New Found Glory

It had been a long time coming, but after a decade long wait – New Found Glory finally made it up to Canada for headlining tour. Their final Canadian date found them at the Rickshaw Theatre in Vancouver and they did not disappoint in anyway, shape or form. Before they hit the stage and whipped the crowd into a frenzy, I sat down with bassist Ian Grushka and guitarist Steve Klein to talk about why it took them so long for a Canadian tour, Chad Gilbert getting electrocuted, their love/hate relationship with cover songs and the evolution of pop-punk.

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Bobby: You guys are heading into the last week of this North American tour – how has it been going?

Ian: It’s been awesome man, it’s been a lot of fun. We haven’t been back to Canada in a while. We were talking back home and like “man, we haven’t been back there in a while – we should probably go now.” So this whole second leg of the tour was based around playing these Canadian shows, so it’s been pretty awesome. It’s a lot of fun.

Bobby: That’s just it, I got into you guys somewhere between Self Titled and Sticks and Stones and in all that time – I’ve only seen you once which was 2004 in Calgary at Warped Tour. And Warped Tour doesn’t really count, so why the hell did it take so long to get up to Canada?

Steve: Why doesn’t Warped Tour count?

Bobby: Well, it’s only thirty minutes quick set. It’s not your set.

Steve: Sometimes it’s hard for us to come up here because we don’t really have label support. I don’t know, tours just don’t really come through here as much. And it’s a hassle, coming in and out of the border and stuff like that. Like we had to go in and out of the border twice. Going through Montreal then coming out and getting back in for Winnipeg – then go across to Vancouver and then back down to Seattle. It’s a lot for a band to go back and forth through the border.

Ian: And the problem is not even the Canadian side of the border. It’s trying to get back into the United States that’s a pain in the ass.

Steve: Not saying that that’s an excuse but…

Ian: There’s only so much time in a year. We put out a record and we’re getting ready to go on tour, it’s like right after the record comes out we know Australia hits us up, Japan hits us up, the US. We do all those and it seems like we’re never on a label that has people in Canada saying “hey, come here. We’re going to put the record out here. We’re going to do this, come promote it.” It feels like we just come here whenever we have the free time.

Steve: We just kind of got big here because of word of mouth. Our fans spreading the word. We didn’t really have too much press or anything kind of like big here since the Sticks and Stones record. What do you think?

Bobby: I think it’s just unfortunate that you haven’t been here and you’re right, there isn’t tons of publicity push here for us. Which is unfortunate because, like I said, I’ve been wanting to see you for a decade now.

Steve: Well we came to Vancouver with Warped Tour and we played a couple headlining shows here a long time ago.

Ian: And we did Edgefest with Blink.

Steve: We kind of go wherever the demand is for the band – wherever a lot of people want to see us. I think now we’re going to try and start building off this tour and we’ll be coming again soon.

Bobby: So have you guys done anything unique to make this tour more memorable for your first Canadian tour in a decade?

Steve: No, we just try to go out there and do our thing – play a regular show. I mean, right now it’s the Sticks and Stones tour so we’ve been kind of doing that set.

Ian: And then we brought our friends’ band, Living with Lions with us and they’re from here, Vancouver. So that was kind of special too because they weren’t on the other leg.

Bobby: Yeah, they’re a great band live. Now, as you said, this is the tenth anniversary tour of Sticks and Stones but actually this year would be the eleventh year anniversary of the record. You started the tour last year, what made you keep going into the eleventh year?

Steve: Because people complained that we didn’t play their city. So we had to go play the places we didn’t play on that tour. We still count it as ten years, no one’s really counting. We don’t really worry about it. People want to hear the record so we’re going to go to places where people contacted us on twitter or complained about us not playing their city.

Bobby: Do you guys still play it note for note or having known it for a decade, do you try to inject new life into the songs?

Steve: We play them pretty much the same, we just play them faster live. We’re not really a jam band. We don’t really add anything to the songs, we just play them how we wrote them and kids are really excited about it. In Canada, this record was big here. This record is the record that got them into New Found Glory, so all the shows have been really fun.

