“We’re not in a band to record records; we’re in a band to do the music we love over and over and over again.”

In music, persistence is one of the most valuable characteristics of a successful career; take a look at New Found Glory, the American “godfathers of punk rock,” and members that can certainly be counted among the most pioneering and persistent groups to emerge from the late 90’s.

After an 11-day trip rocking out across the British Isles, the band is touring again, hopping around the Northeastern US along with several other punk rock groups, including Fireworks, Candy Hearts, and We Are In the Crowd. I was lucky enough to get ahold of one of the members in between sets, even as Candy Hearts was checking sound in an adjacent room! After a quick patch through from their label, I had the pleasure of speaking to NFG drummer and overall great guy Cyrus Bolooki about tour updates, personal perspectives, and some of the developments following the release of the band’s most recent album earlier in October, Resurrection.

Vinyl Mag: New Found Glory is one of the rare punk bands that has been going strong since 1997; how has the genre changed since then?

Cyrus Bolooki: Oh man, I think it’s changed a lot. Obviously, you have tons of new bands—bands that are younger, and bands that have changed styles. They’ve gotten heavier in some ways, and poppier in a lot of ways…but I think one thing that hasn’t changed is that there’s this cool energy, and almost like a kind of camaraderie in a lot of the pop punk bands, especially live. When you go and watch a lot of pop punk bands, they just bring it on stage, and that hasn’t really changed. The music may have changed slightly—I think it happens with any style of music—there’s always a little deviation, and some of them catch, some of them don’t. Again, overall I think it’s the attitude in general. It’s pretty much the same as it’s always been, and I think that’s one of the reasons why this genre is going to stay around and has been around for so long.

VM: Did you ever expect that you’d still be doing this 17 years later?  If you weren’t in a band, what do you think you would be doing?

CB: Yeah, that’s the million dollar question. What would we be doing? I don’t know if any of us really know the answer to that, because fortunately for us, everything got started at a young age right out of high school. I don’t know if we were at the point in our lives to know what we would have done with our lives had we not done this band. Yeah, did we think it was going to last this long and go this far? Not at all!

You know, we started this band, because we loved playing music—we loved kind of going to local shows, and obviously we set very small goals for ourselves and kept achieving them while raising the bar. We never thought, ‘oh, we have to be that band that’s on MTV!’ or, ‘we’ve got to be that band that sells hundreds of thousands of records!’ Just for us to start in South Florida and get out of that state and then get out of the country…and, you know, get on the radio, get on MTV—these are all really big things that we never thought would happen. We’re very fortunate.

VM: What advice would you give to your younger self now? What advice would you give to a young band starting now?

CB: Yeah, that’s also a tough one, too, because I feel like times have changed a lot. You know, we were talking earlier about that, how pop punk has changed. But music – the business side of it – has changed drastically. So things that we did when we started were great then, but may not be the same now.

So, like for us, it was a very DIY mentality, and we took a lot of that from pop punk and just punk in general…we didn’t worry about others promoting us.  We got out there and did it ourselves. Even if that meant going into the parking lot of a local show and having demos that we burned or taped or whatever—that we made, and we passed those out…always trying to advertise on your own. I guess nowadays that could translate into having a social media presence and trying to connect to people in as many ways as possible.

One thing I would say is that you’ve got to work hard.  Nothing in this world comes for free. Even with things like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where it’s so easy for you to reach a lot of people, you’ve got to understand that even though you might have a lot of followers, they may not really be your followers, you know? It might just be a title. You have to get out there and do the groundwork. Try to promote yourself, play shows, and write songs, and just get yourself out there.

VM: Chad said in an interview with Fuse that “Ready and Willing” off of Resurrection is one of the best New Found Glory songs ever written – do you agree?  

CB: Well, that’s definitely a bold statement for him to make. Um, I’m going to back him up because he’s my bro, and I’m going to say that it is one of the best songs we have ever written. Musically, I love it, but I think it’s also got a really good message, lyrically. In some ways, it parallels the entire story of our band. If you look at the lyrics, it really talks about somebody who does what they love and then has to question what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.

