Jaret Reddick on the Funniest and Cringiest of Bowling for Soup

Bowling for Soup is, by their own admission, “easily the 9th greatest pop punk band of all time.” You know Bowling for Soup, you love Bowling for Soup, you can sing along to…maybe a quarter of their discography. These guys have been touring for decades, never tiring of playing the hits even while steadily putting out albums full of new material. “I’ll never understand creating something that people like and then not wanting to perform it,” says frontman Jaret Reddick.

It certainly helps that he’s got plenty of other creative pursuits to occupy his time. In addition to his career as a rock star, Reddick has a country act, performing as Jaret Ray Reddick, and a voice acting career. (Since 2012 he’s voiced the mouse mascot of a certain pizza restaurant.) He’s done improv in his local Dallas. He’s active on TikTok. And this summer, we’ll once again hear Bowling for Soup’s theme song for Phineas and Ferb, which returns for a fifth season on June 6. On a tour last year celebrating the 20th anniversary of their album A Hangover You Don’t Deserve by playing the full tracklist, Reddick warned crowds that this was the earliest in a show they’d ever hear Bowling for Soup’s biggest hit before launching into “1985” — technically an SR-71 cover, but a BFS staple. Then, at the end of the show, Reddick kicked off the encore by quipping, “I lied earlier. ‘1985’ isn’t our biggest hit. This is.” Naturally, it’s Phineas and Ferb’s “Today Is Gonna Be a Great Day.”

Despite performing one of the biggest hits of the 2000s, Bowling for Soup has maintained that scrappy bar-show energy thanks in large part to the energy exuded by Reddick and his bandmates, Gary Wiseman, Rob Felicetti, and Chris Burney, who recently retired due to health concerns. The band continues to tour as a trio because, as Reddick says, “you can’t replace a legend.” Here, Reddick reflects on a career full of zigs and zags that somehow always feel authentic. That’s rock ’n’ roll, baby.

Most unexpected hit

If I’m being honest — and I think this will probably surprise everybody — it’s “1985.” When we made [A Hangover You Don’t Deserve] I was bound and determined that “Almost” was going to be our biggest hit. It ended up being a hit for us, but nothing to just how huge “1985” was. That song actually came late to that album; we were done recording and then the song was brought to my attention by Jonathan Daniel, who was managing Butch Walker at the time, who produced three of the songs. Jonathan was like, “Hey man, SR-71 just sent me this song and it sounds like a Bowling For Soup song.” And I was like, “…you guys should just let Bowling For Soup do this.”

I think it’s just relatable. Interestingly enough, that was at a time when our band had been together for around 10 or 12 years and we were starting to get to that point where we had hits on the radio so you’d have teenagers come up to the merch line with their mom. They would be rolling their eyes at their uncool mom and I just remember saying to so many of them, “Hey, you notice how cool it is that your mom is standing here at the merch line buying you rock and roll T-shirts right now? It’s kind of the coolest thing ever.” So it was catchy for all different ages, because I think the moms loved it as much as the kids who were embarrassed of the moms.

Favorite “1985” parody lyric

I haven’t rewritten it on purpose because there’s so many good TikToks, so I just don’t feel like I need to be the one to do it. There’s “1999” and “2002” and “2003,” but the original one that really broke through was by this guy Sage. That was a 2005 one, and it murdered TikTok. His line was, “She rocked out to My Chem / Not a Five Finger Death Punch fan / nobody understands / still wearing beat-up Vans.” I thought that kept the whole idea and vibe of the original. And it’s just a really, really good lyric.

Funniest Bowling for Soup lyric

We just released Fishing for Woos 15th anniversary reissue and it’s expanded with some B-sides and stuff. I did an acoustic version of “Here’s Your Freakin’ Song” and the lyric, “My mom don’t like you, my dad don’t too, And my brother says you look like the guy from Hüsker Dü.” I can’t even say it without laughing just because “my dad don’t too” is so funny. The thing I love about Bowling for Soup lyrics is the “aha” moments where you don’t realize something’s funny. Like in “Ohio” there’s, “when you’re done doing whatever and when you’re through doing whoever.” When people realize what they’ve been singing [along to,] then they go, ” I didn’t realize what he was saying there!” — those are my favorite ones. I love the little Easter egg funny lines. Butch Walker and I wrote the second verse to “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” while I was in the studio singing it and “Does a mullet make a man?” had us both laughing so hard it took 30 minutes for me to sing that one line.

Cringiest Bowling for Soup Lyric

Some stuff on the really early albums did not age that well. There’s definitely one on “Next Ex-Girlfriend” where I say something and Eric on the recording is repeating something back. The line is “I don’t want to learn to dance, don’t want to rent the limo / I know you’re thinking I’m a weirdo / I just want the bragging rights I wanna let the world know / and convince my friends I’m not a homo.” So, that line obviously did not age well, and I would never write that in a song now. And even live, Rob sings, “and convince my friends I’m not an asshole.” Obviously in the 20 years since we don’t say homo anymore in that regard.

