Category Archives: SimplePlan.cz

Year 2023 in the eyes of SimplePlan.cz

by Dominika | Dec 30th, 2023 | no comments

2023 is slowly coming to its end and what a year it was again! First year since the pandemic where we haven’t fortunately witnessed any show cancelations, which finally allowed Simple Plan to travel way more and way more often. Let’s have a look at the full year from start to finish and remind ourselves of all the happenings in the world of Simple Plan!

You can check out all the past reviews from 2009 later on over here – 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 – but right now, let’s go ahead, take a deep breath and have a look at all the major things that 2023 had in store for the band!

Here’s the recap of 2023:

After resting at home for the first few months of the year, the guys were ready to finally hit the road big time in March, when they’ve finally returned to Southeast Asia with their first headlining tour for the new album Harder Than It Looks. This month also brought us the 21st anniversary since the release of SP’s first album No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls, which the band celebrated by re-releasing the album on a beautiful crystal clear vinyl. At the end of March, we’ve then got to listen to Jeff Stinco’s special guest guitar appearance on a cover of ‘Waving Through A Window’ (a song from the Dear Evan Hansen musical) by Punk Rock Factory.

In April, Simple Plan were featured on Busted’s new album, collaborating on the song Loser Kid 2.0. For the summer, Simple Plan have returned to Europe to celebrate the festival season as well as to perform a few headlining shows. While in Europe, Simple Plan made a stop in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, where we welcomed them at the Rock For People festival for the first time and also filmed a little interview with them for SimplePlan.cz. In the interview we got Jeff and Chuck spill some beans about the Iconic/Jax collaboration that took place a bit later that year.

In the meantime, they’ve also managed to score the Rock Artist of the Year award at the 2023 CMW Jim Beam Indies Awards in June, making it the first award they’ve won as an independent band – congratulations, again! Upon returning from Europe, the guys didn’t stop and on the contrary headed to Florida for their favorite annual Walt Disney World stay, where they performed three shows for a few consecutive days at the Garden Rocks festival. And as per usual, they couldn’t miss out on returning back to their motherland, Canada, in July to perform for their Canadian fans at a number of local festivals.

The highlight of the summer of 2023 was a massive tour across the United States with The Offspring and Sum 41, which ran all the way until September. In October, Simple Plan released a new music video for the song ‘Iconic’ featuring a special guest – the singer Jax. In the same month, the band also headed to Mexico for a number of shows and ended the year with two iconic shows at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas.

And what can we expect from 2024?

2024 will be another super busy year for Simple Plan. They will cut their usual early year break short by heading to Europe for their first headlining tour since 2017 – the Hard As Rock tour with State Champs and Mayday Parade. As far as we know so far, this tour will include the band’s greatest hits but will also be focused on the bands latest album, as this is the first time they will get to fully promote it here in Europe as a headlining act. They will also be stopping in the Czech Republic and we are already planning another SimplePlan.cz interview!

As far as other touring plans goes, after returning from Europe mid February, the boys won’t rest for long, as they have a tour in South America in plans for March: they will finally return to Colombia as well as to a number of Brazilian cities. In April, the band will finally head out back down under, where they will be going on tour across Australia with We The Kings and Boys Like Girls. The plans the rest of the year then include another return for European festival season in the summer, mixed with some opening acts for Avril Lavigne, and also another performance at the When We Were Young in the U.S. in October.

But what about other music ventures for Simple Plan in 2024? According to an interview with Pierre, some members of the bands are already very eager to begin working on a new album. Pierre thinks that the creative process (songwriting/making demos) will definitely begin in 2024, but is unsure about when the album would be released. Besides that, Simple Plan also have some b-side songs up their sleeves that they might also release in the coming year to not keep their fans waiting for music for that long. But how will everything turn out? We shall all see in 2024!

As always, thanks for all the support in 2023, we can’t wait to bring you more Simple Plan news in the coming year!

REPORT: Simple Plan at Rock For People

by Dominika | Jun 18th, 2023 | no comments

Tens of thousands of music fans have gathered last week in the airport area of Hradec Králové in the central part of the Czech Republic to attend the annual Rock For People festival, which traditionally offers four days full of tons of multi-genre performances. This festival was the reason for Simple Plan to return to the Czech Republic yet again not even one year since their last appearance.

