Bowling For Soup & Less Than Jake: Back For The Attack Tour

With their thirty year anniversary as a band on the horizon in 2024, Texas’ favourite punk rock export Bowling For Soup continue to grow their global fanbase and expand their success year on year. Also dubbed the crown princes of pop punk, Bowling For Soup - frontman and guitarist Jaret Reddick, fellow guitarist Chris Burney, drummer Gary Wiseman and bassist Rob Felicetti have proved that nothing, not even a global pandemic, has slowed the demand for their unique, humour filled live shows and upbeat, heartfelt anthems.
Songs such as High School Never Ends, Punk Rock 101, 1985 and of course the Grammy nominated Girl All The Bad Guys Want resonate as much today as when they were written and are proving extremely popular in the modern streaming world. Their 2022 album, Pop Drunk Snot Bread, a play on the cultural reference “pop punk’s not dead”, was heralded by fans and critics alike as the band’s best release in fifteen years. Millions of streams and YouTube views for songs like Getting Old Sucks (But Everybody’s Doing It), I Wanna Be Brad Pitt and the global smash Alexa Bliss (dedicated to WWE’s own multi-time world wrestling women’s champion) show that Bowling For Soup can still run rings (and riffs) around their younger contemporaries. The album also features songs like The Best We Can, Wouldn’t Change A Thing and the positive mental health anthem Hello Anxiety, where Bowling For Soup show they can do both serious and reflective, with a BFS heart at the core. 
It's a testament to the bands' enduring appeal and a fanbase that continues to grow day after day - evidenced by their 100 million streams on Spotify in the year 2020 alone. Finding their niche back in the 1990's would be tough when the musical climate was in serious shift. "We were just the stereotypical, small town guys with nothing else to do - starting a band to keep ourselves out of trouble" recalls frontman Jaret Reddick looking back. There was certainly no trend to follow, every other band seemed to be genre jumping to try and catch "the next big thing" without knowing what "the next big thing was", leaving the members of Bowling For Soup with no option to just go out and have fun. Brought up on a heady diet of 80's John Hughes Movies, LA Hair Metal, Steve Martin comedy routines (which spawned the band's name) and hook laden punk rock, BFS hit the ground running on the simple blueprint - have a good time and pretty soon, everyone else will join in!
Bowling For Soup are a band who've proven time and again that they can move with the times throughout a period of turbulence for the music industry. From their DIY roots, through to being on a major record label for many years (Jive Records) and being very successfully independent with their own label for over a decade, they are a band who've found success in every way. ‘We're in control of everything now. If we decide we wanna do something, we just do it - we don't need to ask anyone’s permission. It also makes you feel super proud when you do something yourself and it’s a success’, reveals Reddick.
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Bowling For Soup were playing to the biggest crowds of their career. Over 20,000 people witnessed their sold out 2020 UK tour with Simple Plan and they've sold out arenas alongside Steel Panther. Headline appearances at recent editions of UK festivals like Slam Dunk and Reading and Leeds have gone down a storm. At Reading Festival 2019 the crowd overflowed out of the stage with fans peering for a glimpse of "BFS", while their appearances at the final editions of the US Vans Warped Tour brought enormous crowds to every show, no matter what time of day the band were performing.
With the world experiencing live music again following COVID in 2022, Bowling For Soup’s enduring live appeal saw fans return in droves for huge tours in both the UK and US, many making a “BFS” show their first taste of live music since the pandemic. Whether it was huge theatre shows with Lit and The Dollyrots (UK), Less Than Jake and The Aquabats (US) or the sold out UK singalong with Jaret and Rob acoustic tour, the demand to see Bowling For Soup live in the flesh is bigger than it ever has been. 2023 sees the band return to play festivals and shows in mainland Europe for the first time in many years, alongside huge slots at the UK Slam Dunk Festival, while multiple US tours are in the pipeline. A Second chapter of their greatest hits, Songs People Actually Like Volume 2, is due to land late this Summer. Frontman Jaret Ray Reddick is also enjoying new adventures with his journey in the world of Red Dirt Country Music with his debut solo album Just Woke Up.
While the music industry and the world at large is ever evolving, Bowling For Soup have prided themselves on moving with the times, keeping up with the latest ways to stay in touch with their fans (Jaret is now a huge star on TikTok) and get their music out there to as many people as possible. For generations of fans, there has always been a Bowling For Soup song for every occasion. They’re the band who make you smile and they’re the band who will pick you up when you are down, and as their song says, they wouldn’t change a thing.  

