For anyone thinking that the backstage artiste area is a lavish red-carpeted, flower-strewn, brown M&M’s in a brandy glass haven are well and truly mistaken. Before going onstage to rapidly filling Dingwalls for his Heartbreak & Hilarity Too show Jaret Redick sits on a questionable sofa in a store cupboard of a dressing room. The coffee table is covered with various drinks both soft and alcoholic as Jaret speaks with a fan who’s blagged his way into his inner sanctum, said fan is also invited by Jaret to stay for our interview. Kelly, from tonight’s support band The Dollyrots is also there and as some of my questions involve Jaret and Kelly’s up and coming duet album she also squeezes into the tight space. Suddenly we have an audience as crew, PR and a host of musicians swan in and out during our chat, no pressure then.
The Bowling For Soup founder is an amiable interviewee, he’s open, honest and genuinely interesting. He has a deep understanding of music, fans and the industry as a whole. And why wouldn’t he, he’s pretty much seen it all. The one constant in his and BFS’s career is the love the UK give him/them. Bowling For Soup are hitting the UK roads in November for a Pre-Xmas tour and while you’re reading this some will have already sold out. So as the cranberry juice arrives we kick on.
OriginalRock. So Jaret (and Kelly) a duets record? How, why and where did the idea the idea come from?
Jaret Reddick. Bowling For Soup, The Dollyrots and Patent Pending did a tour and along with the tour we did an album called ‘One Big Happy’. On the album we all covered each other’s songs, so a new song a cover each others and it ends with the tenth song that me and Kelly wrote called ‘Love Ya, Love Ya, Love Ya’, the reaction was awesome and that’s pretty much it. They (The Dollyrots) opened up for us on tour over here and we’d perform that song each night. So one night it was like “we should make a record”, so we did it.
Kelly. That was at The Roundhouse in London.
JR. It really came out great and we’re super happy about it, we wrote and recorded it and now it’s coming out.
OR. So is it going to be a mixture of cover versions and originals…
Kelly. All originals.
JR. We wrote about twenty songs? (Looking at Kelly)
Kelly. Yes and in a room together, not over the internet, not in bits and pieces, we wrote everything together, in the moment with no plans.
JR. No rules. So there’s no set style for the album.
Kelly. I mean maybe half-ish is BFS/Dollyrots-ish but the rest of it… Sometimes we started with a drum loop or a bass line and sometimes it was just an idea, like we’re going to write a song about Dad’s ‘n’ daughters.
OR. So to the untrained ear and to someone who hasn’t heard any of it, how would you describe it?
JR. Well…We haven’t heard really heard the mixes yet, so we don’t really know (cue laughter all round).
Kelly. Awesome! The songs themselves are really cool.
JR. They’re really good songs but the music is being done as we speak. We’ve recorded all the vocals and all the main ideas are down, the songs are there. We have a producer right now who’s putting it all together. I think there will be a good mixture of Dollyrots/Bowling For Soup type songs and there’s some stuff that’s kind of out there a little bit.
Kelly. Modern alternative-ish,
JR. Plus some super heartfelt songs,
Kelly. Oh yeah there’s some tearjerkers.
Bowling For Soup will be celebrating their 25th (wtf!) anniversary next year and this fact is not lost on Jaret but before we head down that road I want to know about his thoughts and experiences in the music industry.
OR. How has the music industry changed in the twenty five years you’ve been recording?
JR. What’s funny about us is we’re the only generation of bands, people who are around our age or up to five years after that have had to live through so much change. It’s literally, every year is a completely different set things you have to learn and appreciate. Just from BFS’s standpoint, cassettes to Cd’s to people stealing music to people buying music online, streaming and all of the other stuff in between. Plus being in your mid-forties and having to learn how to use Snapchat! So keeping up with social media and marketing yourself digitally and the fact that bands don’t even have to tour anymore to be successful, you can be successful through the internet. It’s an ever evolving world and if stop to try and catch your breath you’re One hundred percent going to miss something.
OR. So you’re always having to be the next pioneer…
JR. It’s a lotta work.
OR.So has it become less of, hanging back stage, private jets and more of meeting people, signing stuff and well, getting back on the shop floor?
JR. We talk about it all the time. I’m jealous of the bands who got to write a record, record it, go play shows and then go home. Because in our world, (including Kelly/Dollyrots) it’s a full-time job being in a band.
Kelly. It’s twenty four hours a day. We have to pay attention to social media in England and in California. Bands used to be kind of anonymous and you’d learn about them through interviews and journalism, now they check our social media and they know exactly where we are, exactly what we’re doing what we ate for dinner, what our kids do. There are no barriers which I think in a lot of ways is harder for us as musicians but I think it’s a way better fan experience. It’s part of what enables us to be an independent bands right now. The thing is we know are fans now, we have real interaction with them all the time, it’s hard but it makes things more rewarding.
OR. Can that be blessing and a burden, I mean do you get in awkward situations because its gone past that, fan-artist relationship?
JR. We know bands that are more private individuals or whatever. Kelly and I are both outgoing when we want to be.
