Somehow, Bowling For Soup Are Still Having Firsts.
- Jaret Reddick
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
The first week of this tour started out absolutely insane.
In fact, it began with what might have been the craziest - and possibly the most
awesome - 36 to 48 hours in the history of Bowling for Soup.
Last Thursday, the band, Dave, and our manager, Swin, headed to Love Field in Dallas
to do something that still sounds completely made up when I say it out loud:
We played a live show on a Southwest Airlines flight!
Some people online actually thought the whole thing was fake, but I assure you, it was absolutely real. We had guitars, amps, a snare drum and two microphones, and we played a short set aboard an airplane while flying 35,000 feet in the air.
We knew things were going to be cramped, so I reached out to our friends at Godin Guitars. Just like always, they had exactly what we needed. Check out the new parlor guitars we’re playing in the videos!
After doing this for more than 30 years, it’s pretty amazing that there are still new - and completely ridiculous - things for this band to experience.
Landing in Vegas
We landed in Las Vegas that night, and early the next afternoon headed to the Punk Rock Museum for a listening party and Q&A celebrating our new vinyl release on the Punk Rock Museum’s record label.
The album is called Good Enough for the Girls I Go Out With!!, and it’s a collection of demos from throughout our career. It gives you a chance to hear what some of these songs sounded like in their infancy—before the final recordings, before all the production and, in some cases, before we completely figured out what the hell we were doing.
The listening party and Q&A were both a huge hit. I just love it there at the museum. The people feel like family, and it has truly become a home away from home for me.
Bigger Than You Think Tour: The Sequel
From there, we headed straight to the first show of the Bigger Than You Think Tour: The Sequel with Simple Plan and 3OH!3. It was great seeing everyone again, but the Las Vegas show almost felt like a placeholder for the tour because, immediately afterward, all three bands had to head to Long Beach for Warped Tour the next day.
Saturday is where things somehow got even crazier.
We played our Warped Tour set in the middle of the day, saw a ton of friends and bands we hadn’t seen in a while, and I did around two hours of press.
I will say, this might have been my favorite Warped Tour set of all time.
Those of you who saw us might remember Shiragirl from Gritty in Pink joining us onstage for the Wheatus anthem “Teenage Dirtbag” (side note: I was so bummed I missed the opportunity to say “Breakfast Club, Gritty in Pink, Even St. Elmo’s Fire”).
Here are a couple of things you probably didn’t know:
That was the first time we had ever played that song!
Haha! We legitimately just talked through it, learned it on our own, and played it so we could debut it at Warped Tour.
Also, I was wearing Brendan Brown’s actual hat from the original “Teenage Dirtbag” video Wheatus made 25 years ago!! He had also sent me his glasses, but let’s just say this…I do NOT have the same prescription as he did way back when! I would have fallen off the stage!
Warped is always a whirlwind on its own, but we couldn’t exactly hang around and enjoy the rest of the day.
We had another show to play...
Immediately after our set, the band and crew grabbed our guitars, piled into a crowded SUV and headed to the airport. We had to get to San Diego in time to play a Comic-Con block party for ThrillJoy.
There were really only two ways we could make it happen:
One was a helicopter.
Certain members of our families - and, admittedly, certain members of our band and crew - weren’t comfortable with that option, which was completely understandable. I would never make anyone get on a helicopter, or do anything else they felt was dangerous, without them being fully on board.
So we did the only other logical thing:
We hired our first private jet!
It had already been a very long day, and nobody was particularly interested in drinking. But when you get on your first private jet, and they have Buffalo Trace waiting for you, you have to have a toast. So we raised our glasses and celebrated the occasion with some extremely luxurious private-jet cuisine, including Corn Nuts, protein bars and, if memory serves, at least one Snickers.
We landed in San Diego, got picked up at the airport and drove straight to the Comic-Con event, where we played a full 75-minute set - our second show of the day. By the end of it, we were absolutely exhausted, but we also knew we had just experienced one of the coolest days in the history of this band.
It made it even better that my son Jack was there helping with merch at Warped Tour. Marco had flown in for the weekend, and our friend John James Ryan from Keep Flying is out here selling merch. We got to share the whole insane experience with them, along with the touring family we spend our lives with.