From sweaty club shows to uproarious festival dates, LESS THAN JAKE’S deeds are best measured in the smiles they’ve generated for life-long fans and new listeners alike.

Uncharted, the ska-punkers’ brand new 7 song EP released by longtime label Pure Noise Records, should help keep those smiles tattooed on the faces of their fans. The new material is stacked with loud guitars, booming bass, thunderous drums, those distinct vocal harmonies, and the one-two punch of the trombone and sax.

These seven tracks see the band conquering new musical territory, while holding true to the classic LESS THAN JAKE sound.

Indeed, LESS THAN JAKE —guitarist/vocalist  Chris DeMakes, bassist/vocalist Roger Lima, trombonist Buddy Schaub, saxophonist Peter “JR” Wasilewski and drummer Matt Yonker — may have been at this for over three decades, but with the energy and spirit of this new EP, you would never know it. 

The recording sessions were helmed by Jason Livermore and legendary drummer/producer Bill Stevenson (Black Flag, Descendents, ALL).  Stevenson and crew harnessed LESS THAN JAKE’s urgency and helped capture their frenetic live energy on this eclectic collection of new material.

So, what’s next for Less Than Jake? One thing is for certain - their consistency.

While the tendency now is for legacy acts to announce farewell and reunion tours, LESS THAN JAKE have never even taken a summer off. 33 years performing and the band is more visible than ever. If you’re looking for a rocking good time, look no further: LESS THAN JAKE doesn’t just bring the party, they are the party!

There was a brief moment when recording Exercise Your Demons that things didn’t seem great for CLIFFDIVER. The Tulsa, OK seven-piece – lead vocalists Joey Duffy and Briana Wright, guitarists/vocalists Matt Ehler and Gilbert Erickson, bassist Tyler Rogers, saxophonist Dony Nickles and drummer Eliot Cooper – were having a great session with producer Seth Henderson, as they had on 2018’s At Your Own Risk EP at Always Be Genius studios in Indiana. And then their lodgings fell through. But instead of worrying about where to stay and what to do, the band simply resorted to their favorite non-musical activity.

“It was a real low point,” remembers Wright, “but the guys were just playing disc golf. I was sitting there stressing, like ‘How can they play disc golf?!’, but I realized that that’s really fucking it, isn’t it? That yeah, this sucks, and it’s never going to be okay, but I’m going to be okay because I’ve decided I’m going to be okay. It’s resilience – and if you own your shit, it’s painful, but no-one can take that from you. That’s why the record’s called Exercise Your Demons, because while you may not be able to exorcise them and get them out of your life, you can train them and get them under control.”

That’s the attitude at the core of this album, and one embedded deeply into its nine genre-defying (but also unashamedly emo) songs. The follow-up to the band’s first two EPs – 2018’s Small Hours and the following year’s At Your Own Risk – Exercise Your Demons picks up where those EPs left off, building off the band’s homegrown success which has seen them share stages with K. Flay in Tulsa and the likes of Hot Water Music, The Wonder Years, Spanish Love Songs and more at last year’s iteration of Fest, get airplay on Tulsa’s esteemed radio station 104.5 The Edge and sign with SideOneDummy. But it also flings the door wide open musically, making this debut fell-length quintessential CLIFFDIVER.
“This is the first recording that really captures us,” says Duffy. “It was a cool opportunity to change, reinvent and just get weird with it.”
“We definitely haven’t painted ourselves into a corner musically,” says Wright, “but we also wanted to establish that we’re an authority on emo – especially for me, from a representative standpoint.”

