6 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Bowling For Soup's Jaret Reddick

Jaret Reddick of Bowling For Soup has written some of pop-punk’s best bangers, but he almost found a career in psychology instead…

“I’d been at a Steel Panther show the night before, but I mustered up the strength to go. The creators gave me a crash-course in what it was [Phineas And Ferb – an animated TV series], and the interesting thing is that I went there to talk about doing the theme song, but they asked if I wanted to audition for a role, and I ended up getting cast as Danny. Hopefully you haven’t seen the last of that character…”

“When you’re in the Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants in America, there are these big animatronic mice which talk to you and sing Happy Birthday to the kids, and that voice is me! I didn’t realise the first time I went in that I was actually recording commercials there and then. I just thought it was an audition, so I was thinking, ‘Man, we’re doing a lot of stuff for this!’”

“I wanted to work in a big corporation and do their counselling on subjects like PTSD and addiction. That was my goal for after university. Bowling For Soup started as I was finishing up with school, and I just wanted to use it to take a few years off and not have loads of responsibility, and now here we are 20 years later!”

“I’m a sports nut, and when we started coming over to the UK we all decided to pick a team. Manchester is my favourite place to play, so I picked Manchester United, not knowing that Manchester has two teams! Any time I’m up early on the weekend I’ll sit down and watch the match.”

“I grew up listening to country, and I still have those roots. I’m a massive Frank Turner fan, I think [U.S. artist] RaeLynn is awesome, and I’m really into [alternative country band] Old 97’s, too. I don’t like the modern, poppy country stuff; I’m more a fan of older artists and ‘red dirt’ music, which is a Texan style of country.”

“When it wasn’t an instant success, the label bailed on it and went to a ballad called When We Die, and that’s a huge regret of mine. High School Never Ends did eventually become a hit because it spread like wildfire online, and it’s now one of our most downloaded songs. I just wish I’d fought to give it the chance it deserved when it first came out, because there’s a poetic quality to that song that everyone can relate to.”

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