Sydney pop punk outfit Forever Ends Here had an explosive start to their career seven years ago. They’ve toured with some of the biggest names in the genre — some of whom have become their closest and biggest supporters over the years.
Five years since calling it a day, a new spark of inspiration is alight in vocalist Luke McChesney’s brain. Together with his brother and drummer Kane McChesney and good mate/bassist Mav Burnett, the boys are back and all grown up with brand new single ‘Cherry Chapstick‘. One listen to this and we just cannot get past those feelgood pop melodies that throwback to the mid 2000s.
On the eve of their reunion tour which kicks off in Sydney and Melbourne this weekend, we jumped online to catch up with Luke about everything he’s been up to since 2018. Oh, and we may have revisited a certain tour memory that was considered a full-circle moment for the band.
Are you guys back for good now? Or like, how did this reunion come about? I mean, it’s been five years since we’ve heard a peep from you lot.
We’ve always sort of had in the back of our mind that we would look at doing a one off show. Next year is the 10-year anniversary of From Where I’d Rather Be, which was our main EP. In the back of our mind we’re like, we’ll do it as a one off 10 year anniversary club show. So it started as there.
We’ve remained great friends the whole time though. Kane, our drummer, is my brother. So we spend a lot of time together. The more time away from Forever Ends Here we had, the more we spoke about it. Then the idea just blossomed from one show to maybe two shows to releasing new music.
It was still a little up in the air for us at the time though. The idea was we’ll 100% commit to this tour and we’ll commit to the new single and see where that goes. But seeing how excited everyone is about the shows and how exciting it is for us to be back in a rehearsal room and playing together, it’s definitely not something that we’re going to quit any time soon. So yeah, we’re back for the foreseeable future.
What was the first rehearsal back in the studio like?
It was pretty 50/50. I think if anyone follows me on Spotify and has been looking at my listening history, I look like a self-obsessed maniac who’s just had Forever Ends Here on repeat for the last five months trying to relearn them. But I think when we got back and played the old songs, it actually went the opposite way to what I thought. We haven’t played them in so long, but because we were touring so much back in the day, it’s like riding a bike. It became muscle memory. As soon as we played them, we’re like, oh, we know this.
It was the newer ones like ‘Feel It’, which was the last thing we released before splitting up, and our brand new single, ‘Cherry Chapstick’. All of those have taken a lot more time to polish. But it’s been exciting and somewhat exhausting. We’ve put in a lot of time for this tour because we wanted to do it right. We figured if we were going to do the reunion, we’d make it sound good and take it seriously.
I hope ‘100 Times Over’ is on the set list. I feel like for most of us back in the day, when we thought of Forever Ends Here, that song definitely made its mark.
Look, I won’t give away too much of the set list, but I think that one’s a given. That was actually the first song that we played when we got back in the room. It had been about five years since we played together.
Moving into the new era now, how did ‘Cherry Chapstick’ come about?
It’s been a long process that single. When we split up the band five years ago, myself and Maverick started a new project called Ever Change. We were sort of writing eighty songs and I’d actually written the chorus of ‘Cherry Chapstick’ to be an Ever Change song. I was sort of playing around with production at home and it just kept feeling like it was missing something. I loved the lyrics, I loved the melodies, but it needs something more. The more I played with it, I was like, it needs a distorted guitar to drive this melody.
Once we had the idea of relaunching Forever Ends Here, the first thing that popped into my head was ‘awesome, now I can do something with that song’. After we decided to relaunch it, I sent the boys the chorus of that and they said, ‘yeah, we definitely think this could be something.’ So I was able to play around with the idea at home, send it to the boys and then collaborate with a producer on it. It came together over six weeks in and out of the studio and it came together nicely.
It is definitely a mature new sound for this little pop punk band from Sydney, that’s for sure. So is there an EP in the pipeline?
