“I definitely am into taking the longer, harder road”: NFG's Chad Gilbert on What's Eating Gilbert

CHAD GILBERT doesn’t know the meaning of the word “break.” His main gig playing guitar for New Found Glory has kept him busy for the better part of 15 years, culminating in the band’s first-ever live album, Kill It Live, out Oct. 8 on Violently Happy/Bridge Nine. But with what little time off he gets from his day job he spends working on WHAT’S EATING GILBERT, his retro-rock solo project that’s loaded with nostalgia for the ’50s and ’60s. The band—Gilbert on vocals and guitar, keyboardist/vocalist Honor Nezzo, bassist Audelio Flores, Jr. (also of Set Your Goals) and NFG drummer Cyrus Bolooki—will be hitting the road alongside an assortment of bands throughout the next two months in support of their new EP, Cheap Shots. So before Gilbert’s cellphone went into roaming mode, we caught up with him to talk his new band, his old band and just what it’s like to be electrocuted.

Bonus: AP and What's Eating Gilbert are currently hosting a tweet-to-win contest to win the WEG jacket featured in the video. Be sure to check it out and tweet before the September 17 deadline!

INTERVIEW: Scott Heisel

Let’s start with the obvious: What is eating Gilbert? What’s on your mind right now?
CHAD GILBERT: I don’t know what’s on my mind right now. I’m just excited to leave on tour. You know, whenever my girlfriend’s gone, its definitely—you know, she tours as much as I do, if not more. When I’m home, I just feel like I’m kind of wasting away, so you know, she’s gone and I’m like, “I want to be on tour!” so I’m just excited. I’ve got those tours with Tegan And Sara and I’ve got some shows with Chris Carrabba, I’ve got some Motion City Soundtrack and Bayside shows and I’m just excited to get out there. Most of all, I’m antsy. At every What’s Eating Gilbert show, they’ve all been shows where I’ve played last. So I’ve never really played for anyone new. That’s no slight to anyone at the shows; they just sort of heard about it through me and my associations and they were things that they’ve already known about. So this is going to be cool because I’m going to be playing in front of a couple thousand people with Tegan And Sara. They have no clue what it is. So, its going to be fun, being able to have some sort of semi-fresh start at playing a show, playing for people who have actually never seen me play before.

It has been a while since you’ve actually opened for somebody, even in New Found Glory. You’ve been a pretty consistent headlining band. Is it a different mindset from New Found Glory opening for the Honda Civic Tour versus What’s Eating Gilbert opening for Bayside or Tegan And Sara? Do you view the two as the same? Do you have different pressure on yourself because you’re the frontman now?
Yeah, with What’s Eating Gilbert, it’s definitely different. I have a whole new respect for Jordan [Pundik] with singing and how important it is to hear yourself. Because when I play guitar, I’m like, “Who cares! Let’s just play!” And now, with What’s Eating Gilbert, I definitely take care of my voice, warm up and warm down and watch what I’m eating. And it’s like, because there’s so much on me, that yeah, I try to really take care of my voice way more. If you’ve seen New Found Glory, I do a lot of the talking onstage and I used to sing obviously for Shai Hulud. I’m comfortable being a frontman. I’m not afraid to talk in front of anyone. That’s not a fear of mine. I don’t get nervous that way, but I definitely want to be good.

You’re also in an interesting spot with Chris Carrabba’s new band, Twin Forks. You’re both doing this new stuff away from what made you both the most famous. Obviously, the two of you go back a long ways, back to the Florida hardcore scene about 15 years ago. It’s been a while since you two toured together as Dashboard and New Found Glory. So when you do a tour like this and you’re meeting up with people when they’re in new bands, is there any sort of different feeling-out process to see how they’ve changed as a musician or do you just pick up where you left off?
Well, when Chris started this project, he sent me some of the songs he was working on a while ago, after Further Seems Forever’s California dates. I thought it was kind of cool. We sort of just kept touching base and talking every once in a while about stuff. I think the cool thing is that we have known each other for a long time and we are starting up [new projects], so I feel like these new shows are more comforting and less pressure on each other. You get to see two cool new projects, but at the same time for us as artists, I think there is sort of a comfortable thing going on. It’s nice having a familiar face while you’re in this growing period.

