The guys from Boys Like Girls are starting to get the hang of this whole rock star thing — the TV appearances, the video production and the radio shows.
Thanks to the success of the quartet’s breakthrough single, the pop-rock anthem “The Great Escape,” and its follow-up “Hero/Heroine,” Boys Like Girls finds itself playing sold-out arenas on bills with some of the year’s biggest artists.
“It’s really cool to walk out of your dressing room and run into bands you’ve been fans of your whole life,” said Paul DiGiovanni, the band’s guitarist. “It’s over in the blink of an eye, but it’s still totally insane.”
However, Boys Like Girls — DiGiovanni, singer Martin Johnson, drummer John Keefe and bassist Bryan Donohue — is getting used to lots of “totally insane” things. The band, which formed in the fall of 2005, while DiGiovanni was still in high school, was chosen as MTV’s artist of the week in December, meaning a whole week of performances and interviews sprinkled through the channel’s programming.
“It’s so weird turning on the TV and seeing yourself acting like an idiot,” DiGiovanni said. “It doesn’t really freak me out, but it’s still a surprise.”
As Boys Like Girls gets more touring under its belt, though, being on stage in front of larger and larger crowds gets even easier. The band is touring the U.S. on an arena tour with Avril Lavigne.
Though Boys Like Girls’ eponymous debut still has plenty of singles left to roll out, DiGiovanni said the band already is working on material for its next album.
“At every sound check, we hammer out something new and then record it at the end,” he said. “We’ve added a ton of little parts to our other songs too. We want to give people who’ve seen us a bunch of times something different each time.
“It’s all so much fun,” DiGiovanni said. “Everything is still so new that we’re just enjoying whatever comes up.”
Boys Like Girls
When: 7 p.m. Friday
Where: Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Rd., Rosemont
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