It takes a special kind of band to play for a crowd of sweaty, sunburned Warped Tour diehards less than 24 hours after charming families at Disney World’s Epcot — and make both feel equally natural. But Bowling for Soup has never been a typical band. In a year where pop punk’s resurgence feels louder than ever, BFS is riding the wave they helped create, delivering nostalgia, heart, trademark humor and a freshly ignited era of music to fans old and new.

In November, the veteran trio — Jaret Reddick, Rob Felicetti and Gary Wiseman — hit Orlando’s Camping World Stadium for the third weekend of Warped Tour’s highly anticipated revival (having already played the Long Beach and Washington, D.C. dates). For a band that lived so many of the OG Warped summers between 2003 and 2018, stepping back onto that stage felt both surreal and deeply familiar.

And yet, just hours earlier, they were packing six shows at Disney World’s Epcot as part of the Eat to the Beat series. This proves why Bowling for Soup has become the rare multigenerational band that punk kids, their parents and even their kids can agree on. One moment, it’s nostalgic hits like “1985” blasting through a mosh pit-filled stadium; the next, it’s a sea of families singing along to the Phineas and Ferb theme at Disney.

Fresh off this whirlwind Florida weekend, PopHorror caught up with Reddick to talk Warped Tour’s return, unforgettable stories from the early 2000s, the evolving legacy of A Hangover You Don’t Deserve, and why Bowling for Soup’s next era might just be their most exciting yet.

PopHorror: You guys have been doing so much this year, between Warped Tour, Epcot and you were even in Vegas recently. How are you feeling as this year comes to an end?

Jaret Reddick: It’s been crazy! The last two years have just been reminiscent of the mid-2000s. We’re feeling good. I’m excited about next year, and this has been an amazing year. I’m excited about new music, more touring, going back to Australia. There’s just so much on the horizon right now. So I am thankful for a little bit of a break, but I am very, very excited about 2026 for sure because it is shaping up to be a really great year.

Warped Tour Revival

PopHorror: I’d love to hear your thoughts on this year, especially Warped Tour. Did you ever think that it would happen again? And what did it mean to get on that stage in this new era of it?

Jaret Reddick: For me, being a part of it for about half the years, my thing was always, “No Warped Tour, no Kevin Lyman.” I know he tried to bring it back for the Warped Rewind at Sea cruise, and I think that was very successful. But I also think it was a lot of work. There was part of me that wondered, “What is it gonna take to get him to want to do this again?” I was very happy when it came around, and I figured if anybody was going to be able to do it — and do it right — it’d be the man himself. I think he did such a great job of making it to where it was accessible to people, and also making a big festival not feel so overwhelmingly huge that it was miserable for fans and bands.

Everybody had a great time and it just felt like Warped Tour. The big thing for the bands, our favorite part of it is the camaraderie. Almost all the bands, if you ask that, they’d say seeing all their buddies and hanging out. You’re only on stage 30 or 40 minutes, so being able to hang with your friends is the thing that we all really missed. That aspect of it was a little bit different in that not everybody was on a bus. A lot of people flew in and out. But it felt amazing. I think all of us look back on those summers and miss them, and also look back like, “Oh, my God, am I glad that’s over.” It’s a very mixed feeling, for sure.

PopHorror: Bowling for Soup played Warped Tour many times during its original run. Are there any memories that stand out from those days?

Jaret Reddick: Man, there’s so many. We were actually just talking about one the other day from, I think, 2004. We ended up in Canada on the Fourth of July and so some of the bands — it was NOFX, Pennywise, some of the guys that were known as the “circle of hate” — had sort of boxed in and made their own USA. You had to be American to be able to get in to celebrate Independence Day. We were there, plus a band called Dynamite Boy and a few other bands from Texas. And so we, within that, made our own Texas, and you had to be from Texas to get into ours. It was just little things like that, fun things.

Speaking of NOFX, we were on Warped Tour when we showed Fat Mike the “Punk Rock 101” video for the first time and showed him that he was name checked in there. It’s a memory that he still has. It’s been a long time and we’re friends now, and I said to him the other day, “You were just like, ‘I don’t know what to say,'” and he goes, “I still don’t.”

Another cool one is being on there with Rancid, and Tim Armstrong had written a song [“Here We Go”] that we ended up performing for Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. We had never met, so I got to go up to him at Warped Tour and say, “Hey, man, we’re the band that did your song.” It’s a lot of memories, that’s for sure. Every day I have another one.

