Room Thirteen recently had the opportunity to have a backstage chat with Bowling For Soup frontman Jaret Reddick before their show at Norwich UEA on 17th October. This is the second and final part of the interview.


R13: Do you ever feel restricted by your own style or sound?
Jaret Reddick: Yeah, we get painted into a corner as a band a lot. As a writer I get it really bad. As I've gotten to do more things and want to write songs for other artists, or different kinds of music or whatever, I find myself in these situations where it's 'oh, that's the '1985' guy', or 'that's the fart joke guy', or 'that guy sings about beer' and then, having a song like 'Turbulence', which is not the first song of that kind we've had, it strikes people as, like, 'this is really weird that you guys are putting this out', when we've had these on every album we've ever done. There is a little more depth to us, you just wouldn't be able to tell by having a conversation with us, really.

It gets sort of frustrating, but not to the point of 'I don't get it'. I understand, we're known for 'Girl The Bad Guys Want' and 'High School Never Ends', and putting stupid shit on the internet, where half the time we don't have clothes on. So when you come out with stuff like 'Turbulence' or 'When We Die' people do have to take a step back and say 'is that really them?'. It doesn't get as frustrating BFS-wise as it does as a songwriter because I would love to be taken a little bit more serious in that regard. I think that'll come.

R13: Phineas and Ferb, and the 'Love Handel' thing, how did that come about?
JR: That's just the best thing ever; the two creators of Phineas and Ferb were just in the developing aspect of that show and they had the theme song. They wanted BFS to record the song, but they also wanted, for promotional use and radio, a 3 and a half minute single made out of the theme song, so they flew me out to LA and showed me a couple of episodes that were unfinished. I fell in love with the show and fell in love with the guys. They were just brilliant and they said 'can you do this?', and I'm like 'yeah, I can do that in about 20 minutes, I'll have something by tomorrow'. So, I went to my hotel room, did the 'Today Is Gonna Be A Great Day' version of their theme and they loved it.

While I was at the initial meetings with them they said 'Hey, we like your voice too, do you want to read for a part'. I originally read to be the drummer of Love Handel, which Steve Zahn ended up getting, but while I was in there they said 'you could be the singing voice too, so why don't you read for Danny', and I got the part. It's great. I've got a really awesome Love Handel episode coming out where I sing, like, 11 songs. It's just brilliant. It's been a lot of fun. We're more known now for Phineas and Ferb than we are a lot of our hits because it's just so huge. If I'm at my kids' soccer game and the parents ask what I do and I say 'I'm a musician, I'm in a band called Bowling For Soup', they go 'I think I've heard of that'. Then I'll name one of the songs and they'll say 'Yeah, I kind of know that one'. Then I say 'I also do stuff for this show- I don't know if you've heard of it- called 'Phineas And Ferb' and it's like 'WHAT!' It's awesome.

R13: There's also a facebook campaign to get you to do the theme to Ghostbusters 3, should it ever get made.
JR: An awesome fan of ours named Steve Rosier had that idea and just started this facebook site which was floating around out there. We have this inner group of really amazing, hardcore fans that have all gotten to be friends, and they're all from different parts of the world and they communicate all the time. Anyway, this kid named Steven Brown who's been doing some art for us for a few years - he did all of the 'Fishin' For Woos' booklet, and some of our merch - I guess Steve (Rosier) got a hold of Steven (Brown) who then did a picture of us as the Ghostbusters, and it was just the coolest thing I've ever seen. I thought 'I've got to get behind this now', so I started tweeting about it and put it on our facebook page, and then Ghostbusters websites got hold of the story. It just really organically grew from this facebook page that had, like, 17 people liking it to.

