Author Archives: Dominika

Simple Plan announce European tour with Mayday Parade and State Champs

AUTHOR: Dominika | 31. July 2023 | 1 comment

Europe, hold on to your hats! Simple Plan are finally heading out on a headlining European tour and they’re coming to the old continent first!

Simple Plan just announced that they will be returning to Europe in January and February 2024 for their “Hard As Rock” tour, which will include 20 concerts in total (in France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium and the UK).

As supporting acts, the band will be bringing State Champs and Mayday Parade, so we are in for a treat!

Tickets officially go on sale Friday, August 4th at 10am local time (except Antwerp – on August 8th and Barcelona – on August 21st) but pre-sale starts already tomorrow, August 1st at 10am local time with the passcode ICONIC.

Below, you can check out the full list of tourdates:

Simple Plan meet a loyal fan fulfilling his dying wish

AUTHOR: Dominika | 12. July 2023 | no comments

A very beautiful and emotional meeting took place on July 7th at the Eau Grand Air festival in Baie-Comeau in the Canadian province of Quebec. Jimmy-James Grégoire, a 21-year-old boy, who suffers from progressive spinal muscular atrophy, was able to check off one of his last wishes: to finally meet his favorite band: Simple Plan just a few weeks before peacefully passing away by his own choice.

For Jimmy-James, Simple Plan have meant a great deal for a huge part of his life as he was often seen wandering the streets of Sept-Îles and Uashat with his motorized wheelchair and his loudspeaker blasting Simple Plan songs. “Their songs bring me closer to my own story, they represent many things. I already have my Simple Plan playlist for when I die,” noting that his favorite song is ‘A Million Pictures Of You’.

According to the article by Le Manic (which brought us Jimmy-James’ story), during their performance at the festival, Simple Plan dedicated a song to Jimmy-James while the crowd cheered him on by shouting his name. He even received a special guitar solo from Jeff Stinco. “It was beautiful, they are lovely people. So friendly in person,” Jimmy-James said after meeting his music heroes.

The members of Simple Plan were touched immensely by Jimmy-James’ story. “It’s touching. We’re happy to bring him a little bit of happiness by being able to do that for him. It warms our hearts,” shared Pierre Bouvier to Le Manic. According to Jeff Stinco “one of the roles of music is to accompany people in all moments of their lives,” adding that he was happy to know that his band’s music accompanied this boy during his and will continue doing so until the very end. And finally, Chuck Comeau concluded: “It makes me very humble to know the difference we’ve made for him. Experiencing this kind of situation helps us too and allows us to become better people.”

As his condition makes him suffer every day, he feels great pain both physically and mentally. Because of that Jimmy-James has made a personal decision to die of his own will and has requested medical assistance in dying on the day of his 22nd birthday on July 24th 2023. May the music follow him on!

REPORT: Simple Plan at Rock For People

AUTHOR: Dominika | 18. June 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!

Simple Plan win Rock Artist of the Year at the 2023 CMW Jim Beam Indies Awards

AUTHOR: Dominika | 18. June 2023 | no comments

The 22nd annual Jim Beam INDIES took place on June 8th 2023 in Toronto as part of the Canadian Music Week. Simple Plan were nominated in two categories at the awards: Artist of the Year and Rock Artist of the Year – and in the end, the band brought home a win in the latter category, winning the Rock Artist of the Year award. Congratulations!

This is the first time for Simple Plan to win an independent music award ever since becoming label-free since their latest release ‘Harder Than It Looks’ (2022). Since Simple Plan were in Europe at that time, the award will be awarded in person later.

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

AUTHOR: Dominika | 17. June 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!):

SP.cz interviews