Origins in Wichita Falls

Bowling for Soup has its origins in Wichita Falls, Texas , where Jaret Reddick and other members of the band grew up. Reddick and original drummer Lance Morrill met in the fall of 1976. Reddick began playing music in 1985, at 13 years old. Reddick and guitarist Chris Burney knew each other in high school (they met in 1986) and as students in the 1980s, they grew up on the commercially successful heavy metal music of bands such as Quiet Riot , RATT , and Mötley Crüe , but were also influenced by the faster punk rock of the Ramones and later Green Day . Burney’s family owned a Wichita Falls coffeehouse called “The Refuge” with a music stage and he played there with his first band, the Persecuted, where he and Reddick met bassist Erik Chandler and drummer Gary Wiseman in the early 1990s (although Wiseman did not join the band until 1998).