25 years of Heartache & Hilarity: An Interview with Jaret Reddick from Bowling For Soup: “What am I going to do?, Travel the world and still be doing fart joke songs at 45?”

Bowling For Soup are one of the most enduring and beloved bands in pop punk. They have always stayed true to who they are and retained a dedicated fanbase throughout everything. They write some of the catchiest and happiest songs and yet it’s still hard to believe that their breakthrough hit ‘Girl All the Bad Guys want’ is nearly 20 years old and the band themselves are approaching their 25th anniversary. We caught up with frontman Jaret Reddick at the tail end of last year on the bands Almost Christmas tour to discuss playing the U.K, working with Not Ur Girlfrenz, the current feeling in the band, how to stay relevant over such a long period of time, their new live album and dvd that was recorded at Brixton Academy and many more topics.

You have just wrapped up the Almost Christmas tour here in the UK. How was this tour for you?

Jaret: It’s been awesome. The fans over here are so great to us, they always have been. It’s been awesome to go to some markets we haven’t been to for years, we were here in February as well so there’s always a little bit of risk in coming to the same country twice in one year, especially when you are playing bigger places but it’s been great and we have had great crowds. It’s good to be out on the road with Patent Pending again,it’s been a while since we have been out with them, also Not Ur Girlfrenz are here experiencing their first tour outside of the U.S as well.

After this the next time the U.K will be seeing you will be at the Reading & Leeds Festival in the summer. I want to say this will be your first time playing in about 16 or 17 years, so how is that going to feel?

Jaret: I really don’t know, but it’s been a very long time and we’re anxious to get back there because it’s a special place for us because the first time we ever played in the U.K was at Reading & Leeds so there is a special place in our heart because we were catapulted into the music world over here and we just fell in love with it.

Have you compared the lineups from last time you were there and the current one?

Jaret: I can tell you that last time we played I knew every band on there and this time I don’t really know that many, which is both showing my age and also showing how much we survived (Laughs)

I mean 2019 marks the 25th anniversary of Bowling For Soup which is an incredible feat in itself because the industry has changed so much in that time. Firstly how does it feel to have been around that long and secondly what do you think is the key to your survival as a band?

Jaret: Well…First of all it’s amazing. It’s not something you set out to do, it’s something I always used to joke about “What am I going to do?, Travel the world and still be doing fart joke songs at 45?” Here I am doing exactly that. We really owe it all to our fans for all the support, our fans are lifers and they started out with us and now they have kids and they are bringing them along as well. I think the key to our longevity is that we are very true to who we are and we don’t put on any sort of face, it’s just about being us and who we are and I think because of that people relate to us and also think especially with the U.K our humour founds its niche, the fact that we are funny and don’t take ourselves too seriously really caught on over her, we’re equally as big in the states as we are here, but it’s more condensed here so you can accomplish more in a shorter amount of time. The really cool thing is that we have managed to cast our hook over a few different generations so to speak, we have also manged to bring in new fans while keeping the old ones.