Fresh over the pond on their Drive Thru Europe tour, Punktastic’s Dan caught up with office faves New Found Glory before their gig in Manchester to chat about the tour, recording plans and girls…
DAN: Ok, here goes nothing. Do you want to introduce yourselves
CHAD: I’m Chad, I play guitar
JORDAN: Jordan and I sing
DAN: You’ve been classed as many different genres. How would you define your sound?
CHAD: Umm, I think our sound is a cross between punk rock, indie rock and hardcore. That’s how i see it because i think our band live, for those who’ve never seen us before they might not really catch it, but if you see us live we have like an energy, like a hardcore band, we have a lot of energy, we go crazy, we go nuts, and our music is poppy, you know what i mean like pop style, the vocals are really melodic, and have got like a pop-punk feel to it and then the lyrics are really emotional. I think the lyrics are as of what an indie-rock band would write, you know what i mean? So I think basically we all grew up listening to all kinds of different music and i kinda think we just combined all our favourite styles of music into one. We are a pop-bunk band but there’s so many other aspects to our band than just that.
DAN: So what sort of stuff did you grow up to? What would you say your influences are?
CHAD: Mine were like Green Day, I listened to a lot of Green Day, but then I also like a lot of hardcore bands, like Sick of It All, stuff like that.
JORDAN: I dunno, stuff like Green Day, indie rock stuff like, i dunno, dischord stuff
DAN: You’ve just come over on your latest tour, what do you think of England so far?
CHAD: I think it’s awesome, it’s our second time here, and it’s so much fun, like, i know it’s like a couple bands from the states are like “I don’t think you’ll like it”, but i love it. We’re coming back in January with Blink, and I’m already excited to be coming back.
JORDAN: It’s cold.
CHAD: Yeah.. it’s cold. We’re from Florida, so i’m sick of the heat, you know? I like feeling the cold weather. It’s just fun, like you can go after the shows and there’s always clubs open, there’s kids there, you can go the clubs and have fun and hang out. There’s like rock clubs – in the States there’s rock clubs where the shows are at, but there’s no dance clubs that play like punk rock music – in every city [here] there’s clubs with kids dancing to punk rock music and there’s none of that in the States, and I think it’s so rad.
DAN: You’ve got things like Rock radio stations that we don’t over here though.
CHAD: Yeah, true, but it ain’t quite as good, you know?
DAN: Have you got any songs down for the next CD yet?
CHAD: Yeah, we got a bunch – about 18-20 songs musically done, probably 5 of ’em have vocals. The day after we get back from here [the tour] we got into pre-production, which is where we’re gonna go into a practice studio with a producer, play him all our songs, and just work on 16 – 18 songs that we really wanna record. They won’t all be on the album, but we’ll have a couple of exclusive songs for the UK, stuff like that.
DAN: Are you guys surprised at the success you’ve had? Is it strange to be one day watching the Warped Tour, the next you’re on it?
CHAD: Yeah it’s really crazy. I’m happy to know that it came out of nowhere, but it didn’t come out of nowhere, you know? It’s like there’s new punk rock bands, not to mention any names, that have major labels put them together and write songs for them, their first tour is a big tour, like the Warped Tour or something, and I think that’s lame. Our band and a lot of other bands in the States, have been together for 4 years, but it [our success] wasn’t just all of a sudden. We’ve been touring non-stop for the past 4 years…
JORDAN: 5 years…
CHAD: Yeah 5 years now… I think it’s amazing, I never thought that we’d be actually get there, it’s crazy to think we’re on the Warped Tour, but we did work really hard for it, so I think we deserve it.
DAN: When you say about the major label bands, what are your thoughts on the constant “selling out” arguments you hear every day? Bands like The Ataris and AFI have now signed to major labels, is it a good or a bad thing?
CHAD: I think that the whole major label thing, I dunno what those bands opinions were about it, like the Ataris used to say “The Radio Still Sucks”, but when we started we were never, ever against a major label. I always heard things about them like, “major labels are all about money”, which, i suppose, the majority of them are, you know, but when we first started we wanted to be a band that got somewhere, and really sold a lot of records, we wanted a lot of people to see our band and hear our music. To me, it’s like anything – if someone’s a baseball player, they practice for years when they’re in the minor leagues, so that one day they can play baseball in front of thousands and thousands of people, and be admired for their talent. The same goes for us, we just want people to hear our music…
JORDAN: We’re still doing the same thing though…
CHAD: Yeah, the thing is with major labels, where the line should be drawn between sell-outs and not selling out is that major labels take your records and put them everywhere and promote it, but if sign to a major label and change everything about you, that’s fucked up. There’s bands that worry about radio singles and this and that, and that’s not what you should be worried about. You should worry about playing music, have fun, worry about your fans and if you get huge, you get huge, that’s cool. There’s some major labels that are like, “ooh, the punk thing’s big, let’s put together a punk band”, that’s fake bullshit, that’s not what it’s all about. It’s all about starting from scratch and working really hard, and to have real fans, you know fans that really care about you and your music, ‘cos they don’t just listen to one song, they listen to your whole CD. They feel more like a part of the band, as opposed to just some kid buying a song to listen to. Major labels aren’t always bad, I’m totally happy with where we are – we’re never gonna change anything about our band. If we do change anything about our band just to sell records, then people can call us sell-outs, but untill that day, we’ll never do that, ever.
