New Found Glory are one of the leaders when it comes to pop punk and have been for over a decade. The band are coming to Australia for their co-headlining tour with Taking Back Sunday on the back of their seventh studio album Radiosurgery. We were lucky enough to speak to Jordan from the band about the tour and their latest release.

You recently had a bunch of dates in the UK, how did you find that tour?

Dude, the tour was great. The shows were awesome, they were all sold out before we got there which was amazing. It was also kind of a different tour for us because of the bands that were on the tour, bands like letlive. and The Blackout and another UK band called While She Sleeps, they’re all kind of heavier bands, maybe expect for The Blackout they’re a little more rock, but it was just a different kind of tour for us with mixed sounds of music which was cool.

Looking through your setlists and see you have a handful of covers, as people would know New Found Glory aren’t new to this but was there ever a time where you guys felt worried that you wouldn’t do a song  justice if you covered it?

Oh yeah, for sure. I remember trying to figure out songs for the last cover song record and we wanted to do Kiss From A Rose by Seal and after we were trying to work it out it just wasn’t doing it justice and it wasn’t sounding cool. Then we wanted to do [long thinking pause] I think it was by Whitesnake… [sings] Here I go again on my own. Is that Whitesnake?

Yeah I’m pretty sure it is.

Yeah well we were trying to do that and I just could not hit the notes [laughs]. I don’t know how those dudes from those hair bands could sing that high. And they all could!

With seven studio albums in the arsenal how do you go about putting together you setlists?

Well we listen to our fans and we kind of know what people want to hear and we’ve been known to do kind of pick your setlist kind of nights where people just drop off songs in like a bucket and we’ll just pick the songs. I don’t know, we just kind of pick what goes off live. If it’s not fun live we don’t play it really, unless people are saying they want to hear it like that song The Story So Far we only play it when people are calling it out over and over and over. I personally like playing the more upbeat and energetic songs just because it makes the shows more fun.

It was announced a while ago that you decided to stop making music as International Superheros Of Hardcore, what lead to that decision?

Honestly, we’re just too busy with everything else. I feel like the Superheros surpassed what it was actually meant to be, it actually went farther than what we thought it was going to be which was really cool. No one thought it was going to get as popular as it did. I think it was pretty cool, but on the other hand we have so many other things that we need to do with New Found Glory and our own personal things.

Onto your Australian tour, how was it decided that instead of bringing Pop Punk’s Not Dead to our shores you’d do this huge double headliner with Taking Back Sunday?

I don’t know, I think it was just timing. We always want to do shows with Taking Back Sunday and we haven’t been back to Australia in a while and I think when we do do the Pop Punk’s Not Dead Tour, because we’re trying to bring it everywhere, but when we do do it we want to make sure that it’s awesome. We want to make sure that everyone can do it, because we want to try and take the same bands that we had in the states. Taking Back Sunday arec great, I’m stoked to be touring with them but with Pop Punk’s Not Dead we really want to make it like a big event. If we do it we want it to be like a real tour, when we come out to Australia not play like four of five shows we want to do like a lot of shows.

What are you guys expecting to get out of the Taking Back Sunday tour?

We’re just pumped to play there again, it has been a while. We’re going to play some new songs and get out there. It’s just an excuse to be in Australia [laughs]. We love going there, we love being there and hanging out in Australia and we love playing in Australia so it’s like a vacation whenever we’re there.

On the whole Pop Punk’s Not Dead idea, are you surprised with how massive the response has been to the whole concept and how much people are embracing it?

Yeah I think it’s really awesome, and it’s really cool because there are so many new up and coming rad bands that are like flying the flag for pop punk. It’s really rad that young kids are starting to like really embrace it you know.  It’s funny because there are so many people that are older that are like my age that liked pop punk and they kind of transitioned into hipper cooler things, or what they thought was cool and now they’re kind of getting back into it is a cool thing because of bands like Transit or even Cheap Girls, I mean Cheap Girls are kind of 90s but their record I would consider a pop punk record, and even like Brand New, their first record was like a pop punk record. I don’t think it went anywhere, pop punk was never uncool, it’s been around forever, Ramones where a pop punk band. It’s really cool looking back on it and I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon. As opposed to like a metal band that mixes dubstep, I don’t know how long that can be cool for, you know what I mean.

