Punks & Pokes featuring Bowling For Soup and Eleven Hundred Springs
Punks and Pokes is set to be an annual Longhorn Ballroom community event inspired by the iconic Sex Pistols – Merle Haggard marquee. The show will be held on Saturday, February 1, and will celebrate the musical diversity of the Longhorn’s history while raising awareness and funds for relevant charities. To help kick-off the inaugural event, Longhorn Ballroom will host two beloved (and contrasting) North Texas bands, Bowling For Soup and for one night only a special reunion of Eleven Hundred Springs.
Proceeds from the night will benefit Music Health Alliance (connecting musicians with healthcare), Cafe Momentum (serving at-risk teens in Dallas), and the Southern Gateway Park Foundation (coming to South Dallas).
Hall of Fame Texas Rangers broadcaster, Eric Nadel, will be the emcee for the night and our friends at Spinster Records will set the mood. Longhorn Ballroom will be telling the stories of its past in fun ways - while supporting these organizations and celebrating the future.
Bowling For Soup
With their thirty year anniversary as a band on the horizon in 2024, Texas’ favourite punk rock export Bowling For Soup continue to grow their global fanbase and expand their success year on year. Also dubbed the crown princes of pop punk, Bowling For Soup - frontman and guitarist Jaret Reddick, fellow guitarist Chris Burney, drummer Gary Wiseman and bassist Rob Felicetti have proved that nothing, not even a global pandemic, has slowed the demand for their unique, humour filled live shows and upbeat, heartfelt anthems.
Songs such as High School Never Ends, Punk Rock 101, 1985 and of course the Grammy nominated Girl All The Bad Guys Want resonate as much today as when they were written and are proving extremely popular in the modern streaming world. Their 2022 album, Pop Drunk Snot Bread, a play on the cultural reference “pop punk’s not dead”, was heralded by fans and critics alike as the band’s best release in fifteen years. Millions of streams and YouTube views for songs like Getting Old Sucks (But Everybody’s Doing It), I Wanna Be Brad Pitt and the global smash Alexa Bliss (dedicated to WWE’s own multi-time world wrestling women’s champion) show that Bowling For Soup can still run rings (and riffs) around their younger contemporaries. The album also features songs like The Best We Can, Wouldn’t Change A Thing and the positive mental health anthem Hello Anxiety, where Bowling For Soup show they can do both serious and reflective, with a BFS heart at the core.
It's a testament to the bands' enduring appeal and a fanbase that continues to grow day after day - evidenced by their 100 million streams on Spotify in the year 2020 alone. Finding their niche back in the 1990's would be tough when the musical climate was in serious shift. "We were just the stereotypical, small town guys with nothing else to do - starting a band to keep ourselves out of trouble" recalls frontman Jaret Reddick looking back. There was certainly no trend to follow, every other band seemed to be genre jumping to try and catch "the next big thing" without knowing what "the next big thing was", leaving the members of Bowling For Soup with no option to just go out and have fun. Brought up on a heady diet of 80's John Hughes Movies, LA Hair Metal, Steve Martin comedy routines (which spawned the band's name) and hook laden punk rock, BFS hit the ground running on the simple blueprint - have a good time and pretty soon, everyone else will join in!
Bowling For Soup are a band who've proven time and again that they can move with the times throughout a period of turbulence for the music industry. From their DIY roots, through to being on a major record label for many years (Jive Records) and being very successfully independent with their own label for over a decade, they are a band who've found success in every way. ‘We're in control of everything now. If we decide we wanna do something, we just do it - we don't need to ask anyone’s permission. It also makes you feel super proud when you do something yourself and it’s a success’, reveals Reddick.
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Bowling For Soup were playing to the biggest crowds of their career. Over 20,000 people witnessed their sold out 2020 UK tour with Simple Plan and they've sold out arenas alongside Steel Panther. Headline appearances at recent editions of UK festivals like Slam Dunk and Reading and Leeds have gone down a storm. At Reading Festival 2019 the crowd overflowed out of the stage with fans peering for a glimpse of "BFS", while their appearances at the final editions of the US Vans Warped Tour brought enormous crowds to every show, no matter what time of day the band were performing.
With the world experiencing live music again following COVID in 2022, Bowling For Soup’s enduring live appeal saw fans return in droves for huge tours in both the UK and US, many making a “BFS” show their first taste of live music since the pandemic. Whether it was huge theatre shows with Lit and The Dollyrots (UK), Less Than Jake and The Aquabats (US) or the sold out UK singalong with Jaret and Rob acoustic tour, the demand to see Bowling For Soup live in the flesh is bigger than it ever has been. 2023 sees the band return to play festivals and shows in mainland Europe for the first time in many years, alongside huge slots at the UK Slam Dunk Festival, while multiple US tours are in the pipeline. A Second chapter of their greatest hits, Songs People Actually Like Volume 2, is due to land late this Summer. Frontman Jaret Ray Reddick is also enjoying new adventures with his journey in the world of Red Dirt Country Music with his debut solo album Just Woke Up.
While the music industry and the world at large is ever evolving, Bowling For Soup have prided themselves on moving with the times, keeping up with the latest ways to stay in touch with their fans (Jaret is now a huge star on TikTok) and get their music out there to as many people as possible. For generations of fans, there has always been a Bowling For Soup song for every occasion. They’re the band who make you smile and they’re the band who will pick you up when you are down, and as their song says, they wouldn’t change a thing.
Eleven Hundred Springs
Eleven Hundred Springs was founded by Matt Hillyer (lead vocalist, guitar, primary songwriter), Steven Berg (bass), and Richie Vasquez (drums) in 1998. Prior to forming Eleven Hundred Springs, Matt and Steven had played together in three previous bands, most notably the Dallas rockabilly band LONE STAR TRIO, and the 3 piece rock band STRAP. The band’s early days included a lengthy Monday night residency at Adair’s in Deep Ellum. It was during this time that the band’s first album, Welcome to Eleven Hundred Springs, was recorded, as well as Live at Adair’s.
Over the years, the band has had several lineup changes, with key band member Jordan Hendrix joining the group in 2006.
The most recent, and what proved to be the band’s final lineup was put together in October 2016.
On June 9, 2021, lead singer/songwriter Matt Hillyer announced via his Facebook page that, “with bittersweet feelings that we’ve decided to bring the band to an end.”
On Friday November 26, 2021, the band played its final farewell show at the Granada Theater in Dallas, Texas.