PopHorror: The elder emos were so excited for Warped Tour’s return…though it definitely took a toll on our knees and backs.

Jaret Reddick: I was literally sitting here writing a thing to a shoe company as to why I want to work with them because of exactly what you just said. It’s like I say in our song “Getting Old Sucks (But Everybody’s Doing It).” I wore Vans, Chuck Taylors, Macbeths and all of those for as long as I could. But now, I’m pretty much just HOKAs.

The Band That Families Agree On

PopHorror: What is it like seeing that generation still screaming your songs, but maybe now with their kids and spouses?

Jaret Reddick: For us, we’ve always been a multi-generational band because we started out as a bar band. So by the time we really broke, we had been around 10 years, and so people bringing their kids to shows kind of was already a thing. But this whole thing now, where people are bringing their kids to see this genre, sometimes it’s three generations. Sometimes it’s the kids that were teenagers that are now in their 30s, who’ve got jobs and can buy merch. Then there’s the kids that heard us because they were in their parents’ car or they heard us on Radio Disney. All of that is definitely adding to this resurgence. And those are the people that are coming to the shows these days.

As you said, you saw us play Epcot — we’re very lucky in that we get to play lots of different kinds of shows. We get to do our show when it’s our tour, but then we can also do a state fair or Epcot, which is more of a family-oriented show. We get to see firsthand kids sharing it with their parents and them singing the words to “1985.” Maybe there’s a kid falling asleep and then we play “High School Never Ends” and they just light up. We’re lucky enough that we broke in the UK first, and music is such a big part of their culture that families vacation together going to festivals. So we’ve always had that thing where it’s like, “Bowling for Soup is the band that families agree on.”

That’s always been really near and dear to me, especially when you’re at the merch line at the end of the night, and a dad or mom walks up and says, “I had nothing in common with my child. Nothing. And then we found Bowling for Soup. Now we’re here at this show and we’re going to see New Found Glory in two weeks…” That’s the best feeling in the world — bringing people together. But it’s not just bringing strangers together, it’s bringing families together.

@jaretreddick

Honestly, it’s been over a week since we did 6 shows at #epcot , what a flippin BLAST!!! #eattothebeat

♬ original sound – Jaret Reddick

PopHorror: And your own kids were at the Epcot shows!

Jaret Reddick: They were! My two boys were there. My daughter didn’t get to come. She’s 22, graduated college and is doing life stuff. I had all three kids at Four Chord this year in Pittsburgh and all three are coming to Wembley on Dec. 13. But yeah, my boys were there and I was meeting my oldest son’s girlfriend for the first time. It was a really fun dynamic because my youngest was sort of using the whole fact that there was a new girlfriend to his advantage. He’s 13, so he could ask Jack for stuff and Jack didn’t want to say no because the girlfriend is there. And Gary had his whole family there and Rob had his son there, too. It was definitely a family affair.

PopHorror: Do your kids come to a lot of your shows? Are they aware of how big you guys are amongst several generations?

Jaret Reddick: I don’t think the older kids really knew, especially my daughter, because she just grew up with it. She was born the day “Girl All The Bad Guys Want” got nominated for a Grammy. The same day. For her, she’s never really been into music and stuff. For her, it’s just kind of my job. She’s seen shows here and there, and the stuff that she comes to see, she’s pretty freaked out about it. My oldest son — he’s my middle kid who’s 19 — has always come to shows, come out on the road and always had a good idea of it. My youngest for sure does because he and his mom, just in the way that life has developed, they’re a lot more able to come out and join us on the road. He’s seen us in different countries and in front of different sized crowds.

My funniest story about my daughter was several years ago. She was in high school still and she called me from her science class and said, “Hey, dad, I’m sitting here in class.” I’m like, “Well, why are you on the phone? This is ridiculous. What’s happening?,” because I’m a dad, right? She says, “Do you know how many Spotify listeners you have a month?” At the time, I knew it was a lot, so I said, “Yeah, I don’t know what the number is, but it’s probably around this.” She goes, “Well, dad, that’s a lot. My friends are freaking out right now.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been trying to tell you, you just don’t listen.”

PopHorror: How did Disney come to be? Did they reach out to you?

Jaret Reddick: They did reach out to us. We’re lucky enough that we have a guy that used to work for us, he teched for us a long time ago, as well as The Ataris, New Found Glory and several other bands that are friends of ours. He has the ear of the buyer of the music there, and has been suggesting us and suggesting us. Simple Plan have played there and they’re our buddies, Newfound Glory have played — several bands that are our peers that may kind of push the envelope of the humor thing a bit less far than we do. We do tend to go a little over the top on some comedic outbursts.

