The awaited reunion with South America

interview by @grupimoderna

Bad Nerves returns to our country for Lollapalooza Chile 2026. After their first visit, opening for Green Day, the band left impressed by the warmth of their latin american fans.

By then, we knew the band was a part of the festival’s line up, so we decided to contact Bobby Nerves, the band´s vocalist, to talk about his experience on the last tour, about learning spanish and portuguese, and also his expectations of having a solo concert in our country for the first time.

ItSA: First of all, we are so happy to have this time to talk to you and also to have you visiting Latin America again. We were at the Green Day show last year, so we saw you and we are familiar with your energy, it was great. How would you describe that first time you had touring in Latin America? 

Bobby: Well yeah, it was crazy. We never thought we would get to play over in South America, it’s a real dream come true, going there to play gigs with Green Day, it’s the kind of thing you dream about, you know? It was amazing, all the people we met were so wonderful, the crowds were all so much more… I don’t know. They just seemed a lot more, sort of excited for music than some other places in the world, which was really appreciated. I’ve been to Brazil a few times and I hadn’t ever been to Chile. I mean, I was only there for a couple of days, but the place where I was seemed really nice, can’t wait to go back. The weather there was very similar to British weather when I was there, which I kind of liked, it was sort of a bit cold.

ItSA: Yeah, but this time you’re coming in March and the weather is gonna be hell. So our advice would be to bring sunscreen, because it’s very hot already. Be prepared for something absolutely different.

Bobby: Oh no! yeah, it was quite cold.

ItSA: I know. I love cold weather, so that was great for me, but now it’s… yeah, bring sunscreen.

Bobby: No, I’m excited, I’ve been to Brazil, Brazil was pretty hot, Rio was quite hot. In fact, everywhere that I went in Brazil has been quite hot, but it was quite nice when we were in Chile. I quite liked that it wasn’t really hot, to be honest, but if you say you… so we’re coming back in summer? Is it summer then or what? when we come back, what is it? 

ItSA: Last few months of summer, last few weeks of summer, yeah.

Bobby: Okay, gotcha, right. So I’m gonna have to bring some shorts then. I can’t wear shorts on stage though.

ItSA: Why not? I mean, I get it because of the stage performance and all…

Bobby: Doesn’t really make sense, does it? Shorts is a bit of the wrong vibe. 

ItSA: Yeah, but you know, sometimes the weather…

Bobby: …forces you

ItSA: Yeah! When you guys first started, were you like “maybe we get some albums out, we play a few gigs”, maybe not so big ambitions, or did you want to travel around the world?

Bobby: I definitely think we wanted to travel around the world, but… I mean… when we very first started this band, the intention was purely to write and record music for fun. We didn’t even plan on playing gigs, we didn’t plan on getting a band together, it was just me and Will, our guitarist, and our band… we just started it for fun really, so we never thought that it would sort of turn into this, but obviously I think, well… not everyone, but for the most part, people want to see the world, because you’re only here once. It’s nice to see and experience other cultures and people from different places, I think that’s one of the great joys of life really, but we didn’t think this band would take us around but I think it’s one of the things I love about it, getting to travel to all these places and yeah… just meet all these people and just experience different things. It’s really quite amazing. I don’t know many other things that you get to do that with your friends, it’s a really amazing experience, I’m very grateful to be able to do it, especially coming to South America. That’s crazy, I never thought that would happen. 

ItSA: Yeah, especially because South American crowds are known for having big, big energies compared to like… everywhere around the world. I mean, of course, it’s my country as well, so I’m always gonna be like: “yeah, no, our crowd is the best”, but our crowd in South America, I would say, it’s very loud sometimes, as well.

Bobby: Yeah, I feel like in England we’ve been a bit spoiled with bands, there’s been so many famous bands come from England, and so many bands come to England whereas coming to South America, you have… It’s kind of hard to go to South America, you have to get to a certain size almost, because it’s very expensive to travel. So it’s almost like we’ve been spoiled a little bit I think in England, because so many bands come there, whereas in South America… I wonder if that’s why there’s so much more enthusiasm, why people in South America appreciate the music maybe a little bit more, at least that kind of rock n´ roll kind of thing, the crowds are amazing.