The one problem with the whole thing is we actually have covered the song 'Ghostbusters' before for a movie with Reese Witherspoon. I can't for the life of me think what it was called (Just Like Heaven). I like our version of it, but it was years ago and it was under the direction of the music producer for that movie, and they wanted it exactly like Ray Parker Jnr, so we didn't really get to put our spin on it. It kind of sucks, we need an asterix by that song and next it say 'Yes! We really want to do that song for Ghostbusters 3, but we would do something really cool'. All of the feedback out there is people hearing the version that we've already done and thinking that we want this to be the theme, and then they're just like 'The original version is better' and, yes, it is, but we did it under a certain set of circumstances. It would be interesting if something happened. That would be one of the coolest stories ever, where some fans just decided 'we're going to make this happen' and it happened.

R13: You were over earlier in the year with The Jaret and Erik acoustic tour, how did that come about?
JR: We've been doing the acoustic stuff in the states for years. It's actually how we got to quit our jobs originally; we'd go set up in pubs and play for tips. When Bowling For Soup started doing really well radio stations would want us to come in and do promo stuff. The Bowling For Soup 'machine' is nine people and all this gear. It can be really expensive just to get us somewhere, so we started a lot more of Erik and I going in and doing these promo things.

We also do these VIP sessions here and sometimes we'll do four or five acoustic songs for the kids, and I told the promoter, Steve Homer from LiveNation [there's a lot of Steves in this interview, have you noticed that?] 'Watch the reaction of this', because I really thought it would work. Last year we gave it a shot, and it was a huge success, we did it again this year and again it was a huge success. It's a different way to present the songs, a completely different kind of show from what the kids are used to seeing from us. It's definitely a more interactive thing, and we just love to do it.

There's been some talk that maybe we've overexposed ourselves in the UK and I know the fans don't like to hear that, and I definitely don't like to hear it either, but if your promoter and your agents start to think that you're coming over a little bit too much then they start to try and squash the extra shit. Man, I really want this acoustic thing to be every year, that's the point. We'll see. I really do hope we get to do it again.

R13: You recently split with your record company, Jive. Was that a tough decision?
JR: It wasn't tough because we knew it was coming. We had made a lot of preparations for it. One of things that you can't say about BFS is that we're not smart, 'cos we're fucking smart, and we knew it was coming. The timing was fucking terrible though because we had just gone in and made what I still consider should have been the biggest BFS record to date, 'Sorry For Partyin'. Because of the timing of that and those songs it should have been huge; there's hits on there. Basically, we went in, we spent all of this time and money doing this record and they went and basically cut 9 bands' budgets that year and we were one of them. Bands that weren't necessarily costing money, but they (Jive) just basically refocused everything.

Jive is gone now, there's just no more Jive anymore. It sucked for a few months because we had this album that was out there that we couldn't promote. Kids didn't understand why they were coming to shows but we didn't have videos on MTV and we weren't on the radio, and we couldn't say anything while we had all the paperwork and we were trying really hard to get that record back to be able to put it out ourselves, but Jive wasn't having it. We licked our wounds, I locked myself in my home studio for three weeks, wrote 'Fishin' For Woos', we went and recorded it in three weeks and we got it out there on our own and it's one of the proudest achievements of our band.

Obviously, the worry is that if we rush this record it's gonna sound like we just shit out an album, but not one person has said that; we got the best reviews we've ever got on an album. I think we came out winners. We're our own bosses and we can do whatever we want.

The beauty of it is that the fans are getting more content; 'Fishin For Woos' came out in April, we just released a new single with a new version of 'The Bitch Song' and a cover of 'Stacy's Mom'. We've got a new Christmas album coming out. We're going to re-release our first three albums, we're going to do a b-sides album and it's just, like, when you have the major label cuffs on you, you can't do that.

R13: So do you own the rights to your back-catalogue now?
JR: No, they own everything, but you get it back after a certain time. We own our first two albums and our fourth album. They own 'Rock On Honorable Ones!!', which is our third album, and then all of the ones that they released, and we own 'Fishin' For Woos'. They'll continue to sell, especially 'A Hangover You Don't Deserve' and 'Drunk Enough To Dance', they'll continue to sell forever; a few hundred a month or whatever, but...they're records that people tend to revisit. We ended up great, but it was an interesting time.

