John Nolan and Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday dropped by backstage to chat with KROQ’s Megan Holiday, a fan who has been telling all her friends about the band after first hearing them years ago at the age of just fifteen. That word-of-mouth from Megan and countless others certainly worked out well for the band, now celebrating 25 years after their debut, Tell All Your Friends, performing two epic weekends at this year’s Coachella festival.

“We ended up naming the [first] record that because it worked,” says Adam. “Shaun [Cooper] would burn them in his basement at his parents' house, and we called them the ‘Tell All Your Friends demos,’ because we hoped people would tell all their friends, and then they did. And we were like, ‘I love it when a plan comes together!’”

With the release of their eighth studio album, 152, this past October, Adam reveals that number has actually been included on every one of their albums ever since, as a kind of easter egg for their biggest supporters, “So they know that we're always thinking about them,” he says. “It's this exit in North Carolina. There's this little stretch of highway to where 85 and 40 come together and they form one highway, right? I grew up in a small town in High Point, North Carolina… so all the shows, you had to go up to Chapel Hill and halfway there, because that's where the colleges are. Halfway there, there was a stop, Exit 152, and then these guys were nice enough to just let me stick it on everything.” John adds, “There's a picture of the actual exit on the back of the [Tell All Your Friends] album, and, it was also sort of a coincidence, someone at Victory [Records] made the design for the cover, which happened to be like a highway with a sign... It all just sort of naturally moved into that 152 sign on the back and then from then on, every album.”

Now 25 years since their inception Adam says, “I feel like this little kid, it doesn't feel like any of that time has passed. I can't believe we get to do this,” he adds, although heading into weekend two of Coachella, “nerves are still at an all-time high for me.” John says his jitters are doing better than the last weekend, partly because of how weekend two’s vibes seem to be much more chill. “Even just kind of meandering about,” he says, “it feels like everybody's like, ‘Oh, we got this, we did this last week.’”

Speaking on the resurgence of the Emo scene with events like Emo Night and When We Were Young seeing massive success, although he says TBS “doesn't have anything to do with it," Adam believes “that's what's beautiful about it… Because that can exist, and bands like us can also exist, and we're just all a part of one another. One of the things I love so much and that I just feel so lucky is that I feel like I've found my people and we've gotten to grow up together, just through the shows and the whole thing. It was a big part of us, you know,  so it's cool that's doing well -- and that means we get to do well too.”

Don't miss Megan Holiday's full interview with Taking Back Sunday above, and stay tuned for more of KROQ's coverage from Coachella 2024.