Several months ago, on the rainy opening day of the Download Festival 2013, one half of our team on the ground Jamie caught up with Patent Pending frontman Joe Ragosta for an interview. This interview however started with a twist, as Joe decided he would interview Jamie to kick things off…
Hello! This is Joe Ragosta from the band Patent Pending reporting for Rocksins! I’m here with Jamie, from Rocksins, and he’s going to explain to us all what he’s been doing in a field for the last two days with no music…
Jamie: Well, there’s been music but no live music. People have been getting drunk, people have been getting stoned, people have been getting up to other things they probably shouldn’t have been, trying to stay out of the torrential storms and generally having a good time.
So a whole lot of British then!
Jamie: I’d say so, British festival behaviour down to a T.
You heard it here folks from Jamie at Rocksins, this is Joe Ragosta from Patent Pending signing off and starting my interview, from Jamie…Jamie’s interviewing at me….you know what I mean!
On with our regularly scheduled interview….
So, are you guys excited to be here?
Joe: Dude, I don’t think excited is even the word and I don’t think they make a word strong to explain the amount of excitement that we have at this exact moment. I did, because I’m being British right now, have a cup of tea backstage and I saw Toby from Papa Roach and it’s like “I used to have that guy’s poster on my wall!” So it’s a bizarre thing to be here. KoRn are here and Slipknot and all these amazing bands that we thought being a pop rock band, and being a small pop rock band, we’d ever get a chance to get in the same arena as.
You guys are on in ninety minutes or so?
Joe: All I know is I need to find some food, or otherwise I’m gonna throw up the food I didn’t eat!
Jamie: Yeah you don’t wanna do that, I think there’s food that way *points*.
Joe: Cool! Well, ninety minutes or one meal from now *laughs*
The UK has been pretty good to you guys over the last year hasn’t it?
Joe: Oh dude that doesn’t even cover it.
Jamie: I know you were on tour with Bowling For Soup & The Dollyrots, I saw you guys in Cambridge on that tour, that was a lot of fun.
Joe: Those shows were incredible dude. Every single day that we’re in England, this is gonna sound cheeky as you’d say, and it’s going to sound fake, but it’s not fake. Every single day that I am here is better than the day before, and when Jaret from Bowling For Soup sat me down, he started managing us this year, he was like what about England blah blah blah, talking about what we should do with the band and everything and I was like “dude, it doesn’t matter, let’s just go to England, it’s fuckin’ awesome there!”. Maybe I’m the first American to ever say it, but I fuckin’ mean it! This country has embraced us in such a way that it’s just SO great to be here. I know we’re playing a metal festival today, and we’re the only pop rock band without a hit song, but I think it’s gonna be fine, because it’s England where everyone loves music.
Jamie: The people will come.
Joe: Hopefully!
They will, particularly anyone who’s seen you with Bowling For Soup or if they saw you with Erik (Chandler) a few months ago. Did that tour go well for you guys?
Joe: Live Nation called us and said here’s a tour and we were like OK great we wanna do this, thank you, this is an incredible honour, but are you sure about this? Because other than the people Erik is gonna bring I don’t think we’re gonna bring anyone! So they were like “Don’t be daft” *laughs*. I didn’t have a clue and was like “what does that mean?” so they had to explain it and then I was like “well I don’t think you’re right but let’s get on it”. So then we came over and there were fucking sold out shows! It was nuts and the reactions were insane! We’re very fortunate this year to have this new regime with the second family here in England.
Awesome! Well I think your covers E.P has probably done quite a bit to get you some good exposure.
Joe: Thank you very much!
Jamie: What made you choose to do the likes of Backstreet Boys and Limp Bizkit? It’s quite a mix on there.
Joe: It is, so it’s actually a great testament to our band because we have such an eclectic group of influences and all of us collectively agree that our favourite year of music was 1999. Enema of the State came out that year, Limp Bizkit had a record out that year, KoRn and Lit and all these amazing bands had stuff out, and then on the other side Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys, a lot of pop history, our generation of pop history happened that year. So we always wanted to do a covers album from 1999. If we’d had it our way it would have been twenty five songs. But we ran out of time and out of money so it’s only five songs long. Because we’re a weird band like that we love to do a Backstreet Boys song next to a Limp Bizkit song and with the Limp Bizkit song make it a piano ballad! But we’re annoying crazy people from America and that’s the stuff we do.
