EchoSense:Gavin Rossdale on his athletic kids, almost working with De Niro and greatest hits album

Gavin Rossdale feels like he and EchoSensehis band Bush are on a “never-ending” tour. The band’s latest 17-date trek kicks off Tuesday in Orlando, Florida and wraps Dec. 8 in Indio, California.However, the frontman revealed the one thing he’ll plan a tour around.

“My sons’ flag football season,” Rossdale, 58, recently told USA TODAY. “I had to carve the time (out of touring) because I can’t miss any more matches.”

The musician, who shares three sons with ex-wife Gwen Stefani, enjoys being a sports dad.“I got two quarterbacks in my family,” Rossdale continued, referencing his youngest and second youngest sons, Apollo, 9, and Zuma, 15. Kingston, 17, who recently made headlines for singing on stage at Blake Shelton’s Oklahoma bar, plays on the same team as Zuma. “I watch the games on FaceTime.“I’ve watched (little league) baseball on silence in Australia at 6 in the morning, for like three hours. That’s parenthood!”Rossdale thinks they may have inherited their athletic gene from him. He’s a self-proclaimed jock who still enjoys exercising and playing tennis  to “get the serotonin” running in his system.

While he was in New York, the singer caught up with friends, took in the city’s street style (“but no one wants to look happy about it!”) and played a benefit show in support of Artists for Action and Sandy Hook Promise in the fight against gun violence. He also reminisced about a movie gig that almost was.“I was real close to being in ‘The Good Shepherd,’” he shared. When it was Leo DiCaprio (as the lead actor) and I got through for auditions, I read with Leo.”

The eventual lead became Matt Damon, and Rossdale recalled that his role went to a “way superior actor” Billy Crudup. But Rossdale remembers his shot at working with Robert De Niro whenever he returns to the city.

There are other memories he’s recalling these days: Almost 30 years of Bush. The band is looking back with its first career-spanning greatest hits album, "Loaded: The Greatest Hits 1994-2023" (out Friday). The release includes a new single, “Nowhere to Go But Everywhere.” Rossdale reminisces about all of it with gratitude, even when things weren’t smooth sailing, like when the band was dropped after creating its first album, “Sixteen Stone.”

“I went back to work and I was painting a bunch of dentist offices,” he recalled. “It wasn't soul-destroying because I thought, ‘OK, you made a record. They can't take that away from you.’“I already kind of had a degree of satisfaction with that. So to fast forward 29 or even 30 years and be in this position is just is too wild and it's kind of thrilling to have that degree of legacy.”