DAN: As you said, you’ve been touring for a while now. Are you sick of it, do you want to be home sometimes?
JORDAN: No, because I wouldn’t want to be going to school and working at Wallgreen! You miss home because you’re away from it for a long time, but then you go home and you wanna go out [on tour] again.
DAN: Which do you prefer, touring or recording?
JORDAN: I like recording. I like recording a lot. I dunno, either.
CHAD: I like touring the most. When I’m home from tour, I don’t feel alive. Like I’ve been touring so much I feel like.. I dunno. I see my family and it’s awesome, but i’m in the same place for two weeks straight and I’m like “Oh my God, i’m goin crazy, I need to get somewhere”. With touring you’re in a different place every night. When you’re home you’re kinda just waiting for your next tour, basically.
JORDAN: Sometimes it’s nice though, when you’re on tour for like five months straight just to go home.
CHAD: Yeah it’s good for like, three days, then you’re like “When’s the next tour?!?”
DAN: You guys write a lot of songs about being unlucky in love and having broken hearts. Are you actually that unlucky in love?
CHAD: Err.. we don’t write about exact circumstances and things that have happened. Basically the reason we write about girls is that what went on when we were younger. I’ve had my heart broken, and I think all of us have had our hearts broken at one time or another, but we write those songs because that’s what’s easiest for our fans to relate to. It’s basically about the traumas of our earlier life, you know? Like we grew up in the suburbs, with the movie theatre, the malls and the high schools, that’s all it was. It’s sad to say that those were the traumas of our lives. Going to shows, and girls, who’s going out with this girl, and my friend’s just stabbed me in the back and started going out with my ex-girlfriend, those are like the traumas of our lives. That’s what we’re gonna write about, we’re not gonna put on some front and be some political punk rock band because that’d be fake. Steve, our guitar player, writes a lot of the lyrics, so there’ll be some situation going on with some girl, and like a month later we’ll have a song about it, which is kinda cool.
DAN: How’s tour going so far? What’s is like playing with Fenix and RX?
CHAD: It’s fun.
JORDAN: We were friends before, so everyone hangs out with each other after the shows.
CHAD: Yeah, in the States sometimes when you’re doing tours, you’ll tour with some band you’ve never met before, so it’s like the first half of the tour you’re kinda uncomfortable but by the second half you’re all friends. Here it was like “wow we’re going to Europe, why not make it fun?” so we just invited RX Bandits and Fenix to come with us. We’ve toured with both bands before, so it’s like non-stop fun.
JORDAN: We’ve got the drummer from RX at the moment playing for us, too
CHAD: Our drummer Cyrus broke his arm, so…
DAN: Didn’t he fall off his stool? How did he manage to break his arm from that?
CHAD: well, it was in this club called the Roseland Ballroom in New York City, and the stage is like nine feet high, towards the back of the building, and there’s no railing around it. You got this huge big square thing and there’s no railing at all, so all day we were like, “man, we gotta be careful, we could fall off this thing and get hurt”. Towards the back of the stage it’s like really dark, we’ve got our big banner covering the back of the stage. We were getting of for our encore, and he [Cyrus] was walking next to the banner, which was right on the edge of the stage, and he stepped into like, nothing, ‘cos it was so dark, and fell off the side and broke his arm, his back and a rib.
DAN: So when are you expecting him back?
JORDAN: For recording.
CHAD: Yeah, he’s gonna be back for January.
JORDAN: Hopefully for the Blink shows.
CHAD: Yeah, he’ll be back for Blink.
DAN: Are you looking forward to supporting Blink this January?
CHAD: Yeah, we did the whole summer tour in the States, so it’s gonna be like a re-union tour, it should be cool.
DAN: Ok, I guess you’ll be wanting to get ready for the show then.
CHAD: Yeah, thanks man.
JORDAN: Thanks guys.
And with that we left them to prepare for what turned about to be an excellent gig – read the review of the 5 star Nottingham one here. We were looking forward to seeing them back with Blink this January, but sadly, we’re gonna have to wait. Boo.