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player ready...Gym Class Heroes visited Six Flags Great America on Friday to perform in the park’s Summer Concert Series, but you would think frontman Travis McCoy was performing in a different sort of amusement park show the way he described himself.
“I’m a freak of nature,” said the 6-foot-5 McCoy hours before his band took the stage in Gurnee. “I’m big; I’ve got tattoos. I’m a pretty intimidating guy. I’ll talk to fans after shows, and there’s this preconceived notion that I’m a big bully or a big jerk.”
It probably doesn’t help that McCoy has a barbell piercing through his nose and a hole in each earlobe the size of a dime. Not that I noticed.
“When they meet me, they’re like, ‘Wow, I thought you were going to be [a jerk],'” McCoy said. “I’m like, ‘Nah, I’m a sweet guy.'”
McCoy’s band is best known for its hard-to-describe sound (pop punk hip-hop?) and its hit “Cupid’s Chokehold,” which reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. If you read “People” and “Us Weekly” more than “Spin” and “Rolling Stone,” you probably know Gym Class Heroes as the band with the guy who has dated Katy Perry.
“I see her on occasion,” said McCoy about his on-and-off relationship with the “I Kissed a Girl” singer. “She’s got a grueling tour schedule. I thought ours was bad, but hers is crazy. I see her from time to time. Let’s leave it at that.”
Touring has given McCoy an appreciation for the smell of his apartment. The 27-year-old rapper talked about the smell — a combination of vinyl, orange air [fresheners] and cigarette smoke — as if it were a home-cooked meal. He also misses his bed and pointed to the bags under his eyes when asked about his sleep schedule.
But that’s not to say he doesn’t enjoy traveling city to city. McCoy called touring “addicting” and said he enjoys meeting new people. He is grateful that it allows him to see friends around the country he wouldn’t get to see otherwise.
And then there’s the role touring plays in his battle with substance abuse.
“Touring has become my drug,” said McCoy, who has been in rehab twice due to an addiction to pharmaceuticals. “There’s a high you get from doing a really tight show where everybody is smiling. There’s no drug that can do that.”
McCoy candidly blogged about his substance abuse in March 2008 and admitted feeling guilty for glorifying drug use in his lyrics. Since then, McCoy has had fans come up to him and thank him for inspiring them to get help.
“I’ve had so many kids come up to me and say, ‘I was scared to talk about my problems, but you being open got me to be more open,'” said McCoy. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ That wasn’t my intention. I did it to get it off my back. It went beyond that.”
Gym Class Heroes is signed to Decaydance Records, which is run by Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz. (McCoy is the godfather to Wentz’s son, Bronx.) McCoy plans to release his first studio solo album, “The Lazarus Project,” on T-Pain’s Nappy Boy Entertainment later this year.
While a solo project sometimes means the end of a group, McCoy insisted that the band from Geneva, N.Y., remains strong. He simply wanted to try something new and show a different side of himself.
“Aside from my vocals, it doesn’t sound like [Gym Class Heroes],” McCoy said. “There’s some slow ‘Wow, is that really Travis?’ type stuff. It showcases more of a melodic side — dare I say emotional side.
“But when you say ’emotional,’ people immediately abbreviate it and say, ‘Oh, it’s an emo record.’ That’s the last thing I want.”
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