STP's Jeff Gutt hopes to connect with bands he "grew up admiring" on 'Purple' anniversary tour

Stone Temple Pilots launch a U.S. tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their 1994 album, Purple, Friday in Concord, California. The bill also includes Live, as well as Soul Asylum and Our Lady Peace for select dates.

For STP frontman Jeff Gutt, who joined the band in 2017, the tour brings together artists from his youth.

"It's gonna be awesome to go out with another group of guys ... that were influential on me," Gutt tells ABC Audio, mentioning a past tour with Bush. "It's just a great feeling to be able to connect with people that you kinda grew up admiring. "

Gutt adds that he's especially excited to be on the road with Live, with whom STP had played a show ahead of the tour.

"I didn't realize that [Live] had so many hits," Gutt laughs. "I was, like, 'Wow, I know that one, wow, I know that one.' The whole night I was just, like, amazed by it."

"It had slipped my mind how many great songs they had," he adds. "I'm really looking forward to seeing them and hearing Ed [Kowalczyk] sing every night."

Of course, Stone Temple Pilots themselves were among the influential bands of Gutt's youth -- he remembers purchasing Purple as a teenager when it first came out. Now that he's fronted the band for seven years, Gutt shares that he feels "more comfortable" performing the songs that were previously sung by the late Scott Weiland and Chester Bennington.

"When you're singing a song that someone else wrote, it's hard to take ownership of the song, personally," Gutt says. "I just try to come from it like a fan would do, and what it means to me as opposed to what it meant to Scott or to Chester when he sang 'em."