Pat Monahan left his heart in San Francisco.

The Train frontman said he is returning to the spirit he once felt with his young, hungry bandmates as they began their career in San Francisco back in 1994.

Train's new album, "Save Me, San Francisco," its fifth, will be released Oct. 27, and in an interview Monahan said the rootsy rock band wanted to recapture the vitality it seemed to have left behind.

"These songs are stories about us starting out in San Francisco," said Monahan, who now lives in Seattle with his wife. "[The city] is the one thing that's missing in our lives."

Train has never lacked popularity until recently. Although the band's fourth album, "For Me, It's You," was its first to not become a gold-seller, the previous three albums released popular singles that attracted rock fans and radio-listening tweens alike: 1999's "Meet Virginia," 2001's "Drops of Jupiter" and 2003's "Calling All Angels."

After "For Me, It's You" failed to reach listeners, the band went on hiatus for nearly three years. "Having that time off gave us time to reflect," Monahan said.

He came to an epiphany one day. "We [had been writing] music not to fail, instead of writing to win, without ever realizing it," he said.

So Train regrouped as a trio, with three original members: Monahan, drummer Scott Underwood and guitarist Jimmy Stafford. They approached the new album just as they approached their smash debut: as if their lives depended on it. "This is our opportunity to live again," Monahan said.

So far, the results are positive. The first single from the album, "Hey Soul Sister," is the first song of Train's to chart in five years. And the song's loose, acoustic-guitar shuffle reminds us of the stripped-down Americana rock of the band's first album, rather than the too-slick gloss of "Calling All Angels" and the fourth album.

Uncle Kracker » He answers to the name Matt, but no one knows him as Matthew Shafter. He is known, for better or for worse, as Uncle Kracker, Kid Rock's best friend and former DJ.

Kracker started out as a rapper, but the success of 2001's "Follow Me," a soft-rock ballad he recorded as an afterthought, caught him by surprise. " 'Follow Me' definitely changed my life drastically," Kracker said. " 'Follow Me' was the only song like that on the album. It changes your way of thinking."

Like Kid Rock, Kracker decided to focus more on writing and singing than rapping, and like Rock, Kracker has found success. A cover of Dobie Gray's 1973 song "Drift Away" set a record for the most weeks at No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, remaining atop the chart for 22 weeks in 2002. And Kracker's collaboration with country star Kenny Chesney, "When the Sun Goes Down," was a No. 1 country hit in 2004.

Kracker had nearly finished recording a new album in 2007 when his daughter and mother persuaded him to scrap it and start anew. "[My daughter] was about 8 and she said she didn't listen to it because she couldn't dance to it. My mom said the same thing a few days later. I don't think they wanted me to make a Madonna album."

So instead of the darker material that he had been pursuing, he went back to the drawing board and recorded an entire new album, "Happy Hour," released last month. "I'm a much happier person with a much happier album," Kracker said.

The album is in the soft country-rock vein, much like a song he co-wrote with Kid Rock, "All Summer Long," that was a smash hit in the summer of 2008 (due largely to the heavy sampling of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama"). "I'm a pretty laid-back cat," Kracker said.

But he isn't laid-back in his opinion about a former love. "I don't like a lot of new rap," Kracker admitted.