That representation is at the heart of CLIFFDIVER’s identity, matched only by the band’s intentionality. Already known on the Tulsa scene as a soul singer, Wright was asked to join CLIFFDIVER permanently after featuring on 2020’s single “Gas City”. One of many reasons for that decision is what her joining the band signified. They realized they could plug a representational gap.

“I’d always thought I couldn’t make the music I like because my voice wouldn’t work,” she says. “I’m also a girl, a big girl, a black girl, a mom, and someone in their 30s. But I stopped judging myself by those metrics. When we were recording “Gas City”, they asked why I hadn’t ever been in a band and I explained that my voice is different, and that that’s intimidating for me and it might be intimidating for people to listen to. So a big part of me joining CLIFFDIVER and the rebirth of the band is off the back of that representation and being intentional about what people are taking in and what we’re putting out there.”

“Bri and I also aren’t your prototypical people fronting a band,” adds Duffy, who is 34 and a father. “We’re not Machine Gun Kelly – I’m just your dad’s friend.” 

Another major part of Exercise Your Demons is how unflinching it is when addressing mental health issues. Both Duffy and Wright have survived suicide attempts in the past, and they want this record to offer hope and strength – if not a literal lifeline – to anyone who hears it. It is, by its very existence, a testament to what happens if you don’t let your demons win.

“Neither of us should be here,” admits Duffy, who was diagnosed as bi-polar at 25, and who recently celebrated nine months of sobriety, “but we are here. We know what it’s like to be alone with the thought that the world would be better without you and we’re proof that it can get better. You won’t wake up one day and not be struggling, but I went from having a gun in my mouth at 24 to being here at 34 about to put my first album out. So I get to say: ‘Listen, I know how bad it sucks and it’s going to suck again, but you have what it takes to keep going.’ That’s the whole message – that you, too, are resilient. The things that were breaking you a year ago aren’t breaking you now.” 

That message is borne out through the narrative of these nine songs. A profound exploration of grief that takes place over a hedonistic weekend, the concept of Exercise Your Demons was initially inspired by a recurring nightmare Duffy had in which an ex-fiancée of his who had taken her life was trying to convince him to do the same. He told Ehler about it, and the pair soon wrote what turned into “Death Is A Wedding”. Smack bang in the middle of the album – which was mastered by Will Yip – that song is a bleak blast of poppy post-hardcore/emo which sees Duffy’s late ex resurrected through Wright’s stunning and wondrous vocals. The tracks on either side of the song take you through that hedonistic weekend, and the various stages of grief, as well as every type of emo – a barrage of what the band accurately term ‘new nostalgia.’

Opener “New Vegas Bomb” is a frenetic explosion of not-so-youthful exuberance filtered through noodling guitars, chugging riffs and joyous horns, before “Who Let The Hawgz Out?” soundtracks an abjectly dark night of soul with a burst of vital musical energy. Elsewhere “We Saw The Same Sunset” is a beautiful, hushed lament wrapped in existential despair that runs into “Death Is A Wedding”. But then there’s a shift in attitude with the uplifting “Super Saiyin Al Pacino” and, later, the introspective relief of “I Left My Heart At Lemon Lake”, whose soaring melody soundtracks the lifting of the darkest darkness. It all ends with “IKEA Strikes Back”, which focuses on Duffy’s joy at being a father while also capturing the purpose of this album.

“Because we have this talented group of musicians around us,” says Duffy, “we’re able to trick people into talking about their mental health without them at first noticing what we’re doing. And I get to show my son that, no matter how life kicks the shit out of you to where you think there’s no hope, there is a ‘but’, there is hope and redemption, even for a burnt-out, used-up party kid like me. I’m looking forward to a future that I’m building that wouldn’t be here were it not for CLIFFDIVER.”

“That’s our mission statement for the band,” agrees Wright. “We feel that responsibility as people who have been there. So we’ll sit in the mud with you and talk about it, and we hope our little bit of courage can explode to something that’s bigger than us. Because it’s not about us, it’s about what we’re talking about and the connection that we call the fabric, because it creates strength. We’re just trying to make a bigger net to catch more people.”