When Bowling for Soup formed in 1994, nobody knew that they would still be going nearly 17 years later.
Jaret Reddick, lead vocalist in the pop-punk band, admits that he didn’t see Bowling for Soup being this successful. “It was never any sort of career choice or anything like that, until after we had been doing it for a few years and even then it was like ‘hey, lets just see how far we can take this thing’.But you know, all the time knowing ‘everything can end tomorrow’ you know?
“We look back on 17 years of saying ‘you never know how long this is gonna last’. It’s quite remarkable that we’re still around and still doing it, but we’re still having a good time you know.
“Also another thing, as we were starting out and as things started to take off, the number one rule was ‘if it not fun any more we’re gonna stop doing it’, and we’re still having fun almost 17 years later, we’re still best friends.”
Writing, recording and touring for that long might get a little tedious for some people but Reddick still enjoys every minute of it. “I really don’t ever get bored. I always sort of go back to that whole theory of ‘if you’re bored then you’re boring’ kinda thing and I’m definitely not boring so if I ever say I’m bored then I’d just be calling myself boring so no, no I’m never bored.”
The band have always had a sense of humour with their music, with songs such as “High School Never Ends”, “The Bitch Song” and “1985”. But it’s not what they set out to do, Reddick said: “We didn’t really set out to be funny.
“We never sat down and talked about like ‘you know what we need to do is to be funny’. It sort of was a transitional thing, whereas our songs started to just get [happier]. We started out as a happy band but you know, album after album we sort of got more happy.
“I mean the idea of just trying to put songs out that would make people smile became more of the sort of the underlying theme and I don’t intentionally sit down to write funny songs.
“It’s kind of just the way that it goes sometimes, I think it’s just the way that my mind works which makes it interesting to be doing things like other musical projects or whatever that I have to make myself not be funny.
I have a new band called People on Vacation and it’s just me and one other dude and he’s the most serious guy ever and it’s pretty hard to sort of combine our styles but as far as Bowling for Soup I think we’ll always be the happy guys.”
Reddick will be joining band member Erik Chandler on an acoustic tour around the UK in April. The duo have toured acoustically in the United States numerous times but this will be their second visit to the UK.
“Erik and I have played acoustic for years and years because it’s something to do when Bowling for Soup wasn’t playing, on off nights or whatever, that we could sort of do to help not only promote the band but also to pay the bills.”
“We had lots of requests from fans in the UK saying ‘hey, we want to see the acoustic tour too, come over and do it’ and we played the Kerrang tent at a festival, I believe it was Download several years ago, and when we did the spark was sort of planted in a bunch of people’s minds.
So we tried it last year and it was great, it was an overwhelming success and I think it’s definitely something that hardcore fans will love because you get to hear a lot of Bowling for Soup songs that you don’t really get to hear when it’s the full band.
“When it’s the full band we’re only up there for an hour and 15 minutes max, so you know when we’re playing all the singles, we really only get a little sprinkle of deeper material in there. Whereas with acoustic, Erik and I are up there at least two hours, and we’re so close to the audience that we can actually hear them speaking and things so somebody can yell out a song and we can just be like ‘ok’ and it’s a really cool interaction.”
An acoustic evening with Jaret and Erik is coming to Lincoln on April 10th and tickets are available from the Engine Shed site and box office.
For your chance to get your hands on a pair of tickets for the acoustic set with Jaret and Erik from Bowling for Soup on Sunday 10th? Simply email competition@thelinc.co.uk with the right answer to this easy questions for your chance to win.
Which of these is a Bowling for Soup song?
A) 1986
B) 1985
C) 1987
The winners will be announced on the morning of Friday, April 1st.