All Time Low

It's safe to say that All Time Low's highest moment came during their stint on last summer's Warped Tour. The Maryland-based pop punk band takes their name from a lyric in the song "Head On Collision" by veteran pop-punkers New Found Glory, so spending the whole summer on the road with one of their biggest influences – a band they've listened to since middle school – was, and still is, surreal. "It was an awkward story to tell at the time," All Time Low's lead vocalist/guitarist Alex Gaskarth said, recalling how he revealed to the NFG guys just how important their band was to him. Gaskarth's unabashed love of pop-punk, particularly that of bands like NFG, Green Day and Jimmy Eat World, has helped set All Time Low above so many other young bands looking to break big. Making friends with everyone who shares their love for having fun while playing music – including the guys in Amber Pacific, who helped them get signed to pop-punk institution Hopeless Records – the four-piece has made a name for themselves after having just graduated from high school in 2006. Gaskarth ran Recoil through a retelling of his band's short history, the making of their debut full-length, So Wrong, It's Right, and some of their questionable fashion choices.

When you first started touring outside of Maryland on your own while you were still in school, where were some of the places you were really surprised to find that you had an audience already? Alex Gaskarth: Our first tour, it was like our summer vacation of our junior year. That was before we talked to labels or anything. We went on tour as far out as Texas with this band Hometown Anthem from New Jersey and it turned out to be insane. For the time, we didn't expect anyone to come and see us. [Laughs.] But there were actually a few places. Like in Chicago, Illinois, we played for a couple hundred kids and that was pretty insane.

Did you try to tour at all while you were in school? No, we could never manage to tour while we were in school just because it was a requirement [laughs] from all of our parents and everything that we finish high school. It was kind of surreal, though, because we'd be on the road during spring break and then we'd get back to school like the day before classes would start. So it's like the week before you're touring and then the next week you're in class, so it was kind of weird.

On the flip side of that, you did do some recording on your own (2004's "The Three Words To Remember When Dealing With The End" EP and 2005's regionally-released The Party Scene) while you were in school. Were those just intended more as demos capturing what you were doing in a homemade, hang-out way, or did you set out to really record? When we were recording stuff, we were definitely at that stage where we felt like this was for real. We got it all packaged, we tried to do everything right, the only difference was we didn't have anyone to help us sell them. We had to sell them ourselves. But I mean it was a first step. We took it very seriously.

You then recorded your first EP for Hopeless (2006's "Put Up or Shut Up") right before you graduated... Yeah, we were doing that while we were still in school. But we already knew what we were going to do, just because we had already recorded most of those songs once on a previous release that was independent, so that wasn't too crazy stressful or anything.

Speaking of stressful, what was it like going from just playing a few shows on Warped Tour in 2006 to doing the whole tour last summer? To be perfectly honest, the ten days [in 2006] wore us out a lot more than I think the whole Warped Tour did and the reason for that is that we did the ten days in a van. When you're in a van, basically someone is always driving. The day is so long, and you're up so early and you have to be there at seven or eight [in the morning] and you don't leave until about eleven or twelve [at night]. And then in that period you're probably driving since the venues are never very close together. We were not-showered; it sucked. But this last time we were on a bus.

And you were hanging out with your new friends New Found Glory. Exactly, exactly. So it was somewhat more manageable. [Laughs.]

Besides hanging with those guys and the other bands, what was your biggest thrill from being on the tour all summer? I don't know, just the whole vibe of Warped Tour. We're Warped Tour kids, like we were fans of Warped Tour ourselves. To just be a part of it was amazing.

You finished recording your album So Wrong, It's Right pretty much right before you went out on Warped Tour. What did it feel like to be on that tour, knowing you had that record done and ready to come out? It was a really exciting feeling, because we knew we had recorded a record that we were all really stoked on, and we were basically using the Warped Tour to set up the release. So it was a good time for us. We got to play some new songs and we were stoked for people to hear them.

When you were recording the album, then, how did you approach trying to capture the live feel, that kind of party atmosphere of your shows, in the studio or on the record? It's not easy to convey that kind of energy without physically being there because a lot of our performances are a lot about presence and the vibe that we give off. So I don't know; it was a weird experience trying to capture that live feel. But we did do some subtle things, like leaving in some mistakes on the CD and stuff like that. Like maybe someone screwed up a guitar part but it wasn't terrible, so we just left it in, things like that made the record feel a little more natural I guess.

This is a bit of an unfair question, but what albums would you say So Wrong, It's Right is like? I think I would compare it to some of the Jimmy Eat World records. That's really the vibe we were trying to go for. We would definitely compare it to Say It Like You Mean It by The Starting Line, Midtown's first record, albums like that.

Mentioning those records and from listening to So Wrong, It's Right, you've really gone for an upbeat, fun album that embraces hooks and melodies. Why do you think so many bands now shy away from making records like that? Because I think bands are scared to take the heat about it. I think musicians are worried that if they write simple pop music people are going to criticize them for not being smart enough, and we just don't really care. [Laughs] We enjoy pop music and we like playing it. We're not really trying to prove anything.

Now for the unavoidable why wear tightie-whities in your promotional photo? Why not, man?

What was the original idea for that photo? How did you decide on it? Since the record's called So Wrong, It's Right, we wanted everything related to the record to be a little bit questionable, to make people really step back and say, 'What the hell?' But at the same time, it's funny, like people got a lot of humor out of it too. It's all in good fun.

I read that a girl from your home state of Maryland got suspended for having that photo at school. Yeah, that was ridiculous, man.

Have you been able to make it up to her at a show or anything yet? We sent her some stuff and tried to make amends for it [laughs] but I would like to show up at her school wearing underwear or something.

What's the worst trouble you guys got into at school? Aww, man, I was the trouble kid. I would just yell at teachers if I thought they were wrong about stuff. There were a couple of teachers that I had that I hated. I would refuse to let them win an argument. I would just yell at them and basically tell them they were dumb. I was always bad. I never really liked school.

All Time Low will play The Intersection Jan. 19. So Wrong, It's Right is in stores now. For more on the band, hit up alltimelow.com.