Tesla bassist Brian Wheat says the band still makes its living onstage, not in the streaming era. In a new interview with Charlie Kendall's Metalshop, the founding member said the group is “not wealthy guys” and that when Tesla plays live, “that’s how we earn our living.”

Wheat said the band has kept its shows leaner than they once were, trimming sets from the two-and-a-half-hour performances Tesla played at the height of its career around 1991 and 1992 to about 100 minutes now. He said cutting the length of the set and avoiding five-night stretches has helped keep singer Jeff Keith’s voice in good shape. “We have to go to work,” Wheat said, adding that Tesla has lost “a lot of great singers” over the years and that the voice is a muscle.

The comments land as Tesla continues to operate like a working band rather than a catalog act. Wheat said the group was never on the same commercial level as Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Metallica or Guns N' Roses, calling Tesla “the next level down.” He said he has managed the band for the last 20 years or so, during which time Tesla has focused on touring, releasing a couple of new songs every year and preparing new projects rather than chasing the kind of blockbuster album cycle that once defined hard rock.

That shift is shaped by the economics of modern music, Wheat said. People do not buy records the way they used to, he said, and streaming pays poorly. “You get paid a really shitty rates by this thing Spotify,” Wheat said, while terrestrial radio, he said, pays “four cents a play.”

The business realities also frame Tesla’s next release. The band’s upcoming Homage project was originally planned as an EP before growing into a full-length album, and Frontiers Music Srl is due to release it on July 17, 2026, more than 20 years after the Real To Reel series. The selected songs were chosen to honor some of the greatest vocalists of all time, including Elvis Presley, Freddie Mercury, Sam Cooke, David Ruffin, Etta James and James Bro.

For Tesla, the message from Wheat is plain: the road is the revenue, and the stage remains the place where the band still works like a band that has to clock in.