All Time Low Could Barely Play Instruments When They Formed

After seven weeks in Europe, All Time Low's Jack Barakat finds himself slumped on the couch, watching baseball and eagerly anticipating their next journey. “We've played Europe so many times now that we've got a good following there. We were over there opening up for Green Day for seven weeks, so it was awesome, but it was definitely a new crowd; we were playing to a bunch of new people,” Barakat begins.

It's only been five months since their appearance at Soundwave, and a return next month is proof of their tireless efforts. “If you see us at a festival and you see us at a headlining show, it's a completely different show. With festivals, we're working a bunch of new fans over and putting on a less relaxed show; we're a little bit uptight and focused when we're on festivals because we're trying to gain some new fans, but if you come see us at a headlining show at a club, it's going to be a lot more relaxed, we're going to be messing around with people and bringing people up on stage. It's a different kind of vibe.”

It's not that the four-piece make a conscious effort to spend almost all of the year on tour, it's just all they've ever known. In ninth grade, Barakat was playing in a band with a few friends when he met vocalist/guitarist Alex Gaskarth. They got Gaskarth onboard and then slowly tweaked the line-up to somewhat of a local “dream team”, finding the best drummer in the school, Rian Dawson, and finally tracking down Zack Merrick, a bassist that everyone in town was raving about. At 17, while other students where sending off college applications, All Time Low were sealing envelopes addressed to record labels and trying to scope out a manager.

“We could barely play our instruments, we definitely didn't know how to write songs – we were just playing covers at that point. I definitely didn't think we'd be doing it for a long time,” he admits. “We were so young when we started playing, and we got pretty serious about it by 17, so at that point, I mean, most people still don't know what they want to do. We knew that we wanted to play music. There was never anything that we were passionate about that wasn't music, so no one ever even talked about or thought about college. Going to college wasn't even a real thing.

“We've been touring for so long now that we have it down to a science – we get along so well. We all kind of grew up together and it's really like a touring family. We don't really have a problem at all.”

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