Bowling For Soup

L-R : Jess, Gary, Suzi

 

On a freezing cold Thursday afternoon, in the centre of Wolverhampton Jess and I, armed with our trusty tape recorder and our friend/volunteer photographer, Toni, went into Wulfrun hall to warm up and do an interview with Bowling For Soup's drummer, Gary Wisemann. Sit back and get ready to read about mechanical bulls, fridges, and leather catsuits

Suzi - In the sleeve of Drunk enough to dance, Jaret is riding a mechanical bull, was he actually riding it, of was he cheating and had it turned off?

Err, it was on. We all actually got to ride the bull and it is a very unpleasant experience, I've never done it before but the way they tie your wrist its like turning your palm up and then sticking it in your crotch. And then they turn the bull on and so you're just punch yourself in the nuts till you fall of, it hurts

Jess - How long did you stay on for?

Erm, not long, I took a couple of punches to the nuts and fell off as quick as I could and it hurt but, no we all actually got to ride it and they just took a picture of us all hanging out, watching him for the thing. Erik likes it though; he's ridden them since. And I think he's gay.

Suzi - Do you not ride them very often then?

No that was the only time I've never been on one. I've seen the mechanical bulls before, but, they're in a few place in Texas but err I hope I never have to do that again.

Suzi - You wouldn't recommend it then?

No [laughter from the room] I do understand though why cowboys wear really tight pants. Cus we're all wearing out baggy pants, and it hurts cus your basically getting just rub burns on your legs.

Jess - You must use your phones a lot when your over here, do you phone back to the US a lot?

Our what?

Jess - Phone, mobiles

Oh yeah, erm we all have different cell phones in the states than we do here, and its quite expensive if we use them here to call home, but you know since they do the free incoming minutes we just call home and then be like, "hey call me back!" hopefully they have a chance to call you back or else you never have any idea what's going on, but no yeah being on the road all the time you have to use your phones, so its pretty much always in your pocket

Jess - Do you use them to go on the internet when your on the road?

Chris has one that does that, and the phone service that I use doesn't offer it yet, and I'm really pissed off about that cus I'd like to check my email but no erm Chris has it, so the rest of us have to wait to get to hotels or internet cafes of something.

Suzi - Do you get lots of presents from fans?

In the UK lots more than in the states. Erm, in the states kids are starting to bring us stuff but over here kids are very generous.

Suzi - Do you have to bring extra suitcases to put them all in?

Yeah erm actually last time over was the first time whenever we came with simple plan in February was the first time we ever like going home, couldn't take everything. We had to go and buy an extra suitcase actually

Toni - Do you keep them?

Yeah everybody I think has a spot in their house where they have souvenirs or whatever, you know the toys that people brought us

Jess - Do you get really weird present?

Sometimes yeah, a couple of weeks ago I got socks with like embroidered, and had my name and I was like ahh I never thought I'd have my own name on my socks. But I guess that's not too weird, but I didn't think I'd ever have names on my socks.

Suzi - I suppose juggling boobs are a norm (we had been hanging out earlier with some fans who had brought Gary some juggling boobs)

Oh yeah I got a first pair of them the other night. Pretty fun. Feel real! [everyone laughs]

Suzi - Do you think your ever do a co headlining tour with simple plan? Because they become pretty big now

Err we would love to man, they're one of our favourite bands to tour with. We started touring with them in January last year, and then did the February tour with them over here, and then we went back to the states and started dong all these different festivals, and they were on some of them that we were on and then we did warped tour all summer together so basically we got to tour half the year with them. And we've just become great friends, so I think defiantly in the states we would support them. Here I don't know how big they are but we'd love to do anything with them. Its fun you know they have the same attitude as we do, after the shows over you stay up all night until the beers gone and then try to break stuff, and get naked its fun!

Jess - How do you choose your support bands? Or is that left to someone else?

Erm it's kinda starting to get a little bit weird, but erm like over here we pick bands that we like or are friends with. Like right now we have Farse and we brought Never Heard Of It over. Erm we've toured with Farse before and we really like their music, we like the guys they're cool to hang out with. Erm in the states you know just kinda, it's a little bit political so you know its kinda like "hey well scratch your back if you'll scratch our back" or you know "if we scratch your back someone else will". It gets to be a big mess, but you know we try to take people that we have a good time with that will party and drink with us

Suzi - Jaret said he likes the darkness do you like them?

Yes I do I think they're awesome. When we came over for the Kerrang awards and Reading and Leeds festival, the first day we did a bunch of press and everybody's like "oh what do you think about the darkness?" and we were like, "I have no idea who that is" everybody keeps asking us about them so were like, "oh we gotta check it out" so we got to see them at the Kerrang awards they're great, awesome, party music

Suzi - Would you ever dress up like them for a show?

I'm a little bit chubby I don't think the tight leather looks so hot on me

Suzi - Not even for Halloween?

Maybe for Halloween yeah maybe

Jess - That's tomorrow. Have you got anything planned for Halloween this year?

Erm not yet but we did hear that there's a sex shop across the street so we might go like buy some school girl outfits or something, I don't know

Suzi - Yeah and dress up like that and do baby one more time when you come on

*Laughs* that would be good

Suzi - How drunk did you all get at the Kerrang awards was it really bad or what?

It was pretty bad

Jess - Do you remember what you did?