Kelly. I’ve been fortunate not have any weird stalker-ish things happen to me, so I’m happy to meet people and hang out, it makes the day more fun and exciting to throw something different into the mix.
JR. My stalkery thing happened to me before the internet was a big thing, so late nineties. Mine was really weird, I don’t want to even mention the city and bring it all back up. It was old school stalking, showing up at the front door type shit. Older bands don’t know how to handle it (the fan interaction), they’re just completely clueless. Some of these nineties bands who just don’t know how to operate like this and try to hire firms to do their social media. Unfortunately that does not work for everybody because there is a personal touch to what your doing as far as marketing yourself. Like Kelly said it’s twenty four hours a day.
OR. A Pre-Xmas BFS tour has just been announced and have it heard correctly that there is a new BFS album in the works?
JR. We’re gonna start thinking about (new album) after the tour. Right now it’s trying to get through this thing that I’m on right now, get home, plan that tour a little bit better and then look towards new music in the new year.
OR. why do you think yourself (& BFS) have such a healthy and enduring relationship with the UK?
JR. People in this Country one hundred percent get us and it’s the most interesting relationship ever because I don’t really understand British humour. But for some reason people in the UK get my jokes.
OR. Like Spoons?
JR. Like motherf**king Wetherspoons, (laughing) that thing has wheels that are gonna run forever!
Kelly. I still haven’t has Wetherspoons!
OR. You haven’t missed much!
(“Take that back!” shouted from a passing roadie!)
JR. I think we’re a straight up simple Rock band, you can understand our lyrics and I think we were, some of the original, in my opinion, most approachable people in this business. I think we’re regular dudes and people see that. When you meet us on the street it’s the same.
OR. Not many people write lyrics like yourself, with simplistic yet anthemic clarity, how do you write those lyrics.
JR. I write like I talk. So if you read a BFS song, you’ll read it in my voice because that’s how I talk. So very seldom do I use words outside of my everyday vocabulary. I pride myself on the songs and even with the songs Kelly and I wrote together is that same style.
Kelly. Every now and then you’d say “Is that a little to poetic?”. Sometimes we went with it but a lot of the time we kept it.
OR. The lyrics are like a conversation…an almost rhetorical one.
JR. Yeah and I like for someone to win so if it’s a break up song I like to put a spin on it, to where it turns around and there’s a victorious person.
OR. Are there any songs you wished you’d never have to play again?
JR. Well probably the answer you’re going for is asking me am I sick of my hits and I’m not! Those are my favourite songs to play. The guys that go “ I’m so sick of this, why don’t they want to hear my other stuff” when they play a show but don’t play the hit songs, you’re never going to get that from me. I’m a music fan so when I go to a show I wanna hear the hits. I will say that we have song called ‘Scope’ that was kind of like our first radio song and I had a couple of years were I really didn’t want to play that anymore but for the most part I can’t really think of any.
OR. On the last H&H show in Islington you opened up about a lot of very deep and personal stuff. Has that been a cathartic exercise for you as well because there were times when you landed a few emotional body blows.
JR. Yes its therapeutic, it’s helped me a lot. I know how many people I’ve helped just by coming forward and I don’t mean that in a conceited way, I mean that because I get the Facebook posts and I had two kids crying in the line earlier. So I’ve come to accept it’s important that I open up and part of that is my communication about it, also the epidemic that is depression in the industry that I’ve chosen as my career. So if I have the chance to be voice about it, even if I’m not reaching some of the levels that some of the guys that we’ve lost recently, but if I can help some young band that is a future huge band and I can keep them, or some of my words help keep them on this planet longer, I have to do that.
OR. The last few years have been horrendous and with people “our age” as in forty plus (and) musicians and a lot of them are not on the bones of their arse, very successful, to the outside world they have everything.
JR. I mean even the people close to them, if you read what Chester’s (Bennington) wife said, they were just at a birthday party and everything was fine, there’s video of them and there’s no way anybody would have known that…So you know, you’ve gotta get people talking and I know your country is a hard one to crack. Your a very proud culture, the way things work for a mental health therapy aspect is different to our country it’s not quite as accessible and if it is there’s so much red tape. So I just do my best to tell people to be there for each other and to go out there and scream it.
OR. What does the next twelve months hold in store for Jaret Redick?
JR. When I get back from this I’ll be full on working on Jaret and Kelly (duet album) until that comes out then I band I manage ‘Not Ur Girlfrenz’s’ album comes out. Bowling For Soup tour coming up, er, Jaret goes to the movies Podcast is going into its third year, new Rockstar Dad podcast just started last week.
Kelly. That’s just till January!
OR. Any time off?
JR. Nah man I’ll rest when I’m dead. I’m taking five days off in December to take my little guy on his five year old trip, I try to all the kids on a trip when they turn five, by themselves. So we’re taking him on a little Disney cruise and he’ll love that, so five days and then straight in to the Christmas season.
Bowling For Soup return to the UK in November for a Pre-Xmas shindig, while the Jaret and Kelly duet album should be out in the new year. To keep up to date with all of Jaret’s podcasts, tours, releases and live dates go to https://www.facebook.com/jare
Read last years Heartbreak and Hilarity and Bowling For Soup live at Brixton reviews below!