Going Deep With Chad Kroeger

Surfer: So once you developed your positive character (who lacks self awareness) where did you go with it?
Chad Kroeger: The first thing I did was go interview people in Huntington Beach. It seemed natural, for my persona, to go and get in the mix of all different people down there and interview people in Orange County as opposed to LA. Honestly, I didn’t really know what I was doing–I was just trying to make videos. Then we had this idea to take the character to city council meetings, I saw that they filmed all of them. So it was sort of like an OC bro who’s trying to be a journalist. Our first big thing with that idea was advocating for a Paul Walker statue. 

Surfer: What was your motivation behind the Paul Walker idea?
Chad Kroeger: This was back in 2017, and the big topic was how everyone was all politically divided and everything just seemed really gnarly. The idea we riffed on was, ‘what could bring people together’.  I truthfully love Paul Walker (laughs) and thought, ‘Well, Paul Walker gets me stoked so I think a statue of him could make everyone stoked and help heal the divide.’ That was our first big viral hit. 

Surfer: Where did you meet JT?
Chad Kroeger: I met him doing stand up…but we tell people (when we’re doing stand up) that we met in Newport at Hoag Hospital, in the baby ward (laughs). But yeah we met doing stand up and were just kindred spirits. Two bros, amongst a bunch of hipsters, and we just gravitated towards each other.  

Surfer: So once you went viral, did you feel a lot of pressure to follow that up? Or did you just naturally find your rhythm? 
Chad Kroeger: It was a bit of actually. For one, it felt harder to go viral back then so we were like, ‘how do we do that again? Or was that a one time thing?’ But then we found the “activist bro” angle and that helped guide us, you know, like ok, we are advocating for causes from this beachy SoCal point of view. We didn’t necessarily think we would go back to city council but then, almost one year later, we went back because LA was trying to ban house parties in the Hollywood Hills. We went to that meeting and presented our case and that really blew up, that’s actually what really launched our careers. That video got shared on Barstool and our followings grew from there and we started to feel the momentum. 

Surfer: Ok so you start to grow your followings and get momentum, what happened next?
Chad Kroeger: We continued to make video content. Then we started our podcast and got that going, but then the ultimate goal was a TV show. We were getting hit up, you know, ‘Hollywood was calling’ (laughs)... we were meeting with all these production companies. We landed on Absolutely Productions, they did “Nathan For You” and “The Eric Andre Show”. We pitched a show with them to Netflix and that was then our main focus for the next two years. We were about to start shooting the show when COVID hit so we had to wait almost two years to shoot and release that. In the meantime, we continued to make content and had a huge viral hit when we went to Huntington Beach to hand out masks…

Check back next week for our final part of the interview.