Five years ago, Chad Gilbert was diagnosed with cancer. As he, Jordan Pundik and the rest of New Found Glory made their new album, Listen Up!, what they wanted was to find life’s moments of greatness in it all. Because, as he says, “At any time, something way scarier than you can ever predict can happen…”
Jordan Pundik has chosen one of his favourite quiet spots to reminisce about New Found Glory’s noisy early days.
On Beer And Blood Stains, the heaviest track from their forthcoming 14th record Listen Up!, the pop-punk veterans take us back to their grassroots genesis in the shitty dive bars of South Florida in the mid-1990s. The way he tells it, it was a time and place less Hit Or Miss than grit and piss.
“There were so many different occasions where either a fight would break out or the ceiling would literally be kicked down because the promoter or owner hadn’t paid the bands,” Jordan recalls of one particular venue that remains unnamed. “So a bunch of friends got together and were like, ‘We’re gonna wreck this fucking place,’ and it was the ceiling that usually took the punishment, which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, because there weren’t that many places to play in South Florida.”
Ceilings, funnily enough, are part of the reason that Jordan is currently speaking to K! in his car. He’d invite us in, he says, but the combination of his house’s high ceilings and the cacophony habitually made by his teenage sons means we’re better off out here, on the driveway of his home in the northern area of San Diego County.
“It’s better in the car,” Jordan reassures us, his eyes reflecting the kind of tiredness synonymous with being closer to 50 than 40, but great kindness, too. Though not the type of kindness he witnessed back in the South Florida scene, which was born from a strange code of ethics all of its own, where once the promoter or owner had settled the outstanding balance with the band(s) in question, those playing would pitch in to repair the damage they’d caused. ‘Such a backwards way for a good time,’ sings Jordan of the strange and unforgettable things that pass for fun in our youth. ‘Some of the best years of our lives.’
Listen Up! is New Found Glory’s first album exclusively of new material since 2020’s Forever + Ever x Infinity. That six-year gap has certainly coincided with some profound changes for the band’s four members – Jordan, guitarist Chad Gilbert, bassist Ian Grushka and drummer Cyrus Bolooki. While pop-punk records have a certain nostalgia characteristically baked into them – of first love, a musical awakening, or the summer that changed everything – Listen Up! is as much about realising the clock is running.
“Time doesn’t stop, right?” says Jordan, his hand running through stubble silvered by time. “We’re all getting older, but as a band we always talk about how crazy it is that we’ve been a band as long as we have. I think that comes down to being authentic with ourselves and with our fanbase, but also having experiences in our lives like having kids. I never thought I was going to be a dad, ever, but having kids changed my outlook on things.”
Despite being camped outside the house to avoid this conversation being drowned out by their chatter, Jordan’s love for his sons is absolute. Both have come to the realisation in recent years that their dad has some popularity, which they occasionally try to capitalise on. “I’ll get, like, ‘Dad, can you bring me backstage at the twenty one pilots concert?’” he laughs of a request he claims to have denied.
His youngest son, who’s 12, seems to have become a hybrid of mini manager and hype man. It’s been known for the family to be out for sushi together and son number two to spot a kid with green hair, approach him and ask, ‘Do you know New Found Glory?’
“It is so embarrassing,” cringes Jordan, flipping the usual parents-embarrassing-kids dynamic on its head. His older son, meanwhile, is 15 and acting upon his love of music. The other day, Jordan recalls, he was walking past his son’s room and heard a familiar song coming from within. “He was listening to the song Ordinary Life by [Berkeley punk veterans] Samiam,” dad beams. “I got so happy, as I love that band.”
When New Found Glory played North American tour dates with The Offspring and Jimmy Eat World last summer, son number one joined his father on the road just before the school term began.
“It was his first time getting in the mosh-pit,” reveals Jordan, teetering between proud dad and concerned parent. “He was just so hyped and would come back between bands saying things like, ‘There was this guy and he fell over and we all picked him up.’ To which I said, ‘It’s so cool that you’re having fun and doing that, because I used to do the same thing. But you’re my kid, and if you break your arm, I’ve gotta pay for that!’”
