In May 2013, New Found Glory were back in Canada, playing “Sticks and Stones” from start to finish. The album was eleven years old, the gigs were selling fast and fans still knew every word. One city was missing from the run, though. The band had booked Toronto, put tickets on sale and then found out they couldn’t play.
Matt Schichter spoke to guitarist Chad Gilbert over the phone for his 2013 interview, starting with the Toronto cancellation. They ended up talking about a whole lot else: how “Sticks and Stones” came together, the real-life stories behind its songs, packed little venues, the Ramones and a few people Chad had bumped into outside music.
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Chad passed away on 20 September 2026, aged 45, after five years of cancer treatment. Matt has recently put his interview archive from 2003 to 2014 online, including this conversation, first published on 31 May 2013.
New Found Glory released “Listen Up!” in February this year, the last studio album they made with Chad. We went back to Matt’s recording to hear what Chad had to say in 2013, and to follow what happened to him and the band in the thirteen years since.
New Found Glory played Pouzza Fest in Montreal in May 2013, where they were one of the headliners. The gig that fell through was a separate “Sticks and Stones” anniversary show in Toronto. Their deal for Pouzza included a radius clause that ruled out the Toronto date, even though the cities are about six hours apart.
Chad was clearly annoyed. They’d already announced Toronto and started selling tickets before anyone caught the problem. As far as he was concerned, Montreal and Toronto were far enough apart that fans going to one show weren’t necessarily the same people going to the other.
He didn’t let their own side off the hook, either. The booking agent had missed that part of the contract, and the issue only came up when the Montreal promoter spotted the Toronto announcement.
So Toronto got pulled. Chad hated having to cancel on fans, especially when the band had finally lined up a proper Canadian run. He was already asking their agent to find another way back there, even if they had to make a detour for a single show.
The official Pouzza Fest archive still has New Found Glory on the 2013 bill. They played Montreal. Toronto was the show they lost.
The “Sticks and Stones” anniversary tour had got bigger than the band originally expected. The album turned ten in 2012, and for the first batch of gigs New Found Glory booked smaller rooms than usual to make each night feel a bit special. Tickets went quickly. Then the messages started coming in from fans asking why their city had been left out, so the band added more dates in 2013.
They’d done something similar for the tenth anniversary of their self-titled album. Chad laughed that fans were already asking when “Catalyst” would get its turn.
At the first three Canadian gigs, the crowd was singing so loudly Chad could barely hear his guitar. He’d played these songs so many times by then that his hands knew where to go, and once the set got going he wasn’t too bothered about hearing every note coming back through the monitors.
There was another fun change. New Found Glory usually saved “My Friends Over You” for the end of the night, but on this tour it came second, exactly where it sits on “Sticks and Stones”. Turns out the crowd went just as wild for it early in the set. The band played the whole album, took a quick breather and came back with roughly nine more songs from across their records.
They were between albums at the time. “Radiosurgery” had come out in 2011, and Chad was already messing around with new riffs at soundchecks, even though they weren’t ready to make another full studio record.
They did have something else underway: their first official live album, “Kill It Live“, taped over two sold-out nights at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, California, in March 2013.
Chad loved Chain Reaction. It was one of those Southern California clubs every young band wanted to play, where the kids would show up ready to go off. After around fifteen years together, New Found Glory still hadn’t put out a proper live record. If they were finally going to do one, he wanted it to be fun to listen to.
He brought up Blink-182’s “The Mark, Tom and Travis Show”. He liked how much faster some of those songs sounded live, and how the jokes between tracks made it a record you could keep putting on. New Found Glory had the same thing in mind. They tweaked arrangements, left gaps for the crowd to sing and picked songs that got huge reactions at gigs even if they weren’t the obvious singles.
“Kill It Live” came out that October through Bridge Nine and Chad’s Violently Happy Records, with seventeen live tracks and three new studio songs: “I Want to Believe”, “Connect the Dots” and “First Bite”.
Revisiting “Sticks and Stones” also meant going back to the time New Found Glory moved from South Florida to California. That move came up again and again when Chad talked about the songs. A few of the lyrics were tied directly to what the band were leaving behind.
Matt asked who actually wrote the songs, and Chad got into the way New Found Glory worked back then. He usually brought in the music, often with a pretty complete demo, guitar parts, a melody in his head and some kind of drum idea. They’d put it together at practice, then guitarist Steve Klein would work on lyrics and vocal lines.
Chad reckoned Steve had written somewhere around 70 to 80 per cent of their lyrics by that point. They weren’t shy about arguing over a chorus or telling each other a verse needed work, and Jordan Pundik had his say too. They’d keep pulling a song apart until everyone was happy with it.
“My Friends Over You” came out of a relationship Chad was leaving behind in South Florida.
He was moving to California with New Found Glory, and the relationship wasn’t going to survive it. Chad remembered how much it hurt at the time, but he was set on going with the band.
