Success Gets Complicated

By the time Bowling for Soup made The Great Burrito Extortion Case, the recording budget was significantly larger than anything the band had access to before.

So they spent it.

They planned sessions in Atlanta, Tulsa and Los Angeles, simply because they could!

Before recording, Jaret had also tried to outsmart the traditional album-release delays by doing the artwork first.

The original title was All My Rowdy Friends Are Still Intoxicated.

The band went to Las Vegas and shot all of the photos for the album before they recorded a note.

Wedding dresses.

Full makeup.

An Elvis wedding.

Erik passed out on a couch.

Naked in a bathtub.

The Las Vegas sign.

Then, one afternoon in Atlanta, with recording already underway, Chris looked at the silent television in the bar before heading to the studio and read a news ticker aloud:

“Burrito extortion case.”

The story involved an attempt to extort Taco Bell by claiming a mouse had been found in a burrito.

Chris turned to everyone.

“Wouldn't it be funny if the album were called The Great Burrito Extortion Case?”

Jaret immediately called Jeff Roe.

“We're changing the album title.”

FFROE pointed out that they had already shot the photos for the packaging.

Jaret was unconcerned.

“It'll work!”

Somehow, it did.

The record also produced one of Bowling for Soup's most enduring songs.

Jaret wrote “High School Never Ends” with Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne.

Jaret brought the title.

Adam brought an idea about society's obsession with tabloids and celebrity.

They combined them.

Adam also forced one other change.

Jaret still wrote lyrics by hand in stacks of notebooks he carried along with his laptop.

Adam told him to put away the notebooks and open his laptop.

Jaret resisted.

Adam insisted.

That was the last day Jaret routinely wrote lyrics on paper.

The first recording of “High School Never Ends” went too far into keyboards and pop production. The label pushed back.

Jaret called Adam and sent him the recorded version.

Adam stripped the track down, put the guitars back where they belonged and returned it with the basic message:

“This is what it's supposed to sound like. Simple.”

By the time the album was ready to come out, however, a lot more than the music had changed.

The Hangover years had taken their toll on the touring operation. Parts of the crew environment had become unhealthy. People were drinking too much, some were struggling to do their jobs reliably, and the bus—the place the band was supposed to live—had become increasingly uncomfortable for the band itself.

It was time to make changes.

Most of the crew turned over.

One person stayed.

Dave Hale had joined in 2005 selling merchandise and had notably stayed outside the chaos around him. He took plenty of grief for it.

He also kept showing up.

Over the years, Dave would become Bowling for Soup's tour manager and one of the most trusted people in Jaret's life—someone his wife, parents and bandmates trust to make sure he gets where he needs to go, stays safe, and gets home again.

The management structure changed at almost exactly the same time.

Jaret eventually had to end his working relationship with Jeff Roe.

It was one of the hardest professional decisions he ever made.

FFROE was his best friend and had helped build virtually every piece of Bowling for Soup's career. But the working relationship had become increasingly difficult and unproductive.

Rainmaker Artists was the obvious choice to step in as management. Bowling for Soup had already worked closely with Mike “Swin” Swinford and Paul Nugent through the booking agency the two owned together, as well as Swin's merchandise company, Bandwear.com. The management team became complete when intern Sarah Steinbrecher joined as the band's day-to-day contact. She quickly proved herself to be the person who could somehow keep all of the moving parts moving, earning the nickname “Champ” from Jaret—short for “Champion of the World.”

They remain Bowling for Soup’s management team and also manage all of Jaret’s music, voice acting and just about anything else he gets himself into.

So when The Great Burrito Extortion Case arrived, Bowling for Soup was trying to launch the follow-up to the biggest album of its career while almost everything around the band was changing at once.

The crew was changing.

Management was changing.

The label itself was changing.

File sharing and digital sales were reshaping the record business. Departments appeared and disappeared. Radio budgets shrank. Bowling for Soup would build a relationship with someone at the label, only to watch their role disappear or see them move somewhere else. Even Howie Abrams, the band’s longtime A&R guy and one of its biggest champions, was eventually let go. It was getting harder and harder to feel like Jive Records was still home.

Into all of that came “High School Never Ends.”

