Interview: New Found Glory

Alter The Press! managed to catch up with Cyrus Bolooki and Ian Grushka from New Found Glory before their sold out show at the House Of Blues in Hollywood.

The guys spoke to ATP about their 10th anniversary tour of the band's self-titled album, headlining Slam Dunk Festival in the UK this May, the follow-up from 'Not Without A Fight' and more.

Alter The Press: How has the 10th anniversary of the self-titled record tour been going so far?
Cyrus Bolooki (drums): It's been amazing.

Ian Grushka (bass): It's one of those tours where we knew all the bands ahead of time, so, from the first day of the tour, everyone was hanging out. Normally, it'll take about two weeks of the tour until everyone feels comfortable with each other. This time, everyone has been hanging out the whole entire time; it's been a lot of fun.

Cyrus: For me, I've been stoked to see Saves The Day every day. They are one of those bands where we've known longer than any of the other bands on this tour, they have been around for just as long as us, we toured with them ten years ago, and it's kind of sad that it's taken us ten years to tour with them again. It's awesome for us to see them every night, in addition to being on the show with all the rest of the bands.

ATP: It's like a 10th anniversary tour for you guys as well.
Cyrus: It's almost our 10th anniversary for our first tour with Saves The Day, a long time ago, yeah.

ATP: Wasn't there a big incident at the show in Reno, Nevada?
Ian: What happened was, we were playing, a fight broke out, we stopped in the middle of the song and said, “If you want to fight, take it outside” so we kept playing, but then stopped again for another fight. We stopped like four or five times where it was was fighting, fans on fans, security vs fans, fans vs security. It got ridiculous and we got so pissed off with everyone fighting, we thought fuck it, and we left. Later, when everyone settled down, they came back to get us, we then finished out the last couple of songs even though half the kids had already left and it was not a fun time.

ATP: What made you want to do this 10th anniversary tour?
Cyrus: We talked about it around our tenth anniversary as a band, we've been around for thirteen years, and we were saying we should do a show or something like that. That's where the idea came from. Obviously, we missed that, and here we are, three years later. The self-titled CD was so instrumental to our career, not just to us, but to a lot of kids getting into us, and it seemed like the right thing to do. We said we should play the whole record. Bring everyone back to the time, get a really good package together and we'll be having a lot of fun ourselves, doing something really special, that we don't always get to do, but still be in a tour like we always have, where kids can have a great time at the entire show.

Ian: Even though it's an older record, as a band, it's refreshing for us because you don't do a normal set like every other night. Even when this record first came out, and we played those songs, we never played them in order at a show, and it was a refreshing start for our band as well.

ATP: How has it been, playing the record in its entirety, every night?
Cyrus: It's been fun, it's different. I guess, the self-titled record has been out for so long, that we have played all the songs, just not in that order, so it's not really as if we needed to practice that much. What's fun for us, and the kids, is that everybody knows what's coming next, you literally will see kids singing the whole way through and the crazy thing is, we get through it in 25 minutes, so it's not like the show is halfway done. It goes really quickly.

ATP: With the songs being over ten years old, does it feel weird at all to play them?
Cyrus: I think if you take a song like, 'Hit Or Miss', we played that so many times in these last ten years, so it's not like we've been waiting for ten years just to play these songs again. Give it five years from now, for some of the records we recorded since the self-tiled, there are probably a couple of gems we've only played about once or twice from them, that we need to practice for those tours, if we decided to do them.

ATP: Did you choose Saves The Day, Hellogoodbye and Fireworks for this tour especially?
Ian: We picked the bands we wanted to tour with first, before we knew it was going to be the tenth anniversary tour.

Cyrus: Honestly, Saves The Day was the band we tried to get in the past. So, it's one of those like, the second it works out, we are going on tour, I don't care where it is, we just wanted to tour with them. We pretty much had them first locked in for this tour, and then filled in the blanks, but, like Ian said, we tour with bands we want to tour with, and try to have bands who we are already friends with, so it's not awkward, and fun times. It's been really good for us.

ATP: A while ago, Chad (Gilbert - NFG guitarist) said new International Superheroes of Hardcore material (NFG side-project) was being written. Is there any update on this since then?
Cyrus: Nope, nothing we can elaborate on.

Ian: There will be another New Found record before an ISHC record.

Cyrus: You can put that in ink.

ATP: Have you started work on the follow-up to 'Not Without A Fight'?
Cyrus: Not really, but we have started talking more about it today. We know where it's going to be, we are doing this tour in the US, have some international stuff coming up, then it looks like, towards the second half of this year, we are going to write and record that. Hopefully, early next year, like the spring, we'll have something out.

ATP: You've recently been announced to headline the Slam Dunk Festival in the UK. You guys looking forward to coming over?
Ian: Yeah, with all of our friends' bands too. Insanity.

Cyrus: It's almost like another tour like this, where we know everyone. The line-up is crazy because, over there, they've pretty much managed to put together the cream of the crop of this entire genre over the last six-seven years.

Ian: It's going to be off the hook.

Cyrus: This line-up is going to be ridiculous. It's pretty much going to have everything you ever thought about in this genre, for the last six-seven years, it'll have it in that one show. Whoever is on that show, it'll definitely represent years of this genre, from old to new.

ATP: Are you doing anything else whilst in the UK, besides Slam Dunk Festival?
Cyrus: As of right now, no.

ATP: What is the plan straight after the 10th anniversary tour?
Cyrus: We go to Japan and Australia, do some festivals; New Zealand, then some random dates in the US, like universities, leading up to Slam Dunk. We’ll probably take a little break, and then go back into the studio.

ATP: Anything you would like to add?
Cyrus: Thanks to ISHC for letting us do this interview, and not taking it themselves.

'Not Without A Fight' is out now on Epitaph Records.

- Jon Ableson