Toadies have two new non-musical releases planned for early 2021. The band partnered with local coffee roaster Full City Rooster in 2019 for the release of Toadies Texas Pecan Coffee. That partnership has lead to a new brew, Dark Secret. Toadies bassist Doni Blair says “After the success of our collaboration with Full City Rooster on the Toadies Pecan Coffee we wanted to go simpler on the next roast. We wanted to let Michael from Full City Rooster roasting skills and talents shine through and decided on an amazing Ethiopian dark roast that we are calling ‘Dark Secrets’. No fanfare with packaging, we’re letting the coffee speak for itself. But just in case we decided to wrap it in ninja black.” Full City Rooster’s Michael Wyatt adds “Full City Rooster (est. 2013) always starts with the finest single-origin coffees from micro-lot growers and socially responsible farms in the best coffee growing regions of the world. From there, we work hard to roast carefully to make individual qualities sing from each coffee origin. ‘Dark Secret”’ is a collaboration with The Toadies—a dark roast of the finest beans from around the world. Dark Secret goes beyond smokey and intense not unlike the band itself.”

Fueled by all that coffee, Toadies singer Vaden Todd Lewis has just released the first in series of lyric comics in a collaboration with illustrator Lee Davis. Vaden says “I’ve wanted to see the stories behind our songs realized in a visual/printed format. It’s very exciting and fulfilling to see these characters come to life. Lee’s illustrations really bring out the macabre dark humor that’s been a big part of my writing style my whole career.”

Davis comments  “When I heard Toadies on the radio or MTV I enjoyed their infectious music, and the line “Do you wanna die?” is one of those moments that was imprinted on my mind and years later sounded just as clear in my head as the first time I heard it. So it was surreal when I got word that my illustration work was desired by the band for a comic run. It was and is a thrill and an honor to take on this task. The lyrics proved uniquely ambiguous, as I discovered a truly unsuspected vision behind the words: I’d started reading the script expecting to go outside of my love for the weird and horrific to explore a tamer realm, yet suddenly I realized just how bloody and gleefully bizarre this vision of Vaden’s really was.”