Reconstituted Toad the Wet Sprocket hits concert circuit (with podcast)

Dinning’s uncle, Mark Dinning, scored a No. 1 hit in 1960 with the song “Teen Angel.” That tune got new life in the 1970s as part of the “American Graffiti” movie sound track.

“Until Toad came along, that was my family’s biggest foray into the music business,” Dinning said.

Dean Dinning’s aunt, Jean (Mark’s sister), co-wrote the song.

“It’s been a big part of our family for a long time,” said Dinning, who along with the rest of Toad the Wet Sprocket comes to Harvester Performance Center in Rocky Mount on May 30.

But the family has had plenty more musical success, including The Dinning Sisters, Jean Dinning’s trio with her siblings, Lucille and Ginger. That Andrews Sisters-type act recorded and performed from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s, a span that found them in movies, working with the likes of Bing Crosby and singing on NBC Radio. Yet another Dinning sister, Delores, later sang on TV’s “Hee Haw” during its entire run and sang harmony on Charlie Rich’s hit single “Behind Closed Doors.”

Dean Dinning’s father, an upright bassist, managed The Dinning Sisters, and later gave his son some great advice on what instrument to choose.

“I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and he said, ‘Son, if you can play the bass and sing, you can always be in a band, because there’s 10 guitar players for every good bass player who can sing,’ ” Dean Dinning remembered. “And I guess he was right.”

Playing bass and singing harmonies with Toad the Wet Sprocket, the younger Dinning wrote a new chapter of family musical success with such hits as “All I Want,” “Come Down,” “Walk on the Ocean” and “Something’s Always Wrong.” Dinning got many co-writing credits as the band sailed through much of the 1990s before splitting up in 1998.

When the band reunited in 2010, all the members had learned lessons from the first go-round and have applied them to getting along better these days, he said.

“I think that we were tired of the grind, and I think we had spent so much time working on getting along and making it happen, we stopped being polite enough,” Dinning said. “Any time you’re in a group situation and you’re working on a shared project, you gotta put aside your needs for the needs of the project. I learned that for any project that I work on, there are things that you do, actively, and there are things that you let happen. Let other people get their way once in a while.

“There’s a give and take and a flow happening, and you’re still getting something great at the end of the day, even if it’s not your idea.

“I think we all needed to get out of it and express ourselves outside of the band and then understand what it was that we brought to the table, so that when we came back we could be more confident and stand up for the opinions we really believed in, the things that we really wanted to fight for — pick our battles more is probably the main thing.”

The latest step in the reconstituted Toad is the 2013 album “New Constellation.” Dinning said the band will play about five songs from the recent disc, along with plenty of fan favorites from the past.

“Having new music is so great, and the fans have really responded to it,” he said. “We haven’t taken out any of the hits [from the set list]. You’re still going to hear seven songs you’ve heard on the radio when you come to see us.”

He said the new material has reinvigorated both the band and its fan base, and that might be the most important aspect of the record. The band enjoys seeing fan responses to such new songs as “California Wasted,” which he co-wrote with lead singer/guitarist Glen Phillips and guitarist Todd Nichols.

“You kind of look at each other and go, ‘Yeah, we’ve still got it.’”