Most Underrated Bowling for Soup Song

“Life After Lisa” should have been a hit. It just never got the chance, but I think that that song could have done really, really well. I don’t think enough people think of it because it’s just buried under “Punk Rock 101” and “Girl the Bad Guys Want” and “Surf Colorado,” all these crazy fan favorites that are on that record. But “Life After Lisa,” man, that’s an underrated song.

Wackiest Bowling for Soup Album Title

The Great Burrito Extortion Case is wacky in more ways than one. That album was actually supposed to be called All My Rowdy Friends Are Still Intoxicated. I caught wind of how labels worked really quickly; I was always trying to make things more efficient but a lot of the time you’d record the album but then the artwork or the photos would hold things up. All of a sudden, you’re not delivering on the right date. So, me being smarter than everybody — or thinking I am, anyway — I say, “Hey, let’s go do the photos first.”

So we went to Las Vegas and took all these photos for this thing called All My Rowdy Friends Are Still Intoxicated. Then we went and recorded the album in Atlanta. Every day we had the same ritual. We’d meet down at the hotel bar around 1:00, have a beer or two, and then head to the studio. [The bar TV was usually playing the news.] The sound was off, but a little ticker was going and [one time] it just said “Burrito Extortion Case.” It was about someone putting a mouse in a burrito and then trying to sue to get free stuff from Taco Bell or whatever. Chris Burney said that’d be a good name for an album: The Great Burrito Extortion Case. And I was just like, “let’s change the name of our album to The Great Burrito Extortion Case right now.” I literally called our manager and the label and said, “We’re going to change.” You can’t change the name, everything’s already in process! “Yeah, I don’t know. We’re just going to change the name of the album.”

So when you look back at those photos it’s us in wedding dresses and tuxedos in the pool and all this stuff that makes sense for All My Rowdy Friends Are Still Intoxicated but definitely does not make sense for The Great Burrito Extortion Case.

Song You Didn’t Write but People Think You Did

That one’s easy: “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne. We tried to pinpoint what we think happened: “Stacy’s Mom” was a hit around the same time “1985” was and it got mislabeled on Limewire or Napster or whatever. So it just spread throughout the land that “Stacy’s Mom” was a Bowling for Soup song. And years later, people started showing up to our shows with signs and shirts that say “Stacy’s Mom” on them. We’re just like, “That’s not our song! This is weird.”

And what’s even weirder is that Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne was a friend of mine and we actually wrote “High School Never Ends” together. I told him, “I don’t know why we’re getting credit for your song but now we’re just going to cover it.” We put it out on iTunes and it did really well, but that’s definitely the one that I get the most credit for that I don’t deserve.

Favorite Adam Schlesinger Memory

He was my first friend we lost to COVID. It was scary before, but that’s when I was like, “Holy crap, this is getting really close to me now.” But my favorite thing that I like to tell people about him is he’s the reason that I stopped using pen and paper to write songs. That might seem like a very small thing, but I was going on 15, 20 years of writing songs in a journal-type thing or a spiral notebook or whatever. I had stacks and stacks of these things. I still have them all, by the way. When we wrote “High School Never Ends” I had that title written in one of those journals. He had asked me, “Hey, you got any good ideas?” And I was like, “Man, I’ve been trying to write this one for a long time and I just haven’t really connected with the right way to go about it.” We ended up writing it that day and it became a hit for us.

Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››

But when I got to his studios [with my notebooks] he was like, “What are you doing? You got to make the switch. Get your computer out. It’s just way too easy to do it this way.” And I’m like, “Man, I don’t know. I feel like I’m just sort of losing the intimacy of all of it” or whatever. And he’s like, “That’s ridiculous. We’re not poets, we’re lyricists, and we’re writing a song here and it’s easier to send things back and forth and to erase things and move things down the page and all this stuff.” That was the last day I ever wrote a song on pen and paper and it was due to Adam Schlesinger.

Most Fun Song to Perform Live

I think a lot of people run from their hits and they’re like, “We’re sick of playing this song.” I will never understand that mentality. I’ll never understand creating something that people like and then not wanting to perform it. All of the hits are a lot of fun, but “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” is by far my favorite song to play live. It’s just such a cool riff. Right when we burst into that song, people lose their minds. They know what it is by the first two notes. It also means that we’re getting towards the end of the show and by then my back probably hurts so it’s very refreshing to know that here in a few minutes I’m going to get to sit down and have a cold beer.

It’s a very diverse crowd for us and it has been for as long as I can remember. Like, “Punk Rock 101” and “1985” were huge on Radio Disney. We’re that band that kids and parents agree on, for whatever reason. A 15-year-old will bring their dad to a Bowling for Soup show. Moms tell me “Hey, I don’t get to go to all the shows. Y’all are our band.” That makes me feel so good. We’re at three and four generations in some cities now.

