American rock band Goo Goo Dolls is hitting the road this summer, including a July 19 stop at Walmart AMP in Rogers, where they will bring an evening of hits and some new material to northwest Arkansas.

Formed in Buffalo, New York, in 1986, Goo Goo Dolls was co-founded by lead vocalist and guitarist John Rzeznik and bassist and vocalist Robby Takac and has included a rotating cast of musicians over the years. Launched as a cover band with a punk edge, the band spent a decade paying its dues in clubs and bars before breaking out with 1995’s “Name” and following that up with the smash 1998 single, “Iris,” which spent 11 consecutive months on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaked atop the Hot 100 Airplay chart for 18 weeks and, later, placed first on Billboard’s “Top 100 Pop Songs 1992–2012” roster.

“Iris” anchored the band’s most successful album, Dizzy Up the Girl, which also included “Slide” “Black Balloon” and “Broadway” and was required listening to anyone coming of age at the end of the millennia. Other hits include “Here Is Gone” from Gutterflower in 2002 and “Better Days,” “Give a Little Bit” and “Stay with You” from 2006’s Let Love In. The band has had seven top-40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, including three top-10 numbers; have sold 15 million records worldwide; and received four Grammy Award nominations.

AY About You sat down with Takac to discuss the music industry, the secret to longevity and what the boys named Goo have in store for fans in the land of Johnny Cash.

AY About You: You have described the band’s early days as just basically a brawl every night.

Robby Takac: That’s pretty accurate.

AY: At that age, you probably could not really conceive of one day recording something like “Slide” or “Name” and that whole genre, no?

Takac: You know, you start out in a band wanting to sound like the bands you love, so, in the mid-’80s, when our band started, we were trying to do what the bands that we loved were doing. I don’t know if there was a lot of original thought at that point, but that’s where you kind of get your footing and your foundation as to what kind of band you are. We had 10 years rolling around in the clubs and playing to sometimes empty, sometimes full little rooms all over the place. We got a really good chance to, like, see what kind of band we could become, you know?

The record industry was different back then too. They would see a band and say, ‘Ah, this band has potential, and now we expect you to sell an outrageous amount of music on your first outing,’ so they would help develop a band, and there were smaller labels that did the same thing. For us, that was where we were sort of living. We weren’t really that successful, but we were learning how to be a great band.

AY: How did that evolution as artists happen, where, even though this was not what you anticipated, that is where the music led you, and you embraced it?

Takac: By the time our record Superstar Car Wash came out, we were able to kind of be out there and present ourselves. It always seemed as though the wheels were going to come off, but we were presenting ourselves in a pretty professional way, you know? We knew what was important. We were learning the right songs and learning what some of our strengths were. John, in particular, was learning a lot of strengths that he didn’t even know he had as we moved on.

I don’t know if that’s something that a lot of bands get to do now, under the tutelage of folks who are in the music business. We had a lot of legendary people come through our circle over the years who gave us a lot of good and some shitty advice at the same time. Ultimately, if you’re honest in what you’re doing and let yourself grow as a group and kind of figure things out and discover things, you can sort of let that guide you and lead you to what your next thing is going to sound like. That’s always sort of what we subscribed to.

AY: One of your favorite bands and influences you’ve mentioned is Cheap Trick. I remember seeing an interview one time where somebody brought in a demo tape of “The Flame,” that big monster power ballad they had. Guitarist Rick Nielsen said in the interview that after hearing it for the first time, he pulled it out of the tape deck and threw it against the wall. He could not envision them doing that. Was there ever anything that came along, maybe even a song you introduced, that took a little bit of selling, or were so you guys connected musically that you could see immediately why this made sense and how this could work into your repertoire?

Takac: Well, you know, Cheap Trick didn’t play that song live for a long time. Like, even when it was a huge hit, they weren’t playing it. They do play it now, actually. We’ve done a couple shows with them, and it was a lot of fun. I think, maybe, the difference with that is, you know, Cheap Trick was used to doing other people’s songs, like “Ain’t That a Shame?” and “Dont’ be Cruel.” [“The Flame”] was probably brought to them like, ‘You guys should do this song. It’s going to be a hit.’

You asked if people ever brought things in and we were like, ‘What the hell is this?’ We’ve never really been in that position where someone’s come in and said, “Here, do this song. It should be a big hit.” John’s written songs with plenty of people, but I don’t think it was ever a departure that was so far out there. We were more like I’ll come in with 12 songs, and two will end up on the record — because they’re not finished songs. They’re just ideas. Most of those things probably didn’t belong anyway.