Luckily, the next Simple Plan show was right outside San Diego, so we didn’t have some massive overnight move ahead of us.
That show honestly felt like the real beginning of the tour. Everyone finally had time to say hello, settle in, and enjoy being back together.
One of my favorite parts of every night has been joining Simple Plan onstage to sing “I’m Just a Kid”. It is always a highlight for me, and I think it says a lot about the relationship between our two bands. That friendship and camaraderie have been there since 2002, and somehow it just keeps getting stronger.
Monday was a day off, and it also happened to be the birthday of “1985.”
I was so tired that I completely forgot to post about it, so let this serve as my official acknowledgment that “1985” turned another year older on July 27.
Sorry, old friend. I forgot your birthday.
We drove to San Jose and had a glorious day off in a hotel. My body was hurting quite a bit from all the travel and everything we had crammed into those first few days, so I got into the gym, spent some time in the pool, and tried to work out some of the damage.
Other than that, I stayed in my room, watched some true crime, caught up on emails, and did as little as possible. It was marvelous.
San Jose
The San Jose show the next night was fantastic. It’s always interesting returning to a city that holds some difficult memories from the early days of the band.
A long time ago, we had a San Jose show get canceled. Losing that show meant we didn’t even have enough gas money to get home. I honestly don’t remember how we scraped together enough money to make it back, but we had to cancel two more shows and drive home in the van with our tails between our legs.
It was one of those moments where you seriously question what you’re doing with your life.
All these years later, we came back to San Jose and played to an amazing crowd.
Well, eventually amazing!
You see, we alternate set times with 3OH!3. Each night, one of us starts the show, and the other gets the ALL-POWERFUL middle slot. In San Jose, it seemed as though the entire crowd was still standing in the merch line when we blasted into “Girl All the Bad Guys Want”.
But it didn’t take long for everybody to funnel in!
The San Jose Sharks mascot came out, and because it happened to be Shark Week, we wore shark hats from Bass Pro Shops during the photo opportunity. That entire night felt like a pretty great full-circle moment.
Reno
From San Jose, we headed to Reno for another fantastic show. My parents came in, met most of the bands and spent the day hanging out with everyone. We also made a bunch of social media stuff with the Simple Plan and 3OH!3 guys, which is always a blast.
Then we hit the casino.
For once, we missed bus call and Dave didn’t even get mad. We asked him for more time, and he just gave us more time. I had been doing pretty well at the craps table and was up a respectable amount of money. But I saw my friends sitting together at a blackjack table, and I wanted to go be with them. So I cashed out my winnings, joined the rest of the band at blackjack and proceeded to lose everything I had won.
I finished the night $25 down.
And that, my friends, is how they build those places. I have no regrets!
Day Off In Boise.
Today was another day off, this time in Boise, Idaho.
This particular day had been planned for months because Spider-Man: Brand New Day was having its opening-night screenings, and Rob is such a massive fan that he could not risk seeing a single spoiler.
We already knew which theater we were going to. We had the tickets well in advance. The entire band and crew went, along with Rafael, our photographer for this tour, and we had an awesome time.
By the way, I cried twice during the movie. So, you know…beware.
To summarize...
Now I’m sitting here in my Boise hotel room at the end of the first week, looking back at everything that has happened.
We played a show on a commercial airplane.
We celebrated a new record at the Punk Rock Museum.
We started another tour with some of our closest friends.
We played Warped Tour, took our first private jet, performed two shows in one day, celebrated Shark Week with an actual shark, lost our money in Reno and saw Spider-Man together on opening night (and we somehow managed to do it without Rob seeing a single spoiler)!
Through all of it, the thing I keep thinking about is how lucky we are.
After all these years, this band is still growing. The crowds keep getting bigger. The streaming numbers keep climbing. New people continue to find us, while people who have been around for decades are still showing up and singing every word.
Most importantly, we are still having firsts.
Tomorrow we play just outside Spokane, followed by a show in Montana, and then the insanity continues.
I’m exhausted.
My body hurts.
I may still be recovering from the Corn Nuts on the private jet.
But I wouldn’t trade this crazy life for anything.
-JR
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