Why Simple Plan Always Treats Their Fans With Love & Respect — Jeff Stinco Explains!

So the charity, the Simple Plan Foundation, over the years you guys have raised and donated around $3 million. In 2012 you guys won your second Juno award, this time it was for the Alan Waters Humanitarian Award. One thing that really stands out about the band is just how much you care about the fans and how well you treat the fans. I want to share three comments from fans that prove my point. So, James Street says, I met Jeff recently backstage at a pizza party in Brisbane and he's such a nice guy. That day he ran a 10K in under an hour along the Brisbane River. Then there's Daryl Jason Hughes that says, I've met the band a few times, they are four of the nicest guys you will ever meet. And then James Redlinger Jr. says, Simple Plan has saved my life, countless times. I am blessed to have been able to tell them that when I met them backstage in 2012. So what makes you guys appreciate your fans and have such a close relationship with them? I want to believe it's because you're good Canadian boys, but what do you think of this? Our fans are our bosses. You know, like it's not the other way around. I would be out of a job if it wasn't for our fans. And when you've been doing this for as long as I have, you realize that there's ups and downs in your career, right? And the same people that you meet on the way up, you meet a lot faster on the way down. And we've been there, you know, in 2008, guitar music was completely out of fashion. Radio would not play Simple Plan anymore on the radio and we relied so much on radio to be heard that it was disastrous for us. You know, our shows would like really not look good. And it was it was really bad. And then we decided to sort of pivot and try, you know, a different approach. But our fans were always there. The hardcore fan base, you know, the core of it was always present. And I still see faces that I recognize from 20 years ago at our shows. And to me, that makes me really, really, really proud because it means that they stood by us. We stood by them. We respected them. There's a really, you know, a good respect on both sides of things. And I love the fact that, you know, they are the reason why people here like heard about us through the harder times, because they would be the influencers that would talk about Simple Plan and sort of like, you know, get the word around. And the charity to me is sort of the best approach we found to answer those testimonies that you're talking about, that we hear backstage, when people tell us, like, I'm really going through a hard time and your music is helping out. But do you have any advice, you know, with that problem that I'm facing with depression, with, you know, dark thoughts that I have? To be fair, like my answer is often like, I really like I want you to find the resources, you know, that will help you. I'm here, you know, to make music, to allow you to escape, you know, and and to live emotions and sort of like have a good time, you know, while you're at the show. But I know people that could help you because the foundation allowed me to be introduced to amazing individuals that actually change society through their charities. So what we do is we raise like a dollar out of every single ticket that we sell, and we basically finance charities that are working on the ground and, you know, applying change to society, like making a difference. So I've been it's been so rewarding to see, to meet all these amazing people, like there are some really, really special people on this planet that that are really making a difference that are changing the world, bettering the world. And yeah, so the foundation is it's almost like giving us back more than anything we're giving. So when when I win those awards, you know, those humanitarian awards or I hear I'm like, it's kind of unfair because I want to kind of pass it on to the amazing people that I meet throughout the year through the foundation.