From gigs with free steak to discovering the luxurious joy of a travel bidet, Bowling For Soup frontman Jaret Reddick gives us his greatest tour tales…
Lifting the lid on the highs, lows, creature comforts and touring weirdness of a travelling band…
“A travel bidet. The answer used to be my laptop, but now I have one of these, and it’s the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. You just feel clean all the time. I think they used to be sold as a feminine thing, but they’ve just put a different kind of jet on there or whatever. It looks like an electric toothbrush, and you stick it in there, and this stream of water goes up… It’s, like, $30 to attach one to your toilet, but you go out on the road and you miss it. So now I carry one with me. It’s in my backpack. I’ve spoiled myself with it. It’s a luxury I can’t do without.”
“Russia. I remember we were preparing for that trip and asking if we should bring merch with us or have it printed over there. And they were like, ‘Oh no, don’t bother with merch. The Mob will handle all of that.’ And sure enough, we showed up and this whole wall of merch was set up. It looked great! I asked how the split [of money] worked, and they went, ‘Oh, there’s no split. You guys just get up there and play, and they’re gonna sell this and, I guess, not stab you.’ It was expensive to go over there, but we do have the Mob story now, so that’s something.”
“Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The sign outside the venue said: ‘Come dine and dance to the rock’n’roll and country sounds of Bowling For Soup.’ It was this hillbilly country, backwoods steakhouse. Nobody was there but the regulars, and they kept bringing us moonshine up to the stage. Then we got to the hotel, and I walked into what I thought was the office. It wasn’t. It was just a room that was so full of beds that you would have to crawl across them all in order to get from one side of the room to the other, and there were nine children sitting in there, eating cereal and watching television. It scared the shit out of me, like something out of Friday The 13th. It was one of the weirdest shows ever, but the moonshine was good, and they gave us steak!”
“Actually moving. We always stay at a Hilton, which always has a gym. The driver will check in, and we just go straight to the gym, and we can all get in there and do 30, 45 minutes. And then if there’s a pool, we try to hit the pool for another 30, 45 minutes. It’s really, really helped as far as our energy levels and just overall health and fitness go. That and drinking a lot later and going to bed earlier.”
“This place in Joplin, Missouri. There’s a music store in there, there’s a Taco Bell – it’s anything and everything you could ever imagine. There’s a motorcycle just right there in the middle. It’s like you walked into a mall. I know a lot of people are going to say that Buc-ee’s is the greatest rest stop, but this place blows Buc-ee’s away. Also, there’s the convenience store down in El Paso where behind the counter they have baby tigers at their feet. I’m not making this up. You can buy them for, like, 50 grand. That place is probably shut now. It’s almost certainly not the best place to raise a tiger…”
“CBGBs. People might say that Bowling For Soup is not a real punk band. Well, I can say this: I pooped at CBGBs. Twice. That thing was really something. There was no door on the bathroom, and the toilet was built up on a pedestal, so you had to go up two steps to get to the toilet. And there was no seat. It was all just stickers and pee. I have ulcerative colitis, so when I have to go, I have to go. It was horrible. We also once played a place the night after Insane Clown Posse. The floor was insanely sticky from all that soda [Faygo] they throw around. Most venues have sticky floors, but this was like having your feet actually stuck to the ground. And whatever Juggalos do to bathrooms should be illegal…”
“Nice. There’s room to spread out. There’s nice bathrooms. Lots of places to plug things in. Those are very highly sought after things when you’re on tour.”
“Looking out and seeing that kid who’s singing every word to every song, and then beside them is that parent who’s bringing that kid to their first gig, and they’re all singing along together. Seeing a family sharing in our songs, and it bringing them together and them having Bowling For Soup in common, is something that I never get sick of. It’s my favourite thing to look out and see every night.”
“Getting names wrong. As a rule I avoid saying the name of where we are to avoid that. But one time, we were at this show, and we’d just gone on after Mario. I went, ‘Give it up for Chingy!’ But Chingy hadn’t played yet. I got a lot of flak from that, because we were actually even on the same label…”
Bowling For Soup headline London’s OVO Arena Wembley on December 13, before returning to the UK next summer with Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls. This interview originally appeared in the winter 2025 issue of Kerrang!.
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