R13: 'Fishin' For Woos' was going to be an EP, then it was an album...
JR: It was originally going to be an album, then, when we were coming over here last October, LiveNation really wanted a product out there, they wanted us to release something, so we started doing all this promo work and I broke it down into an EP. There were some songs that were going to be on the EP and some songs that were sitting over here, and I called my manager and said 'I can't do this, I've got to pull the plug; this is a collection of songs that I wrote to be an album, releasing it as an EP is bullshit because then these songs aren't gonna make sense. It's an album. I know we've already been doing the press, but we've got to stop it and try and get this album out as fast as we can'. So we pulled the plug, and he was great through the whole thing. Everyone was very receptive because I did have good points.

You get into these inner arguments with yourselves like 'you've got to save the singles for the full-length', but then we're not putting out the best EP that we can if we don't put these songs out, but then you can't just re-release these songs as an album...there's all this craziness that goes along with it. Very seldom am I 'The Artist', I'm always 'the Business guy', but in situations like that they let me be 'The Artist' once in a while. It worked out way better because 'Fishin' For Woos' is exactly what it needed to be, and I couldn't be more proud of the collection of songs, the writing on it, and everybody's playing on it.

R13: You're well known for your videos, any plans in that area?
JR: My Company, Built by Ninjas, made a video for Turbulence and, again, adding to this list of crazy, proud achievements, it was my first time directing with my friend. I used family and friends and borrowed the car, and the girl that plays my wife in it is one of my wife's best friends. It was a really cool experience.

We talked about making a video for 'I've Never Done Anything Like This' before this tour, but it didn't come together. I really want to make an animated video and I really want to make a Claymation video. I think that might be the direction that we go. I put the feelers out on Twitter and I actually got some really good responses, so that'll probably be what I work on BFS-wise when I get home, and see if I can get those done.

R13: You're known for your cheerfulness, radio-friendly sound, and sense of humour. Are you secretly a miserable bastard that goes home and kicks the dog or something?
JR: Hahaha, I have bad days like everybody else, but I am probably the happiest person that I know. I have problems like everyone else; I think I'm too fat. I worry about shit like that. I remember one day in 8th grade waking up and being in a really bad mood. I was just angry at the world and I said something mean to my mom, I think, and I was just being a little shit. I couldn't really figure out why I was in a bad mood, and I made a conscious decision, I literally remember the day, that 'I'm not going to do this anymore, I'm not going to just be in a bad mood for being in the sake of a bad mood, I'm not gonna do it'. So I don't. I do all of the business for Bowling For Soup, and I can get irritated or frustrated, but I'm pretty good about letting that blow over.

(Laughs) I'm not always as bubbly as I am when I'm talking on TV though, I can pretty much turn that on and off.

R13: How much to come and give a motivational talk to my son about not being grumpy?
JR: (Laughs) I have actually thought about that whole motivational talk thing, I'm not really sure if that's my future or not. Maybe I'll send him an email (laughs).

R13: Is there anything you'd like to have been asked in an interview, but you never have been?
JR: Man...unfortunately I don't think that there is. I've done a lot of these, but I thought that last question was really good though. I don't get asked if I'm happy all the time, people just assume that I am. My friends will tell you that I can be a jerk, but not very often.

R13: I don't suppose you have time, you're too busy!
JR: That definitely is a factor. I get more irritated when it's something that affects the band, 'cos they're my best friends, they trust me and I don't want to let them down.

R13: When you're not together as Bowling For Soup do you still spend time together socially?
JR: We talk all the time. We text constantly. Erik's wife and my wife are best friends, so we spend time together as family. Gary's got a little boy, so we do family stuff, and Chris is 15 minutes away from me, so we'll go and have drink or whatever. We're in constant contact, making sure each other are good.

R13: That's all I've got for you. Thanks a lot for that, I appreciate it.
JR: Cool, man.