But finally, our manager was able to get in there, get the meeting and say, “Look, they do this kind of stuff all the time. They can do this. They’re professionals and I think it’ll really work.” And it did. The numbers were great and people were at every single show. Even the late shows were packed. It was just a great couple of days and I feel confident that we’ll be back.

There’s a lot of unknowns when you go into a situation like that because we had never done it before. You don’t really know, like, how do you get from one place to the other? Now that we’ve done it, I’ve got it down and I’m like, “Oh, man, if we get to do it next year, here’s the plan. I’ve got all these different things we’re going to do.” This time, I felt like I was just trying to get from show to show. During the day, everybody was going to the park or whatever, and I was like, “Ah, I think I’m going to stay here. I’m going to enjoy this lovely hotel room and this amazing weather. I think this is good for me.” But it worked out really well and it was a lot of fun.

A Multi-Faceted Concert Experience

PopHorror: I loved the matching outfits — the black T-shirts with the blue shorts. Is that a new thing?

Jaret Reddick: When we first started, we actually wore gas station attendant uniforms, and that was also our merch. We couldn’t afford T-shirts, so we bought used work shirts and sewed patches on them that said “Bowling for Soup.” It was a cool little thing. And then we had custom bowling shirts made for a while. There was a time when we wore white shirts with different colored ties. There’s the Drunk Enough To Dance cover. So matching is not something that we have ever really shied away from, but it’s something we haven’t done in several years. When we went back out to tour the Hangover You Don’t Deserve record last year, we did the jersey thing, and that was something I’d always wanted to do, where everything matches and then available at the merch is what you have on. That went really well.

During that tour, we came up with our new mascot Jerry, and so we started putting Jerry on everything. That’s when we were like, “You know what? We should just keep doing this.” It’s so nice because now, packing is so easy because you only take three show outfits. I’m basically Charlie Brown — I wear exactly the same kind of underwear, socks and shirt every day. Sometimes I vary my shorts, but not all the time. It’s worked out well and I really like the way the photos look with us all dressed the same. I think it’s something that, this era as a three piece, is one of our things.

@jaretreddick

Anyone wishing we were back at Warped Tour 2025?!? Man. I’m so thankful to be a part of the Warped family and I’m so impressed with how they managed to make this years festival shows, feel so genuinely WARPED! Who was your favorite?!? #warpedtour #vanswarpedtour #bowlingforsoup #music

♬ original sound – Jaret Reddick

PopHorror: You mentioned it earlier, how you push comedic boundaries in your shows. But at the same time, you also have songs like “Turbulence” that are very deep and relatable to people. How do you balance the fun, but also let people know that you have something to say?

Jaret Reddick: That was a real big evolution in the songwriting because when I first started writing songs, it was about two years before I started Bowling for Soup. I was really, really self-conscious about writing anything that was real. So even the first couple of Bowling for Soup albums, you don’t get any sort of insight. It’s all just silly. It’s not necessarily funny, but it’s all just sort of made-up stuff. The first heartfelt song I wrote was “You and Me” and it was on Tell Me When To Whoa. It was also on the single for “The Bitch Song,” which ended up getting us a record deal. After that, I started to be able to put my feelings out there. But I’m also an ’80s kid, and so the power ballad is a big part of my life. All the metal bands I listened to always had at least one power ballad, like “Home Sweet Home” on Theatre of Pain. They all had them and so that was always a big deal for me. Once we got a record deal, I was like, “Man, we should always have a power ballad.”

So we had “Where To Begin,” “Me With No You” and, as you said, “Turbulence.” But I think for me, substance can come in different ways. It can come out on those songs like “Me With No You” or “Turbulence,” but it can also come in a song where you, at first, might not realize that I’m actually talking about something that I feel strong about. Something like “Hello Anxiety,” where I wanted to make a fun song about a terrible thing, and I managed to do it. It’s one of those things where it speaks to people so much, but so different. If you know what anxiety feels like, it hits you one way, and if you don’t, then it hits you another way.

One of my favorite things is when somebody only knows “1985” or “Girl All The Bad Guys Want,” and then they actually listen to us and go, “Oh, okay, you guys aren’t just talking about farts and beer.” I’m like, “We don’t even have a song that talks about farts!” I don’t know how we got this freaking fart joke reputation. We have not even said “fart” on a song until the newest Bowling for Soup song. So 31 years it took us.

