Push to Fire: Bowling For Soup Interview

Push to Fire Interview: Bowling For Soup
by Steve O'Gallagher

Bowling For Soup have been bringing the world their flavour of pop-punk happiness for nearly 16 years now and sell out shows every time they come to the UK. Singer Jaret Reddick and guitarist Erik Chandler have been touring the UK this April doing intimate acoustic shows featuring new and old favourites from the Bowling For Soup archive. Push To Fire had a quick chat with Jaret before their London gig at the 02 Islington Academy.
Jaret and Erik are no stranger to these acoustic live shows on the behalf of their band as they have been known to do the odd acoustic set in Texas and for radio stations, but this is their first time doing it as a tour outside of the US. “We were here last October for a headline tour and we’ll be back again this October so it made sense to just give it a try like this. Basically, we just wanted to come over and do something a bit intimate for, like, hardcore fans. We had done acoustic things during the VIP shows last year on the tour in October where you got to come in like an hour early and we’d do a 30 minute acoustic set for you. It was very well received and again we do these shows all the time in the US and sometimes people would even fly over from the UK to see them so it was definitely sort of for the hardcore fans in small places. Every show sold out except for two which we moved into bigger spaces because of the demand. It’s been great.”
The acoustic lineup certainly does provide a different live show to the usual punching rock show put on by the full band; later that night on stage Jaret and Erik would crack jokes and banter with the crowd for 10 minutes at a time sometimes before playing the next song in the set. “I like the intensity of the full band gigs, but I like the intimacy of the small gigs. I like the interaction with the audience, just being able to single somebody out and actually hear what they’re saying. Like in Newcastle, we had a heckler and it was great 'cause we could address it. I mean, when you have a full band you can very rarely hear that sort of thing. But yeah, it’s really fun. I mean we do a lot where the audience will shout out a song and we’ll just play it. It’s really cool, but again there’s nothing quite like a huge rock show.”
Oddly enough it was actually the acoustic sets by Jaret and Erik that helped the rock band get off the ground in the first place. “We were doing Bowling For Soup pretty much just on weekends at the start and Eric and I set ourselves up in a pub every night playing music for tips and it was a huge success. I mean, just a few weeks into us doing that the place was packed all the time and we were pulling more than Bowling For Soup was at that time in our home town. It actually started to really work because then people started to come see the band. We then also set up in another pub in Denton where we re-located so we were then able to make a living from it and say ‘hey, let’s just quit our jobs for a while and give it a shot’ and we’ve never had to go back.”
Stressing that this acoustic tour is intended for the hardcore fans, Jaret discusses how they balance the set list between their older and their newer material. “We’re actually more focused on older stuff on this tour than we are newer stuff because we knew that it would be more hardcore fans. Most of the people who are here at these shows have been listening to us for say 5,6 or 10 years. We have people who have been to see us like 11 times already and tons of street teamers. You know, in a city where we’d normally play to 2500 people we only sold 500 tickets so you know it’s the hardcore fans. We do new stuff, old stuff, middle of the road stuff, most of the songs which were singles, and then we do a bunch of really super deep cuts as well that the street teamers ask for or songs that we just like.” Bowling For Soup are no strangers to busting out some live covers; something that was expected in the lead up to this tour. “Whenever we set out to do this tour we thought we’d be doing a lot of covers than we have been, but we’ve only been doing about one a night and that’s really because people just know the material as well as we could have ever anticipated. Every once in a while we’ll do a little Neil Diamond or Johnny Cash song or something on a whim, and we’ve been asked to do our Summer of ’69 cover sometimes. It depends what the crowd asks for and we also try to change it up a bit each night just for ourselves to try to keep a cool vibe.”
Bowling For Soup’s wealth of songs cover a lot of subject matter, but many of their songs speak of their time growing up in their hometown in Texas with the same friends. When asked how it feels now to be travelling the world with a completely different lifestyle Jaret explained, “I get slapped back into it a lot because my parents are still there, and obviously with things like Facebook people who were from back in your life and you never thought you’d hear from again pop up. It’s one of those things where, for me I write a lot about the time from when I was probably about 13 to 25-26 because that’s really when you sort of learn everything. So many things happen to you so fast in those years and then it all sort of slows down.”
Jaret is an avid Twitterer and has his own podcast where he talks through the meanings behind the Bowling For Soup songs and plays rare B4S demos. This is a world away from how the industry was when the band started almost 16 years ago. “For me personally, the biggest thing is just how quickly things change in the social networking stuff. I have fans emailing me asking “how do you have a wife and two kids, you write all these songs, you have a record label, you do this, this and this, and you still manage to be on Twitter and do all these fans related things? How do you keep up with it all?” I have no idea. It’s one of things where like, I think back to where I started when we just wrote songs, recorded them, and went on tour. There was no email even. Booking a hotel you had to find the phone number and call them, so it’s definitely a lot different. Technology is just such a blessing too when you have a family at home, to have a phone on you that rings any time pretty much anywhere you are in the world, to be able to email, and to see pictures of my kids every day is awesome.”
