"I'm typically a nervous person to begin with. Everything I do, I feel that way about," singer Jordan Pundik said as he took a sip of his drink a few hours before he and the rest of New Found Glory stepped onstage at Irving Plaza in New York City to celebrate their 20th anniversary as a band.
Since 1997, Pundik, guitarist and singer Chad Gilbert, bassist Ian Grushka and drummer Cyrus Bolooki have been rocking the stage and practically entered their adult lives playing music. And now well into their mid- and later-30s, the band has hit a milestone that most groups only dream of. And before their set, Pundik sat down with Myspace to take a little walk down memory lane and also talk about the future with their ninth studio album, Makes Me Sick, which releases on April 28.
Unlike other pop punk bands that have seemed to make their big returns to the stage life, New Found Glory never lost their momentum and continued to churn out records. However, with 75 songs under their belt, that's a hell of a lot of songs to remember. And to top it all off, everyone lives in different places now.
"There's songs in there that we've never played," he admitted. "So every night, I'd be in bed and listen to one record and listen to that same record the next night. Then I'd move onto the next one. So I did that for a month, and then I'd start over."
Meanwhile, everyone practiced on their own, and the guys got together a week before the tour to iron out all the kinks with thorough rehearsals.
"We always try to do the best we can," Pundik said. "We're still humans, you know? There's times I go onstage, and I forget whole verses to songs."
"But it's cool because people can come, especially to these shows," he added. "When we do a normal show, we have people say, 'Play this song. Play that one,' but now we're playing all the songs. So it's going to be great."
Despite being inside the second floor green room of Irving Plaza, you can feel the buzz of the sold out crowd reverberating through the walls. And it's that energy that keeps NFG excited to hit the stage each night. And aside from the old material, the band also has a new set of songs that many fans are hearing for the first time, especially because they tried to change things up for Makes Me Sick.
"This time, we had a producer, Aaron Sprinkle," Pundik said. "On past albums, we did it on our own, and the last record was really stripped down. But with this record, we really went for it on every song. Whatever we wanted to do, whatever sounded good. There's a lot of different keyboard sounds."
And while Pundik's proud of all the songs on the new record, "The Sound of Two Voices," is a memorable one.
"It was kind of close to one of the last songs we wrote for the record," he revealed. "We were altogether because we were writing the record in Nashville, and we went to a show. I think we were on our back, and Paul Simon's 'You Can Call Me Al' came one. And we thought we should do a song like this. That's how it started."
He continued, "And when I play it for people, they love it. It's definitely different."
And when it comes to the old material, Pundik's faves change from show to show. But the tunes from their debut album Nothing Gold Can Stay still has a soft spot in his heart.
"I just remember where I was. I was 16 and 17 years old [while] recording those songs and living at home with my parents," he said. "And I'd remember playing those shows when those were the only songs we had when we played those first shows. I'm often remembering how it felt. And now, we're still playing it, especially in venues like this, where it's smaller. It feels like how it felt then."
New Found Glory will be playing the US leg of the 20th Anniversary Tour till May 12 in Ft. Lauderdale, not too far from where the band started in Coral Springs. They will then take the tour to the UK and eventually Australia.
Although many of the fans that night in the Big Apple, as well as those who are coming to the tour are longtime fans, there are some who have only recently tapped into NFG's music. So what should these young fans hear in order to get the full New Found Glory education?
"I'd probably have to make a mixtape for them because every record is a certain time in our lives," Pundik revealed, "and it encompasses everything that's going on in that particular moment of our lives. So it's really hard to say. I'd have to make a cassette."
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