Interview: Chad from New Found Glory

Posted on February 27, 2012 by L&G

Last week, we got the call to speak to New Found Glory member Chad. Always up for a chat, our videographer Zilla said “Yeah, bro. I’ll take care of it.”

Below is how it all went down:

I can’t say I know much about Coral Springs, Florida, what was it like growing up there?

Growing up there was like, watching some like t.v show ya know? There was nothing but sports. There was just like jocks and the mall. If you weren’t a jock you were a weirdo, and we were the weirdos. We went to middle school and high school together and played in this band. Everyone else played sports and we played music, and that’s it. It was like something you would see in a 90′s teen movie or something.

So, there wasn’t much of a music scene there?

There was a music scene in Fort Lauderdale in Miami and that’s where we played. We grew up in Coral Springs and Coral Springs is a suburb of the bigger cities, so there was a really good music scene, a lot of punk bands, hardcore and ska bands. There was everything and everyone played together, it was cool.

What were you listening to around the time you were recording your EP back in 1997?

That’s kind of how New Found Glory got its sound and why it was different than other bands. We all listened to different stuff. I was listening to lots of hardcore. Steve and Jordan were listening to bands like The Ghetto Kids and Texas Is The Reason and more bands like that. Our bass player Ian would listen to NOFX and Unwritten Law and that kind of stuff. So when we all came together I guess our goal was to kind of create music that would please all of us. So I think that’s why there’s different elements and that’s why New Found Glory sort of evolved into our own sound.

So, since that EP how has the writing process changed?

Honestly, besides technology changing – like being able to talk about ideas through ichat – everything else has pretty much stayed the same in the sense that I’ll come up with a vocal melody and an idea for the music, give my idea to Steve who will then write lyrics, come up with an idea and then bring it back to me and sort of get it bouncing off the rest of the guys in the band and then it becomes a song. It’s always been that way.

You guys have sited Blink 182 as an influence over your career. What was it like working with Mark Hoppus on Not With Out a Fight?

It was really cool ya know? It was nice of Mark because he had done a couple of records and then we were at a point where we were in between albums figuring out label stuff. But we had a lot of songs, so we went to Mark like “Hey you’ve been producing records, we’ve got these songs and you know we’re gonna get signed. Do you wanna make this record and then we’ll shop it around. And thats what we did. So it worked out where, since he was a fan of our band, he knew that we would write a record that a label would wanna sign. He had faith in us and we had faith that he would be able to make a record that sounded good, and that was it. It was a cool working together sort of thing.

So were you guys mates with him before working on that record then?

Yeah, we met Mark years ago, it was kind of funny. In 2000 when our self titled record came out. We were on tour in a van and our cell phone rang and it was Mark Hoppus. He was like, “Hey man, I love your band, your band’s awesome. I’ve got your CD and I’d love to tour with you guys one day. And we we’re like, “Yeah, that would be awesome”. So he reached out to us a long time ago. We hung out with them and became friends. When they released Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, they took us on tour. So that was really cool.

Another big guy you got to work with was Marky Ramone at Bamboozle last year when you played a Ramones tribute set with him. How did that get tee’ed up? Was it an insane experience or what?

Yeah man it was really crazy because his band changed music. It was just incredible, it was awesome. He’s the last living member of the Ramones – besides Tommy Ramone the first drummer who is still alive – but pretty much Marky is the one that everyone considers as the drummer. Yeah it was really cool, we got to practice in New York and that was really fun. I think that was my favourite thing was just practicing. Being in that space and learning together, that was the most fun.

I have to ask of course about your side project The International Superheros of Hardcore. What started that? Did you guys just want to play hardcore or did you just want to dress up?

Ah we just wanted to dress up .(laughs)

Basically how that came about is we love hardcore music obviously, and we were living in a house in Malibu recording our Coming Home album in 2005. We would write songs all day and we just live in this house. So at night it would get kind of boring because a lot of the stores in Malibu close at 8 o’clock at night and well, you’ve heard of Malibu but there is nothing out there. And what there is closes super early. So we were living in this house and for fun at night we would just play these hardcore riffs and would scream a bunch of bullshit and then eventually it gave us the idea. That’s sort of how it came about, it was just because we were bored and living in that house.

You’ve actually done a bit of production work. I’m a huge A Day to Remember fan and am especially impressed with the sound on What Separates Me From You. How much production work have you done?

I’ve done a lot of stuff and produced a lot of bands. I did the two ADTR records, I’ve produced H20, Nothing to Prove Album, I produced the Terror album, Keepers Of the Faith. Ive done a bunch of bands. It’s really fun, I love producing when I’m off tour.

And what was it like working with ADTR? They seem like pretty cool guys.

Yeah that was a lot of fun. Jeremy is the predominant song writer of the band and me and him have a good thing working together, bouncing ideas off of each other. It’s just really easy to write with them and put albums together.

One more question to wrap it up. I’m a bit of a guitar head myself and there seems to be two types of guitarists. There’s the guys that are really into their gear and then there’s the ones who don’t really care about what they’ve got, just as long as they’ve got a guitar. What category do you fall into? Do you bring a lot of gear with you when you’re touring?

Nah, man. I have my guitars. I’m particular, I only play Gibson. But besides playing Gibson Les Pauls I play Mesa Boogie stuff. As far as gear I just have the one pedal that’s clean and dirty. That’s it. That’s all I need.

Thanks for talking with us, Chad.

Alright, awesome. Thanks, man.