Bobby: Now with it, is it kind of fun going back and remember little stories from the album? Like I remember reading that for The Story So Far you and Cyrus switched for the first part of the song where you recorded the snare drum and he recorded the bass line. Is it fun going back and remembering all these old stories from the recording studio?

Ian: Yeah, definitely man. Like, when Sticks and Stones came out – it was a huge part of our lives. We had just went from living with our parents at home, moved out to California on our own. It was our second major label record and we moved all the way across the country. So for us, it was definitely a really exciting time – you know what I mean?

So just looking back and realizing how far we’ve come since then and even the fact that we can even do a ten year tour on the record is awesome. And plus, doing this tour and getting to play a song like The Great Houdini where, when that record was out ten years ago, we never played that song live. The first time, I think, we ever played Great Houdini live was the first show of the Sticks and Stones tour. So that sort of shit is kind of cool too and kind of special.

Bobby: There’s rumors that you guys are already planning a ten year Catalyst tour for next year.

Steve: I’m not saying anything yet.  It would be fun to do it. We’re not really doing anything – like nothing’s planned but it would be fun.

Bobby: Now this is the ten year anniversary of Sticks and Stones but you’ve been doing this for over fifteen years now. When you came out in the late nineties, the turn of the century  there was the whole pop-punk explosion. There was you guys, Fenix TX, MXPX, Blink 182, Saves the Day, Starting Line and so on and so forth. You guys were the young crop of bands leading the way, now you’re kind of the veterans leading the new crop of bands. Did you ever think that twist would happen?

Ian: It something that you never really think about.

Steve: Yeah, I don’t think it’s something you should think about. If you think about it, then it will never kind of happen.

Ian: Starting out, we would look at it – well, I would look at it. I can’t really speak for anyone else. But starting out you’d look at the old school punk bands – like The Ramones and the Sex Pistols and those sort of bands and then they influenced like Bad Religion and NOFX and then they influenced a handful of other bands which then those bands influenced us. It’s kind of like a snowball, it keeps going. But back then, we just wanted to put out one record and tour outside of Florida. We were never like “Alright, we’re going to do this.” We didn’t know that ten years from then we would still be doing this. It was just something to do  because where we were from, there wasn’t much to do.

Steve: The fact that we can even do a ten year anniversary on a record is cool. The fact that these songs are timeless and people want to hear them ten years later –  the fact that these songs could be put out today and still be relevant is cool.

Bobby: At the same time, you guys have had a huge influence. You look at bands like Story so Far and All Time Low who named their bands after your songs. You tour with a lot of up and coming bands, like Living With Lions or last year on the Pop-Punks Not Dead Tour you brought Man Overboard and This Time Next Year with you. Do you think it’s important to kind of teach the new bands or show them the ropes?

Steve: I don’t think it’s necessarily teaching them. It’s just kind of them… I don’t know, for  us we’re the type of band who always have their ears to the ground listening to new music. We’re not like a jaded band that’s been around forever and don’t listen to new music. So we like to keep it fresh and take out new bands and bands that we back and bands that we’re friends with and want to be on tour with and have a good time with.

Ian: And I feel like in ten years, those bands are going to do the same thing. You just kind of learn from touring and seeing what you want. You don’t want to tour with bands you’re not going to hang out with or have a good time with. You’re away from your family and your friends and your life, so you want to have that family feeling on the road. You know what I mean?

It’s important to have down to earth people in the bands that you tour with because those are the people you’re going to see every day. You’re going to want to want to hang out with them. You’re not going to want to be around people you don’t want to be around. So we kind of always just tour with bands who kind of keep it real and bands that we like. It’s pretty chill.

In punk rock, in our genre, there’s not a lot of cocky bands. There’s a handful of bands that are dicks but the thing is, every band that you talk to and like “those dudes are dicks, those dudes are dicks.” You know what I mean? You have to kind of earn that status. But for us, we just want to tour with people that we’re going to have fun hanging out with, that are good people, good bands and then you have more fun.