A big question mark was however hovering over how Simple Plan would deal with being put on the first festival day, which besides SP included a line-up of rather hardcore and metal acts such as I Prevail, The Architects or Slipknot. Our worries have completely disappeared once we’ve seen the wave of people heading over to the YouTube Music Stage right before the Simple Plan show. On one hand, it might have been rather surprising for some to see more than three quarters of the audience raise their hands when Pierre asked who is seeing Simple Plan for the very first time. The reasoning is simple: it’s very likely that the imbalance of the music genres on the first day of the festival has caused many Simple Plan fans not to attend – because it simply didn’t offer anybody else for them to see. On the other hand it was the perfect opportunity to introduce Simple Plan’s live show to other music fans, who have so far only known this band from the radio. From our point of view, we have to say that the atmosphere that the fans and “not fans” managed to create during this show was marvellous and overall very pleasant. You could tell that for many of the attendees, Simple Plan songs are tied to their teenage years and you just can’t forget those lyrics! No wonder that Pierre actually confided in us later that day that this was one of the best times he’s had on stage in years. And that’s always so nice to hear!

Overall, we could sum up that Simple Plan definitely made their mark at Rock For People and won over the hearts of not only the festival attendees but also of most of the reviewers from the media that reported about the festival later on. Let’s have a look at those!

IReport rated SP’s performance as “great” in its photo report. A positive review also came from the music website Fakker, which stated that “it’s impressive how this group still has so much to say to the world of pop and punk even after nearly two and half decades.” IRozhlas agreed that Simple Plan have truly presented themselves in “the best light”. It also pointed out how much of an interest of the crowd Simple Plan created with their performance at Rock For People and how Pierre Bouvier won the crowd over with his “broken Czech” (note from SimplePlan.cz: Pierre actually consulted us on his Czech backstage right before the show and surprised us by how many phrases he still actually remembers). A no-less positive review came from the news website iDnes.cz, which highlighted the work of Simple Plan’s sound engineer Frank Joly and rated the entire SP performance as an “honest, likeable and most importantly very well-performed and exciting pop-rock show.” Another great summary of the whole concert came from MusicServer. In their post, the authors even mentioned SimplePlan.cz with a short thank you, for which we wholeheartedly thank them right back!

“And a special thank you definitely goes to Dominika from the fantastic fanclub SimplePlan.cz, which alongside other websites about Yellowcard and Foo Fighters belongs to the best Czech fansites ever. And because the band from Montreal has become to know Dominika very well over the years, they often like to thank her at their Czech shows. And we too have to send her a word of thanks because it is thanks to her that the concerts of these pop-punk veterans are so much more heartwarming here than anywhere else.”

– MusicServer.cz [article] –

And it was precisely this thank you from Pierre to SimplePlan.cz right before he kicked off the last song off their set, which has become the highlight of the day for us. Once again big thank you, Pierre! In case you haven’t seen it on our social media yet, we are including it on a video below (big thanks to Hanka for sending in the video!)

It was clear that Simple Plan are very aware of the rock atmosphere of Rock For People, which is why they chose to give their setlist a little bit of a rock spin. The setlist, which consisted of 18 songs, brought us some special tracks we haven’t heard live in a while including “Me Against The World” or “You Suck At Love”. During SP’s performance, the band also invited two female singers to sing with them on stage: Taylor Acorn was featured on Jet Lag and LØLØ helped Simple Plan out with I’m Just A Kid. Check out the full Rock For People setlist below:

I’d Do Anything
Shut Up!
Jump
Jet Lag (feat. Taylor Acorn)
Your Love Is a Lie
Addicted
You Suck at Love
Welcome to My Life
Me Against the World
Iconic
Summer Paradise
Wake Me Up (When This Nightmare’s Over)
Party Medley (All Star / Sk8er Boi / Mr. Brightside)
What’s New Scooby Doo?
Million Pictures of You
Where I Belong
I’m Just a Kid (with LØLØ)
Perfect

Have you also attended SP’s show at Rock For People? What did you think about it? Let us know in the comments under the post or on our social media!

Recap of new SimplePlan.cz’s interview with SP: plans for 2024, band’s future as a four piece, secret featuring and more!

by Dominika | Jun 17th, 2023 | 1 comment

Last week, SimplePlan.cz caught up with Simple Plan before their performance at Rock For People in the Czech Republic and got to interview Chuck Comeau and Jeff Stinco, who gave us the most time out of any of the other media (for which we’re extremely grateful!).

In the interview, we decided to focus on some of the more important current topics and questions that have been in the minds of many fans recently and in this post we’d like to put down a summary of them in case you don’t have the time to listen to the full interview (which we wholeheartedly recommend, though!). Let’s get to the important stuff then, shall we?

