What Success Means Now

Jaret has a Grammy nomination. He has toured the world repeatedly. He has played songs to audiences larger than the entire population of some of the towns where Bowling For Soup began. He has written music recognized within two notes and sung a television theme known by people who could not name the band that recorded it.

He headlined Wembley Arena after believing there might not be many giant professional firsts left.

Then he followed it with a tour of freaking English castles.

Those things matter.

They are not the whole measurement.

Success is his wife.

It is his children becoming people he admires.

It is his family—both the one that raised him and the one DNA testing unexpectedly gifted to him.

It is a band that continues after more than thirty years and still chooses to spend its downtime together. They eat together, go into the venue together, work out together, drink coffee together and often share the first beer of the day.

It is a crew that calls him Dad.

It is a parent telling him Bowling For Soup gave them something to share with their child. It is a listener saying a song helped during a divorce, a funeral, a panic attack or a lonely drive home.

It is making someone smile.

It is helping another person feel less alone.

It is the privilege of continuing to make music after the industry, personal upheaval, changing tastes and time itself have given him countless opportunities to stop.

Jaret still wants to improve at piano. He wants to take Casey to Italy. He wants to become healthier—not to chase an old photograph or squeeze back into a suit from 2003, but to remain active, present and ready for the possibility of grandchildren.

He wants to keep being a good father.

He wants Bowling For Soup to continue making the best music it can.

He believes there are still country songs inside him.

And he wants the people who encounter his work to understand that he means it.

The jokes are real.

So is the gratitude.

So is the love.

Fifty years from now, Jaret hopes people remember Bowling For Soup as good people who made smart, funny and heartfelt music—songs that helped listeners through both great days and terrible ones.

But his personal legacy is even simpler.

He wants the people he loves to know he loved them.

He wants the people who worked beside him to know he appreciated and protected them.

He wants the audience to know he never took their support for granted.

The story began with a kid in Wichita Falls, a borrowed Walkman and a song that arrived at exactly the right moment.

More than four decades later, Jaret Reddick is still chasing that feeling.

And every time he writes a song, makes someone laugh or lets another person know they are not alone, he gets the chance to pass it on.