The entire song is really a question to the listener: are you ready, and are you willing to take on whatever it means to follow your dreams and do what you want to do? Obviously, you know, that was a question that…whether it was conscious or not, we answered that. We did persevere and we did push through, and…specifically with this last year and everything that happened with our band, we answered that question again.

But as we were growing up or even first starting this band, we weren’t huge or anything overnight—it was a lot of hard work! So, that’s where I’m going to say it’s definitely one of the best NFG songs ever written, because of the lyrics and the message that it’s sending. It’s very universal, and can apply to anybody.

VM: What is your favorite song from the album and why?

CB: What’s my favorite song? Actually, right now we’re playing five songs off the new record on this tour, and the one song we just started playing live is the song “Resurrection.” I actually love playing that song. It’s not necessarily the most powerful NFG song ever written, or even the fastest, slowest, or any of that kind of stuff, but it’s just got a great rhythm, and it’s extremely fun to play, and the crowds react really well to it.

VM: What is your favorite song to perform live?

CB: Yeah, I mean, of course it’s tough. We play 23 songs live every night, and on this tour specifically, besides our new songs…we’re playing a lot of…well, obviously, like, ‘hits’ if you want to call them that, but you know there’s songs we’re playing on tour that we…never usually play on tour. So, I’m enjoying all of it. New song — definitely “Resurrection,” and/or maybe “Selfless” — I actually really like that song as well. As far as all the songs we play live…I’ll pick a random one—“This Disaster.” We never play that song live, and we’re actually playing it on this tour. Even though it’s kind of slow, it’s very heavy, and I think [the audience is] very surprised to hear that song live.

VM: You said in an interview that playing live is what this band does best – can you elaborate on that?  What do audiences get out of your live shows that they don’t get out of listening to the audio?  What do you get out of your live shows?

CB: I think there’s on word to sum all that up: energy. There’s definitely this energy to our music in general when you listen to it on the record and stuff like that, but there’s a completely different type of energy live, and so…I feel like with any band, you can’t really form a full opinion about them…until you see them live. Their record could sound however they want it to, but when you see them live, it’s really happening. There is this energy, like…you combine the sound and the movement of what’s going on up on stage with the other kids around you or other bands around you singing all the lyrics, and it just adds up to something you can’t put on a record.

As far as doing what we do best is playing live? Yeah, I would agree with that. You make a record once every one or two years, but you play shows every single night, and if you can’t play live, and you can’t enjoy playing the same songs over and over, why are you doing this? We’re not in a band to record records; we’re in a band to do the music we love over and over and over again.

VM: What is it like recording and playing as a quartet now?

CB: So, it was a little different. I think where we had maybe…I don’t want to say hesitation, but it was a little scary kind of going into it. Actually, before we got into the writing process, and we had this thing called Parahoy that we did, which was a cruise that we did back in March. We had that scheduled before everything happened with the membership, and we went into it not knowing if we were going to sound good as a four-piece, but we decided to go ahead and rehearse that way to see how it would be.

We played like two or three songs as a four-piece, and…there were comments that we sounded tighter and better than before, so it helped having confidence going into the writing.

As far as the writing goes, it was very easy and relaxed. Jordan, Chad, and myself – we all live close to each other in California and would all hang out with each other once a week. Chad would have a guitar, I’d have a little recording setup, we’d record him playing some guitar, I’d go home, throw some drums on top of it in my home studio, bring it back, we’d write the lyrics…it was just this very easy, relaxing kind of meet up thing for a few weeks, and the next thing we knew, we had a lot of songs written.

Before we even got in the studio, we had 12 or 11 out of the 13 songs totally written. So it was very easy for us.  Everything kind of came natural, and it was really just us, like…pouring out what we were going through, and any kind of fear or anything that we had just came through in the music. That was a way for us to get over all that. I think we did a really good job of personifying everything that we were going through and just laying it all out there, and I think kids relate to that.

VM: Your new album [Resurrection] just came out. What has it come to represent for New Found Glory? How has the response been?

CB: The response to the record I think has been great. We’ve had kids say—well, I shouldn’t be saying kids, I should say fans—say that this record is the best that we’ve done in a long time…I think one of the things people really do kind of resonate with is the fact that, as far as the music, we seem to have gone back to riff-based songs, where on Radiosurgery, our previous record, it was a lot of power chords.

