New Found Glory Interview

Here is my interview with Chad and Cyrus from New Found Glory.

Veteran punk rockers New Found Glory returned to the UK this month to tour with one of last years breakout bands and seemingly NFG’s new best mates Paramore.

Since splitting with record label MCA New Found Glory have been busy doing really anything they please including spending last Summer on the Warped Tour and headlining the lock up stage of last years Reading and Leeds festivals before starting work on their Album of Movie song covers.

Called From The Screen To Your Stereo Part II it followed up a similar project made for Drive-Thru records back in 2000 which featured songs such as My Heart Will Go On and I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing.

FTSTYS part II was also released on Drive-Thru and hit UK stores earlier this month. This time around NFG called in collaborations from some of their big name friends including Taking Back Sunday’s Adam Lazzara and Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump.

The video for the EP’s cover of Kiss Me featured Paramore highlighting the growing friendship between the two bands and as a result it was no real surprise to anyone when they announced they would be touring the UK together. Although the fact that NFG would be supporting the younger and still relatively new band raised one or two eyebrows.

Bandidge caught up with Cyrus Bolooki and Chad Gilbert from NFG before the tours show at Leicester’s De Montfort Hall.

Do you feel that being the support band for the first time in a while has meant there has been no pressure on you and that you can just go out there and perform?

Chad: “I think New Found Glory never really feels pressure any more doing shows because we have such a die hard fan base and this show is awesome because although we are not closing it still doesn’t feel like we’re a support band its more just like a show you know, it’s like a special guest kind of thing. You know a lot of our fans are here and then a lot of new fans to that have never heard of us before so it’s super easy because we play our songs and our fans go crazy then all the kids want to be a part of it that don’t know us so they go crazy you know it’s really fun.”

Cyrus: “I think we’re really excited to be back out here because we really love to be outside of America, in England, Europe you know anywhere else it’s really fun to be back out here.”

With Paramore all being under the age of 21 have you been taking advantage of the younger drinking age here in the UK to lead them astray?

Chad: “They’re really not that type you know they’ve come out a couple of the times to like a club or a bar or something and they’ve come and hung out with us but it’s not really their thing. I mean I don’t drink either but I like going out to the bars and stuff.”

Cyrus: “I think the good thing about them is even though they’re young and kind of a newer band you can already tell that they have their heads on like straight and they’re focused on what they’re doing.”

How did you pick the tracks on your new Album From The Screen To Your Stereo Part II, and how did some of the collaborations come about?

Chad: “The way we picked the songs is really a combination of things like one we tried to find movies that we like with good songs but a lot of movies we like have bad songs or vice versa a lot of good songs are from bad movies so there’s a bunch of reasons. I mean we tried to find songs that we can make sound like New Found Glory sticking to the movie theme.”

Cyrus: “Make sure that our singer still sounds right and doesn’t sound too much like a girl. Sometimes it’s hard because a lot of the songs that we picked had girl singers and were just different types of bands to us. We always found a way to kind of make them our own. And then collaborations we just had a lot of friends we wanted. We called out to a whole bunch of people to see if they could work with us, people that we felt would work well on each song.”

What songs will your upcoming EP The Tip Of The Iceberg have on it and what sort of sound will they have?

Chad: “That is just three New Found Glory originals that are like super fast kind of more our older style of songs, like super fast hardcore type songs. Still melodic because Jordan always sounds melodic when the music is a little bit heavier.”

Cyrus: “Like edgier”

Chad: “And then three songs from older bands that we listened to growing up. You know the movie covers are songs that are just kind of guilty pleasure joke songs, but the songs that are on The Tip Of The Iceberg that we cover are actually songs that you know were influential that inspired us to play our music.”

Has picking the tracks for your Hits album made you take stock as a band and look back at how much you have changed in the last ten years?

Cyrus: “I don’t know that it’s necessarily how much we’ve changed I think it’s just if anything it’s a great collection and it’s like a good summary of what we feel is almost like the first chapter in our band. Like I think right now the best thing about the greatest hits is it’s almost like it shows what’s ahead of us. That’s like you know what we’ve done for the last ten years and they are awesome songs and there is such a good mix of songs on there including like a song that we never really released situation and B sides as well so I think you know we don’t have to look back and necessarily see how much we’ve changed but we really look to what is coming and we have so much coming.out like with the tip of the iceberg ep and a new record we’re planning on doing in the summer so there is a lot to look forward to.”

Your last album Coming Home dealt with more personal issues then and had a more mature sound to it then your previous records will this continue on your next album when you record it?

Chad: “I think lyrically, I mean all of our songs are always personal, I think musically though we are going to, its going to be a step forward in the sense that we’re going to write a new completely different kind of record it’s not going to sound like Coming Home. It will be like a different style but it will be more energetic, like, more like a live record. Like a live friendly record you know.”

In recent years there has been a trend for American punk bands to make quite political records. Is that something you have ever been tempted to do?

