Pete Droge returns with first new music in 19 years after ‘heartbreaking’ discovery

A rock singer is making a comeback nearly two decades after his last solo album.

Pete Droge, best known for the song “If You Don’t Love Me (I’ll Kill Myself”) featured in the 1994 movie “Dumb and Dumber,” told Spin magazine that he partly took time off from music to focus on finding his birth mother. He had an “incredible epiphany” in 2009 when he was working on a song and his computer glitched with a timestamp error showing “1969,” the year he was born.

“I can’t really say it was a memory, but it was sort of like an imagined flashback or something,” he said. “A lightbulb went off, and I was like, ‘My adoption… I should look into that.’”

Droge told the publication he had “been doing that middle-aged thing” and “taking stock of my life.” He had been in therapy, dealing with anxiety, depression and past issues with alcohol and substance abuse.

Droge, encouraged by his adoptive parents Arnie and Jan Droge, got his adoption records and learned his birth mother’s name. He quickly discovered her obituary, which was “heartbreaking.”

But the obit helped him connect with some of his birth mother’s family, including his grandmother who’s now 98. According to Spin, he met family members in Ohio and bonded with his uncle, a fellow musician; he also talks with his grandmother every Sunday.

“I remember having this really intense feeling of connecting with a sense of place that I’d never really felt before,” Pete Droge told the magazine. “This kind of, in a strange way, felt like home.”

Droge’s adoptive father died in 2015 and then his adoptive mother’s health began to decline. He struggled to work and had his own health issues, eventually getting treated for intense chronic fatigue.

Some of that journey inspired Droge’s new album, “Fade Away Blue,” on Aug. 22. It’s his first solo release since 2006’s “Under the Waves.”

Droge told Americana UK that two songs, “Song For Barbara Ann” (his birth mother’s name) and “Lonely Mama” were about missing the chance to meet her. He also wrote a biographical song about his birth mother, “Gypsy Rose,” based on stories he gathered from friends and family. It nearly turned into a concept album about adoption — lead single “You Called Me Kid” is about his adoptive father — but he instead chose to include other autobiographical songs about different periods of his life including his grueling touring schedule in the ‘90s.

Droge was a fast-rising star after releasing his debut album in 1994, opening for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1995. He also released “Beautiful Girl,” the title song from the 1996 film “Beautiful Girls,” and briefly formed a supergroup called The Thorns with fellow singer-songwriters Matthew Sweet and Shawn Mullins.

Droge also released three albums with his wife, Elaine Summers, and worked as a music producer and composer for film and television. In June, he began his first tour since performing with The Thorns in 2003.

Droge, whose adoptive mother died in June, told Spin he hopes the music helps others with similar experiences. But he also hopes it helps him find his own birth father, whose name was not on his birth records and hasn’t been found through DNA testing platforms like Ancestry.com and 23andMe.

“Part of my hope with putting this record out and telling the story is that maybe someone will be like, ‘Hey, I went to the University of Oregon in the late ’60s, I remember Barbara Ann Thomas and the guy she was dating at the time,’” he told Spin. “Maybe there’s a kid out there who hears the record and is inspired to do some soul searching of their own.”