Drummer Cyrus Bolooki of New Found Glory spoke about their forthcoming concert at Jones Beach on Long Island, where they will be performing with The Offspring and Jimmy Eat World as part of the “Supercharged” Tour.
Can you tell us about your upcoming show at Jones Beach… What can we expect?
Boy, are we excited to play at Jones Beach again! We’ve had so many amazing memories at that venue, including stops there way back in 2001 while supporting Blink-182.
The entire NY/NJ area feels like a second home to New Found Glory, our fans there are always awesome and supportive, so I’m expecting a great, high energy show with us playing a bunch of our hits, plus maybe a few surprises.
Basically, everything you’d expect in a New Found Glory show. So make sure you show up in time to see us play!
What’s it like sharing the stage with The Offspring and Jimmy Eat World?
I think it goes without saying The Offspring is a band that without them, most of our genre wouldn’t even exist.
They helped pave the way for punk rock music to hit the mainstream back in the early-mid 90s, and when you fast forward to the end of that decade, it wasn’t uncommon to hear a band like The Offspring, Blink-182, or Green Day on the radio along side all of the largest artists in the world.
To be able to share the stage with them is nothing short of amazing. We’ve been very fortunate in our 30 year career to have been able to tour with the greats in our genre, and The Offspring is literally one of the few bands of this magnitude that we have never toured with. So, this is, for us, like a dream coming true.
It’s a similar situation with Jimmy Eat World; as we all started out in our musical journeys as fans of that band.
We’ve seen them when they were playing small clubs in Florida, and we all watched (and rooted for) them as they got bigger and bigger as the years went on.
This is one of those very unique tours for me where I’m definitely going to want to watch both bands every single night.
It feels like we’ve been waiting 30 years for this lineup to come together, so I don’t want to miss a single moment of this!
What inspires your music and songwriting?
I think literally everything inspires our music, from what’s going on in our personal lives, what we see and hear around us, and also what we all grew up listening to and enjoying as we were young.
In New Found Glory, we have such an eclectic mix of musical influences that really helped shaped our band into one that helped define a genre, mixing pop punk styles with heavier guitar riffs, ensuring the rhythm is there for people to bounce to but still relating to what everyone goes through in their lives with our lyrics and melodies.
What do your plans for the future include?
We’re super excited to have just wrapped up recording our 11th full length album, and we have also signed with a new label, Pure Noise Records to release this album in the near future.
We have a new single “100%” that’s out now and more to come, and even now, almost 30 years later, we’re still out there writing and recording new music and touring all over the world.
We’ve got a UK tour happening after this Offspring tour and even more international touring to follow, so we will stay busy for a long time to come!
How does it feel to be a band in the digital age?
I think we’re part of an interesting hybrid of artists. We started our career in the infancy of the digital age, and for a short time we got to experience what music was like before you could get anything in the blink of an eye (or, should I say, the push of a button).
So, for us, when we were first starting, we had to rely on our own efforts to get our name out there — we would promote ourselves, book our own shows, record our own music and do whatever we could to try and spread that music to as many people as possible.
Nowadays, there are an endless number of tools at the fingertips of every musician, even those that have just picked up an instrument for the first time.
Our band members (much like both The Offspring and Jimmy Eat World) know and understand the importance of making “real” connections with our fanbase, as we all spent years on the road in vans playing small clubs and sleeping on people’s floors.
I think this work ethic and also the experiences we got of of that helped us curate an audience of people that have grown with us and continue to support us 30 years later.
What is your advice for young and emerging artists?
Just like I mentioned above, there is no shortage of ways to promote yourself or your music nowadays. However, none of that, in my opinion, is a substitute for getting out there and taking your music (and promotion) into your own hands.
Sure, there are companies, websites, and apps that can help you release your song on the other side of the world in seconds, but spending a few minutes with a fan at a concert, talking with them, making that connection, is something an app can never do.
Don’t get me wrong, you’ve got to have good music and a story or some kind of angle behind it in order to stand out.
If you want to create connections that will last longer than the typical 10 seconds of fame, you got to get out there, be real, and put your heart and soul into your craft so that others can see how passionate you are about your dreams.
Which artists would you like to do a dream collab with someday?
What a hard question to answer, as we’re all so different in our musical tastes!
As stated before, we’ve shared the stage with so many of our musical heroes, but if we’re to ask each of us this question, you’d definitely get 4 different answers.
I think for me, being a kid that starting playing music by picking up a guitar and learning all of the Metallica albums, I’d selfishly say that would be an awesome (and super unique) collaboration.
Of course, it will never happen, but if it did it would certainly make my 14 year old self the happiest kid in the world!
What does the word success mean to you?
Success comes in many forms, whether it’s actual metrics or even just hitting personal goals or accomplishing things you have always wanted to do. For us, I think success has come over and over in our career.
First, it started with the goal of recording and releasing an album, then moved on to playing shows that continually got bigger and bigger.
Next, it moved onto trying to sign to a label and bring our music to places other than our hometown in South Florida, and land larger tours.
We’ve constantly set goals and worked to achieve them, and now, 30 years later, with gold and platinum albums, worldwide tours, and even this tour with The Offspring and Jimmy Eat World, we’re continuing to succeed day in and day out.
In an industry where the average life of a band is a few years, we’ve managed to overcome that stigma and build a career that’s spanned generations, inspired countless bands, and continues to this day.
Even then, we still have goals that we strive for, and like I just mentioned, getting the tour with The Offspring was one of them!
To learn more about the rock group New Found Glory, check out their official website, and follow them on Instagram.
