Making it big with your high school garage band is about as likely as a successful marriage to your high school sweetheart; it just doesn’t usually work that way. Against all odds, All Time Low have taken advantage of what they see as an age revolution in the industry and have become one of the new generation of pop foreces to be reckoned with.

Singer Alex Gaskarth took time out to speak to Shout! recently while on the AP Tour…

S!: What one song from So Wrong, It’s Right would you choose to hook a new fan?

Alex: Probably “Dear Maria, Count Me In”. It’s kinda the “spokesperson” for the CD, I guess. It’s sort of the most in-the-middle of all of the songs, as far as the heavier side of the CD to the poppier side of the CD.  It’s right down the middle, so I would use that one.

S!: If you had to reference your sound by comparing it to one band, who would you compare yourselves to?

Alex: Skee-Lo! I’m joking, obviously [laughs]. I don’t know…I don’t think we sound like Blink 182, but I would say Blink 182.

S!: So, just heavily influenced by them?

Alex: Yeah, yeah…yeah.  Not the band The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blink 182!

S!: If you could add anyone (living or dead) as a member, who would it be?

Alex: Umm…man [thinks]. The tambourine player from Josie and the Pussycats!

S!: You guys were signed by Hopeless Records before you even graduated high school and have been on the road almost non-stop since. Do you feel that the experience of touring has matured you? In what ways?

Alex: Yeah, I definitely think we’ve kinda been forced to grow up a little bit faster than a lot of people would, but I think it’s for the better. I think we’ve learned a lot in a small amount of time, which is not always easily accomplished. Just the fact that we’re always on tour with bands that are years older than us and have much more experience and wisdom…I think that because of that, we’ve sort of picked up on what they know over the 2 years that we’ve been out of high school and touring.

S!: Does it ever get tiring?

Alex: Yeah, it definitely does! There are there are times towards the end of a tour that you really feel like you just wanna be done with the tour, go home and catch up on some sleep, but it’s part of the game.

S!: As a young band, do you find that your age makes it harder to be taken seriously in the music industry?

Alex: Not anymore.  I think the younger you are now, the more promise you actually have, the more potential there is for you. I think more and more labels are signing more and more younger artists. I think we’re at an advantage now. I think 5 years ago, we would have been at a slight disadvantage, but I think our timing was right.

S!: ATL was named one of Alternative Press’ 2007 “Bands You Need to Know”. Do you feel that that drastically impacted your fan base, or was it just complimentary to the momentum you already had?

Alex: It’s a giant magazine in the scene, so I’m sure it exposes us to a whole handful of new fans and a whole handful of new people that can hate us, but yeah, of course it helped.  It’s AP! I don’t know, it’s very cool to just be named that by such an incredible magazine…it’s awesome!

S!: You guys have songs on Hopeless compilations Punk Goes Acoustic 2 and Punk Goes Crunk. Did you find it difficult to change your sound to record for those albums?

Alex: I don’t think we really changed our sound, I think we did the opposite.  Well, with the acoustic one, it was easy; it was just about making an acoustic song work in that sense. But with the Rhianna song, I think we took that and made it more sound like us. It was interesting, it was fun, but luckily that’s a pretty simple song anyway…so we didn’t really have to bust our asses, like trying to reformat some weird, obscure song to fit our pop genre, because it’s a pop song anyway. We just kind of got rid of the whole hip-hop/r&b aspect of the song and kind of kept the lyrics and the melodies, but wrote the rest of the music as if we were writing our own song. So we basically made that song ours.

S!: Congratulations on your TV debut on Jimmy Kimmel recently (March 08)! How does performing on television compare to performing at a show?

Alex: Well the one cool thing about Jimmy Kimmel (as opposed to the other late night shows) is that they actually put an audience in front of you, so that helps take the edge off the fact that there’s cameras everywhere! But to be honest, it was like the most nerve wracking experience of my life. That show has an average of 3 million viewers nationwide, so…biggest show we’ve ever played!
 

• Official Site: http://www.alltimelow.com/
• MySpace URL: http://www.myspace.com/alltimelow