Chad: “I feel like a lot of bands in the punk genre sing about political things just because they feel they need to and they don’t always know what they’re talking about because you can go up to them after a show and start talking to them.

“We are a sincere band and we don’t really like singing about things that we aren’t a hundred percent into you know just because we want to be political. A lot of bands have tried to pull the political card to try and get respect you know and”

Cyrus: “It’s not really us.”

Chad: “No it’s not our thing.”

You’re currently not signed to a major label have you signed a deal with anyone to record your next album yet?

Cyrus: “We haven’t done that yet we’re still looking and I think we have a good idea in what direction we’re going to go but like I was saying earlier it’s just really cool and really exciting for us right now because we can go anywhere.”

Do you feel that not being signed to a major label has allowed you to be more creative with what you have been doing recently?

Cyrus: “Creative, Yeah. I think if you look at what we’ve put out in the last six months definitely it’s a wide mix from covers of crazy kind of random bands to like our stuff.”

Chad: “We’ve never really had pressure from labels. We’ve always been creative. You know even on our original albums we’ve never had pressure from labels to write a certain style of music.”

Cyrus: “They let us do what we want to do, what we do best.”

Ian (Grushka, NFG bass player) recently started his own clothing label how is that going?

Chad: “King Doula? He just started some t-shirts. It’s kind of funny because we’re like we’re all five different people and Ian you know when we do t-shirt designs we never really use Ian’s ideas because they are so like whack, not like err.”

Cyrus: “They’re out there”

Chad: “Yeah they’re like out of whack with what New Found Glory is you know so this was a cool thing for him to do to have his own ideas.”

Will you be doing your own tour of the UK anytime soon?

Cyrus: “November, we’re coming back in November.”

New Found Glory are clearly a band that are happy just to be on the road playing their music and despite a crowd reaction somewhat less frenzied crowd reaction then they normally receive the band showed in Leicester why they are one of the best pop punk bands in the world. NFG’s set must surely have made an impression on the kids who had stayed up past bed time to make the trip to see Paramore.

And when Chad said he didn’t feel pressure during shows he really wasn’t joking casually playing literally every instrument on the stage during NFG’s set which ended all too quickly. Even drummer Cyrus got in on the act playing the second half of the bands set closing rendition of My Friends Over You.

It will be interesting to see if this tour has any effect on the average age of the crowd when New Found Glory bring their own tour to the UK in November.

This interview also appeared online at http://www.bandidge.com/interviews/n_nfgint You can also see photos of the interview and gig taken by Kev Grange at www.BADesign.deviantart.com.

New Found Glory and Paramore

I recently interviewed Chad Gilbert and Cyrus Bolooki from New Found Glory before their show supporting Paramore at Leicester's De Montfort hall. They were both really nice blokes, very polite and friendly and told me quite a bit of interesting stuff about there upcoming releases and more. The interview should be appearing at www.bandidge.com some time soon and I'll also post it here in its entirety incase they take out any parts as it is quite long. The gig itself was pretty good with four bands appearing in total. The first act on stage were a band called Conditions who, despite having the usual curse of the unannounced support band, awful sound settings making it nearly impossible to make out the lyrics to their songs, were quite an impressive live act. Especially for a band yet to release their first EP. The quality of their music was good and their stage presence and entertainment value was even better. Anyone with an interest in up beat pop punk music should definitely keep an eye on this lot. They are on myspace if you want to find out more. Next up was Kids In Glass Houses, another punky act from Wales that have been pretty widely hyped in the British music press. But on this showing it's pretty tricky to understand why. The majority of their songs seemed quite dull and all sounded more or less the same. One guitarist posed and preened in an annoying manner remeniscent of Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz while the other three musicians were so anonymous that it was almost like they weren't there. The energy levels of the bands' singer Aled Phillips couldn't be faulted but his efforts to work the crowd definitely need work. Then, in my admitedly slightly biased opinion, the best act of the night New Found Glory. They proved again that they are one of, if not the best live punk band in the world. Singer Jordan's voice sounds as good live as it does on their albums and the rest of the band showed what good musicians they are even effortlessly switching instruments during songs and barely missing a beat. There was also a nice moment when NFG allowed some guy out of the crowd to come on stage and play drums for them. The crowd may not have been as loud or frenzied as a usual NFG crowd but it's likely that was because many of the kids in attendance were simply too young to be very familiar with the band. Headliners Paramore walked on stage to a loud, if noticeably high-pitched, hereos reception. Their set was the only one of the night to feature a video screen to accompany the songs and although the band were pretty good musically it felt like their showmanship was a little forced. On a plus note Hayley Williams vocals sounded much better live then I had expected, her voice really did have the same power and quality as the bands recordings. The highlight of the Paramore set was probably their cover of Jimmy Eat World's Sweetness although that to may have been lost on some of the younger members of the crowd. Paramore's performance wasn't bad but it did little to improve my opinion of them as a a band that are average to fairly good but that have been massively over hyped and marketed. Over all a pretty good show and a very enjoyable night. The band of the night were definitely NFG with Paramore and Conditions an equal second.