Following more than a decade of pure success, Simple Plan is set to return to our shores on the back of their latest release, and 4th studio album, the pop punk party rock masterpiece Get Your Heart On.
Music Feeds: Hey Dave, how you doing?
David Desrosiers: Did you say ‘How you doing?” I thought you were meant to say ‘how you going?”
MF: Which one do you guys say?
DD: No, no, we say ‘doing’ but you know what? When we’re in Australia we love to say ‘going’, we get a kick out of it, we think it’s great, you know ‘how you going?”. Cos in French, we say ‘how you going?” so we don’t say ‘how you doing’ so for us, French Canadian it makes sense, we think you going it right”
MF: I think we got it right also! ‘Going” it rolls off the tongue. So where abouts in the world are you now?
DD: I am at home, believe it or not, for the first time this summer, but I’m leaving tomorrow morning, ha. So I’ll pack my bags after this interview. We’re heading over to Korea tomorrow morning; we’re doing a little south East Asia run. Then we go straight to Europe until mid September. Then we come back here for a special show with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and then we are going down under!
MF: Cool – that’s a really busy schedule
DD: Yea – but we can’t wait. You know? It’s a lot of touring, it’s a lot of work, but the big light at the end of the tunnel is Australia, my friend.
MF: Well, it sounds like everything is going well in the world of Simple Plan?
DD: It is! We can’t complain. We’ve been playing a lot of the shows in the States now. We just finished up on the Vans Warped Tour; it was a lot of fun. We’ve been doing Warped Tour for so long it was great to go back to it. Yea, we’re just touring non-stop for this record. We’ve already been to Europe, already been to Japan, now we are going back to Europe and back to Japan. We want to go everywhere but there’s only so many days in a year you know?
MF: Only so many countries you can visit I guess!
DD: It’s the best problem a band can ever have.
MF: It really must be a tough life! So Simple Plan started off in 1999, that’s 12 years together without a single line-up change. So many bands have failed here, what’s your secret?
DD: You know what? The secret to that is that right now we could all be marriage counsellors. We are now so good at knowing what buttons not to push, what buttons to push and when to push them; it’s like communication makes it so much easier. And I mean we are all getting older and we’ve gotten to know each other better. It’s kind of like we’re all married … but we’re not having sex … with each other.
MF: Simple Plan really did pioneer the whole pop punk movement, having been only 9 at the time Simple Plan came around, you’ll have to explain to me: has the pop punk scene changed much since 1999?
DD: I think it’s always going to be around, no matter what. Look at bands like Blink 182 and Green Day. I remember when we got signed in 2000, some people said that pop punk bands were going to die in the next couple of years. Now look at us! 11 years later and our record is doing really well in parts of the world and we couldn’t be happier with the reaction of the fans right now, you know? And we’re getting new fans every day as well. We can’t complain. I think pop punk will always be in a good place.
MF: So what can you tell us about the new album?
DD: Well, the new album is kind of like a throw back to the first two records we did, as far as the overall vibe, well our last record was a lot more introspective and a bit more from our darker side, I mean, we’re all really proud of that record and our fans were very pleased with that record as well. But after playing a lot of the songs live, we felt that we needed to get back that fun … energy … power. That’s why we threw back to the spirit of the first two records. There are a lot of songs that are about having a good time, stuff like that. We like to not take ourselves too seriously, and this is the result. You can be serious when it’s time to be serious, but you also need to have fun when it’s time to have fun.
MF: Exactly, that’s the law of life! So with Get Your Heart On you have guest appearances from Alex Gaskarth from All Time Low, Natasha Bedingfield and of coarse Rivers Cuomo, what was this experience like?
DD: Again, like I said we wanted to have fun, we wanted to party and to party you have to invite friends, and you have to invite some girls as well, so Natasha Bedingfield had to be on the record. To have Rivers Cuomo on the record was like a dream come true for all of us. We all grew up listening to their music. The first American tour we ever did, we had a Winnebago, now there were no iPods back then and the Rivers Cuomo CD was played almost the whole time in the RV, almost non-stop. When we heard he was doing collaborations and co-writing, we took the song to him and he dug it and said he’d sing on it! It’s even cooler for me though, I get to sing his parts live … every night! That’s quite an honor.
MF: Rad dude! So you haven’t been to Australia since 2008 – it’s been a couple of years, what are you looking forward to the most?
DD: Oh god … the weather, the beautiful scenery. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to put my feet in the sand. Any nice beach. You guys have such beautiful land, such a nice place in the world. It’s so precious to us. We really appreciate coming down. We think Australians and Canadians are pretty similar.
MF: Really? I’ve always thought that too!
DD: Maybe you guys are a little better looking? We accept that you know, we’re cool with that. Ha ha and very friendly and very open.
MF: Aw, you know how it is!
Simple Plan Australian Tour Dates
Friday 30 September – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Ticketek www.ticketek.com.au or 132 849
Saturday 1 October – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Ticketek www.ticketek.com.au or 132 849
Tuesday 4 October – Palace Theatre, Melbourne
Ticketek www.ticketek.com.au or 132 849