Anyone that has seen New Found Glory live has nothing but good things to say, how much effort and preparation goes into your live shows?

Well we don’t really practice as much as we should [laughs].  When it comes to preparation, the preparation for us is more like “what songs are we going to play” “what are we going to do to make this tour special” because we don’t want to go out there and play the same songs every tour, every tour we always try to add at least a few songs that we didn’t play in the last one. Last time we played in Australia we were doing Soundwave so we didn’t get a really long set so this time when we come back and do the co-headline thing we’ll be able to play a lot more songs that people want to hear.

Radiosurgey came out last year, having been out for a while now personally how would you compare it to your previous work?

Well every record that we put out I say is my favourite but honestly Radiosurgery is one of my favourite records, it’s a record that I’ve always wanted to do, just straight forward pop punk, it’s upbeat and you can sing along to all the songs and it has this constant flow to it. Thats kind of like what we were trying to do you know, we were listening to all the bands that of got us into this kind of music. Listening to, like I mentioned before, Descendents records or a Ramones record, and we wanted to like do that but not make it sound outdated and make it sound like a New Found Glory record. It’s definitely one of my favourite records.

It’s been well documented that with Radiosurgery you guys wanted to incorporate sounds and influences by old punk bands that you grew up listening to with the New Found Glory sound that everyone knows, listening to the album, would you say that you achieved this goal?

Yeah definitely, I think so for sure. I was doing an interview before this one and he was saying how someone told him that our new record a bit more slowed down and alt-rock. What did you think of it?

I thought it was very much a pop-punk record

Yeah and he said the same thing, he said “someone told me that and then I listened to it and it’s totally not like that.” I just thought that was a weird thing for someone to say, if it was about our record Coming Home then I would have understood how because that one was more a slowed down kind of record. But I don’t think this record was slow, it’s not like super fast like you’re listening to a NOFX record but it’s definitely not slow. It’s funny people’s different opinions about things.

A lot has changed since you first started making music, has the band ever had to make any sort of adjustments to cope with the changing music scene?

I don’t really feel like we have. We’re not a jaded band and we don’t want to be washed up and we want to stay in tune with what’s going on and in tune with our peers and with what is going on in our scene so we’re all music lovers. We want to stay in on what’s going on so we pick up young bands to tour with that we think our cool and up and coming and we want to show them to people. That’s why with every record we try to not make the same record you know. We don’t go into the studio and say “alright, the formula for My Friend’s Over You works that was a big song for us” we don’t go in there and try to write twelve My Friend’s Over You songs. We just go there and write what we’re feeling and what’s going on in our life and I feel like that really reflects in our music and that’s why we’ve been a band for as long as we have been because people can relate to it so easily. It’s weird with some of the people hating on some of our records. Some people were like “I wish there new album sounded like Coming Home” but when Coming Home came out everyone though it sucked [laughs].

As you mentioned your last trip to Australia was last year’s Soundwave Festival, the festival kicks off again this weekend, do you have any words of wisdom to any of the bands embarking on the festival?

Yeah, there’s often times where bands think they’re better than other bands and everyone is in competition with each other, but fuck that. You’re in Australia playing with some awesome bands, try and become friends with them and hang out, that’s what I’m all about, I like going and hanging out whether or not people like them or not, I just like to go and hang out with people and meet people and have a good time. My words of wisdom is fucking have a good time and a not care about all that other bullshit.

Do you have any last words for us?

Yeah I say this all the time, but thank you to all the fans over there, without them we wouldn’t be able to play in Australia so we can’t wait to get over there.

NEW FOUND GLORY AND TAKING BACK SUNDAY ANNOUNCE CO-HEADLINE AUSTRALIAN TOUR
Guests: The Maine & This Time Next Year

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