New Times: Only a few years back, you guys were still on the uphill struggle. How does it feel now to have it all pay off?
Alex Gaskarth: Oh, man, it's one of those things that's taken quite a while to build. It's been a combination of like a slow build, but you know, it's only been a few years in the making. So it's... it feels like it's been rushed. It's a strange balance. It's been phenomenal, to go from playing church halls and stuff like that when you're still in high school to headlining in front of a few thousand kids every night. It's amazing.
Bands like yours have to be on the road for months at a time. What are the essentials that need to be packed?
For us now, we tour in a bus, so there's a lot of downtime. So a lot of the crucials are all the new movies that are out and basically videogames. They're a huge thing for us — definitely something to keep you entertained. We play a lot of sports too, so we'll bring out footballs, Frisbees, stuff like that, for off days. It's a really good way to kill time.
In your video for "Weightless," you rag on a lot of different groups and at times get pretty brutal. Were you ever worried about any backlash?
[Laughs] I mean, it's all in good fun. We make fun of ourselves in the video too, you know? Nobody's untouched in that video, so it was really more just kind of for laughs, and I think everybody gets it, and I think the stereotypes we address are pretty accurate. I think people mostly just kind of took a step back and laughed at it.