Bobby: Like you said, you always have the ladders of influence. You have Bad Brains which influenced Bad Religion and NOFX which influenced new bands which influenced you guys who are now influencing others. Who are some of the bands, when you guys were first starting off in Coral Springs, that you looked up to or helped show you the ropes?

Ian: I feel like for everyone starting out in the band, it was more of an individual thing for what kind of bands made you want to play music. For me, I know it was Unwritten Law and Blink 182. Those were the two bands that made me want to be in a band and tour. I think Green Day, as a band as a whole – like a band that everybody in the band kind of liked – Green Day had a huge sort of influence on that. But I feel like you’re influenced by different bands for different reasons.

As a band, being on a road, I feel like Less Than Jake was that one band that kind of gave us a chance, and kind of pulled us under their wing and showed us how shit really was.  But before I was in this band, just going to shows and hanging out with bands – Unwritten law was the band that made me go “Fuck man, I want to be in a fucking band.” Just from hanging out with those dudes and seeing their shows.

But there’s five dudes in our band and everyone kind of looks at shit differently, so you’d probably get a different answer from each of us.

Bobby: Which is good, you don’t want to all be focusing on one point. You want to have different ideas so you can get the best possible option.

Steve: I think what sets out band apart from other bands in what we try to do is try to mix our influence of punk and hardcore and East and West Coast music that we all listened to. We kind of took all of our favourite bands and that is what influenced our band.

Most of us like punk, like stuff that he said but Chad listens to hardcore, I listen to like nineties emo. Like I think Lifetime and that kind of band where they’re fast punk and have breakdowns. They kind of started the genre that we kind of ran with I guess.

Bobby: Like Chad was in Shai Halud for quite a while which is vastly different than New Found Glory.

Steve: But he just sang in that band, he didn’t play. It’s just different.

Ian: But even for our band, that helped starting out because even though we were nothing like Shai Hulud, we would still be on tour and they’d be like “Oh, Chad from Shai Hulud is in this band.” So I feel that in the very beginning, we got a little bit more respect from hardcore kids which might have been harder to get had Chad not been in Shai Hulud. So starting out, like in the very beginning, to the hardcore kids it was always like “oh, that’s Chad’s other band.” And that kind of just helped to build the buzz. Chad wasn’t – once we started, he wasn’t really in Shai Hulud that much longer. So that kind of died out quickly but that definitely helped in the beginning. Doing tours with bands like Snapcase where if you’re just a pop-punk band, people would’ve been like “fuck you guys, you suck” sort of shit. But we got a little bit more respect and sort of a chance because Chad was in Shai Hulud.

Bobby: A bit more, quote unquote, credibility.

Ian: Not credibility necessarily but they’ll actually listen to the music and judge it on whether they’d really like it rather than just saying “oh, fuck you” sort of thing. They’d actually gave us a chance.

Bobby: For me, growing up – I was huge into pop-punk. How would you describe the difference between the turn of the century pop-punk, 2002/2003 to now? The 2010 era?

Steve: It’s not really that different. It’s the same.

Ian: Yeah, I feel like is the same shit.

Steve: Three chords and songs about girls. No one’s really re-writing the wheel. No one’s doing anything crazy. There’s no new Shape of Punk to Come. It’s the same shit but people try to do things differently and try to add their own spin to it. I think the original bands are the bands that are going to stick out and last a while.

I think for young bands, bands that are around now, the key is to write timeless music. Try to be relevant and not turn out music that is contrived.

Bobby: There was also always the defacto pop-punk record labels. In the nineties it was Lookout and then it was Drive-Thru Records. Who do think now is the defacto pop-punk label?

Steve: There is none. I mean there’s Bridge Nine and Fearless, I don’t know. Pure Noise and Run For Cover, but they’re not even really straight pop-punk. Nothing really. Rise but they’re like a metal label. I don’t know.