Erm I do now but I didn't after it happened until erm. it was about a month ago we were in the states touring and we were on our bus and we're watching MTV 2, and Good Charlotte was hosting the all things rock, and they go "coming up bowling for soup", and were like "oh crap holy moley", we'd never seem ourselves on MTV in the states before, so we're all sitting there watching and they start telling stories about us at the Kerrang awards and I was just like "oh crap I walked around for 45 minutes with my balls out my pants" you know and then err you know, Chris was pulling the tablecloth off of tables and breaking glasses and yeah it was a pretty good night.

Suzi - Do you do typically rock star things like throwing fridges off of balconies very often? (Back in February Chris and simple plan threw a fridge off a balcony after a show)

Erm you know you get into a rut sometimes. And sometimes it happens a lot and then sometimes it doesn't. Erm, I think we've only thrown like one fridge off a balcony, but we've thrown lots of phones and chairs and lamps and stuff like that off balconies, but the last few months we've been pretty good, I guess I think we're all a little tired. Either that or we're growing up

Suzi - Did simple plan have to pay for the fridge eventually?

I think they had to pay for some of it yeah, I don't really know how it broke down, but yeah I think they had to pay for something.

Toni - is it fun throwing things off a balcony?

Its fun throwing anything off a balcony. I mean its like peeing off of high places and throwing stuff and braking it its fun you know, I don't know if its just a guy thing or if its cus we're stupid

Jess - How do you feel about your roadies being almost as well known as you?

I think its great, we hired some people that we like hanging out with. They're fun characters they're all either funny or you know have some kind of characteristic that's cool, so its cool that the people here picked up on that and liked them too

Suzi - How did the sweet in sweet Charlie come about?

Erm Charlie is not even his real name but err, his mom has started calling him Charlie now and that's pretty interesting. Erm, the sweet parts easy, there's old jerky boys, you remember them, like phone call prank telephone people and they had some prank where they called people sweet Charlie, erm so we added the sweet onto the Charlie. And err one night we were out drinking and we were drinking kamikaze shots, and Charlie went from sober to completely hammered in like 30 minutes and through that we somehow started calling him Charlie

Suzi - Why don't the rest of your people have names like that?

All of our crew has nick names, none of the band really does but we call Greg the ginger we call err, we have a new guy Tony he's T-ride Edo is called the blue duke cus he used to have blue hair erm gosh what else our new road tour manager is called Shawn Baggins, Baggins isn't even his real name. So I guess the band doesn't really have nicknames but everybody else does.

Jess - Did any of you use to have nicknames when you were younger?

Not really when I was in high school everybody called everybody by their last name so I was just Wisemann. But that's not really a nickname

Suzi - How do companies go about getting your songs on soundtracks?

Erm its kinda different types, sometimes its our labels trying to get it onto the soundtrack, sometimes it's the movie or the producer, somebody actually wanting our song. So you know its different ways, we have a guy who does just work for our label, and just tries to get movies to get our songs. Like this last, the Britney song we did for freaky Friday they came to us and said, "hey we want you guys" so it works both ways.

Suzi - Had you already done that and then they came to you?

No they came to us, and they had already shot the scene where the actors are singing along to the song and so we erm had to do it at the tempo that the band had done it and the key that the band had done it so we were kinda limited in where we were going with it, but originally the band Travis you know them? [Nods from us] ok they had a recording of them doing the cover and so they wanted us to do a cover of his cover, I guess so it kinda gets messy but

Jess - We've had David Blane over here in a box, suspended in London, what do you think of illusionists like him?

I think he's pretty cool. I just wanna know where did he poop in the box like you know cus it's a clear box

Suzi - He had a little bag or something and a little curtain that he'd pull over

Yeah or was there just like a pile of doo-doo over there [points on ground in corner] its kinda gross

Jess - So you don't think it's stupid or anything, cus he got egged and stuff over here

Yeah I'd say more power to ya you know, I mean I'm not gonna go on a hang yourself in a box diet to try and lose some weight, but you know, well if it works for him them its good I don't know I think he's done some cool stuff though, but I don't know about standing in a box for 40 days is that what it was?

Suzi - 44

44!

Toni - Did you see Derren Brown Russian roulette?

No

Toni - Oh this illusionist put a bullet in a gun and just you know "oh I think its this one click no it isn't I think its this one bang" he stupid. He didn't kill himself, which would have been good

Wow

Jess - Do you think you'd ever do anything like that to get money or anything?

Probably not

Jess - Can you do any magic?

No I cant do any magic, actually our new tech err Tony can do the little hovering thing, so that's kinda cool to watch. But I don't have any talents like that I'm just a boring normal person

Suzi - Who plays the drums...

Yep

Suzi - What sort of visa do you have to get to come over and tour in the UK?

Err it's pretty simple just you have to get a work permit and our booking agency does that for us so I mean we don't really have to do much. Just show up and I know other bands that come over and they just show them their passports and say that they're coming over to visit, but you can probably get in some trouble for that

Jess - What have you got planned after this tour?

After this tour we're going to have two weeks off cus our manager's getting married, and some of us are gonna go to Jamaica for his wedding. That'll be nice I can't wait, and err after that we have a few more weeks on the road in the states, and then we're gonna write and record a new record through the winter. Which I'm happy to not be on the road this winter cus we've nearly died the past two winters driving through the mountains and the ice so lets not go for the third time.

Thanks to Gary for the funny and interesting interview. You can check out more of Bowling For Soup at www.bowlingforsoup.com. Bowling For Soup are back in the UK in march, to promote their album which will come out shortly after that. So keep checking their site if you want to know when tickets will be available.

Originally conducted for www.justwannarock.com