Yeah, there’ll definitely be more. The plan was to have more songs ahead of the tour, but unfortunately all of our attention for the last couple of months has been on promoting the tour and rehearsing for the tour. So ‘Cherry Chapstick’ is the only finished song we have currently from the new Forever Ends here.
We’ve got some time off for the rest of the year after this tour and I’m definitely excited to get back in the studio. I don’t know whether it will end up being an EP though. But I’m constantly writing and collaborating on ideas, so there will definitely be more for sure.
I guess 2024 will bring even more promise for you guys then. Strolling back down memory lane for a moment, what’s your favourite memory from Forever Ends Here back in the day? You guys had some massive opportunities, like touring with Canadian legends Simple Plan…
Oh, that’s a tough question. I feel like a lot of my favorite memories were actually from touring with some of the smaller Australian bands who have remained some of our best friends to this day. In saying that though, I still can’t get past the Simple Plan tour. The first album I ever bought on CD was No Pads, No Helmets, Just Balls by Simple Plan. When I was 11, I actually queued up for seven hours to be at the front row of the mosh pit for a Simple Plan concert at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion. I was tiny. So obviously them seeing me in the audience was like, what is this child doing in our mosh pit? Pierre Bouvier came down at that show and put his arm around me and we sang ‘I’m Just A Kid’ with his arm around me.
You know how they say, don’t meet your heroes because they’re not going to be as nice as you think? It was the opposite with Simple Plan. On the first night of that tour, we walked in, they greeted us in the backstage room with a bottle of vodka and said, welcome to the tour. I remember walking in and wanting to say hi to them on day number two, and I went to shake Pierre’s hand and he brought me in for a hug and said, ‘No, no, no. Acquaintances shake hands, friends hug.’ It was the coolest full circle moment.
That’s probably my strongest memory from the Forever days. That was the one where I was like, we’re doing this with the band who are the reason we wanted to do it in the first place. So yeah, I can’t get past that one.
What a wholesome memory! And who knows — maybe Forever Ends Here will end up touring with Simple Plan again one day…
Maybe. Last time they were here, we actually caught up with them, which was really, really nice. You often wonder at the end of those tours, you’re like, maybe we’ll never see these people again. But they came on tour again a year or two after we toured together and they invited us to the show. So hopefully we will get to play together again one day.
And if not Simple Plan, then perhaps a Short Stack tour could be on the cards, who are another band you frequented the stage with back in the day across Australia. Do you still keep in touch with the Stack crew?
We do. I was chatting with Shaun Diviney the other day. We were looking to extend our crew for the tour and reached out to Shaun to get in touch with some of Stack’s crew. Shaun in particular has kept in touch with us the whole time. We’re great friends, we chat often. That was another full circle moment because I don’t know how much of the history you know there, but at that Simple Plan show actually, Short Stack opened and from there I was a big Short Stack fanboy. When we announced the Forever reunion, Shaun was the first person to text me. He was the first person to comment on our Instagram. He was the first person to post ‘Cherry Chapstick’ on his story. Now Shaun’s our biggest fan.
Short Stack have always done the most to give back to the scene and give other bands a chance and we appreciate them immensely. We’ll always have love for those guys.
Love that, and we’re excited to see you hit the stage again this week in Brisbane at The Brightside. Best way to end a tour is in Fortitude Valley.
We’ve definitely had some nights in the Valley. Someone said to us the other day, you’re playing the Brightside. Isn’t that like a dingy pub? I was like, yeah, with some of the best memories we ever have. The Brightside is my favourite dingy pub in the country.
We’re excited. We toured a little bit with Ever Change but only went to Melbourne and we spent some time in Adelaide recording. But we haven’t been back to Brisbane since the last Forever Ends Here show, so it’s going to be really special to be back.
Interview By Tamara May
Catch the return of Forever Ends Here in Sydney and Melbourne this weekend, followed by Brisbane on Friday 14 July. Supported by Those Who Dream and Bellehaven.
Get your tickets here
