As fall is ushered in with a cool breeze (yea, yea, we know it’s going to hit 93 today), it’s time for the annual food and music fest Las Vegans have come to expect each October. Local radio station Mix 94.1 presents the 13th Annual Bite of Las Vegas at Desert Breeze Skate Park featuring a full lineup of local bands and national headliners, plus food from 45 of the top restaurants in town. Patrons can purchase $1-5 portions of food from elaborately decorated booths (there’s a contest!) while enjoying the beautiful weather and listening to music. In other words, the day goes pretty much like this: Stuff your face. Rock out.

On the local stage, check out Bri, Theory of Flight, Imagine Dragons and Red Wine Rewind. On the House of Blues main stage, Katharine McPhee of American Idol, Parachute, Uncle Kracker, the cast of Le Reve, Blue October and Train will all perform.

Las Vegas Weekly recently caught up with Train lead singer Pat Monahan, who will be headlining the festival as the band kicks off a tour in support of its newest album, Save Me San Francisco.

What can you tell me about your new album and how it differs from your past material?

This record is more like we were in the beginning than our last few records. We’ve really simplified some things. We wanted to kind of go for a more organic kind of feel on this album.

Having been together for 15 years, what is Train’s current songwriting process like?

I have written maybe 60 to 80 songs in the past few years to try to build a Train record. It’s impossible to know where a great song will come from. “Hey Soul Sister,” for example, I wrote with a couple of dudes in New York. Scott [Underwood] and I have a song on the album called “Breakfast in Bed.” We wrote that song five or six years ago, and now it’s getting a shot on a record. You never know, when you’re making a record, what things fit.

How did you come up with the band name Train?

One of the guys who’s not in the band anymore, Rob Hotchkiss, was listening to an interview with Echo & the Bunnymen and the lead singer was saying there was nothing romantic about America. Rob said he thought that wasn’t true and that the locomotive was an American image that is incredibly romantic, so he asked what we thought about calling the band Train. I said that would be fine for now, but let’s change it later. Calling your band something, who knows if that’s cool or not until years later and you go, “Yeah man, my band is called U2. “ If you make great music and you last fifteen years then it’s a great name and if you last fifteen weeks in the basement of your mom’s house, then the name sucks. You never know.

I imagine the Virginia character in “Meet Virginia” was pieced together from people you all knew, is that true?

When I wrote the lyrics to “Meet Virginia” years ago with Jimmy [Stafford] and Rob [Hotchkiss], there were some things that were happening in our lives that we thought really needed to be written about. You know, exercising in high heels. We used to play softball with a girl who would show up in an evening gown and high heels and she was a badass shortstop. So we just had to make a song. “Hey Soul Sister” is similar. We just collect these great memories from San Francisco and beyond and you write your experiences down with melody.

What was it like recording your solo album Last of Seven during Train’s hiatus in 2007?

I started writing a record that was obviously not a Train record. I wanted the opportunity to record a record that was different. So that’s what I did. I think that it’s going to be a musical in the next few years, after I get off the road with Train. A friend of mine wrote a book to it and we’re going to turn it into a Broadway musical.

What was it like winning a Grammy for “Drops of Jupiter,” which spent over a year on the Billboard charts?

The most exciting part for us – I say that having won a Grammy, it might have been different had we not won a Grammy – was performing at the Grammys. It was pretty great looking out at great bands that we admire from the past and performing for them and having them rock out with us. I wouldn’t mind visiting the Grammys again.