Candlebox Still Knows How to Make the Past Feel Present
Candlebox
The Observatory North Park, San Diego
October 2, 2026
There are concerts you remember because they were spectacular, and then there are concerts that reach backward through time and grab hold of something you thought you had already lost. Candlebox at The Observatory North Park was both but for me, it was something considerably more personal.
I first met Kevin Martin in 1996. I was younger, crying, shaking and overwhelmed with emotion. Because the music meant everything to me. It helped me through a lot of tough times and Candlebox weren't simply another band in the soundtrack of the ’90s. Their music had become intertwined with that period of my life, the kind of songs that stay lodged somewhere in your memory long after the posters come down and the CDs have been replaced by whatever comes next.
Meeting Martin all those years ago left an impression that never really disappeared. Standing in front of him again decades later, I couldn't help but think about that kid from 1996. I actually cried. Not because nostalgia is inherently sentimental, but because sometimes you suddenly realize just how much a person's words and music have meant to you over the course of your life.
I had seen Candlebox multiple times throughout the ’90s and into the early 2000s, but I hadn't seen them in years. Walking into The Observatory for this show, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Time has a way of changing the bands we grew up with and, occasionally, changing our expectations of them.
Candlebox exceeded mine.
From the opening notes of “Stand,” Martin immediately proved that whatever mileage the years have put on the calendar, they haven't taken much from his ability to command a stage. He remains an extraordinarily energetic frontman, constantly moving, gesturing and working the room with the kind of physical commitment that makes it difficult to believe you're watching a band that has been doing this for more than three decades.
“Arrow” and “Simple Lessons” kept the momentum high before “Change” and “Blossom” shifted the atmosphere toward something darker and more reflective. The set moved effortlessly between eras, making the evening feel less like a nostalgia tour and more like a living history of Candlebox.
Then came “Don't You,” “10,000 Horses,” “Miss You,” and “Supernova,” with the band sounding remarkably tight throughout. There was no sense that these songs were being performed merely because an audience expected to hear them. They still had weight. They still sounded alive.
“Happy Pills” and “I Remember Everything” carried that same sense of history, while “Cover Me” and “Elegante” gave the set room to breathe before the inevitable emotional centerpiece arrived.
Before “Far Behind,” Martin stopped to talk about loss.
He spoke about missing so many of the extraordinary artists who helped define the musical world that Candlebox came from
Layne Staley, Scott Weiland, Chris Cornell, Mark Lanegan and Andrew Wood among them. These weren't simply names from an old playlist. They were people whose voices, personalities and art shaped an entire generation.
Then Candlebox played “Far Behind,” the song originally written for and dedicated to Andrew Wood, and Martin extended that dedication to all of them.
For anyone who lived through that era, the moment carried an almost unbearable sense of history. The ’90s alternative rock world was built on artists who seemed untouchable at the time. Decades later, so many of those voices are gone. Hearing Martin acknowledge that loss before singing one of Candlebox's most enduring songs made the performance feel less like looking backward and more like honoring the people who aren't here to look back with us.
And then there was “You.”
Ending the night with that song felt inevitable. The opening notes immediately transformed the room into something larger than a concert venue. People weren't simply listening, they were remembering. The song has survived decades of changing musical fashions, and hearing it performed live again made it clear why.
What struck me most throughout the night wasn't simply that Candlebox still sounded good.
They sounded hungry.
Martin's energy was the biggest surprise. After all these years, he still attacks the stage rather than merely occupying it. There is a physical urgency to his performance that refuses to treat these songs like museum pieces. The band wasn't recreating 1993 or 1996 for an audience desperate to relive its youth. They were playing those songs in 2026, with all the history that has accumulated around them.
That distinction matters.
I've watched Candlebox several times in the ’90s and early 2000s. I've watched the music landscape change, watched bands disappear, watched others become reunion acts, and watched entire eras of alternative rock get reduced to nostalgia packages.
Candlebox doesn't feel like a nostalgia act.
They feel like survivors.
And for me, seeing them again after all these years was more than checking another band off a concert calendar. It was a collision between past and present, a reminder of the person I was when I first met Kevin Martin in 1996 and the person standing in The Observatory nearly three decades later.
I walked into that room expecting to remember Candlebox.
Instead, Candlebox reminded me why I never stopped caring about them.
Some music grows old with you.
Some music grows with you.
Candlebox still has the latter.
Photos
and
Review
by
Michael Benesh