Jamie: Yeah, but people very much like that you’re doing something different with some old favourites.
Joe: Well here’s hoping man, because we’re the type of band who like to not be in the box all the time. We’re not scared to do dance moves in the middle of one of their songs to a Backstreet Boys-esque part at a metal festival because quite frankly we don’t give a shit as long as we’re having fun. And if people react to that then that’s great.
Are you going to pull out some of that material today?
Joe: Absolutely! I couldn’t imagine anything funnier than a bunch of people who’ve come to see a bunch of metal bands watching us do Backstreet Boys dance moves in our pop rock songs, that’s a funny thing to me. Just the concept of that makes me laugh. I think it’ll be a great time. Hopefully the people in England who have not heard of us yet will hear of us today.
I hope so! Did I hear right that you’re opening for Bowling For Soup on their UK farewell tour?
Joe: You heard right sir! We’re doing the Bowling For Soup farewell UK tour from October 10th to October-whenever they make us leave, and it’s gonna be an incredible array of excitement and emotions, because that band has such history here and they’ve had a big part in our lives and our careers. So watching those last days of shows here where they’ve had this unbelievable following, it’s going to be a little gut wrenching.
Jamie: Yeah I think it’ll be amazing but really sad as well.
Joe: Exactly. It’s going to be so bittersweet. My understanding is that they’re going to play for three hours a day. If you’ve seen Bowling For Soup you know that two hours is never enough, so this time around three hours won’t be enough either!
Jamie: I saw Jaret & Erik do their first acoustic tour and they did three hours then but I’ve never seen them do three hours of a full band show. That’s gonna be mental!
Joe: Sure is going to be mental. They’re actually doing an acoustic show the first night in Union Chapel in London, we’re on that too, and they’re shooting a full DVD that night too. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say that…but I just did.
Jamie: Worldwide exclusive!
Joe: Jaret’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me.
Jamie: Don’t worry, this probably won’t be written up until it’s out in the public domain anyway (Jamie’s note: how right I was). It’s all good.
Joe: Thank you sir!
One last question, can you give us a funny tour, either from yourself, or your time on the road with The Dollyrots and Bowling For Soup?
Joe: funny stories…funny stories…OK, so last night we played with the band Lit, and we’re huge fans, we covered their song My Own Worst Enemy on our 1999 E.P, and we were playing with them last night. They were one of the first bands we ever learned how to play. At our very first show we covered My Own Worst Enemy, this is twelve years ago. So last night we were stood on the side of the stage watching them, and they called us up on stage to sing it with them. And it was such a bizarre moment because it’s a song we play almost every time we play.
Jamie: That must have been so surreal.
Joe: It was bizarre man. The craziest part of the whole thing was after the show they were on our bus getting fuckin’ hammered with us. So it was a really cool moment, especially for a band like us who grew up in basements idolising bands like Lit it’s an amazing honour and privilege, and fuckin’ funny as shit that we can have a moment like that in our memory banks. It’s cool.
So, all’s well that end’s well. We didn’t drop Joe in it with his manager and good buddy Jaret Reddick from Bowling For Soup, and we cost ourselves a worldwide exclusive by being slow with this interview. Never mind!
Patent Pending are currently in the middle of opening for Bowling For Soup on the “BFS Bids Farewell To The UK Tour” Tour. Very limited tickets are available for a couple of shows but most have now sold out. The list of shows is available on the tour announcement here. Rocksins saw Patent Pending in action with Bowling For Soup on the opening night of the tour at the acoustic show at Union Chapel and our review of that show is available to read here.
Patent Pending’s brand new album Brighter was released last week to co-incide with the tour and is available right now after a very successful Pledge Music funding campaign. Further updates from Joe and the rest of Patent Pending will be available here as they are made available. Follow Joe on Twitter at @JoePending.