The song became the first single and began gaining traction.

Then radio feedback arrived.

Some programmers thought it sounded like “1985” the sequel.

The BFS team found the criticism baffling. Bands were usually rewarded for having a recognizable sound.

But in a reactive—and, in hindsight, premature—move, Jive shifted its attention to another song: the ballad “When We Die,” which the label believed could be enormous.

“High School Never Ends” never received the full push Jaret believed it deserved.

Years later, people involved in that decision, including the head of promotion at Jive Records, told him they regretted pulling support too quickly.

The song went on to become one of Bowling for Soup's most popular songs anyway.

For Jaret, that missed opportunity still hurts more than many of the much more dramatic things that happened later.

While Bowling for Soup's relationship with the traditional record business was becoming less stable, an opportunity arrived from a completely different world.

Jay Stutler from Disney Animation's music department contacted Bowling for Soup's management about a show being developed called Phineas and Ferb.

Its creators, Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, were Bowling for Soup fans.

Jaret eventually flew to Los Angeles for a meeting.

The night before, he saw Steel Panther at the Key Club.

He woke up hungover enough to consider skipping the Disney meeting entirely.

Swin informed him that was not happening.

The visit to Disney began with lunch, where Dan pulled out the entire Bowling for Soup CD collection for Jaret to sign. This was the beginning of a beautiful relationship!

After lunch, a boardroom sign welcomed Jaret Reddick of Bowling for Soup.

Jaret watched unfinished episodes of the show with its creators.

He fell in love with the music, its characters and the show itself immediately.

The initial request was for Bowling for Soup to perform the theme and for Jaret to expand the short version into a full song that could be played on Radio Disney and used to promote the series.

The song evolved into “Today Is Gonna Be a Great Day.”

Disney also knew Jaret had acted as a kid and was interested in voice acting.

He auditioned for a member of the fictional band Love Händel and ended up becoming Danny, its lead singer.

Years later, Jaret's evidence that Phineas and Ferb had truly made it was not ratings.

It was grocery shopping.

First he spotted Phineas and Ferb macaroni and cheese.

He texted the creators.

“You've made it.”

Then he stumbled upon Phineas and Ferb Band-Aids.

Correction.

“NOW you've made it.”

The show introduced Bowling for Soup to an entirely new generation and reinforced the Radio Disney successes of “1985” and “Punk Rock 101.”

Kids who had never heard of “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” knew the voice singing the Phineas and Ferb theme.

Today, those same kids are grown and still coming to watch the band that sang what Jaret will happily call the greatest animated-show theme of all time!

The next era was Sorry for Partyin’.

Jaret met Linus of Hollywood and immediately knew he had found his creative soul mate. They wrote together. They bonded over hair metal, the English comedy band Bad News and the Jerky Boys. After their first session, Jaret canceled an entire trip's worth of other writing sessions simply because he wanted to stay and write more songs with Linus.

Jive brought in A&R person Teresa LaBarbera Whites and even brought Howie Abrams back as a consultant.

Linus and Jaret signed on to produce the album, and their new moniker, Jarinus, was born.

The band, Dave, Linus, and engineer Peter McCabe made Wire Studios in Austin their home for the next month.

They recorded all day, went to the same bar every night, barbecued outside the studio, made ridiculous little videos with early flip cameras and genuinely believed they had made the best Bowling for Soup album yet.

Jive liked the record too. But they wanted another single.

Jaret was exhausted. Eighteen songs recorded. And they wanted another single.

He and Linus eventually came back with “No Hablo Inglés.”

The label approved it.

A video was made, directed by former Sum 41 drummer Steve-O.

Promotional material was printed.

Some stations had already started playing it.

The official radio push was to begin after Christmas.

Then Jive dropped Bowling for Soup.

It was the end of 2009, making the Jive/BFS relationship almost exactly 10 years long.

Jaret's first call was to Butch Walker.

Butch encouraged him. That's what Butch does. The band didn't need the label anymore.

That same day, Jaret rented a hotel room simply so the band and Dave could have a private meeting.

He gave them two choices.

“Wrap it up.”

Or:

“Turn it up.”

Everybody chose “turn it up.”

Everything was going to be okay.