ON CONTINUING WITHOUT DAVID
For the past few years, many fans have still been quite unsure about the current situation in Simple Plan after the rather vague announcement of David’s departure from the band, following the sexual misconduct allegations. In this interview, we decided not to ask but rather give the guys space to tell the fans how they feel about the situation without putting them on the spot with any specifics. And while it is still a very sensitive subject, which the guys can’t talk about in details, we think they made it clear that at least for now, the only way to go is to continue as a four piece. No plans on adding a new member to the band are on the horizon.

THE FUTURE OF SP CREW
For many hardcore Simple Plan fans, it has been a sad few years after their official fanclub SP Crew, which used to offer some amazing perks such as soundchecks with the band, has stopped functioning. The band knows this is an important feature in the fandom and they told us it is on their to-do list to bring it back in some new form. The fans however need to be aware that when it is back, they must not expect it to be the same as it used to be, but the band is trying to come up with a concept that would work out both for the band and for the fans and offer them something worthwhile.

SNGA AND GYHO ON VINYL
We also raised the question about the possible release of the not-yet-released Simple Plan albums on vinyl – Still Not Getting Any and Get Your Heart On. The guys said that that is another thing that is in works and they are thinking about either releasing them either separately or perhaps even as a boxset.

MUSIC VIDEO FOR ‘ICONIC’ FEAT. JAX?
By asking the guys two seemingly unrelated questions, we might have actually made them spill the beans about a secret project. Judging by Chuck’s “secretive hints”, it looks like Simple Plan might be releasing a music video for the song ‘Iconic‘ (which has been a hit on many radio stations at least in the Czech Republic for a while now) and that release might actually feature a collaboration with Jax, an American singer/songwriter, mostly popular for her viral song ‘Victoria’s Secret’. We can’t wait to find out more!

TOURING PLANS FOR 2024
A question we could not have not asked was about Simple Plan’s touring plans for the foreseeable future. According to Chuck and Jeff, the band still aims to visit places they haven’t been to after the pandemic – and that is Australia and South America. Besides that they also revealed to us that their plans include a European tour very early in the new year (2024).

NEW MUSIC ON THE HORIZON
It is not just touring that the guys have their minds set on, though. They still have some new songs left over from the recording session of Harder Than It Looks and they are trying to come up with ways how to release them – possibly similarly to their EP from 2013 that came out after Get Your Heart On with a few unreleased tracks.

25th ANNIVERSARY PLANS
During the interview, the boys have also mentioned that Simple Plan’s 25th anniversary is coming up in 2024, which deserves to be celebrated, so it is possible that some of the previously mentioned things – such as the vinyls or the EP might be tied to this special anniversary next year. And of course knowing Simple Plan, we can always expect a lot more exciting stuff!

You can check out the full video interview below (the audio quality isn’t the best, so make sure to turn on the English subtitles we’ve already provided!):

Year 2022 in the eyes of SimplePlan.cz

by Dominika | Dec 31st, 2022 | 1 comment

Back in 2009 we started this tradition on SimplePlan.cz to recap the entire past year and remind ourselves of all the good and bad that has happened over the course of it. And here we are, 13 years later, still recapping year after year: this time around the year of 2022, which was quite significant for Simple Plan: they released their first album as an independent band as well as the first album as a four-piece group, who finally managed to properly tour outside North America ever since the pandemic. How they did during the entire year? Let’s see!

You can check out all the past reviews from 2009 later on over here – 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 – but right now, let’s go ahead, take a deep breath and have a look at everything that happened in 2022!

Here’s the recap of 2022:

At the end of 2021, right after our last review was posted, Simple Plan still managed to do a one major thing: release the first official music video from their (then) upcoming album – ‘The Antidote’ and this way kicking off the new year with a brand new single and a hit. In January, the ghost of the pandemic has striked again and reminded up that it is still not fully over – Simple Plan’s first post-covid Canadian tour with The Offspring, which was supposed to take place in the beginning of the year unfortunately had to be canceled (but wait, it gets better from then!).

The promo mechanism of the new Simple Plan album started picking up speed in February, when a new collaboration for the album has been announced – Simple Plan and Sum 41 finally decided to bury the hatchet of past childish disagreements and for the first time worked together on a new song. The music video for ‘Ruin My Life’ feat. Deryck Whibley was released on February 18th and the bands also revealed the plans of upcoming tours in the U.S. and Europe together (with Simple Plan as the special guest) for a good half of the year.

