Interview: New Found Glory
New Found Glory is a band that needs no introduction. Having released 7 albums as a band, most recently their album Radiosurgery, they’re at the forefront of a new movement – “Pop Punk’s Not Dead.” These pop punk veterans talked to Straight Up Random before their show at the House of Blues in Orlando, FL about what that phrase (“Pop Punk’s Not Dead”) means to them, how they’ve seen the music scene change over the years, what it was like writing for their newest album Radiosurgery, and more.
SUR: Can you introduce yourself please?
Hey whatsup, I’m Steve. I play guitar in New Found Glory.
SUR: You’re only about a week into the tour, but how’s it going so far?
It’s going amazing. The bands we have on tour with us, Set Your Goals, The Wonder Years, Man Overboard, This Time Next Year, are all really good friends of ours. So it’s always a lot of fun to have, you know, obviously your friends on tour with you. It’s a party.
SUR: As far as your live performance goes – you have 7 albums of material to choose from to create a set list so how do you go about choosing what songs to play live?
Well, we’re trying to incorporate some new songs into the setlist. We also try to incorporate, yeah like you said, we have so many records, we’re just trying to play the fan favorites. Trying to do as many songs as we know that kids want to hear us play, you know? So they can go home and be like “oh, they played every song I wanted to hear!” We play like 24 songs every night so hopefully it’s enough for people to go home and satisfy.
SUR: Why did you decide to call the tour the “Pop Punk’s Not Dead Tour,” and what does that phrase mean to you?
For us like, “Pop Punk’s Not Dead” just means – you know, New Found Glory has been around for like 14 years, and we’ve been playing this style of music since then, so a lot of people have been saying like now there’s a revival of pop punk, you know, because Blink [182] and all these bands are getting back together from their hiatuses, but for us, like we never went anywhere. Our fans never went anywhere. This style of music is ever-growing, and there’s lots of new bands that work hard, like the bands that we brought on this tour. So for us it’s just like, you know, for people to wear it, like “hey, I’ve been here, this music is here to stay, and I’m proud to be part of it.”
SUR: How have you seen the pop punk scene change over the 14 years that you’ve been a band?
Well obviously like the internet changed the scene a lot. Like when I grew up, you know, I used to buy like CDs and vinyl at shows or go to a record store. Nowadays, kids can just go online and download music. I think it’s kind of taken away from, you know, a little bit of the specialness of buying a record and going to the store, but it also has its good parts, as far as being on the internet because we’re able to tour in South America and Southeast Asia and all these countries that would have never heard our music if it wasn’t for the internet. So it’s kind of like it has its good and its bads.
SUR: You just recently released Radiosurgery – what fueled this album and where did the inspiration behind the writing process come from?
Every record for us like captures a time period, and for this record, we wanted to kind of go back to the roots of the music of what like got us into the music in the first place. I felt like a lot of our past records are more guitar driven. This record was a lot more melody driven, and they sound more like anthems I guess you can say – more like classic pop punk songs. And that’s just for us like…we kind of wanted to make a cohesive record with Radiosurgery. I guess if you listen to the whole record, you know, it kind of tells the tale of someone going through stages of a bad breakup, but Radiosurgery, being like we made this whole thing up where it’s like the only way to get that person out of your head is to get them surgically removed.
SUR: What influenced your decision to work with Neal Avron as your producer again? (How was it working with him again?)
Neal did our first three records, and he’s like a really good friend of ours. We would use him for every record, but we obviously wanted to do something different for the past 2 albums, but he actually mixed Not Without A Fight, but we always felt like he was a part of the band. Going into recording this record, we just knew and we felt comfortable with him taking these songs that we kind of wrote, and making them the best that they could be. He would kind of like make us write and re-write stuff over just because he wouldn’t settle for anything.
SUR: And how do you feel Radiosurgery overall fits into [New Found Glory’s] discography?
I don’t know, it’s just like the next step. For us we feel like, you know, a new band with Radiosurgery. We feel like we’re really proud of this record, and we want to keep writing records that kids can enjoy, and have fun listening to, and come to our shows and watch us play live, and have a good time, you know?
SUR: What are you hoping to achieve with this album that you haven’t already accomplished with your last ones?
Just to keep playing shows, and to keep getting new fans. For us like we kind of achieved a lot of our goals that we had as a band growing up. So now it’s just kind of like staying relevant and keep being able to tour and play in front of a lot of people.
SUR: Can you give me one straight up random fact about each member of the band?
Chad likes wrestling.
Ian likes baseball.
Cyrus is kind of like a nerd, he’s the computer guy. He like knows how to fix computers.
Jordan likes weird music and bands you’ve never heard of.
And what else…me, what’s a random fact about me…I like Sons of Anarchy. I’ve been watching that show a lot.
SUR: Alright well that was the last question. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Just check out our NewFoundGlory.com. We’re going to be posting video updates from the tour.
