So with that said, if lead guitarist Chad Gilbert wants nothing more than to play a few video games backstage before a show, who are we to stop him?
“I’m just sitting around playing video games, [this is] interrupting my busy life of game play,” he jokes. “No, I’m just teasing. I’m about to go on stage.”
When we sat down with Gilbert, New Found Glory were on the last leg of their US tour and packing their bags for a trip Down Under. “The last time we were down there was at Soundwave, so it’s been a couple of years. I’m ready to eat all of the smashed avocado toast and drink all of the local coffee.”
This whirlwind tour that will see the band play eight shows in eight nights is a must-see for any self-respecting NFG fan as they celebrate their 20th anniversary by playing two albums in full every night from their much-admired catalogue of early hits.
“We will be playing every record from the first ten years of the band, so in Melbourne we will get to play all six albums over the three nights, and we’re very excited,” Gilbert says. “We will also be doing meet-and-greets before the shows. They’re some of my favourite times.
“We get a lot of older fans that come up to us and tell us about the first time they saw us and stuff like that. It brings back a lot of memories and emotions. We chat about a lot of fun stuff. Even some of the different venues we play, some of them we’ve been playing for years, so we always try to share a story or something on stage, if we can,” he adds. “There’s definitely a lot of time to reflect. It’s nice.”
Twenty years is a long time when you consider they were teenagers when they started writing and playing music together, and while this tour will be a blast-from-the-past for their loyal fan base, Gilbert insists New Found Glory will continue on – although they might sound a little different in the future.
“We have no plans of giving up, but our approach to writing music has changed as we’ve gotten older. When you’re younger and still growing up, you worry a lot and sometimes your choices might be determined by something else, whether it’s insecurity or caring about what other people say,” Gilbert says. “I think that goes away with age, and I think that’s the difference in our songwriting now.
“If you listen to our new album, Makes Me Sick, songs like The Sound of Two Voices have a Paul Simon-like island vibe and it might not sound like us at first, but then, once you really listen, it becomes New Found Glory.
“Same thing with the track Barbed Wire,” Gilbert explains. “It has this synth line and it sounds very ‘80s. It has this sort of John Hughes element, almost like a Breakfast Club soundtrack vibe to it. When we first wrote it it felt a little different for us, but we liked it and we weren’t afraid of it, and I think that’s a good thing. It’s now about wanting to write from the heart. If it feels right to play it, we play it.”
While Gilbert is also unafraid to reveal he still loves his PlayStation, he admits his days moonlighting as ‘Captain Straightedge’ — frontman of the International Superheroes of Hardcore, a side project for all the members of the band — are behind him.
“That was a time and a place that was super fun, but that’s not happening again anytime soon!” he laughs. “We put so much into New Found Glory now that we don’t really have time to spend putting on capes and masks, you know?”