Of course with the development of technology came illegal downloading of music which has affect Bowling For Soup but Jaret keeps a level head about it. “Downloading really is a bummer, but at the same time it’s a reality so I try not to get too bogged down by it. The thing is that our album A Hangover You Don’t Deserve did so well but it was in the thick of all of that, so it’s sad for it to have been that year. I mean, if it had been like two years before we probably would have sold millions of copies instead of about 800,000 but it’s just a reality and you just keep plugged away.” Signed to Jive Records, Jaret hasn’t expressed any major label-band struggles over the years. “There are definitely ups and downs with labels, but I’m not a label hater. I’m one of those guys who sees labels for what they are; they are a business, they’re there to make money. Most artists do take a lot of things personally and I think very few things are personal in this industry. It’s all about survival and money and the labels are hurting just as bad as the bands are so nobody’s really sure what to do.”
For a band that’s been going for as many years as Bowling For Soup has, they can be forgiven for wanting to take some time to explore other things in life as well as the band, but Jaret assures that they’ll keep doing Bowling For Soup for as long as possible. “I think all of us definitely have a lot of other things that we want to do, but we’ll keep doing Bowling For Soup for as long as people are into it and as long as it’s still fun. I don’t know if doing it 12 months a year is something that we’ll keep wanting to do because there are other things we wanna do in life in music and outside of music. Gary just went and got his real estate license and he wants to stay home for a bit every once in while as do I. There are things I wanna do in music that require me to be home to do and so the main thing is figuring out the balance between Bowling For Soup and the rest of our lives. After the last tour we took two years off and it was great; we came back more motivated than ever.”
2010 is set to be a busy year for the band as they are due to record their next album in June which incredibly will be their 11th album to date. They’ll be back in the UK a few times during the year to promote the release. “We’ll be here in the summer for Wireless festival, and then a couple of other smaller festivals as well, hopefully Reading and Leeds in August but that’s unknown at the moment, and then a headlining tour in October so we’ll finish the year promoting that and then we’ll hit 2011 thinking about taking a little time off again.”

Thanks to Emma W for organising this for us and to Jaret from Bowling For Soup for speaking to Steve. Photo by Scott Cole. Find more info and music clips on their MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/bowlingforsoup.

Push to Fire Interview: Bowling For Soup by Steve O'Gallagher Bowling For Soup have been bringing the world their flavour of pop-punk happiness for nearly 16 years now and sell out shows every time they come to the UK. Singer Jaret Reddick and guitarist Erik Chandler have been touring the UK this April doing intimate acoustic shows featuring new and old favourites from the Bowling For Soup archive. Push To Fire had a quick chat with Jaret before their London gig at the 02 Islington Academy. Jaret and Erik are no stranger to these acoustic live shows on the behalf of their band as they have been known to do the odd acoustic set in Texas and for radio stations, but this is their first time doing it as a tour outside of the US. “We were here last October for a headline tour and we’ll be back again this October so it made sense to just give it a try like this. Basically, we just wanted to come over and do something a bit intimate for, like, hardcore fans. We had done acoustic things during the VIP shows last year on the tour in October where you got to come in like an hour early and we’d do a 30 minute acoustic set for you. It was very well received and again we do these shows all the time in the US and sometimes people would even fly over from the UK to see them so it was definitely sort of for the hardcore fans in small places. Every show sold out except for two which we moved into bigger spaces because of the demand. It’s been great.” The acoustic lineup certainly does provide a different live show to the usual punching rock show put on by the full band; later that night on stage Jaret and Erik would crack jokes and banter with the crowd for 10 minutes at a time sometimes before playing the next song in the set. “I like the intensity of the full band gigs, but I like the intimacy of the small gigs. I like the interaction with the audience, just being able to single somebody out and actually hear what they’re saying. Like in Newcastle, we had a heckler and it was great 'cause we could address it. I mean, when you have a full band you can very rarely hear that sort of thing. But yeah, it’s really fun. I mean we do a lot where the audience will shout out a song and we’ll just play it. It’s really cool, but again there’s nothing quite like a huge rock show.” Oddly enough it was actually the acoustic sets by Jaret and Erik that helped the rock band get off the ground in the first place. “We were doing Bowling For Soup pretty much just on weekends at the start and Eric and I set ourselves up in a pub every night playing music for tips and it was a huge success. I mean, just a few weeks into us doing that the place was packed all the time and we were pulling more than Bowling For Soup was at that time in our home town. It actually started to really work because then people started to come see the band. We then also set up in another pub in Denton where we re-located so we were then able to make a living from it and say ‘hey, let’s just quit our jobs for a while and give it a shot’ and we’ve never had to go back.” Stressing that this acoustic tour is intended for the hardcore fans, Jaret discusses how they balance the set list