album in 2023. That included the first new song in eight years, Together Right, which became the band’s fifth No. 1 song on the Canadian rock charts.
Finger Eleven spent much of 2024 opening for Creed on its North American tour but kicked off 2025 closer to home with a unique tour of Ontario theatres. They play in Oakville tonight, Thursday, March 6 and Milton this Friday.
They open the show with a seven-song acoustic set, then return with the amps cranked to 11.
“It’s a great way to let the audience in,” Anderson said. “We just get to say ‘Hi’ and it’s kind of informal. It’s more like this half hour welcome to the show moment. In these theatres you can hear anything anyone says, so it sparks this conversation. It’s such a different vibe. I get to be goofy as possible and make terrible jokes all the way through. Watching a band you can tell if they’re having fun.”
Thirty years into their career, Finger Eleven still is. They’ve not only beat the long odds of the high school band that carves out a successful career, they've actually outlasted their high school - Burlington's Lester B. Pearson, which closed in 2018.
They are also a rarity in having four of their five original members – Anderson, his brother Sean on bass and James Black and Rick Jackett on guitar. Only Steve Molella, the band’s third drummer, who joined in 2014, hasn’t been there from day one.
“We were driving to a show and I asked Rick, ‘Who has had this long career with the same members?”’ Anderson said. “It comes down to this cornball idea where we got together in middle school and high school, and said, ‘Yeah, this is what we want to do.’ And there’s nothing better. I think we can proudly say we’re an anomaly.”
That they are. And they’ve done it with the two things Anderson says they can control, making the best music possible and putting on a good live show.
“The right reason to do this is to be together and make something out of nothing,” he said. “Thirty years on we’re still chasing that magic and there’s nothing like it.”