Ian: It’s hard to say.

Bobby:  I was trying to think of some and was thinking Run for Cover or Rise but I’m not sure.

Steve: Labels don’t even matter anymore because people get free music. So there’s no real main punk label. There’s pop-punk bands but they’re kind of spread across the board now. There’s  no one label that has the monopoly over everybody. Epitaph, I guess for a while, had a lot of bands but they went in a different direction.

Ian: Fat Wreck Chords.

Steve: But again, they’re still not pop-punk.

Bobby: Fat Wreck has always had its own sound. Not just pop-punk.

Ian: They’ve fucking pumped out some great records man. When they first started.

Bobby: Oh yeah, did you see the drum melody of every Fat Wreck Chords record ever released? It’s like a twelve minute drum melody.

Ian: I started watching the beginning but then my wifi started running out. But I saw like the first minute of it and it was fucking awesome.

Bobby: I’m going through it and I’m like “I own that record, and that one, and that one.” It’s a quick reminder that Fat has put out some good albums.

Ian: Yeah, that’s how Fat was then. Everything they put out was fucking awesome. It’s a riot.

Bobby: Going back to New Found Glory – in March you guys were at the Chain Reaction recording a live album which is rumoured now to be coming out in October. Do you have any information about the live album?

Steve:  I think we’re going to tour off it so it will probably come out in September and we’ve recorded three new songs. So you’ll get three new songs and then the live record on there.

Bobby: Now when you guys were recording the record, Chad got electrocuted or something. Can you tell us about that?

Ian: We never really figured out what happened but we’re kind of assuming what happened. Chad basically had his monitor in front of him. Underneath his monitor there was a socket to plug stuff in and some of the wires were hanging out of that. He was either sweating and the sweat got in there or someone in front of him spilt their drink, but when he went to grab his metal microphone stand – that was right on top of where that was. So he kind of got jolted from that.

He went to go get checked out in the hospital after that because when he was younger, like really young, he had some heart problems so he was kind of concerned about that. So he went and spent the night in the hospital. We wound up finishing the set without him that night and then he came back and played the set the next night.

And he’s fine now, but yeah he got jolted pretty good.

I turned around to get a drink and then I turned around the other way and he was on the floor. I thought at first “oh, maybe he’s just joking around. Maybe he’s tired because it’s our first show back for a while.” Yeah so, he kind of just got jolted off the microphone stand.

Bobby: You guys also did the live DVD in 2005 with Live In London: This Disaster which, with the power outage, was a disaster. Do you guys have bad luck doing live stuff?

Ian: We said the same thing. It’s just the luck of the draw I guess.

Bobby: On Record Story Day, back in April, you guys released Mania – a Ramones cover album. Out of all the Ramones catalog, you guys picked six songs. How did you pick which songs to play?

Steve: We did a set list a while ago where we did a Ramones set with Marky Ramone playing drums with us. So we decided to do twelve songs and then we just took those songs that we did live, picked our favourites from those and made those six into Mania.

Bobby: You guys have also always done cover songs like you started with From the Screen to your Stereo and then Part 2 of that. What leads you to do cover songs?

Ian: Well, in the beginning, when we started getting popular in our home town we kind of had a wide variety of people that would come out to our shows and not everyone would have our music. At that time, the Celine Dionne song was on the radio.  We were like “it would be funny if we just took the shittiest song on the radio and just covered it for fun.” So if someone comes to our shows and they don’t have our record and know any of songs yet then they can at least sing along for one song. So we started doing that Celine Dionne song for fun.

Then we started doing the Aerosmith song, “I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing.” We did that song second. We did that and then kids would come to the show and be like “hey, what record is that song on?” And “well, it’s not on one…” And at that point, we had out It’s All About The Girls EP and Nothing Gold Can Stay and then Nothing Gold Can Stay was going to get re-released. First it was on Eulogy and once we ended up signing to Drive-Thru, they were like “we’re going to re-release that record.” We realized that our fans in Florida had had Nothing Gold for so long that we needed to put something out to hold them over until we were able to do another full length. So that gave us the idea to do From The Screen To Your Stereo Part 1. We had the Titanic and the Armageddon song and then each guy in the band picked one song and that’s how we came up with seven songs for the EP.

