Beer is a common ingredient in BFS's recipe for fun, which also includes lambastin each ohter's moms, exposing their privets, and otherwise embarrassing themselves or their audience. They've certainly had plaenty of practice. Having spent the better part of the last 7 years playing bars all over the Lone Star state perfecting their unique brand of joke-rock, these guys know ho to work a room. Now, with their second Jive release, the boys of Bowling For Soup are ready to pound their message home with 18 tracks of unabashed punk-pop that's quirky, reverential and downright, asswhooping funny.
They've already played with the best (including virtually every number band, from sum 41 to blink 182, catch 22 to SR-71) and have crisscrossed teh crountry dozens of times (they're on their fifth van in four years and its already pushing 100,000 miles) but Bowliong For Soup had meager beginnings. In fact, the group started as a two-man outfit consisting of Jaret and guitarist Erik Rodham Clinton, who played acoustic numbers for tips and specialized in 80s hair metal covers. "those shows were about comedy as much as Eric for 4 hours, we'd play some covers and some of our own songs, take our money and go home. Theat's how we were albe to quit our day jobs- we prostituted ourselves." Their affinity for covers would become a hit with the locals crowds, as the guys were known to play everything from The Desendants to Bon Jon Jovi. Soon after, guitarsist Christopher Van Malsteen joined the party followe by longtime friend, Gay Wiseass, who replaced the band's original drummer from 1999.
From his home base of Wichita Falls, Jaret calculated BFS's assualt on the state with military-like percision. The band's founding member, he was, by default, the brains behind the banter, and figured that since competition was so stiff for club dates in Dallas, the closest major-market city, "why not focus on the smaller towns-the size of Wichita falls-and build it that way?" They started venturing oustside thrie city limits to places like Albilene, San Angelo and Lubbock a couple of times a month. As BFS's social widened, they were able to hook up withs groups like Hgfish or Beef Jerky (a Dallas hip-hop outfit) for supporting gigs, but it didn't take long bfore BFS was headlining. "We financed our first big tour in 97-98 by ourselves with a credit card. We slept in the van, some nights we'd play to 20 people, but it was one of the greatest times ever. It was like a camp."
BFS had released their first album, Rock On Honoreable Ones!, in 1997 on the local independent FFROE label. Two years later, they had sold 10,000 copies of it and were hard-pressed to manfacture more (the album was already on its forth run). The decided to record an EP instead and, with money borrowed from Jeret's grandpa , they released Tell Me When to Whoa in 1998. On it was a track called "The Bitch Song," a sarcastic, if not somewhat autobiographical take on that girl you hate to love. "I can't really write about anything but girls, because I really don't know about anything else," Jaret confesses. "Even tpday, although I'm married, it was tough getting here.
"The Bitch Song" got noticed, no just by local fans and radio staions (including Dallas' immensely influential KDGE), but by A&R scouts at labels around the country. "They started flyin in," explains Jaret. "every l;abel guy wanted to take us to eat." But the band was almost taken with Jive, not only because of the .label's unparalleled success, but also because they were to be int first rock singing. "We were into it becasue we knew we would be the guniea pigs, and that was the way we had always done everything-by the skin of out teeth."
BFS's five Jive release was 200's Let's Do It For Johnny, on which a new virsion of "The Bitch Song" was included (and released as a single) as well as a cover of Bryan Adams' classic "Summer Of '69." The band also made its fist video, a hilarious take on life in the big house; it's hilights include Chris in a tutu, Chris naked and lost of sloppy tounge (Jaret was lucky recipient on those shots). With the exception of Eminem, it may have been the least PC video of the year. To promote the album, the band geared up and hit the road, covering the US in its entirety, the UK three times over, and the European festival circuit. "We're road warriors," Jaret says with pride, "I'm out there with my three friends, we never argue and we a lot of fun. It really is just like camp." But he also admits that it can get tiring "at about week six, you kinda get to point where you're like, 'maybe I don't wanna see the sun twice a day."