Best Phineas and Ferb Song (That’s Not the Theme Song)

The first one I ever did with them I didn’t write but I sang was “Music Makes Us Better.” which is in the episode, “Dude, We’re Getting the Band Back Together.” The boys come into the store where my character works and he just starts telling them the story of how music has evolved throughout the years. He goes into metal and psychedelica and all these different things and it’s just so well written and a cool montage. But then I would have to say I love “Robot Riot” from the first Phineas and Ferb movie. My character is singing in the movie and I did get to co-write that one. It’s so funny because you’re making fun of a robot. “Your mama is a lawn mower, your daddy is a washing machine.” And it’s really funny to see a huge battle going on during a song that you wrote. So, I guess I’m going to vote “Robot Riot.”

The way that I’m told about it, they had me in mind [to do the theme song] from the very start. I know Dan Povenmire is a huge Bowling for Soup fan. When I showed up for my first meeting, he had all of our CD covers for me to sign. Apparently in things that Dan and his co-creator Swampy had worked on previously, like The Simpsons or Rocco’s Modern Life, Bowling for Soup had been a reoccurrence in the writing room. And then the rest of my involvement in the show just came from really really hitting it off in that first meeting and getting the opportunity to read for a part.

It’s crazy because so much of the stuff that I’ve done has really happened organically. That’s how Chuck E. Cheese happened too. I was just doing improv comedy here in Dallas and one of the guys that did improv for another troupe got the account for the rebranding of Chuck E. Cheese at his advertising agency. He started pitching me, saying “This is the guy! He’s got flexibility with his voice, he can sing. We want to make Chuck a rockstar, this guy’s already a rockstar.” I really had the job before I ever even went in. I’ve been really lucky. Bowling for Soup and the other things that I’ve done have at least gotten me all these opportunities, and if I go in and I deliver, it ends up being something that I hold really close to my heart. I just absolutely love Phineas and Ferb. I love being Chuck E. Cheese. And then there’s the kids that know we did the theme song for the Jimmy Neutron movie and things like that. One that really pops up a lot too is Sonic the Hedgehog — I did the theme song to one of those relaunches as well. And that song is just this crazy underground hit with all those guys. So, we’ll hopefully get a version of that out in the United States soon. Wink wink.

Song Your Kids Are Most Likely to Sing Along To

My son Everett is 12; Yesterday we were in the car and he said something was “just out the window.” And then he just starts singing, “Out the window and down the fire escape.” He sang the whole song. I don’t know how he even heard that! I mean, he possibly has heard it live at shows, but he knew every word. So, you just never know. Each of them has their own favorite song. My daughter Emma really likes “I Don’t Wish You Were Dead Anymore” because she’s on it at the end. Jack, who’s 19, changes quite a bit based on what his friends are into, but he’s really into my country stuff. So he likes “Royal Family”.

My adult children come to my shows pretty much anytime I’m in town. And then my little guy will go on the road with me, for a week or so at a time pretty much every summer. Next summer, when he’s 13, he can come out and work if he wants to. He’ll have an actual specific job and will have to get up with the crew while daddy sleeps in. He and his mama come out on the road quite a bit. And Jack won’t even tell me he’s coming. He just shows up. He likes surprises and he’s real good at them. So it’s always nice just right before I walk on stage to see my boy walk in.

Jack went on Warped Tour when he was about 12 and man, by day two he had that place on lockdown. He was borrowing all these bands’ minibikes and he would just walk through the merch area throwing a football. He was only supposed to stay a week, but after a week he kind of threw a fit and got to stay four more days and then threw another fit. He ended up being on Warped Tour for about two and a half weeks. I’m a softy when it comes to things like that because I’m just like, “He just wants to spend time with me!”

Wrestler You’d Want to Write an Entrance Song For

We did write a song for the wrestler Alexa Bliss. We had gotten to be friends and I was just like, “Why is there no representation of pop punk in wrestling? Everything’s — I don’t mean this to be derogatory, but I call that kind of music “cock rock.” A lot of people call it “butt rock.” Whatever that sort of Midwest rock is. I like it, but she’s a pop punk chick, she needs a pop punk song. But what I did was, when I wrote it with Linus of Hollywood I wanted it to open up like we’re about to throw to a cock rock song. So it opens up with a crunchy dun duh duh then all of a sudden it’s just bubble gum-y pop punk. I’m really really happy with it and I’m glad she likes it as well.

I grew up a huge Von Erichs fan. I’m from Texas, and if you’re a really really big Bowling for Soup fan, then you might know that I actually went by Jaret Von Erich until the early 2000s. Kevin Von Erich’s daughter would actually come to our shows and she told me, “Hey, my dad said you’re an honorary Von Eric.” So I would have to say that if I were to write an entrance song it would either be for Kevin or Kerry Von Eric for sure. In fact, I got in a conversation on Twitter one time with Kevin Von Erich and he was like, “Yeah, I get it. You’re not using the name anymore, blah blah blah.” And I was like, ” Hold on. Make no mistake. I’m not using the name for any other reason than it just started to get weird with publishing and writing because I’m not using my real name.” I had all these aliases out there and I’m trying to get paid for these songs I wrote, when I’m starving to death in the early 2000s. I went back to my name literally just for ease of legalities. But in my heart, I will always be a Von Erich.