At age 16, Dave “Snake” Sabo would stand in front of the mirror, play his Ibanez guitar and pretend to be Paul Stanley or Ace Frehley from the band Kiss. Or pretend to be Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhoads. Or Eddie Van Halen, or one of the other rockers he worshipped.

Earlier in life, Sabo had been way into sports. But at 13, he and his Sayreville, New Jersey neighborhood friend Jon Bongiovi, who’d later rebrand his last name to Bon Jovi, took the train to New York for a Kiss concert that rearranged Sabo’s universe. After witnessing Kiss’ decibel-fed hooks and eyelash-singeing stagecraft, for him everything now orbited rock music.

In Sabo’s early 20s, after a stint as a pre-fame Bon Jovi’s lead guitarist, he cofounded his own hard-rock/heavy-metal band, Skid Row, based in Toms River, N.J. A couple years later, songs off Skid Row’s quintuple platinum 1989 self-titled debut album, like “18 and Life,” “Youth Gone Wild” and “I Remember You,” gave teenage fans new anthems to practice rock-star moves to.

“And it’s funny,” Sabo says, checking in for a phone interview from his current Long Island residence. “I’ll be warming up in the dressing room now before a show, and inadvertently there’ll be a mirror there. And I’ll walk past that mirror and stand in front of it, even if it’s for a moment, and I’m that kid again.”

Skid Row’s latest album taps into that same original flame. Released late 2022, “The Gang’s All Here,” plays like the missing link between Skid Row’s debut and orca-heavy 1991 follow-up “Slave to the Grind.” In Swedish sensation Erik Grönwall, Sabo, cofounding bassist Rachel Bolan and classic-era guitarist Scotti Hill found the best voice to howl their songs since the talented Sebastian Bach. Completing the circuitry: Longtime drummer Rob Hammersmith’s boom and producer Nick Raskulinecz (known for his work with bands like Rush, Alice in Chains and Ghost) behind-the-console savvy.

“Hell or High Water” opens the album like a street-walking cheetah. Skid Row have always excelled at tuneful defiance, and “The Gang’s All Here” track “Tear It Down” continues that thread. Seven-minute spellbinder “October’s Song” is the spiritual sequel to ‘91 Skids hit “Wasted Time.”

It had been 16 years since the band’s previous full-length album. Critics and fans alike were clearly ready for new Skid Row songs that sounded like the Skid Row they knew and loved. Metal Edge named “The Gang’s All Here” one of the year’s top five hard rock albums. The raucous title track has been streamed more than 2 million times on Spotify.

A nearly universal hell-yeah reaction to the album was “completely unexpected” by the band, Sabo says. He’s quick to give credit to record label earMUSIC — whose roster also includes other legacy rockers like Alice Cooper and Deep Purple — for their support of and belief in the project. Sabo adds, “But just the way the fans have responded to Erik in band and the songs … I mean, [the album] charted top 20 in like 11 or 11 countries, and to be quite honest that hasn’t happened in 27 years. It’s surreal but it’s also amazing after all this time to still be able to do this where it’s really appreciated. It’s incredibly humbling.”

That kind of gratitude is partially due to the down-to-earth Jersey-ness that binds Skid Row’s core members. But it’s also from perspective one gets going from hungry kids working to become the best band on the competitive East Coast scene, to blossoming to new princes of arenas, like Skid Row were in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, to spending the new decade-plus deemed passe, after grunge hit, making mopey mandatory in rock.

Like other bands from their era, Skid Row and their songs are too often discounted, at least by those outside the rock/metal community, as being more about image than talent. Which simply isn’t true. “I Remember You” and other early Skid Row gems became classics of their time. They still crackle with electricity to this today.

Of Skid Row’s steep rise, Sabo says, “We had no idea that it would explode the way it did. And I think that affected certain people in the band differently than other people. But speaking for myself, I was raised in such a way that, you know, life is a gift, man. I was just so thankful and so humbled by everything that was happening for us, that when things started to go downhill, while I was upset because of all the hard work that we put in, as it was starting to sort of fall apart, I was prepared for it mentally, just because of the way I was brought up.”

Even during lean stretches and as lead singers came and went, Sabo says, “I don’t think I ever lost faith in what we could accomplish as songwriters and as a band, whatever the incarnation of the band was. My partnership with Rachel, I always had great faith in that as far as, you know, being best friends and business partners and songwriting partners. And that includes Scotti Hill as well.”

Skid Row’s early days the band, like many young bands do, aspired to world domination. Still, Sabo says, “The original bottom line for us was always if we could just keep playing music for a living it would be amazing. And so that has continued to this day.”

Although others have contributed, Sabo and Bolan have been Skid Row’s primary songwriters since the ‘89 debut. Over the decades, the basics of their collaboration have remained constant.

“The two of us will get the room, throw ideas at each other,” Sabo says. “Everything always starts off with a conversation though.” With guitars in hand and tossing riffs around, they’ll start talking about what’s going on in their lives, or with people they know, or with current events. And somehow through that conversation, directly or indirectly, we are led to working on an idea.”

As true as “The Gang’s All Here” adheres to vintage Skid Row, new moves shaped the album too. For one, the band worked with outside songwriters, including Paul Taylor from Winger and Aerosmith/Brother Cane collaborator Marti Frederiksen. “That was a really great experience,” Sabo says. “We worked with people that we were friendly with, and it produced some really cool tracks. I became a better writer through this experience of writing for this record.”

