Jeph Howard of the Used on Taste Of Chaos: “It’s like a family reunion"

With Taste Of Chaos making its triumphant return this weekend, we figured who better to turn to than Taste Of Chaos veterans, the Used. We caught up with bassist Jeph Howard to have him share some his favorite ToC memories and tease the awesome plans the Used have in store for 2016.

Who are you excited to see this year?

JEPH HOWARD: Oh God, I’m stoked to see every band on this tour. There’s so many good memories from the past, it’s just exciting to be on the same tour again with all these bands. Touring has two sides—well, it has many sides, but major touring, we’ll talk about two sides. There’s the festivals and then there’s the non-festivals, like club shows. They’re both great, but I prefer the club shows most of the time. But certain festival shows have a family vibe. Warped Tour has that kind of vibe and Taste Of Chaos even more so, I think. So it’s exciting to go to a tour that has that vibe with bands we all know, even bands we haven’t heard of and haven’t played with. That’s even more exciting! Taste Of Chaos is kind of like a family reunion. It’s very exciting.

What’s it like being back on TOC after the few years they’ve had off?

Oh man, it’s great. We’re so excited about it. We did the first and third [tours]. We helped with it originally. We did the World Taste Of Chaos too, which was amazing. I mean, there are so many great memories from that tour we still have.

I’m sure after taking this many years off, people are saying: One day’s not enough!

Every time we play shows, we have so many kids come up to us and bring up Taste Of Chaos. “You guys need to come back, you need to bring Taste Of Chaos back, and come back with it.” We have been trying, we have been pushing [for it] to come back for years now. So, now that it’s happening, it’s incredible. Along with Taste Of Chaos, we have a song called “The Taste Of Ink,” and so it’s kind of a throwback to that song, so it’s really interesting.

Do you have any cool stuff planned that the crowd can look forward to for Taste Of Chaos?

We implanted spies in the crowed that are going—no, no, actually. [Laughs.] We don’t really have anything like that planned. We are planning some really cool stage antics. Just, you know, it’s tough, with six records out right now, and we only get an hour to play. It’s a matter of cramming stuff into an hour. That’s six records and each record’s about an hour, so we get a couple songs per record. And it gets really tough, because people want to hear certain songs, and people want us to play something different. We do our best. Coming to our show is your chance to see all of your favorites from each record. And if not, next time you come back, you’ll probably hear that song you wanted to hear. And, actually, we have a lot in store for us in the future right now. We have another show that’s going to be happening Taste Of Chaos. It’s happening in somewhere in LA, it’ll be a really unique setup, something we’ve never done before. I don’t want to put out specifics yet, but follow us on Instagram and Facebook to find out…