At 15, Jordan’s son is the same age Chad Gilbert was when New Found Glory first formed, back in 1997. The two men have therefore known each other for almost 30 years. While they’re now living more than 2,000 miles apart, their bond remains as strong as ever. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, when talk turns to Chad’s battle with metastatic pheochromocytoma, a rare adrenal gland cancer that in his case spread to both his spine and lungs, Jordan quietens.
“We definitely rallied,” he says of their response to Chad’s diagnosis in 2021. “It was a gut punch when we found out everything… to see my friend, my brother, going through that. We only know the bits and pieces he tells us, because he’s still pretty private in a lot of regards with it, which is totally fine.”
Far from being reserved and reluctant to talk about his condition, when we speak to the guitarist later, he’s incredibly open. Perhaps a little too open, in his greeting at least…
“I got naked for you.”
These are the words we hear from Chad Gilbert before we see him. Thankfully, when he appears around the corner seconds later, he’s fully dressed, wearing a T-shirt commemorating legendary WWF tag team Demolition, and a baseball cap at a jaunty angle.
We’re in Chad’s home in Franklin, a suburb 30 minutes outside of Nashville, in a house furnished with classy wooden panels and adorned with cute family portraits. He’s lived here since around 2009, when a number of musicians from the South Florida scene – including Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba – heeded some sort of calling to relocate to Tennessee and put down roots in their respective lives.
“We all wanted to have kids and there was a good school system here and things like that,” explains Chad, his voice audibly weak and growing hoarser as he politely explains some housekeeping rules: he generally receives a lot of doctors’ calls, so may have to pause proceedings if he receives one; he may also have to answer the door to his mum, who’s dropping some food off – though neither happens during the course of our hour-long chat.
It’s early afternoon, so in the first half of the day, which thanks to an elaborate regime of treatments, means he feels pretty normal right now. In a few hours’ time, though, around 6 or 7pm, the medication’s effects will start to loosen, causing him to start stumbling because he has titanium vertebrae in his spine and broken bones in his lower back caused by tumours. This means he lives in a certain level of agony most of the time, necessitating a sensible approach to how he picks and chooses his outings. So while he’ll head to Nashville this weekend to see his beloved bandmate Cyrus Bolooki playing a show with John Feldmann’s Goldfinger, he won’t be able to stick around for the whole show. “Being on my feet the whole night would destroy me!”
Chad is comfortable sitting, though, as he would in the studio during the making of Listen Up!, which he did in the midst of chemotherapy so intense it’s nicknamed ‘Red Devil’, constant ultrasounds of his stomach, and up to 25 blood pressure pills a day to combat the prospect of heart failure.
“Doctors always encourage quality of life, and about enjoying those moments,” reveals Chad. “Plus, Dan [O’Connor] from Four Year Strong, who tours with us now permanently, came down, so when I needed to double a guitar track and take a rest, he could help out with that. Without Dan, I don’t know if the album would have been finished – I did not expect to be so close to death while making it.”
“I’m going through a nightmare. But even in that nightmare, there are lessons you can learn and there’s joy you can bring people”
Despite the pitfalls and the pain, Chad has so much to be grateful for. He tears up when he talks about Lily, his four-year-old daughter, whose cherubic face smiles from various photo frames dotted around, as he compares notes with K! on the wisdom of becoming a first-time father in your 40s. He’s also proud of how Listen Up! has turned out, not just musically but in enabling the guitarist and songwriter to encourage his fanbase to be thankful for what they have.
In November, just before Thanksgiving, Chad spent three days in the ICU. In a case of the cure being worse than the disease, a tumour that had been successfully destroyed caused his sodium levels to spike uncontrollably. While the situation was soon under control, it illustrated that his health is a continual process of hard yards, some won and some lost, of breakthroughs and countermeasures that make the victories, like alleviating the pain in his legs, feel all the more special.
But he knows there are things he can’t change. He lives with a broken back that causes him to tilt forward as he sits, and each morning, before his wife takes their daughter to school, she administers an injection into his stomach, which remains deeply unpleasant. Chad is compromised, but, as he told the rest of NFG a few years back, there’s a precedent for having a member stay home and create in the studio while his tourmates are out on the road.
