Anyone who didn’t think we’d ever get a new Boys Like Girls album would be instantly forgiven. It’s been 11 years since the Boston pop-rock band last released a record, in 2012’s Crazy World, and even longer since Martin Johnson and the boys first broke out of New England on the strength of vibrant 2006 single “The Great Escape.” With uncertainty around the band over the past decade, and a few one-off gigs along the way, the Andover-born Johnson has been plenty busy in that time, releasing various solo material and penning and producing songs for the likes of Avril Lavigne, Christina Perry, Jason Derulo, and others. Over the past few years, a resurrection of Boys Like Girls seemed like a 50/50 proposition.
But in the spring, Boys Like Girls reminded us why we fell for them in the first place with a strong dose of pop-rock thunder called “Blood and Sugar,” and after a few additional singles, the hometown product is set to unleash new album Sunday at Foxwoods this Friday (October 20) via Fearless Records.
And with new music comes a new tour, and perhaps the highlight on the band’s itinerary is an October 26 homecoming gig at the newly minted MGM Music Hall at Fenway, a venue that was just a parking lot for the adjacent Fenway Park back when Boys Like Girls were selling out venues here and across the country.
Johnson joined Vanyaland live from the band’s tour bus in Madison, Wisconsin, earlier this week to talk about the album, the differences in being a touring musician now versus 15 years ago, and the upcoming Boston show, part of their Speaking Our Language Tour, which boats a solid bill with State Champs, The Summer Set, and LØLØ setting the stage. Check out our conversation below. (Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length).
Vanyaland: You guys have a new album coming out. How does that feel?
Martin Johnson: I mean, kind of surreal. We did a 10-year anniversary tour of our first album in 2016. And we played the Observatory in Orange County as the last show, and we got in a huddle after the show and we all sobbed in each other’s arms. It felt thoroughly like it was going to be the last Boys Like Girls show ever.
Not because we don’t get along — we’re all best friends and all have been — but just because life happens and the trajectory of our lives maybe just didn’t feel like we were going to make another Boys Like Girls record. We weren’t sure. People aren’t sure if we broke up as a band, because we never announced a hiatus or anything. We just kind of stopped making music. 2011 and ’12 were a really, really weird time for music with guitars in it, and it felt really alienating. It didn’t feel like the time where the universe was ready for another Boys Like Girls album.
So we all kind of did different things, and different things stretched into 12 years. So stepping out of the pandemic and into new personalities, new lives, new emotions, and new spirits, it felt really, really clear to us what our purpose needed to be, which was to play.
I think you lose track of it. You come of age on the road, you feel that you’ve peaked at 23. We got a record deal when I was 18 and “The Great Escape” was on the radio when I was 20.
Life is painful, becoming successful at 20. And so [coming out of that], you relearn how to live. When you separate the “Hi, I’m Martin from Boys Like Girls, that’s all I know” from the “hi, I’m Martin Johnson, a man who has these interests and likes this and isn’t just a one trick pony,” all of a sudden you realize the gifts that you were given at 20. And those gifts were so, so, so beautiful. Capturing a second chance at performance and the energy exchange between the people that our music meant a lot to and us as performers felt so inevitable and so important, especially right now.
Putting out an album just feels like a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful chapter, and, creatively, the most important thing that we’ve done yet as a band, maybe with the exception of our first album. Nobody can get their first album back, and I think your first impression on the world will always be who you are forever. But I think this record and this second coming of who we are as men, even if it’s just for us and not for the court of public opinion, we’re just delighted to express ourselves again and to get on stage again.
It’s been 12 years. How has your approach to this album been different than from when you last recorded together?
When you’re 18, you have a limited set of tools. So you think about The Ramones, it’s like three chords, and they just play them with such bravado and commitment that you’re like, “yeah, this is great.” It was like that when we were 18. I was listening to some sort of combination of punk rock and musical theater. And there came Boys Like Girls, which was basically the melodic pop version of what was happening in the pop punk and emo scene.
I didn’t really have a rule book, I didn’t really know what was cool. I was just a teen and I was writing songs every day, and I’d been [doing that] since I was 7. I had no idea they were going to be radio songs, and I didn’t know what a radio song was. Since then, I’ve had chapters of life as a songwriter-producer for other artists, a professional in the music industry in a lot of capacities other than standing on stage with the microphone. And so that toolkit has expanded, the musicianship has expanded. Also, the palette of instrumentation has expanded from clamp-style, distorted, open-tuning guitar in my parents’ bedroom in Andover, Massachusetts, with my desktop PC floating back and forth between Microsoft Word and AOL Instant Messenger.