He joked that “My Friends Over You” was really “my band over you”. The change gave the line that sarcastic kick, even though the decision behind it was very real.
“Sonny” was much closer to Jordan’s life. His grandfather, whose nickname was Sonny, died while the band were making the record. Jordan wanted to write about him, and Steve put the lyrics together. Chad remembered it as Jordan’s song, even though other members helped write it.
Another favourite of Chad’s was “Forget My Name“, also written lyrically by Steve.
The band were still trying to get their heads around leaving Florida. They had friends and family there, and some of them were having second thoughts about moving across the country. “Forget My Name” came out of those conversations, when they were still young enough to be living with their parents and trying to work out what happened next.
Ian Grushka and Steve Klein remembered that move in a separate 2013 interview with ThePunkSite. They talked about leaving their parents’ houses in Florida for California to give the band a proper shot. Eleven years later, they were still out playing the songs they’d written around that time.
It’s easy to hear “Sticks and Stones” as one singer telling his own stories, but the writing was shared around the band. Jordan could be singing a lyric Steve had written about something Chad went through, or a song Steve wrote for Jordan after his grandfather died. The music was all quick drums, tightly picked guitars and choruses the room could yell back at them.
They’d also just put out “Mania“, their Ramones covers EP for Record Store Day 2013. That one started when the band were invited to do a set of Ramones songs at a Bamboozle-related show with Marky Ramone himself on drums.
Learning those songs and rehearsing with Marky in New York gave Chad a fresh appreciation for the Ramones. He got talking to Matt about the 1950s pop, doo-wop and Beach Boys bits in their writing, tucked into songs played at punk-rock speed.
Chad’s own hardcore roots ran deep. He sang in Shai Hulud before New Found Glory took off, and he stayed close to that band for years. He even produced their 2013 album “Reach Beyond the Sun”.
We wrote about that collaboration in April 2012 and covered his return to the mic with Shai Hulud at Revelation Records’ 25th anniversary shows.
He also produced H2O’s “Nothing to Prove“. So even as New Found Glory were filling bigger rooms with songs like “My Friends Over You” and “All Downhill From Here”, Chad was still working with hardcore bands he cared about.
Somewhere along the way, Matt and Chad got onto the subject of comic shops. Chad had been browsing Forbidden Planet in New York when he looked across a shelf and realised Robin Williams was standing there. He went over to thank him for his films. Later, while Chad was buying Ed Brubaker’s “Incognito” as a gift, the two of them started chatting with the woman at the counter about the book. Williams ended up picking up a copy himself.
Chad badly wanted a photo with him, but decided against asking. Williams was just out shopping, and Chad figured he’d let him get on with it. He told Matt about another recent encounter, this time with Bill Paxton on a flight. Chad had gone over to tell him how much he loved “Frailty”, the film Paxton directed and starred in.
It wasn’t hard for Chad to understand why fans wanted to say hello after New Found Glory shows. He’d been that guy himself plenty of times. He was happy to talk when people approached him, and he still got a kick out of meeting people whose music, films or comics he loved.
Matt finished with a few quick-fire choices. Road or studio? Studio, at least at that point in his life. Lennon or McCartney? McCartney. What grabbed him first when he heard a song? Melody. And when Matt asked which of his own songs made him proudest, Chad picked one from his solo project, What’s Eating Gilbert.
The lineup Chad talked about in that interview changed before the year was out.
Guitarist and lyricist Steve Klein left in December 2013. New Found Glory carried on as a four-piece, with Chad taking care of the guitar work he’d previously shared with Steve.
Their next record was “Resurrection“, released by Hopeless Records in October 2014. It had plenty of the fast, heavy guitar work the band had always loved, and Chad was now handling more of it himself, both in the studio and on stage.
“Makes Me Sick” followed in April 2017, as New Found Glory reached twenty years together. Keyboards were more prominent on that record, with some different rhythms thrown into their familiar pop-punk sound. The band also went back out to revisit older albums live, keeping up the anniversary-gig tradition Chad had been talking about in 2013.
“Forever + Ever x Infinity” arrived in June 2020. By then New Found Glory had been a four-piece for years, with Jordan, Chad, bassist Ian Grushka and drummer Cyrus Bolooki still writing records and playing together.
In December 2021, Chad was found unresponsive at home and rushed to hospital. Doctors found a large cancerous tumour, initially diagnosed as pheochromocytoma, a rare condition involving the adrenal system. He needed emergency surgery. It was the start of years of treatment and repeated complications.
Another tumour was discovered in his spine in August 2022. More surgery followed, including a major operation that September after the tumour grew quickly. Chad later underwent treatment for other tumours in his back and lungs. Touring became harder, and there were more and more shows he simply couldn’t play.
In January 2023, New Found Glory released “Make the Most of It” through Revelation Records. It was the record they wrote as Chad was dealing with the illness.