between their older and their newer material. “We’re actually more focused on older stuff on this tour than we are newer stuff because we knew that it would be more hardcore fans. Most of the people who are here at these shows have been listening to us for say 5,6 or 10 years. We have people who have been to see us like 11 times already and tons of street teamers. You know, in a city where we’d normally play to 2500 people we only sold 500 tickets so you know it’s the hardcore fans. We do new stuff, old stuff, middle of the road stuff, most of the songs which were singles, and then we do a bunch of really super deep cuts as well that the street teamers ask for or songs that we just like.” Bowling For Soup are no strangers to busting out some live covers; something that was expected in the lead up to this tour. “Whenever we set out to do this tour we thought we’d be doing a lot of covers than we have been, but we’ve only been doing about one a night and that’s really because people just know the material as well as we could have ever anticipated. Every once in a while we’ll do a little Neil Diamond or Johnny Cash song or something on a whim, and we’ve been asked to do our Summer of ’69 cover sometimes. It depends what the crowd asks for and we also try to change it up a bit each night just for ourselves to try to keep a cool vibe.” Bowling For Soup’s wealth of songs cover a lot of subject matter, but many of their songs speak of their time growing up in their hometown in Texas with the same friends. When asked how it feels now to be travelling the world with a completely different lifestyle Jaret explained, “I get slapped back into it a lot because my parents are still there, and obviously with things like Facebook people who were from back in your life and you never thought you’d hear from again pop up. It’s one of those things where, for me I write a lot about the time from when I was probably about 13 to 25-26 because that’s really when you sort of learn everything. So many things happen to you so fast in those years and then it all sort of slows down.” Jaret is an avid Twitterer and has his own podcast where he talks through the meanings behind the Bowling For Soup songs and plays rare B4S demos. This is a world away from how the industry was when the band started almost 16 years ago. “For me personally, the biggest thing is just how quickly things change in the social networking stuff. I have fans emailing me asking “how do you have a wife and two kids, you write all these songs, you have a record label, you do this, this and this, and you still manage to be on Twitter and do all these fans related things? How do you keep up with it all?” I have no idea. It’s one of things where like, I think back to where I started when we just wrote songs, recorded them, and went on tour. There was no email even. Booking a hotel you had to find the phone number and call them, so it’s definitely a lot different. Technology is just such a blessing too when you have a family at home, to have a phone on you that rings any time pretty much anywhere you are in the world, to be able to email, and to see pictures of my kids every day is awesome.” Of course with the development of technology came illegal downloading of music which has affect Bowling For Soup but Jaret keeps a level head about it. “Downloading really is a bummer, but at the same time it’s a reality so I try not to get too bogged down by it. The thing is that our album A Hangover You Don’t Deserve did so well but it was in the thick of all of that, so it’s sad for it to have been that year. I mean, if it had been like two years before we probably would have sold millions of copies instead of about 800,000 but it’s just a reality and you just keep plugged away.” Signed to Jive Records, Jaret hasn’t expressed any major label-band struggles over the years. “There are definitely ups and downs with labels, but I’m not a label hater. I’m one of those guys who sees labels for what they are; they are a business, they’re there to make money. Most artists do take a lot of things personally and I think very few things are personal in this industry. It’s all about survival and money and the labels are hurting just as bad as the bands are so nobody’s really sure what to do.” For a band that’s been going for as many years as Bowling For Soup has, they can be forgiven for wanting to take some time to explore other things in life as well as the band, but Jaret assures that they’ll keep doing Bowling For Soup for as long as possible. “I think all of us definitely have a lot of other things that we want to do, but we’ll keep doing Bowling For Soup for as long as people are into it and as long as it’s still fun. I don’t know if doing it 12 months a year is something that we’ll keep wanting to do because there are other things we wanna do in life in music and outside of music. Gary just went and got his real estate license and he wants to stay home for a bit every once in while as do I. There are things I wanna do in music that require me to be home to do and so the main thing is figuring out the balance between Bowling For Soup and the rest of our lives. After the last tour we took two years off and it was great; we came back more motivated than ever.” 2010 is set to be a busy year for the band as they are due to record their next album in June which incredibly will be their 11th album to date. They’ll be back in the UK a few times during the year to promote the release. “We’ll be here in the summer for Wireless festival, and then a couple of other smaller festivals as well, hopefully Reading and Leeds in August but that’s unknown at the moment, and then a headlining tour in October so we’ll finish the year promoting that and then we’ll hit 2011 thinking about taking a little time off again.”
Thanks to Emma W for organising this for us and to Jaret from Bowling For Soup for speaking to Steve. Photo by Scott Cole. Find more info and music clips on their MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/bowlingforsoup.