So we just did that to hold people over but the second one I feel like people just kept asking “are you guys going to do another one?” We’re like “no.” “Are you going to do another one?” “No.” And then at one point, we just had nothing go on. We weren’t on a record label so we just thought “fuck, let’s just do it for fun.”

And then for that one, we had a bunch of our friends come and sing on the record to kind of make it a little bit different from the first one.

With the Ramones thing, it was just kind of a spur of the moment thing. We always wanted to do something for Record Store Day. When we did Blitzkrieg Pop for Radiosurgery, for that release – me, Chad and Cyrus I think; three or four of us, I don’t remember. We just did a couple of them live, just jamming. So on that Ramones record, the vocals Jordan came back in and did but the bass guitars, the drums, and the rhythm guitars – that’s all one take live on that record. So it was kind of like why not do something for Record Store Day and we already had a bunch of the music already recorded for those. So we’re just like “fuck, let’s just have Jordan go in and do some vocals, throw some leads on top and that would be it.” And that would be something special and something fun to put out.

Bobby: And quick and easy.

Ian: like vinyl wise, they’re all gone already. Now it’s just available on iTunes.

Bobby: What do you like to do more? The punk cover or the Celine Dionne, non-punk song and turning it punk?

Steve: I don’t want to do any covers. I don’t want to do any covers any more. Ever.

Bobby: You’re sick of them?

Steve: I want to play our songs. I don’ give a crap about cover songs.

Ian: I’d rather do country songs to be honest. If I got to pick a whole record of cover songs, it would be fucking awesome.

Steve: I like our songs. *laughs* We don’t need to play anymore cover songs anymore. I don’t even know why we still do that. There I said it. We’re done. We’re done. No more.

Bobby: And you guys have enough songs in your own discography.

Steve: We have seven records. We have seven records. So it’s like when people want to hear cover songs it’s like “oh cool…”

Ian: Cover songs are really just for fun, you know what I mean?

Steve: Cover songs, we just bust those outs when we’re playing for newer fans that maybe don’t know who we are and we want them to have fun too and have them sing along. We try to make our style. For the Ramones record, we didn’t even change the songs around at all. We just kept them true to the songs that they were. From The Screen To Your Stereo, I think we kind of messed around with the songs a bit more and made them more our style.

Bobby: You want to play to your fans and they’re here to hear your songs, so why play covers?

Steve: And they like our cover songs too but I don’t want to be known for that. I don’t want them to be like “Oh, my favourite song of theirs is Kiss Me.”

Ian: Cover CDs are more so people can listen to them in their cars and shit. They’re fun. 

Bobby: You don’t want to be the new Me First.

Ian: Yes. That’s correct.

Steve: It’s not something that we’re proud of like “yes, we did that.” I mean, those records are fun but we’d rather people be stoked on our original songs than be like “my favourite record is From the Screen to Your Stereo Part 2.”

Ian: The covers are fun. We do them, we put them out and then we, personally, don’t really sit and think about them anymore.

Bobby: Just a few more questions. You guys mentioned that you recorded three new songs for the live album. Do you have any plans for another new album?

Steve: Next year probably.

Ian: Yeah, we’re going to get that live album out first and then we’ll see what happens then. We try not to plan it too far ahead otherwise your life is full of anxiety man. And you just gotta let it go.

Bobby: And especially now with the internet, you say one thing and people consider that a promise.

Ian: For us, we’re already booked up until the end of the year so I don’t want to start thinking about next year when it’s still this year.

Bobby: Thanks a lot, do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Ian: No, just thank you to all our Canadian fans – sorry it took so long for us to come back and hopefully it won’t take as long for us to come back again.