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NEW FOUND GLORY |
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NEW FOUND GLORY: GET A LITTLE WARPED THIS SUMMER…
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by Corine Jurgerson
Jordan Pundik will be the first to tell you that successful bands don’t magically appear on the music scene overnight.
This
24 year-old lead singer of Warped Tour 2004 co-headliner
New Found Glory knows firsthand about paying dues. Although this
year marks the sixth time that NFG appears on the Warped Tour, the group
certainly didn’t start out playing the main stage. The Pop/Punk band formed back in 1997 down in Coral Springs, Florida. Pundik described the scenario: “We all knew each other from going to shows. I knew Steve our guitar player from high school… and Ian too. We met Chad because he used to sing in a band called Shai Hallud. We met him by going to their shows and we met Cyrus by going to shows, so we all kind of met up in that sort of world. We just formed and wrote songs, and we were playing locally for a long time and the shows kept getting bigger and bigger locally. So we thought let’s take it to the next level. We rented a U-HAUL truck and illegally took it out of state and would drive to New Jersey to play for two people at a pool party and then drive to Kentucky and played in a garage and we just built it from there and kept touring and touring and touring. That’s how we got to where we are now, by touring a whole lot.” NFG got their big break when the band Midtown passed along their CD Nothing Gold Can Stay to Drive-Thru Records. Drive-Thru heard the album and loved it, then flew to Florida to watch the band play at a sweet sixteen party and at a skate park. They signed the guys that day. Next on the agenda was a re-release of Nothing Gold Can Stay, followed by the movie theme cover album, From the Screen to Your Stereo. Soon the band would be bumped up from Drive-Thru Records to MCA Records based on touring and record sales. By September of 2000, the band released a self-titled album which hit #1 on the Billboard New Artist Chart, sold over 500,000 copies and became certified gold. Sticks and Stones debuted at #4 on the Billboard Top 200 chart in June of 2002, and that album is now nearly platinum. With so much success, one would think that these guys have turned into egotistical rock stars, but that just isn’t the case. How would you feel if you flipped on MTV only to see your band’s video on TRL? Pundik describes the feeling as ‘Surreal.’ “I always have my mom and my grandma call, ‘You’re on TV!… You’re on TV!’ Its just weird because I’m sitting in my living room and I turn on the TV and its me on the TV. Yeah, It’s awesome, but at the same time I’m like ‘Man, why did I wear that shirt?’ Or… ‘I’m singing like shit!’ I’m always criticizing myself, because I’m my worst critic.” Fans are still a huge priority to the guys, and they like to make that known. “We still go out even in the big places and sign autographs and hang out until everyone is gone.” Pundik explained that New Found Glory’s respect for fans was influenced by the band Green Day. “They are one of those bands that we kind of learned from. They are super huge, but are still the same people from when they were nothing to what they are now. They still do cool things for their fans and they are always interacting with their fans and stuff even to this day.” Recently, NFG followed suit by taking a break from playing the large arena circuit to perform at some of the smaller clubs that they played when they were first starting out. This May the band launched their latest disc, Catalyst, spawning the single, “All Downhill From Here” which has received quite a bit of airplay on radio stations across the nation as well as on MTV. Pundik explained that the word “catalyst” means something that brings change. “It’s meaning is something that’s new and different. On this album, we were not afraid to do whatever felt right as far as what kind of guitars to use and what sounds to use and stuff like that. On Sticks and Stones and the self-titled, we kind of just did it really raw. We did it on purpose. We wanted it to sound good, but we didn’t want it to be too overproduced. We wanted it to sound like how we sound live. So we just recorded two guitars, bass, I did a couple of harmonies, tracks on the songs, and that’s about it. We never really used our Producer, Neal (Avron), to his full potential. Neal is amazing. He can write string arrangements, play piano… he can play trumpet. So we never really used him to his full potential, and we were like you know what? Let’s just do whatever we want. So [for Catalyst] every song, we used different guitars, we used different amps. For me, I can’t really do crazy different stuff, but there were a couple of songs where for each song, I used a different microphone based on the feeling of the song and the attitude of the song. I was able to hold the mic and walk around the whole studio and really get into it. Kind of like how it would be live. Holding the microphone and just kind of belting it out.” The fan response to Catalyst has been overwhelming. “A lot of our old fans that kind of disappeared when Sticks and Stones came out have come back. I’ve been seeing a lot of old faces at our shows. There were a lot of kids that I haven’t seen in a really long time that were singing all of the words to the new songs. It’s [the response] been really positive, everyone’s been really digging it and playing all of the new songs live has been really awesome too… seeing all of the kids go crazy.” Currently, the band is gearing up to head out on the Warped Tour, which is celebrating its tenth year on the road. Fans catching the guys at the Warped Tour can expect to hear new tracks off of Catalyst mixed in with some of their older stuff. The guys hope to change their set list every couple of weeks to mix it up a bit. NFG will also play the much buzzed about Warped Reunion Tour, which will take place August 20th at Foxboro Stadium in Boston. To all of their fans, Pundik expresses his appreciation. “Thank you for being with us for this long. And for the fans that came back… thanks for coming back!” |
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