Tony Kanal recalls the moment it sunk in that No Doubt were officially back. After a nine-year hiatus, the band was huddled together under the stage catwalk, about to rise up for the grand comeback at Coachella 2024. “There’s nobody else except the four of us,” Kanal says. “And you’re looking at each other and you’re like, ‘Oh shit, it’s about to go down.'”
The band has performed only one other time since that festival reunion (at FireAid at the top of this year), but it’s about to go down again. No Doubt is set to headline an 18-show Sphere residency running through May and June 2026. (Get tickets here!) With just five months to go before his band takes over Las Vegas, Kanal sat down with Consequence’s Nicole Alvarez at Gold-Diggers LA to discuss Sphere prep, Coachella memories, and his new passion for film and TV scores.
Get No Doubt Sphere Tickets Here
Looking back at Coachella, Kanal recalls how telling his kids they’d be playing with Olivia Rodrigo made him feel like “the coolest dad in the world.” Still, it was their reaction after the show that sticks with him: “We’re doing tequila shots to celebrate and somebody knocked on the door and said, ‘Your kids are out here, and they’re weeping.’ And I was like, ‘Oh no, what’s going on?’ And they came in and they were just so overwhelmed with joy and how big it was, and it was just beautiful. Gwen ended up filming that moment of them coming up and hugging me, and I have that forever.”
As for the future, the Sphere gigs have No Doubt excited, but Kanal admits it’s “daunting” prep work. “We started the creative process months ago, and we are deep in it now,” he says. “You think that you have a lot of time, but you don’t, and you really have to make decisions ahead of time so they can start building the content and rendering it in that very high res way they need to do it for that place.” Thankfully, the band came to quick agreement on the setlist, and they already had familiarity with creative lead Baz Halpin, whom they worked with on their 2009 tour and also worked on U2 and Backstreet Boys’ Sphere shows.
Kanal also has been working in Hollywood as a composer in recent years, working on TV’s Single Drunk Female and Shifting Gears, and the 2022 Netflix film Purple Hearts. He talks about how his composer friend Blake Neely got him into the world of scoring, and what it was like having him as a mentor on Purple Hearts. “After we finished that project — and that was great — I go, ‘Okay, cool! What are we doing next?’ He goes, ‘We’re not doing anything next. You gotta go find your own thing.’ And so then I was like, ‘Oh, shit. All right.’ So then I just put myself out there…”
See everything Tony Kanal has to say about the return of No Doubt, their Sphere concerts, and his work as a composer by watching the video above (or via YouTube).