So I think after 12 years, the thing that was the most liberating for me was when you put away who you are. I put away who I was as a man at 24 because I needed to learn to live in society without being a guy in a band. I needed to survive. In order to be out here [on tour], you have to have this level of ego and narcissism that doesn’t really work in the regular world. So you have to shed that in order to rejoin society as a normal person. I pushed down the kid that I was from 18 to 24.
Some of that had to do with getting sober. I got sober at 24, I have 13 years [of sobriety], but a lot of it had to do with the necessity of joining the normal world. I think with that I buried a lot of musical tendencies. I buried myself and I buried a kid who did a lot of incredible things for me.
So going back and opening that crypt and letting him out to play was painful. As we’ve been opening up this chapter, I’ve been doing these really sort of heavy ‘behind the songwriting’ things about what the songs were emotionally and stepping back into as early as 2002, 2003. It’s been extremely cathartic musically. I think when we first opened the Pro Tools session and said, “okay, this is a Boys Like Girls session,” a lot of me forgot how to do it. And that isn’t because I’m embarrassed of it. I’m proud of everything I’ve ever made. But it’s because it was necessary for me to suppress part of my life in order to live happy. It’s like working with your older self and your younger self. I got to ask myself questions like “what would you have done with this, production-wise?”
But also I have all these new tools from all these records I’ve made, whether it be solo projects as The Night Game or music I’ve made for other people. I think unleashing that toolkit on the Boys Like Girls sound as a producer and a songwriter was super, super liberating, and super fun for me and my bandmates. We were able to do it at my home studio where everything felt really family-oriented and beautiful. We could take as much time as we wanted to on drums, and everybody was able to unleash opinions, and that felt really, really great. It was a beautiful experience, but it was also extremely cathartic.
How’s it been, being back on the road with the band?
Euphoric, honestly. Euphoric. I think the biggest thing that I forgot was the joyous energy exchanged. Seeing joy on the faces of people who love your music fills my heart and spirit with self-esteem and pride and accomplishment. Since I was a kid, I’ve always been super performative and super outward. So the truest extension of my inner spirit is when I slip on the leather pants and get to take it for a strut out on the catwalk. For me, it’s been a really long time. Opening up that toolkit has felt like a massive emotional release for me as a man.
I can see the joy that we’re bringing in a time where people really feel like they need to go back to a simpler space. Like, whether it be to a memory of 2008, where the song is on with a cassette tape adapter and a long cable plugged into an iPod with the windows down in a shitty Mazda, whatever it may be, that feels free. We’re going there every night, and that’s super liberating.
I’ve had a four-month-old baby and my wife out here most of the tour. It’s been such a beautiful experience to be able to do both. Super grateful for my wife to be willing to take the time to rock it [with] a tour baby. And [the baby is] ultra, ultra regulated. The band loves her and it’s been a really, really beautiful experience. I’m extremely tired, for sure; we’re also releasing a record, and filming a video out here, and really wiping a lot of dust off a business that’s been dormant for so long. It’s a tremendous amount of work, but it’s been probably the most gratifying work I’ve ever done in my life. My self-esteem is at an all-time high.
Do you consider this upcoming Boston show to be a kind of like a hometown show?
One-hundred percent a hometown show. Definitely the most excited for any show I’ve played in 15 years. This new MGM [Music Hall] is an iconic venue attached to Fenway. I used to go to 15 games a year with my father. It feels like a homecoming of sorts and a sort of full-circle moment for us. I know we’re all really, really, really excited about it.
Obviously, I haven’t personally lived in Boston since 2008. I moved to New York in 2008, LA in 2010, and now I live in between Utah and Nashville. But Boston will always be home. When you’re from Boston, you’re never allowed to root for another sports team. When you’re from Boston, you’re never allowed to really embrace another culture. I was really lucky, I grew up between Boston and Maine. So I have the whole kind of New England experience. As soon as I hear the accents and I see the Green Monster and I feel the energy and I see the foliage, I know that my heart will feel like I’m truly home.
BOYS LIKE GIRLS + STATE CHAMPS + THE SUMMER SET + LØLØ :: Thursday, October 26 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., all ages, $36 to $96 :: Event info :: Advance tickets