New Found Glory, Old-School Cred

There are a lot of speculations made as to why some bands make it to the top and others don't, but what it almost always boils down to are talent and work ethic. Regardless of any given trend sweeping the nation, regardless of Billboard charts and MTV airplay, if musicians don't take care in crafting their music and aren't vigilant in getting in front of people to play their music, they've got no chance.
Take Florida natives and rock's newest stars, New Found Glory. According to guitarist Chad Gilbert, these leaders of the new-school rock pack - Cyrus Bolooki, drums; Ian Grushka, bass; Steve Klein, guitar; Jordan Pundik, vocals; and Gilbert - have never concerned themselves with much more then being a band and dealing with everything that goes along with that - writing music, playing in front of fans and handling their business. They've got a good, honest and friendly reputation among their fan base, their brand of tuned up new school rock is currently the soundtrack for many young lives, and though it's not that big of a deal to them, their latest release, Sticks and Stones, made it all the way to #4 on the Billboard charts.
On the eve of a sold out show in Chico (the latest in a string of sell-out dates), guitarist Gilbert took a few minutes before sound check to field a few questions about the band's rise to the top and how they plan to stay there.

When people talk about New Found Glory, they throw around the term 'new school' a lot, but you guys have been a band since 1996 or '97. Are you new school?
Yeah, I kinda agree that we're new-school. I mean, since we've been a band there have been a lot of newer bands that have been coming out that people say sound like us, and kids do tell us that we've influenced their bands. But that's crazy because I feel we're still a new band. Plus, we kind of gave ourselves that 'new-school' name in interviews because, you know, we were influenced by hardcore bands and other bands like Rancid and NOFX - the Fat Wreck stuff and other punk from the early- and mid-'90s. I mean, that stuff is why we play the music we play today. We call ourselves new-school because all the bands that we love were influenced by The Clash all the other old-school bands, which I think are great bands, but it's not who I listened to when I was growing up. So I guess that's why we're called 'new-school.'

As far as Drive-Thru Records is concerned, you guys are kind of old schoolers. Has the band changed at all since you first signed with the label in 1998?
The way we're running our band has always been the same, but we're getting more popular, we're playing in front of more people and more people are buying the record, and that's awesome. As far as the ride up, it's been really cool. Drive-Thru has been really supportive, they were the first true believers in our band, they were like, 'We freakin' love your band! You gotta go on tour, we'll get you a van, c'mon, you gotta do it!' They gave us the drive, and you know, they were right - it worked. We just got moved up onto MCA, but we're still involved with Drive-Thru all the time. We take out Drive-Thru bands on a lot of our tours, and we're just trying to help them out because they gave us the drive to follow our dreams. Back when we first started with them, if Drive-Thru sold 500 CDs in a week, that was a lot for them. If an indie or a punk band sold 500 to 1000 CDs in a week it was like, whoa! So we were doing about 300 CDs a week at the time, and we were so excited to hit 350 or 375. Now, four years later, because of us and Midtown and some older Drive-Thru bands' successes, a new Drive-Thru band will put out a CD and sell 30 or 40 thousand records in the first week. It's really cool, 'cause I feel like we kinda helped build this thing.

Your latest album, Sticks and Stones, hit #4 on the Billboard charts. You have to be selling hundreds of thousands of records a week to get those kind of chart numbers. How do you react to something like that after being elated to sell just 350 CDs a week?
Honestly, you don't know how to react to something like that. We found out the night of the first day the album was released, that we sold 30 thousand copies of that CD in the first day. It was crazy. We just all gave each other a little pat on the back and said, 'Okay. Well, let's keep going, stay on the road and keep building.'

It doesn't sound like you guys put too much on the whole numbers-and-charts side of things.
We can't, man. Charts and magazines and critics and reviews, all of it - that's not what it's about. It's about being in a band and touring and playing in front of people, writing albums not just writing songs, and staying on the road. That's just what we focus on. We know a lot of bands who get caught up in all that and they get ruined because they're worried about parts of the business that aren't really important. I mean, sure, I know a lot about the business, but who cares about that? When it comes to the music, just be a band, write music, have fun and go on tour. If you get too wrapped up in it, it just won't last.

Do you see a lot of that happening?
We see it with our friends' bands, but not with us. Before and even after we got signed to Drive-Thru we were just really independent, we ran everything ourselves and we didn't really have a manager, but since we had done it for ourselves for so long, we just kinda knew what was up. Then when we did get a manager, we just learned more. So the label knew that we already had a fan base and that we had our stuff together, so they didn't really have to get too involved. They just told us to do our thing, which we've always done. But a lot of our friends, who don't have the base that we did, get too involved and it ends up being not good for them. So yeah, we've seen shady things happen, but that doesn't happen with us because we're too involved in our band.

The show you're playing in Chico sold out weeks in advance. Is that happening a lot?
Yeah, and what's really cool about this tour is that we're just trying to hit everywhere, and we're playing so many different sized venues. Today, we're playing San Diego and there's gonna be seven thousand people here. In Chico we're playing in front of 700. We don't just like playing at big venues, we like to have some small and personal shows. I mean, we need to play big venues so that everyone will get in and fans won't be mad that it's sold out and they can't see us, but at the same time, we've got to keep that intimacy. That's what's really important to the band because that's what started it all for us.

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