Kidsday talks with All Time Low's Alex Gaskarth

We met All Time Low’s lead singer Alex Gaskarth on his tour bus when he and the band performed at Nassau Coliseum earlier this year. We stayed for the show, and the group is amazing!
 
Were you all friends when you joined the band?

Yeah, we all met our freshman year in high school. We were in a couple of the same classes. Just kind of became friends through the music that we listen to and then decided to start a band. We kind of started out by just playing covers of the bands we listen to like Third Eye Blind, Blink  and bands like that. Following that and writing our own songs  turned into this.
 
When did Hopeless Records offer you a recording deal?

We signed a record deal in our senior year in high school in 2006. We signed it on Valentine’s Day 2006, and graduated a month and half later. That was pretty crazy.
 
What’s your favorite part about being in the band?

I think the travel has always been my favorite part of it. We’ve gotten to see parts of the world that I never expected to see as a person this young — even at all. I don’t think there would be any reason for me at 22 years old to go to like Germany, even Japan, which is so far away. It’s on the other side of the world. Thankfully because of this band, I got to see a lot of the world that I didn’t think I’d get to see.

Are your songs about real life experiences?

Yeah, for the most part. There’s a few that are sort of made-up scenarios. But for the most part, everything’s based on experience — either my experience or someone close to me. It’s very easy to write about what’s going  around you.
 
What was the first song you all wrote together?

It was a song called “My Paradise.” I still have recordings of it somewhere. I think we were 14, 15 when we wrote that song.
Any songs you wrote in high school . . . do you still play them today?
Yeah, absolutely. The song “The Party Scene,” “Running from Lions,” “Coffee Shop Soundtrack.” All of those songs we wrote while we were still in high school.
 
On your newest release, what can people who bought it expect to get from it?

It’s just fun. I think what we really tried to capture was the overall attitude of this band and what this band is about. It sort of combines the live show with what happens offstage, and we film the entire recording along with footage from way back when we were still playing in high school. It really just kind of shows the beginning, and growth and progress that this band has made. How and why we’ve become what we are now. Good story.
 
When are you going to release your newest album that you are working on, and is it like the other albums you did?

We’re shooting to put out the new album in the beginning of 2011. Hopefully, January. It’s definitely taking a new direction. It’s not drastically different from what we’ve done in the past . . .   It’s sort of veering a little bit away from pop; trying to get a little bit more rock.

If you could change one thing about every member of the band, what would you change?
 
I don’t know. Zach  maybe could afford to wear a shirt more often. Honestly, I don’t think I would change anything about. . . it’s a real tough question to answer because this band works because of the four of us — who we are and who we are as individuals. Thankfully no one is really in a position where it pulls the band apart. We’re all sort of stuck together because of who we are as people. I don’t know if I could change anything. It might ruin it.
 
What was the best show you played on this tour?
 
Best show on this tour? That’s another hard one. I have such a bad memory for this. I think playing in Maryland, the first day of the tour, was awesome. We had some technical difficulties because the first day is always rough. It was our hometown venue, and it’s like Merriweather is kind of like the venue I grew up going to shows. I saw Blink there, I saw Green Day there. And to get to headline that and see that many people there for us was a dream come true.
 
What was the most memorable moment for the band on a road show?
 
There have been a lot of memorable moments. I think honestly a couple of the biggest ones are meeting and getting to know the Third Eye Blind guys. They’ve been one of my favorite bands of all times. Just getting to know those guys and getting to go out onstage and sing their songs with them has been like really surreal.
 
Who would you like to go on tour with?
 
There’s a few. I think we have a long list of bands that we would like to tour with — Blink being a huge one, Foo Fighters, Jimmy Eat World, Weezer. Any of those bands would be a lot of fun for us to tour with.
 
When you guys started out, you did Blink 182 covers. Has Blink 182 inspired you since then?

Yeah, absolutely. I think Blink, out of any band, is really the band that inspired us to be a band, I think they’re the ones to thank for All Time Low in general. Watching their DVDs, their performances, their attitude. They inspired us to kind of take the direction and take the route that we took.
 
Did you meet a lot of friends on tour?
 
Yeah, absolutely. I meet a lot of my friends on tour. Just in the bands and with the camaraderie on tour in general, we make a lot of friends. This tour, for example, was actually really cool because we met] Boys Like Girls and] we’ve been friends with them for awhile; we toured with them years back and same with some of the other bands as kids. Bands like Good Charlotte, Simple Plan and Third Eye Blind. We’re all really good friends, now; we all walk away from this experience with a newfound camaraderie as I said before. It’s going to be awesome.