The acoustic album had seven new songs alongside seven live acoustic recordings of older tracks. The new stuff came out of the months after Chad’s diagnosis, when the band were trying to deal with the possibility that his cancer could be terminal.
The four of them wrote together in a room with acoustic guitars, kicking ideas back and forth. Chad told Alternative Press at the time that working that way let everyone contribute and made it easier to get into what the words were saying.
At home, Chad had his wife, Lisa Cimorelli, and their daughter Lily, born in 2021. He talked openly in later interviews about being with them during treatment and trying to keep making music as his health changed.
By 2023, Dan O’Connor of Four Year Strong was filling in for Chad on guitar at shows he couldn’t make. Other guitarists helped out too, so New Found Glory could keep playing.
“Listen Up!” came out through Pure Noise Records in February 2026. Chad had spent much of its recording period in pain, going through treatment and sometimes struggling to move around, but he was still writing for the band.
He kept bringing in riffs and song ideas, the same way he’d described doing it in 2013. Ian and Cyrus worked with him on the arrangements, Jordan brought lyrics, and Dan O’Connor helped record guitar parts when Chad needed a break.
Speaking to Kerrang! in February, Chad talked about just how close he’d come to dying during those sessions. His back pain was severe, he’d been through chemotherapy and even a short stretch of work could wipe him out.
There was plenty of familiar New Found Glory in the songs. “Beer and Blood Stains” looked back at the band’s early days playing rough South Florida venues. “100%” had fast guitars and big, direct hooks. In “You Got This”, Chad wrote about the strange experience of people constantly checking on him because they were worried about his health.
He wanted people to pay attention to the lyrics and ease up on themselves a little. And whenever his health allowed, he was still picking up a guitar to work on another riff or melody.
On 20 February 2026, the day “Listen Up!” came out, Chad played an album-release gig at The End in Nashville. During the set, his left hand started giving him trouble. He was losing control of the left side of his body, and things got worse over the following days.
Doctors found three tumours in his brain. They removed one surgically, and he later had radiation treatment for the other two. Complications kept him in hospital for around a month.
In an April interview with Rolling Stone, Chad and Lisa talked about how quickly he had lost movement, the days when he was barely conscious and the slow recovery after surgery.
The diagnosis had changed over the course of his illness, too. Early reports referred to metastatic pheochromocytoma. In April 2026, Rolling Stone reported that doctors had identified adrenocortical carcinoma, or ACC. The two names appear in coverage from different stages of his treatment and should be understood in that order.
Chad was still hoping to get well enough to play the odd local show. Going back on a normal tour was no longer an option.
“I won’t be able to tour normally ever again,” he told Rolling Stone. He was still hoping he’d get to play close to home.
He did make it back on stage with New Found Glory in Nashville that June, just a few months after brain surgery.
By then, New Found Glory were getting close to thirty years as a band. Chad had been there since the early days in Florida, through the huge pop-punk records, the change to a four-piece and all the adjustments that came with his treatment.
On 20 September 2026, Chad Everett Gilbert passed away at the age of 45.
In their official statement, Lisa and the band said Chad died peacefully in his sleep, with his wife and mother beside him. He was survived by Lisa, their daughter Lily, his mother Jackie and his brother Brian.
They also spoke about the songs he wrote, the bands he worked with and what he meant to the other members of New Found Glory.
New Found Glory pulled out of their scheduled Aftershock Festival appearance. They did, however, go ahead with their EPCOT shows at Walt Disney World on 28 and 29 September.
Disney had always meant a lot to Chad. He’d wanted to play those dates and had already helped put together the setlists, practising in the hope that he’d feel well enough to join the band.
So the band played the shows for him.
On 28 September, Jordan spoke to the EPCOT crowd about losing his friend and bandmate. Chad’s Mickey Mouse guitar stood on stage with white flowers around it. New Found Glory played songs he’d written and helped arrange, following setlists he’d worked on before he died.
The members haven’t announced what a permanent future lineup will look like. Those EPCOT gigs were something Chad had wanted to do, and the band chose to honour that plan.
Back in 2013, Chad had told Matt about the mix of people he saw at New Found Glory gigs. Younger fans pushed towards the barrier, older ones piled into the pit, and some were now bringing their little brothers and sisters along.
Matt teased him about calling everybody “kids”, even the fans who’d grown up with the band.
“I say kids because I’m a kid.”
At the time, Chad was still writing songs, planning more shows and having a blast watching fans sing along to an album he’d made eleven years earlier.
New Found Glory were still playing songs from “Sticks and Stones” at EPCOT in September 2026, using setlists Chad had helped put together.
Original interview conducted by Matt Schichter, published 31 May 2013. This 2026 article was written by Karol Kamiński for IDIOTEQ, drawing on the historical conversation and the band’s subsequent history. Watch or listen to the original conversation and read the full transcript in Matt Schichter’s archive.