“I got to play a couple of shows that were close by,” he notes. “But, you know, Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys was schizophrenic, so when they were in Japan on tour, he was at home making Pet Sounds!” (The Beach Boys’ late mastermind had schizoaffective disorder, a mental health condition that combines symptoms of schizophrenia and mood disorders.) Despite this legendary way of working, and Chad chipping away alone to stockpile riffs on his own, it wasn’t long before Ian and Cyrus came to stay. For a week and a half, the bassist and drummer critiqued and built upon the works in progress, before Chad, who writes more lyrics than ever these days, began putting down words – albeit with Jordan’s help.
“Jordan was in Japan on holiday with his family, and he had a little journal, so I had him send it to us,” reveals Chad.
“There’s no ego to it,” says Jordan of the back and forth over lyrics. “We all know what’s going on in one another’s lives. Everything we write about is happening in real time, or it’s thinking of things that have happened.”
For Chad, in practice that means doing something constructive with his suffering. “I’m going through a nightmare. But even in that nightmare, there are lessons you can learn and there’s joy you can bring people. I don’t take that pain and waste it. I take it and turn it into joy.”
Chad has never smoked or drank, and suggests he’s always lived a healthy lifestyle, but these are the cards he’s been dealt. And yet rather than wallowing, he thinks of the beautiful things in life – the 12-year-old fan in the New Found Glory shirt who made him a bracelet that dangles from his wrist now; the people he meets while receiving chemotherapy, of every race, religion and political persuasion, who in that moment are together as one on the same playing field, hanging out and, as Chad puts it, “doing our best to survive.”
“The meaning behind the record is really about getting people to listen to the words, and to think a little more deeply. To not be so hard on themselves all the time, or critical. Because the world makes us critical of ourselves, and the world makes us feel like failures. And at any time, something way scarier than you can ever predict can happen. But, also, something way better can happen. You know, I went into the hospital for something dangerous and it ended up being because I killed a tumour. You just never know what’s going to happen!”
If Listen Up! sounds like it might be all doom and gloom, then guess again. This is still a New Found Glory album after all, so there’s a sunny disposition in the music even when the sentiments take a turn into more serious territory. Elsewhere, when NFG engage their tongue firmly in their cheek, there are a number of references to The Office and Parks And Recreation, two shows Chad watches religiously when he’s unable to sleep, littered throughout the record.
Treat Yourself, for example, will be familiar to Parks And Recreation [and an episode entitled Treat Yo Self], as a philosophy shared by two characters in the comedy series, who advocate the buying of luxury items and indulgence in pampering on one dedicated day. For Chad, the lesson is clear. “If you’re going through a difficult time, you have to treat yourself and go have some fun,” he says. “Because there are many times when I have to give myself a break.”
“If you’re going through a difficult time, you have to treat yourself and go have some fun”
That respite is easier said than done when there are people, many of them peripheral in Chad’s life, constantly reminding him of what he’s living with, however thoughtful their intentions might be, as explored on the song You Got This.
“They’re caring about me and they want to know how I am,” rationalises Chad, “But my answer is only ever two things: I’m dying or I’m doing good. What I was finding over the past two or three years is there’s a way of talking through the suffering that keeps them in the negative headspace.
“You want someone to ask if you’ve seen the latest TV show, like Welcome To Derry, and to tell you it’s awesome. I’d rather someone just talk to me like that, like a normal person. There are people in my life that have struggled with what I’m going through more than me. That puts a stress on me where I’m like, ‘I’m having a good day, and you brought it to a place that I don’t want to be in.’ So that's what [You Got This] is about. It’s saying thank you for caring, but don’t use this as a tool for connection for yourself.”
If you are after connection, though, Listen Up! is for you. Born from good times and bad, memories old and recent, pleasure and pain, it’s a record to listen to when you want to live in the moment and be grateful for what you have – made by four guys who have never forgotten how lucky they are to be doing what they’re doing.
“We’re just nerds in a band, you know?” Chad smiles. “We just play instruments and that’s it. And there’s nothing that makes me feel cooler, whether I sell two million albums or 200, than there being a person who feels connected to what we do, that tells their best friend about it.
“I think the biggest compliment would be to see the younger generation embrace this record and grow with it, opening the doors again to people not being scared to be themselves.”
Listen Up! is released on February 20 via Pure Noise
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