In March, Simple Plan started giving us first hints about the upcoming album – the fans finally got to learn its title – ‘Harder Than It Looks’, its release date, the album’s artwork and also further down the road the tracklist. On March 16th the band also surprised us with another new song from the album – ‘Congratulations’.

The band finally set off on tour in April, when they visited Mexico. Simple Plan also released a new music video this month for ‘Wake Me Up When This Nightmare’s Over’, the concept of which was to shine a light on the terrible situation in Ukraine and actually used all Ukrainian cast & crew to make the final video. All proceeds from the viewings of the video on YouTube were donated to UNICEF to help children affected by this war.

The end of April but mostly the month of May signified the first part of the Sum 41 and Simple Plan ‘Blame Canada’ tour across the United States, where the U.S. fans first got to hear some of the new songs and also see Chuck crowdsurf in his own ‘post-pandemic way’. Unfortunately this tour didn’t go exactly according to plan as some members of the Sum 41 camp caught covid right before Simple Plan were supposed to celebrate the release of their new album at a show in New York City, however that show and a few others had to be postponed and Simple Plan’s album ‘Harder Than It Looks’ came out on May 6th without the originally planned celebrations.

In June, Simple Plan returned to Disney World for their annual concert gigs, which have been postponed multiple times because of covid in the previous two years. Finally, the guys got to take their children with them to Florida again to enjoy their dads’ music as well as the fun activities the park offers. Over the summer, the band returned to Canada for a few festivals and then hopped back on the second part of the Blame Canada tour with Sum 41 in the U.S. finishing it up at the end of August.

One of Simple Plan’s biggest hit to date, Summer Paradise got certified silver in the United Kingdom in September and this only welcomed the band to Europe even better for their first post-pandemic European tour, which kicked off at the end of the month – once again joining Sum 41 as a guest, but this time with a new title of the tour – ‘Does This Look All Killer No Filler’. During this tour Simple Plan also made a stop in the Czech Republic, where SimplePlan.cz had the honor to interview Chuck again (you can watch the interview here).

And finally at the end of October, the long-planned Simple Plan and The Offspring tour finally brought these two bands back to Canada, where they stayed throughout all of November. During that month, Simple Plan also released a new version of ‘I’m Just A Kid’ feat. the singer LOLO as well as an accompanying video for it. The band then finally got to have some well-deserved rest in December, when they headed off back home to spend some time with their families and loved ones.

And what can we expect from 2023?

As of right now it seems that next year will finally be the year when Simple Plan will get to go out back on tour on their own, finally delivering the ‘Harder Than It Looks’ tour to their fans as a headlining act.

Firstly, the band is set out to go to South East Asia in March for the ‘Harder Than It Looks’ tour that has only recently been announced. In June, Simple Plan will head back to Europe for the festival season, which so far includes destinations such as the UK, France, Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic with a one-off own show in Switzerland. But that won’t be all for SP when it comes to festivals. Canadian fans can also already look forward to them play in their country at a number of festivals in July. And finally, the only date we know about in the second half of 2023 is the already sold-out While We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas, where Simple Plan will get to perform in October.

Besides that there are many indications that Simple Plan might also be planning some more tours during the year – most probably in South America and Australia, where they haven’t toured yet on this tour cycle. However given that the HTIL tour only seems to be starting now, all places which SP have toured in 2022 could also be contenders for their own HTIL tour in the future. We shall see what the year brings.

As always, we’ll keep you updated!

Have a wonderful end of 2022 and we’ll see you in 2023!

New SimplePlan.cz interview with Chuck Comeau from Prague

by Dominika | Oct 3rd, 2022 | 2 comments

After 5 long years, Simple Plan have finally graced us with their presence here in the Czech Republic, when they performed alongside Sum 41 at a concert in Prague. A full report from the concert is of course to come, but we figured the first thing we really need to put out is the interview we filmed with Chuck Comeau on Simple Plan’s tourbus during the afternoon before the show in Prague.

In this interview Dominika (SimplePlan.cz) and Chuck discussed many subjects from the pandemic, becoming an independent band without a label and the behind the scenes of Simple Plan’s song-writing process.

Being over 37 minutes long, it is now SimplePlan.cz’s longest interview to date, so make sure you make time to watch it in full.

Big thank you goes to Coalition Music, Conspiracy Concerts, Danny Vance and of course Chuck Comeau for setting up this interview. Special thanks also goes to Viola for being the best camera girl.

We hope you’ll enjoy it & we can’t wait to hear your feedback in the YouTube comments: