Image courtesy of www.thefups.com


We sat down with The F-Ups frontman Travis Allen in the press room at this year’s Warped Tour in Minneapolis to talk about everything from being robbed in Canada and losing fenders to guitarist Chris deWerd’s smoothness with the ladies. And even as many have stereotyped the band out to be a bunch of rude, mohawked teenagers, Travis proved otherwise. Looks can be deceiving.

Concert Hype: We’re based out of Northeast Iowa… Actually we’re about an hour from The Warehouse.

Travis: Oh really?

CH: Yeah, you guys have played there a lot.

Travis: Ah yeah, that’s one of my favorite places that we play.

CH: So how’s Warped Tour been going?

Travis: Oh Warped Tour has been going great… All the staff, and everybody, and all the crew… Everything is… Everybody’s really nice. It’s really long, like the drives start to get you know, a little tiring. [Laughing] But we had a day off, and now that we’re in Minneapolis right now, it’s pretty nice that we have two days to be home and see families. So it’s kind of like a re-charge before, you know… We actually only have one day left, which is tomorrow.

CH: You guys aren’t doing the whole tour?

Travis: No, we’re doing a club tour after this. I don’t know what else we really have planned. But Warped Tour has been great so far. It’s been really fun.

CH: Are there any particular bands you’ve become better friends with since the tour started?

Travis: Well, Letter Kills, of course… And then there’s so many. Spell Toronto is a band... We’ve gotten to meet a lot of bands that are on the smaller stages, like you know, A Faith Called Chaos. There’s really great bands that a lot of people don’t get to see because they’re always out by the main areas. Which all the bands playing that are playing on the main stages are great, but there’s so many more that are out on like Volcom, you know… Just go check ‘em out.

CH: What was the largest crowd you played for before Warped Tour?

Travis: Probably today… I have no idea how many people were there today, but there were a lot. [Laughing]

CH: But like, even before Warped Tour? Before you got on the tour, do you know what your largest crowd would have been?

Travis: Probably like maybe 500 people… at most. Yeah.

CH: Cool cool. So have a lot of your friends and family come out to the show? Have you seen them?

Travis: Yeah, actually, all my family… a lot of my family is here today. And I’ve got a lot of friends that are walking around right now. I didn’t get to really say hi to too many of them, but when I’m back at the booth I’ll say hello.

CH: What do they make of all your success so far?

Travis: Uh, they’re pretty cool. Like all they say is don’t get a fat head. [Laughing]

CH: [Laughing] I was gonna ask if you’re planning on coming back to The Warehouse anytime soon…

Travis: We wanna try to get a hold of our booking agency or management company to see if we can set a show up there. It would be really fun to go back and play The Warehouse.

CH: What has it been? A couple months since you’ve played there now?

Travis: Yeah, we played, we started there just like… I don’t know how many months ago. Yeah, but that was our first show as The F-Ups.

CH: Cool… You guys were recently robbed in Canada… Has there been any other chaos since then? [Laughing]

Travis: [Laughing] Just like, lack of sleep… I mean like, it’s really weird. We all get along very great, so I mean, there’s not really… Money issues every once in awhile… You know, just your normal stuff that you run into. We had one of our tires go flat. Our fender flew off. [Laughing]

CH: [Laughing] I heard that [voicemail] on your web site… “If you see the fender, bring it back.”

Travis: Yeah, we had to get a new one. Just stuff like that, just stuff that happens when you go out.

CH: What do you think Capitol saw in you guys that made them want to sign such a young band?

Travis: I think probably, you just said it. Probably the fact that we’re young, you know? It’s marketable music. It’s your basic Pop-Punk. It’s funny, I mean, I love Hardcore and all that music… I love tons of music, but you know, a lot of people judge our music off of our image. They always call us posers, but it’s all right. [Laughing]

CH: Have you learned a lot about the business side of the industry since you’ve been signed, do you think?

Travis: Yeah, I’ve learned as much as I can possibly learn right now, you know? I understand so much. Like, it’s been pretty cool since we’re so young. They’ve kind of like almost gone out of their way to help out and show us, you know, really what’s going on. And we’ve had our lawyer, actually out of here, Ken Epto, great guy, he’s been helping us out. Our management team, Benchmark, and actually our producer Brynn Arens taught us a lot of stuff. So did my parents. It’s been… Everybody, you know. Capitol has been great. It’s just really fun. We’re really appreciative of everything.

CH: Your album was released July 13th and you played Vancouver… Did you do anything special that day?

Travis: We just played. [Laughing] Yeah, it was weird because the record wasn’t released there yet. I think it came out the 20th in Canada, so we just told people about it. You know? It was really weird playing Canada. It was fun, but it was just really weird. Everybody was tired… We were…[Cell Phone begins to vibrate] Sorry, I tried to hide it. [Laughing]

CH: A few of your songs were written way back when you were all in 8th grade… What was the reason for including them on your album 5 years later?

Travis: They just kind of stuck. They’re the ones that the label liked. We’re like, “All right, well, we’ll keep that one.” [Laughing]

CH: Do you ever get tired of them?

Travis: Yeah, I’m really tired of “Screw You.” [Laughing] That’s the one I’m most tired of. We did some new stuff to it though, so that was kind of fun. And actually we re-did a song “Glad That I Lost You”. What actually used to be our fastest song and we slowed it down and just changed it around. I don’t really like to play that one all that much, though.

CH: All right, well, I was checking out your message board, and you guys all seem to be about the ladies. So I have to ask you about this… [Laughing] There’s even a thread on there about “hooking up.” Care to comment on that?

Travis: Actually, I’m not much of a lady’s guy. I have a girlfriend…

CH: I heard Chris is…

Travis: Chris… [Shaking head] He’s cute. That’s the only problem. He’s just the good looking guy in the band, so all the girls kinda go after him. He doesn’t do anything with them; nothing happens… I’ll just verify that now. He does a lot of barking. Seriously, that’s all that goes on. [Laughing]

CH: [Laughing] All right, so after Warped Tour you’re playing a few shows, even the ESPN X Games in August. Any big plans for this fall or winter?

Travis: We don’t know as of yet what’s gonna be going on this fall or winter. I’m assuming that we’re gonna be doing more club tours, just to get the name out and you know, promote the CD. We’re gonna be just going around the country, I’m assuming. That’s basically all they tell us. They don’t want us to get excited about something that might fall through.

CH: Finally, what do you see in the future for The F-Ups?

Travis: Well, I don’t know yet, you know? [Laughing] Actually, we don’t know yet. We just hope to, you know, have fun. We don’t really have like a political message or anything, you know? We’re just out to have fun and hope other people enjoy it, too. That’s all. And we’re young. [Laughing]

CH: Well, I think that does it for us, so thank you.

Travis: Thank you! It was very nice to meet you!

CH: And you, too.

Travis: See you later!

Interview By: Gabby and Nicole