Sting sits in a trailer at September’s Ohana Festival in Dana Point with two important questions before him: which songs to perform during that night’s headlining set and which pair of underwear to do it in. “I’m not sure what color to wear,” he says, nodding toward a rainbow of Calvin Klein boxer-briefs arrayed on a countertop. Dressed in tight black jeans and a form-fitting white T-shirt, the 73-year-old musician holds a set list he figures he’ll keep fiddling with until right before he goes on.
“We always front-load it with hits and end with hits,” he says. “But the middle is kind of fluid. Keeps it fresh.
” One reason that’s easy to do is because, after years in which Sting busied himself with orchestral concerts and a Broadway musical and a residency in Las Vegas, the singer and bassist is on the road with just two other musicians — guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas. Called Sting 3.0, the trio’s tour draws on Sting’s decades of songs as a solo artist and as the frontman of the Police, the wildly popular three-piece he formed in London in 1977 after a stint teaching English.
This week the tour will circle back to Southern California for five shows at the Wiltern starting Tuesday night. Sting — who with his wife, Trudie Styler, lives among homes in Europe, New York and Malibu — spoke before his Ohana performance about the new combo, his first trip to L.A.
and whether he’d ever consider cosmetic surgery. These are excerpts from.