The Soundtrack of a Generation

PopHorror: I can’t believe that A Hangover You Don’t Deserve turned 20 last year. Everything is turning 20!

Jaret Reddick: That’s another big thing. When you’re asking about the genre, the popularity of the genre and people coming to shows, if you think about it, Simple Plan, New Found Glory, Yellowcard, Story of the Year, Less Than Jake, Bowling for Soup, all these bands had albums that turned 20 and they were all big at the same time. So it’s just a really cool time to be doing what we’re doing.

PopHorror: Do any of the songs from that album hit differently for you now, or mean something new compared to when you first recorded them?

Jaret Reddick: For sure. There’s a couple of songs on A Hangover You Don’t Deserve that I really never liked. Honestly, I was at a weird point because I had done my first co-write on Drunk Enough To Dance, and that was “Girl All The Bad Guys Want.” It was a huge hit and got nominated for a Grammy, so I was like, “Okay, well maybe there’s something to this co-writing thing.” So I went out and did as much co-writing as I could.

But I didn’t really understand that you didn’t have to put them all on the album. Writers outside of your actual band are used to writing songs and not getting them on records. But I developed these friendships and I was like, “I’m going to just put them all on there,” so it’s a really long record. There’s a few songs like “Next Ex-Girlfriend” that I just really never cared for, but I fought for it to be on the album because I’d written three or four songs with that guy, Jeff Copeland. Then when we were playing it on tour, I was like, “This song is great! What a fun freaking song!”

Then there’s some songs that I always absolutely loved, like “Last Call Casualty,” where I was like, “It’s so nice to be able to play this song in front of people.” For whatever reason, we just never got around to doing it live. Diving back into it, there were nine or so songs that we had never played live, so it was a very cool experience to be able to go back and say, “Oh, this is a cool lyric. I forgot about this,” or, “Man, I forgot that I felt that way about this.” It’s a lot of feelings drummed up during that time.

PopHorror: When you initially recorded that album, did you have any idea that those songs would become basically the soundtrack of a generation? Was there one moment where you realized, “Holy shit, we did something here?”

Jaret Reddick: I knew that we had done something, but the soundtrack to a generation thing, I didn’t really know until 2014. It was actually Warped Tour — we were on tour and it was the screamo days. I mean, these bands were pissed in 2014. It was Asking Alexandria and all of these crazy, heavy bands. I remember us standing at merch and me going, “These fuckers are going to hate us. They are going to hate our guts.” And the whole day, all of these screaming and kicking kids were coming up to our booth and going, “You’re the reason I picked up a guitar.”

So literally leaving that day, it was the first time where I was like, “Oh, my God, we actually really did do something cool. We had some influence on a future generation of guys and girls that took our music, made it their own, and now this is their world out here.” That felt really, really good. That was the last time I ever worried about where we fit. I know we’re not everybody’s cup of tea because we are silly and we do get some shit, but we’ve been together 31 years. So really, what can you say? You can’t really tear us down too much because we’ve got a good track record in history, so we don’t get a lot of shit anymore.

The New Era of Bowling For Soup

PopHorror: And you guys are still making music. You put out a bunch of new singles this year, including “Holding On To That Hate,” the Taylor Swift cover “Actually Romantic,” plus “Endless Possibility” for the new Sonic game. What’s inspiring these new songs?

Jaret Reddick: We’re really rejuvenated. We had a weird couple of years. Everything was exploding and the band was getting more popular. We’re more popular now than we’ve ever been, and so is pop punk. So many people are listening to this kind of music now. And then our guitar player [Chris Burney] retired, so we went from a four piece to a three piece. Me and him started this band, so it was an interesting thing to be like, “What do we do? Do we press the gas or do we tap the brakes?” We’ve tapped the brakes a couple of times in our career and haven’t floored it again since 2007 or 2008, when we were really just going for it. There’s a big drive between the three of us, and our crew is happy and our families are happy. This is just a really good time and so we’re reignited.

PopHorror: You made such a good point that more people than ever are listening to this kind of music. There’s truly a renewed love for pop punk. Why do you think that is?

Jaret Reddick: There was definitely what we call the “Dark Days.” There was this time in between 2007 and 2014/2015 where it got weird, and all the bands know it. It was strange. For us personally, we had always been the darlings of the UK press. There’s a lot of UK music press, and for some reason, everybody just started to turn on us a little bit. It was really strange because we weren’t doing anything different. It was like, “What is happening with this relationship, with these journalists, with this fan base? What’s going on?” As I mentioned, we kind of tapped the brakes in 2013. It was like, “Maybe this is it. Let’s not run this thing into the ground.” I didn’t want to be just like a cigarette butt laying over there and somebody comes and extinguishes us. That sucks. We worked so hard to get where we are.