And musically, for this album Sabo and Hill cut all their guitars together at the same time. With producer Raskulinecz challenging and guiding them in the studio control room, “We’d be blasting everything through the big speakers and playing off of each other,” Sabo says. “And we never worked like that before. There was a palpable energy and excitement going on in that room.”

Sabo says without Raskulinecz, “this record isn’t this record.” A lifelong fan, making a new Skid Row album together had been his idea. “He was like, I want to make the quintessential Skid Row record.’ And we were like, “Great, so do we!’ And he laid it out. He’s like, ‘You guys got to find or remind yourself why you started this band in the first place. Why you started writing songs in the first place. Get back to the essence of who you are as individuals, as band members.” And damn it, they got there.

Many a famous rocker has bragged in the press something to the effect of, “Our next album is going to be much heavier, dude.” In 1991, Skid Row became one of few to back it up. And then also turn that newfound heaviness into a number-one album, which Skid Row did with “Slave to the Grind.”

Lead single “Monkey Business” was the perfect onramp for that molar-loosening sophomore LP. The song’s seeds were planted during Skid Row’s 1990 tour opening for Aerosmith. Sabo recalls, “Rachel and I were rooming together, and I had the first line written: ‘Outside my window there’s …’ I think I had ‘a whole lotta nothing coming’ and Rachel changed it to ‘a whole lotta trouble.’ It just kind of snowballed from there.”

Sabo continues, “The main riff and verse riff really started coming together. When we were done touring with Aerosmith, and really had our minds focused on writing, [the song ‘Monkey Business’] was very much influenced by spending a lot of time in downtown New York City and seeing the way that a lot of life was lived on the street, and partaking in it to a certain degree. It left an indelible imprint on us.”

When it was time to cut their second album, Skid Row reunited with German studio wizard Michael Wagner, who’d worked on their debut as well as Metallica and Mötley Crüe classics. At first, they were only doing what became the powder-keg chorus to “Monkey Business” once in the song, at the end like an outro. Sabo says Wagener convinced the band to rearrange the song. To get to that hook quicker and more often.

“So all credit to Michael Wagener,” Sabo says. “And I think that song kind of set the tone for the record, of what the record will become. We had that and we played it in the rehearsals and we’re working it out with the band. We just kind of knew where this record was going to go from aggression standpoint from how hard and heavy the record would be.”

Judging by online video clips and social media reaction, the Grönwall-fronted Skid Row is crushing it live, hits and peppered-in new songs alike. Which should come as no surprise to anyone who saw classic era Skid Row onstage, including their 1989 Soviet Union stadium shaking set at the Moscow Music Peace Festival, which was broadcast on MTV in the U.S. That performance remains essential viewing for headbangers.

In 1991, the band was supporting Guns N’ Roses on GN’R’s legendary “Use Your Illusion Tour.” For rock fans, the combo of blazing Guns N’ Roses hits like “Welcome to the Jungle” and Skid Row ragers achieved battle-vest bliss.

That GN’R/Skids trek included an infamous June 30, 1991 show at the Birmingham Race Course. The headliner’s set was, depending on who you ask, either a thrilling dangerous rock show or total dumpster fire. Either way, GN’R’s set, beset by a delay, mud thrown onstage and singer Axl Rose at one point walking offstage, teetered on mayhem. After Guns N’ Roses’ next concert, three days later at a St. Louis-area amphitheater, ended with a riot, it didn’t surprise anyone who’d been at the Birmingham Race Course.

However, Skid Row’s performance earlier that day in Birmingham was undeniably molten. The tens of thousands in attendance, including this writer, sucked down the Skids’ set like free booze.

Decades and countless tours and shows later, Sabo still recalls details of that wild day in Alabama. “Backstage it was really, really muddy,” Sabo says, a description that also accurately describes conditions in the audience. “And we were riding four wheelers, quads. I guess the Guns N’ Roses guys had quads out on the road with them. But we ended up getting all muddy and getting into it even before we went onstage. It was like watching something on ESPN, with all the mud flying everywhere and people racing around and getting stuck. Looking back, it’s amazing that no one got hurt.”

Back in 2023, with a hit new album to support, Skid Row have launched a world tour, which will see the band hitting a slew of U.S. cities including Atlanta, Detroit and Houston, as well as shows in Japan, Chile, Brazil, Australia and Europe. Many dates feature support from Buckcherry, the Los Angeles hard-rockers known for hits like “Lit Up” and “Crazy Bitch.”

Twenty-minutes into our phoner, it’s time to wrap things. Sabo and I exchange goodbye pleasantries. Before we hang up, he says something that from some rockers would sound clichéd but in this case scans genuine. “To all the fans that have supported us, we can’t thank you all enough. Without them there is no Skid Row.”

On March 19, Skid Row’s tour comes to Mars Music Hall, located at the Von Braun Center, 700 Monroe St. in Huntsville. Showtime is 7 p.m. Buckcherry and Detroit modern rockers No Resolve are the opening acts. General admission tickets are $28 plus fees via ticketmaster.com or the VBC Box Office. Complete list of tour dates at skidrow.com.

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