FUSE TV - Meet Waterparks: We Speak To Pop-Punk's Latest Obsession

Every once in a while we'll come across a band that just feels like they're on the cusp of greatness. It's a hard thing to accomplish in pop-punk world, a sound limited by the genre's stigma. Apparently no one told the Good Charlotte-approved Waterparks about that, who you might remember from their too-cute-for-words puppy-filled music video for the single, "Crave."

The Houston band is made up of vocalist/guitarist Awsten Knight (that's the correct spelling, he legally changed his name from "Austin,") guitarist/vocalist Geoff Wigington and drummer Otto Wood. We spoke to Knight after their one and only set at SXSW, right after the guy was chased by approximately 12 girls to the merch booth. If that's not a sure sign of future success, we don't know what is.

Let's start at the beginning. How did Waterparks start?
I started demoing for the project myself in late 2011 and put out the first EP in April of 2012. To be able to start playing shows, I was like "We need a band!" I knew Otto from another band I was in a few years before and thought, "He's a good drummer, this works." I met Geoff through the guy who was originally going to play bass. We still don't have a bass player. He said, "I know this guy who should play guitar," and he showed me a picture of Geoff on Facebook. He was wearing a choker and I said, "I don't think we should have him, he's wearing a choker." Then I met him and he was the sweetest so we kept Geoff. We played our first show [on] August 17, 2012 and we've just been going at it since. We did another EP in 2014.

Your debut full-length is going to be released on Equal Vision Records [Say Anything, Set It Off] later this year. How'd you get involved with them?
We didn't have any connections with anyone in the music industry. Labels have this thing that I didn't think they listened to, these "demo submission for local bands" or whatever. We had just gotten a music video back and we were trying to figure out a marketing plan. We just gave it to them, "Here's the unreleased music video, if you like it we'll send you more stuff." We did that to three or four labels. I forgot about it and then Equal Vision hit us back a few days later. 

It's really rare that anyone listens to those blind demo submissions. [Goldfinger frontman/5 Seconds of Summer producer] John Feldmann is really good about that. He listens to everything.
That's cool! We went to his house. He was recording the new Good Charlotte record that's about to come out and we got to do gang vocals on four songs. I'm excited to hear it again, they sound so good. 

What's the story behind your connection with GC's Benji and Joel Madden?
Our A&R Francesca Caldara at Equal Vision was shopping around our demos. She was looking for who was going to produce Cluster, the EP we put out a while back. She was sending it to different producers. She asked us who we'd like to work with and they were obviously very high on the list. One of the guys she sent it to was the Maddens' in-house engineer [Courtney Ballard whose worked with 5 Seconds of Summer and All Time Low.] Benji and Joel heard it separately and they were both like, "This is tight." At the time they were working on setting up a management company, MDDN.co. They didn't have any bands yet. When they heard us they said, "We need to manage them!" and we were the first people actually on their roster. 

Francesca called me while I was at work and was like, "What are you doing tomorrow? How would you like to have lunch with the Madden guys tomorrow around noon in Los Angeles?" I called the guys and was like, "You have to quit your jobs!" It was crazy! We'd been listening to them for so long. I'd get dressed for school in the 4th and 5th grade and "The Anthem" and "Girls & Boys" would be playing on VH1.

Geoff and I went to buy swimsuits and we didn't get to swim. We went out there and were picked up by [the Madden Brothers'] assistants. It was so fancy! An hour later we met them and they were so sweet. And they smell so good.