Now, it’s 2025 and so many of these records are celebrating 20 years, and all of those bands are out there touring. Warped Tour’s back. Blink-182’s back together. Sum 41 broke up, but they did it so high profile that that was pumping everything back up. The Offspring’s out there absolutely killing it right now. Simple Plan is killing it. Yellowcard’s back together. Then you’ve got young guys like MGK, Mod Sun and The Paradox, who are flying the pop punk flag. More and more avenues are opening up for people to get their ears on this kind of music. And the kids that grew up on this, they’re showing it to their families now.

It’s this perfect storm and there’s certainly no argument from me. I am very, very happy that 31 years in, we’re still doing this and making plans to keep doing it. It’s funny, people have been saying, “How long you going to do this?,” to us for 25 years. Now I feel like it’s not even up to me. NOFX went 40 years, so that’s another nine for us. Bad Religion is still out there. Social Distortion is still out there. Green Day’s been together way longer than us. When it’s not fun anymore, when we can’t perform properly anymore [is when we’ll stop].

But I think a lot of people would say we’re better live now than we ever have been. I know we’re tighter and I know that the show is really polished, but never the same at the same time. I feel good about where we are. I think we’re going to write a great record. I certainly am in a better place to write this record than I’ve been to write an album in a long time, and that’s certainly a big plus. And having Rob in the band also writing songs, we’re set up for success on this thing and I’m really excited about it.

PopHorror: Is there anything you can share about the new music and the vibe that you’re going for?

Jaret Reddick: The last album, we turned off the keyboards quite a bit. It’s mostly just guitars, drums, bass — that’s the plan going in. I would like to do some sort of throwback to some faster stuff. I also plan to write just some feel-good, smile-at-the-end-of-the-day Bowling for Soup songs.

PopHorror: And what else is upcoming for the band in 2026? You mentioned that it will be a pretty full schedule.

Jaret Reddick: We just announced Australia and the UK with Frank Turner. We have US dates in the works that are going to be insanely great and fun. We have plans to do Canada again. All of that pretty much fills up the year. I’m taking a break from country and putting that on the back burner for a few years to focus directly on Bowling for Soup. I don’t want to lose another wife [laughs], so I’m going to try to be home some. It’s an exciting time.

PopHorror: Is there any milestone or achievement that you still hope to unlock someday? Is there anything left on the bucket list as a band?

Jaret Reddick: I don’t have a bucket list because I feel like at that point, I’d be a little bit gluttonous. We’ve seen the world several times. We’ve seen stuff that not even other bands get to see because we’ve done so much with the military, we’ve played in so many different places — and we’ve managed to do it and stay together. I’ve raised two children to adulthood, and they’re great people. There’s so much I’ve already done that I don’t really have a bucket list.

But that being said, if it was going to be anything, it’d be to headline Wembley Arena, and we’re doing that Dec. 13. I’m just beyond stoked. We played there once with Steel Panther about eight years ago. So to be back there headlining with Wheatus, Punk Rock Factory and Jon Mahon, I’m so excited about it. After that, there’s things that I’d like to do again. I’d like to go back to Japan. I hope that happens again. I hope that we get to continue to build in Italy, where we’ve really found a nice little niche. But everything else, I’m sort of taking it as it comes. I’ve lived a really, really great life both personally and career wise, so I am fully comfortable riding it as though it’s a wave. I’ll paddle back out there, I’ll keep going, but I don’t know if I need to move beaches, you know?

PopHorror: Last question…are you a horror fan? If so, what’s your favorite scary movie?

Jaret Reddick: I was a bigger horror fan when I was a kid. I’ll show my age here, but I got to see Friday the 13th Part III at the theater, and it was 3D and awesome. And then of course, that also means I’m of the generation of Nightmare on Elm Street, which is the scariest fucking thing that’s ever happened in the history of the world. Then there’s the joining of the worlds in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors [our review]. Don Dokken did the soundtrack, so that was exciting. I do like some of the new scary shit, like Get Out and things like that. But I never really have liked things jumping at me.

Thanks for speaking with us, Jaret! Keep up with Bowling for Soup at bowlingforsoup.com/ and all social media platforms.

Feature photo by Amy Russell. Second photo by Jodi Cunningham.