Blues Traveler frontman says he met his wife at a nudist “colony.” Let’s unpack that.

A Rolling Stone interview sends People Magazine down a nudist rabbit hole, and gives us all the Run-Around

John Popper performing at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, 2010 | Photo by Rafael Rezende, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Celebrity nudism stories don’t cross my desk all that often, and rarer still are ones that feel legitimately rooted in real naturist spaces rather than tabloid hyperbole. So when People Magazine reported this week that Blues Traveler’s John Popper met his now-wife Sherri more than twenty years ago at a nudist “colony,” it was hard not to lean in. The detail reportedly comes from the renowned harmonicist’s appearance on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, where he casually dropped the story while announcing their recent-ish marriage—apparently a revelation even his own Wikipedia page hasn’t kept up with, despite their more than twenty-year relationship.

Popper described their first meeting in 2003 at what he repeatedly calls a “nudist colony” in Hammond, Indiana. The invite, he says, came from now-disgraced porn actor Ron Jeremy, which already places the anecdote in a certain early-2000s cultural time capsule that’s absurd enough to make you smirk. Popper remembers noticing Sherri because, among all the nude attendees, she was the only one clothed. “The eye wants what it can’t see,” he joked, adding that he ended up “stealing her from Ron Jeremy.” However, based on the dozens of assault accusations that have since surfaced against Jeremy, Popper probably saved her more than he stole her.

For me, the geography of this story raised an eyebrow or two. There’s no nudist venue in Hammond to my knowledge (though one may have existed in 2003, but there isn’t much evidence online to support the notion). The 92-year-old Lake O’ The Woods Club in Valparaiso is only about twenty-five minutes away by car, and seems like the most plausible match. The language here is also worth pausing on. “Colony” is a tabloid staple—an old-fashioned framing that lingers mostly in headlines written by people who have never actually visited or even really imagined a real nudist space. Of course, lepers and ants live in colonies; nudists tend to cavort in “resorts” or “parks,” and if it is the Lake O’ The Woods Club Popper recalls, then a better description would be to say they met in a beautiful, verdant strip of natural, nude-friendly land with a gorgeous reservoir (I’ve spend a lovely afternoon there myself, and it’s one of my favorite clubs in the country). Alas, I’ll allow Mr. Popper the misnomer in this case, as one imagines the memory has picked up a bit of mythic polish after two decades.

Update: Several readers have politely noted in the comments that the nudist venue Popper referenced was almost certainly not Lake O’ The Woods. Instead, they point to the neighboring Roselawn institutions Ponderosa Sun Club and Sun Aura—two non-AANR clubs known for adult-oriented events such as the long-running Nudes-A-Poppin’ pageant. Both venues sit just south of Hammond and have well-documented histories involving adult-industry figures, including Ron Jeremy. Given that context, and given Popper’s own account, these readers make a compelling case that his 2003 encounter likely occurred at one of those clubs rather than at Lake O’ The Woods.

Look, I’m not a huge Blues Traveler fan (although their song Hook is a legitimate banger, IMO), but as a geriatric millennial, their influence on popular music when I was growing up was undeniable, and I still get goosebumps sometimes when I hear that dude wail on the harmonica. (I’ve never been able to play one without making most people around me start violently slapping their ears). I was sad to learn that Popper has suffered significant health setbacks in the last year, and I hope that he has a better 2026 and perhaps rediscovers the joy and relaxation that nudism can bring to healing. Stress kills.

For Planet Nude, this story marked a rare two-for-two week in celebrity nudism reporting, after we shared a couple days ago that Charlie Sheen’s new Netflix documentary revealed that he spent part of his childhood in a nudist household. But I won’t complain, it sure beats another story of a beach or club closure. 🪐