For this record, it was a conscious effort to get back to those riffs, and we also embrace the fact that we’re a four piece, so we really did rely on a guitar riff to kind of carry the song and not like a rhythm lead or any of that kind of stuff.

Lyrically, things have changed slightly. You know, it’s not 13 songs about girls, where most of our songs in the past have all been about relationships. There are a couple relationship songs on this record, but there’s also a lot of songs that deal with regular life questions, and a lot of things about how you overcome struggles; how do you get past things? Are you even living your life the way you want to? What are you going to do with your life? Are you okay with trying to push through anything to get what you want?

There are a lot of really cool themes on here, and I think that’s one of the reasons the reactions are so good for this record. It’s because people are seeing…not really a new side to us, but they’re relating to us in a way that they haven’t in a while.

VM: You guys are pretty quick to release new albums. What do you do when you have free time?

CB: Oh, we just make new records! No, I’m joking. Honestly, it feels like we don’t really take too much time off, but we did take a few months off at the beginning of this year, and that’s when we did the Parahoy cruise, things like that. But yeah, we knew last year – even before anything happened with membership – we knew that we were going to do a record this year, and you’re right, we try to do a record every two years.

It’s not like clockwork, but…you release a record, you go on tour for 12 months or 18 months, and then it’s time to kind of do it all over again, because we’re constantly coming up with random ideas or trying to write songs. You know, you want to stay busy in this industry, and we have no problem doing that. That’s how you continue to compete.

VM: Do you have any other creative outlets besides music?

CB: Me personally…I’m a big music guy, and I’m very much into recording and producing. So that side, like, the studio side, that’s a creative outlet for me. Otherwise, we stay pretty busy, so it’s also nice to kind of decompress at home, and…you know, not do anything related to music for a little bit. We all have families, but everybody’s got different things to do.

Chad’s into producing himself, and loves writing with other bands. As I said, I’m into the recording side of things, and Ian is really into sports memorabilia! I’m almost surprised to say this, but there’s almost a creative way to doing that as well. He’s very meticulous with his collection.  He trades things, he actively pursues different items in his collection…yeah, he’s really into it.

VM: How is the tour going?

CB: The tour is amazing! You know, all of these bands we’ve actually been on tour with in different capacities. Candy Hearts is down sound checking right now.  We played with them a couple different times, a couple different tours. They’re a great female-fronted band, great newer band; nice, kind of poppier-punk songs; kind of a throwback to 90’s alternative.

Then you have Fireworks, who we’ve been on tour with so many times. I love their style of music, and also they’re a little more eclectic than everybody, especially with their newer record.

We Are In the Crowd as well—we did a show with them in Europe last year, and that’s where we first met them. They’re a newer band as well, but also with Hopeless records; great band, and another female-fronted band, which is really cool. But, everybody is really fun.  We hang out with each other on our days off; we all try to meet up and go to movies or dinner, or whatever we can, and everybody is having a great time.

VM: You’re going to Australia for Soundwave in 2015! Any plans besides playing music?

CB: Do I have any plans? Um…no, I mean, Australia is amazing. Soundwave for us is maybe one of the most fun festivals you can be a part of.  The lineups are always amazing, and Australia itself is just a beautiful country. We all have a great time going out there.

I like the schedule of Soundwave, because they do it on weekends. It’s on these two different weekends, but you have this, like…week in between where all the bands usually stay in the same city, and they have what they sort of call ‘sideways,’ so all these bands play headlining shows in local clubs. You just get to, like, pick between all these bands, and go see your favorite bands. We’ll probably have our own sideways show, too. It’s just a really fun and a way to get a whole bunch of styles and great bands together so everybody can hang out and have a great time.

VM: What is next for you? 

CB: We’ll stay busy promoting this tour that we’re going to finish up here in a few weeks. We have Europe coming up before that, we’ve got Australia next year, and we’re already trying to make more plans for stuff in the US. I’m sure we’ll go international again. So, it’s crazy, because pretty much all of 2015 is already kind of…not necessarily fully booked, but at least locked down firm. So we will stay busy from this point in time. There’s going to be no time to really have a new record any time soon, but that’s a good thing!