AY: The audience must have approved or, at least, was maturing in the same direction you did to stick with you even as this journey unfolded.

Takac: For us, like, when we did “Iris,” we had done some acoustic stuff, and we had done some other songs that were based in that world. I can remember we were doing “Iris” for a movie soundtrack. We weren’t even recording Dizzy Up the Girl yet. This orchestra was all set up, a huge orchestra, and John and I just remember looking at each other and just thinking, ‘Wow.’

We laugh about that often and say, like, we were watching the garage door firmly slam behind us. You know, you listen to our first record and you listen to our latest record. I don’t even think you’d recognize it’s the same band, but if you listen to the first record to the second record and then the second record to the third record, it makes perfect sense, you know? I think that’s how we were able to grow, by making those changes.

AY: Measuring a career in decades in an industry as fickle as entertainment, is that a big thing for you to get your head around, or is it just kind of that, hey, one day after the other, and then you look up, and it’s been 30 years?

Takac: Yeah, sometimes it feels like you blinked. Sometimes it feels like it’s been a hundred years, depending on what aspect of it you’re talking about. I don’t think I ever thought, when I was 20, doing this, I don’t think I ever thought about if we would be 60 and doing it. That’s not something that ever really crossed our minds. We were just sort of getting to the next day. I mean, the progression and, especially, watching the way the music industry has changed, you feel like after years and years of doing this, you learn how it works.

AY: Do you feel that way?

Takac: It’s like nobody knows how this industry works anymore, and, in a way, it sucks, you know? It’s disappointing because — and, obviously, I speak from a fortunate position in this business — but for the average person in this business, it’s really difficult to make it happen these days. I work with a couple of smaller bands, and it’s just amazing how much more difficult it is now than it was just, maybe, 10 years ago and how much the music industry’s changed and the revenue streams have changed and all that sort of stuff.

Navigating the way things work and trying to figure out where your art is in it and, at the same time, releasing new music is really different now. The way things are, we can release a song that afternoon, and people will know it when they get to the gig that night. As long as we make enough of a big deal about it on social media, they’ll be able to listen to it in their car on the way over. That’s the fortunate part of it. The unfortunate part of it is way fewer people are buying LPs anymore. Everything’s really become pretty singles driven, which is a big change in this business.

AY: What has remained a constant spark that, after all of these years, connects you and John on a new song or on stage or whatever that is that lets you summon that energy to do what you do night after night?

Takac: I think part of it is just being out there wanting to see it cross the finish line every night. I think that’s a big part of it. I don’t know. We’ve been super lucky, I think, more than anything else, to be able to figure out a way to navigate this. There’s been times that we haven’t talked for a really long time — I mean months — and there’s times when we’re out on tour, we’ll see each other every single morning, just sit and have coffee and talk about life. I think one of the reasons we’re able to do this is because we are able to get away from each other for a little while and do our thing and take a breather.

You know, when you start to hear the rhythm of the way people breathe, it’s a dangerous time, and you need to take a step back for a second and let people have their own space. We’ve been doing this a long time together, so we know where each other’s spaces are, and we try to respect that.

AY: What have you got going on right now? What can fans look forward to?

Takac: We released a single a little while back called “Run All Night,” which is a pretty great song. That will be included on a long-running EP that we’re going to put out called Summer Anthem. It’s produced by Gregg Wattenberg, who has done a lot on the past few records we’ve done. We’ve been working on that in New York. We were supposed to take last year off, and it turned into anything but that. We ended up doing a lot of shows, man. It wasn’t consistent touring, but we were out almost every weekend through most of the year last year, so it was really busy for us, so we’ve been working diligently to get a couple singles out by the time the tour starts and, hopefully, have a whole album out by the time the tour’s finished.

AY: Finally, what can audiences expect from your upcoming show in Arkansas?

Takac: Well, part of it, you know, there’s a bunch of hit songs that we know people have put down their hard-earned money for, and so we try to hit most of those songs. We do a few new ones that’ll be on this new record and go a little bit deeper into the catalog. We’ve got some time on these shows. We just did a bunch of opening slots over in Australia with Matchbox Twenty, and trying to put a Goo Goo Dolls show into 60 minutes is crazy.

Yeah, you know, we’ll have a great show. We’re about to go into rehearsals for a few days here, and then we start up in early July — big light show, big PA, all that stuff. It’ll be lots of fun.

Goo Goo Dolls with Dashboard Confessional

7:30 p.m. July 19

Walmart AMP, Rogers