Your music video for “Complaining” is really fun. There are so many videos nowadays with weird interlacing of performance footage and no one knows what’s going on. But “Complaining” is a very classically designed music video where there is a main character and you see what happens to him and you get a clear conclusion. It reminds me kind of what What’s Eating Gilbert is all about, in terms of it being a very traditional project where it’s not meant to be trying to reinvent the wheel, but its trying to pay homage to the nostalgic elements of your life.
Yeah, 100 percent. That’s the thing with this whole project: I really wanted to do a video with this band, and the look and feel of this video is important to the introduction of this band. It’s a big element, like, it’s important for people to see as well as hearing. The video pieces it all together for people. That era [of ’50s culture] is what I grew up around, my family, from the movies I grew up watching to the music my dad would listen to, and my mom would listen to. I got into music really young—I would bring the neighbors over and I’d sing “Tomorrow” from Annie to them. I’ve just always loved music. Whether it was Van Halen’s “Jump” to the Beatles. When writing these songs, it just came out. And when that came out I was just like, ‘Yeah, this is really cool music.’

Here’s how I see it: Music evolves, but it also comes back around. When I started writing, it didn’t feel like I was pushing something, it felt like, “Whoa, this is cool.” It doesn’t completely sound like Buddy Holly and these old bands. But there is that inspiration there and it just felt like sort of a weird natural evolution. It’s coming back in a weird and modern way and I didn’t mean for that to happen, but I guess you could say that I’ve played punk music for so long that having those other influences just sort of formed this.

What’s Eating Gilbert has existed concurrently with New Found Glory, and I totally hear some crossover between some tracks on NFG’s Radiosurgery like “Caught in The Act” and “Train Wrecks.” Those could easily be adapted into What’s Eating Gilbert songs, in my opinion. Were you aware of that when you were working on the New Found Glory record versus the What’s Eating Gilbert album? Did you know the lines were being blurred at all?
That’s kind of funny. In “Caught In The Act,” that guitar lead was my chance to do a New Found version of “My Brain Hurts” by Screeching Weasel. But you know, it’s definitely not like that. When I write a song, I immediately know exactly what it is. I don’t know why, it just feels completely different. And the big part about it comes with vocals. With New Found, there’s sort of a democracy. Where if I write a song for New Found Glory, I write a riff and some music and with the band it is everyone’s idea. I’ll have a vocal idea and then I’ll send the music to Steve and he will have a vocal idea and then we will come together and pick which one we like better or pick elements of both. But with What’s Eating Gilbert, I write immediately and honestly, its like I write before there’s even a guitar part. [With “Complaining,”] I was complaining and complaining, and I wrote it and I was driving around and didn’t have a guitar. So I went home then put it to a guitar. So I think with What’s Eating Gilbert, that’s the difference. It starts with words a lot of the times. And New Found starts with the riff and I want to get more of a group effort.

You’ve done some touring as What’s Eating Gilbert but this is going to be your biggest exposure to date. A lot of times, new bands that feature a member of another notable band tend to incorporate some of their back catalog, whether its Twin Forks playing a couple of Dashboard songs, or when John Nolan from Taking Back Sunday plays solo shows, he plays Taking Back Sunday songs even though he is not the primary vocalist. Is there any element of New Found Glory’s catalog that you would ever think about incorporating into What’s Eating Gilbert, or will it always be a separate band?
It will always be separate. I would never ever do that. Then it’s not a new project. I feel like when bands do that, it [can be] cool, but it makes sense when it is the singer. I can see Chris Carrabba is wanting people to hear his new music, so he gets people there and he will play a [Dashboard] song or two. Morrissey plays Smiths songs sometimes. So I get that, you know, when you’re the lead singer. But I’m not the lead singer of New Found Glory, and to me that wouldn’t make sense. And I do want What’s Eating Gilbert to be very different. I want anyone to listen to this band, and I don’t want them to relate it to New Found Glory. I mean New Found Glory is New Found Glory and What’s Eating Gilbert is What’s Eating Gilbert. And I would never, never want to try to do that.