Taking one for Bangkok
Simple Plan returns for their first Thailand show in 8 years
Simple Plan is the band everyone loves to hate — the band no one wants to admit they were obsessed with. But admit it: anyone in their mid 20s to 30s knows all the lyrics to Welcome To My Life. After a quiet stretch of five years, the French-Canadian pop-punk band has come back with their fifth studio album Taking One For The Team, starting a revival of the poppunk genre.
Consisting of Pierre Bouvier (vocals), Jeff Stinco (guitar), Sebastian Lefebvre (guitar), David Desrosiers (bass) and Chuck Comeau (drums) — the same line-up as their first album in 2002 — the band is now on tour again, and will be performing in Bangkok on Sept 8.
We talk to drummer Chuck Comeau on the band’s comeback and upcoming Bangkok performance.
You’ve been a band for about 17 years now. How do you keep doing what you’re doing?
We all love being in this band, writing songs for our fans, travelling and playing around the world. We know how fortunate we are to still be here playing music with the original line-up, and it’s very important to us to keep going and pursuing the dreams we’ve had since we were 13-year-old kids starting our first band in our parents’ basement. As long as people want to hear our music and come to our shows, we’ll keep playing for them.
Could you explain what your new album name, means?
TakingOneForTheTeam, It’s a reference to the fact that being in a band is very similar to being on a sports team. We win and lose together, go through the highs and lows as a unit, and have to be there for each one another for the band to keep succeeding. Being in a band also means that each member often has to make sacrifices for the greater good, and over the last 17 years, we’ve all done that and put the band before ourselves. We all know that we’re stronger together than on our own.
How come this album took so long to come out? What challenges did you guys face?
Being together for that long and after releasing four albums that were really loved by our fans, we wanted to make sure our next LP would ‘stack up’ to the albums we released in the past. We didn’t want to let our fans down and give them something they couldn’t love as much as our previous records. So the bar was high and we pushed ourselves really hard to come up with an album that would have the classic Simple Plan sound, while still sounding fresh and modern. It took longer than expected, but I’m really proud of the result, and I think the fans have been really happy with the new music as well.
You guys have dabbled in many different genres these past years, but it seems like now you’ve come back to full-on pop-punk. What was behind the decision for that?
I think it’s always fun to try different things and expand the Simple Plan ‘sound’, but at the end of the day, fast, high-energy, catchy music is a style we’ll always love and hold close to our hearts, and it comes naturally to us. We love playing these types of songs live, and our fans love the fact that we’ve always stuck to our roots and keep putting out songs that have our classic sound.
Are you guys trying to bring pop-punk back to the mainstream?
I think it’s an exciting time for pop-punk: lots of big bands are putting out albums and making comebacks and there’s cool up-andcoming bands doing well and releasing great music. We’re really stoked to still be a part of that scene and to be a band that has been influential in that world. Rock music and poppunk specifically have not been getting tons of airplay on mainstream radio these days but there’s still millions of loyal and passionate fans around the world who love this kind of music. So I would say pop-punk has been doing just fine.
There is criticism that you only write songs about teen angst — how do you feel about that?
I think we write about what we know and how we feel. I think a lot of so-called ‘teen angst’ subjectmatter is emotions you can feel at any age and any moment in your life. Talking about heartbreaks, love, falling short of expectations or tough times people go through is not something that only teenagers can relate to. But at the same time, we don’t worry too much about critics or what people say about our music; we write heartfelt, honest songs and we hope people, and more importantly our fans, can relate, and that the music and lyrics can help and empower them.
It’s been eight years since you’ve performed in Bangkok, what can fans expect this time?
It’s been way too long since our last time in Thailand, and I’d like to apologise to all our Thai fans for taking so long to come back to play a show in your country. The show in Bangkok will be a full-on party, a best-of/greatest-hits from all our albums. We’ll play all the big songs people want to hear, as well as some brand-new stuff from the new album. We go on stage and play as hard as we can. It should be a lot of fun and I look forward to hanging out with all our fans in Thailand at the show.