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New Found Glory Interview with Cyrus Bolooki
by Myra H on 2006-11-03 |
New Found Glory Interview
Cyrus Bolooki, drummer
October 20th, 2006
1. Your tour has a great lineup. How did you choose which bands to take out with you, and how has that worked out?
Cyrus: Well, like usual, our band just tries to find people we’re friends with or people we think we’ll have a good time with. So, on this tour, Cartel, we actually played a couple shows with them. We did a couple of college dates. We had a great time with those guys, so immediately we thought about bringing them out, a lot. The Early November, we’d always had them on our mind for awhile. Plus, there’s the Drive-Thru connection, we’ve known them a long time. I mean, we met those guys years ago. It’s just when they were coming out to our shows, they were the new band on Drive-Thru and the opening bands, it’s kind of the same thing. We were friends with them or knew them through people that we knew. In the end, it’s great because we’re hanging out with everybody on the entire tour. It’s not like everybody’s just sitting on their own bus. So it makes it really fun for us.
2. How does it feel to have finally released Coming Home and hear the good feedback from fans and critics?
Cyrus: Well, it’s been awesome because this record out of any of our records, we took a long, long time to record it. We took awhile off before we even started the whole writing process. So we were really anxious to get it out there, and there seemed to be an even longer wait to put this record out, also. The feedback has been great; it’s been awesome from fans and just from random people that hear it. So for us that’s really good because we really feel strongly about this record being kind of the best that we’ve done. You know, we spent extra time doing it so it’s nice to hear people kind of notice that and they like the songs.
3. Let’s say that next summer you have the opportunity to headline an arena show or play main stage at Warped Tour. What would you choose and why?
Cyrus: I mean, you never know. I think we’d just have to make the decision when the time comes. But I do know that we’re looking to tour sometime next year and we could probably go either way. For us, it’s just going to be about trying to be on tour. So, all of our talks about tours are too early for me to even tell you what kind of tour it would be. The biggest thing is that we are on tour next year and we pretty much will be. We will try to go on tour next year around that time. Maybe even earlier, maybe springtime.
4. How do you think your sound has evolved over the years, and how do you plan to keep evolving?
Cyrus: Well, I think with us, our band, as with almost any band, you kind of get tighter, over through out the years, just from playing live so much. I think right now, we’re really, really strong as a group. Umm, musically and personally. But I think our sound has kind of evolved because we always have this kind of… New Found Glory, we have always had this kind of, I don’t know, it’s really hard to describe. Jordan singing over our music is almost always going to sound like sort of the same thing. But, this record, I think we went deeper. We had songs like… it was okay to be a little slower. But songs that are still kind of heavy in many ways and I think in a lot of ways the music on this record kind of takes it back to even before our self titled record, back to “Nothing Gold Can Stay”. If you look at that record, it was very diverse. It even goes in with the lyrics. Our lyrics have kind of gone from…Catalyst was really dark, really like kind of just that way of looking at relationships and everything. On this record, it’s more uplifting, the songs are more uplifting. They’re very anthemic with a lot of crowd sing a longs. We see that live, so our music has kind of matured in a way that it’s taken everything that we like about New Found Glory and take it to another level.
5. Apparently there are some rumors on your forums that you guys are going to pull a Blink-182 and not put out another album after this one. Would you like to debunk these rumors?
Cyrus: Yeah, I have no clue where that comes from. I know as far as any of us are concerned, we want to do this as long as we can. And you know, the biggest difference is that we took a lot longer to do this last record. We took a couple months off, and that was really cool for us, we hadn’t really done that ever since we’d been on the road. After five or six years of being on tour all the time and taking four or five months off, it’s nice. You’re like sitting on your couch for the first time ever and you know able to just like go to restaurants and movies everyday and not worry about having to leave again. So I think for us, that was really big. We needed that. And that’s probably why people thought that they broke up. We didn’t, we were taking a vacation. And then we went and lived in a house together for a couple of months, instead of rushing to be in the studio. And we took time recording the record and everything so it took longer. That’s the way we wanted to do it this time. It’s really good that the record came out this way. People like to talk. There were weird rumors about us going on tour with Taking Back Sunday next year. We called Taking Back Sunday and were like “what are you guys talking about?” and they were like “no, what are YOU talking about” and nobody had even said it. It’s just that people like to talk. But the Internet is good, as long as your name’s out there.
6. If you could be a character on The OC (or any other TV show), who would it be and why?
Cyrus: Hmm, that’s hard to pick. I’ll be the Hulkster from Hogan Knows Best, just because he’s the Hulkster. We actually met him awhile ago.
(Limbeck walks through backstage area on their way to play)
Cyrus: Hi Limbeck! They’re getting me back; I walked through one of their interviews. These guys are fun!
Limbeck: Hi everyone! Sorry to interrupt.
Cyrus: Oh, it’s all good. It’s for a good cause, you’re going to play.
8. If you could make everyone in the world read a few books, what would they be, and why?
Cyrus: I don’t think you want to hear the answer to this from me because I read the stupidest books ever. Growing up, I was never into fiction or any of those nice little stories. So, I would make everybody read a book called “All You Need To Know About The Music Business” by a guy called Donald Passman. It’s actually really good. Then I’d probably find two random books about recording music. So you’d hate me. There’s no Cliff Notes for those, kids! Cliff Notes are how I got through high school.
10. If you could be anyone for a day, dead or alive, who would you be and why?
Cyrus: I would want to be the president, actually. I want to know all those secrets I know those people know, and then go back to being a normal person and not have people following me around everywhere.
11. Let’s say many years from now New Found Glory is playing their last show and coming to an end. What would be the last song on your set list, one that you want to be remembered by?
Cyrus: I don’t even know if we would really have a choice. If it was something like that, we would probably end up letting the fans pick. That’s kind of what we’re all about anyways. But just thinking about the way people react, I think it would actually be “Hit or Miss”, just because that was the first big song. But a lot of people would probably disagree and say “My Friends Over You” and think that is the biggest song we’ve ever had. But it’s a good problem to have, no matter what it is. But don’t forget, there’s two endings to a show, usually. You have the last song, and then you have the encore and the last, last song. We could have “My Friends Over You” and then “Hit or Miss” as the encore. Or the other way around.
12. Where do you want to take New Found Glory in the future?
Cyrus: We want to keep touring and putting out albums, definitely. That’s kind of where we came from. We’ve been doing this for nine years now, thankfully. And we’ve been traveling to a lot of places and it seems like almost every year, we get to go to new places. And that’s like the big goal, besides putting out records and having more and more people hear about us. I want to go to different places in Asia now, and hopefully deeper into South America. Like, we went to Mexico for the first time last year, and supposedly we may be going to New Zealand in a couple of months for the first time. It’s just neat to travel like that. Kids overseas have to wait longer to see American bands. But then they end up showing their appreciation when you come over there because it’s just insane. The crowds in Japan are crazy. They grow so fast in between shows. We’ve only been there four times, and we’re playing in front of over 3000 kids a night when I remember playing the same club in Florida for like a year straight with only 4 kids there. Kids are just amazing. For us, it’s just awesome to be able to continue to do it.
13. Do you have any last words for your fans and supporters?
Cyrus: Just that it’s amazing to see everybody come back to these shows. The coolest thing about this tour is that it’s not just newer fans. There are kids like “oh, I haven’t seen you in a couple of years” and they come back and see us now. We have new and old fans coming out to the shows and everybody’s loving the set list and responding well to our new record so it just makes us feel great and it makes us want to continue doing this. So we will be doing it.
Thank you to Allen Wiggins and Megan Lake for submitting their questions, Dave Romano for setting the interview up and Cyrus for his time.
Comments and feedback : myra@mammothpress.com
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