ItSA: Speaking about releases, you already have the «Still Nervous» album from 2024 and you have the single «Loner» from 2025. Do you have any plans for more releases this year? Maybe something before the Lollapalooza shows?

Bobby: Oh, I’m not sure actually, It’s a very good question. I think we… well, we’re working. On Monday we’re gonna start trying to record a new album, so I don’t know. I don’t think that’ll be coming out before we come over there, but yeah, it would be cool to drop a track before we come over. I’m not sure, but we’re hoping to have another album out this year, if we can make good enough songs, but it’s very difficult.

ItSA: Is it really difficult? Is your creative process… I don’t know. It sounds like you have a lot of fun when you make music, so I don’t know… I imagine that it shouldn’t be so hard.

Bobby: Yeah, it’s fun, but it’s different… I think sometimes you can be too critical, you want to make the best thing you can, but the fact of the matter is that, creating anything, you often create a lot of stuff that’s not good, you know, like that’s kind of the process. You don’t just write great songs every time you go in the studio. It’s quite the opposite. I reckon for every five or six songs I write, maybe one of them could be quite cool. I find it hard, sometimes I’ll have a day in the studio where it’s easy and get a great song, or I don’t know about great, but like… a good song comes pretty fast and that’s pretty cool. But yeah, generally it’s quite hard, but it is fun, you know. It is fun, just that’s the process. The journey is the fun thing, you know, I really enjoy it. It’s frustrating sometimes. There are days where I think, oh god, I’m shit at this, but then, eventually a day will come where I’m like, oh, actually I quite like that.. So, having the stamina to work through your bad ideas is very necessary.

ItSA: That’s on perfectionism, and maybe some impostor syndrome, but that’s life.

Bobby: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know if there’s many people who don’t feel like they’re an impostor, sort of because you have to work through all the bad stuff. People only hear the stuff that we thought was good, but there’s a whole computer full of stuff that wasn’t very good.

ItSA: That’s great. This time around you’re going to be in Chile. Would you like to do some tourism, like… I don’t know, some vineyards? Chile is very well known for their wine, so everyone that comes here and has a little bit of time, they go straight into a wine tasting.

Bobby: Yeah, I’m not a big fan of wine, so I’d rather go to the mountains, there’s like mountains there, isn’t there?, and see the big mountains. But to be honest with you, I don’t really know. We go to so many places, there’s some places we go to and I don’t know enough about the place to sort of, you know, and sometimes you don’t have time. But yeah, I definitely would love to see as much as I can when I visit any country. I do like to, if there’s time, to go and see things and sort of walk around as much as you can. Yeah, that’s one of the great bits about touring, is getting to see all these different places. It’s really fun, especially in South America ‘cuz there’s so many places I kind of thought I didn’t know if I would ever go there. I didn’t know if I’d ever go to Perú and I didn’t think I’d ever go to… Well, I just don’t know, there’s so many places to visit on Earth, it’s hard to know which ones you would go to. But yeah, it’s really really great, I really liked it when we were there. All the countries we went to in South America had sort of cool, cool things that I discovered. And I went back to Perú, actually after the Green Day tour. We flew back to Lima and then to a place called Cusco. It’s like a little town in Peru, and you get the train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes and then you go to Machu Picchu and it was amazing, it was absolutely breathtaking. I’ve never seen anything like Machu Picchu, it was unbelievable. I know it’s obviously a big tourist spot, but for a good reason. It was really… It’s a magical place, so magical. There’s that big mountain that is shaped like a condor, and you’re looking at it and it’s like: Oh my! just… it took my breath away to be honest with you, it’s fascinating.

ItSA: Do you know… there’s this band, a Chilean band that’s called Los Jaivas. They make like a progressive rock, it’s from the 60s. They made an album in Machu Picchu, which is called «Alturas de Machu Picchu». It is a beautiful magical album, it’s my favorite.

Bobby: Let me search it. I will listen to that today, thank you.

ItSA: Yeah, of course, I hope you like it.

Bobby: Oh, I’m sure I will, gracias.

ItSA: Do you speak Spanish a little bit?

Bobby: Well, not really. I speak little bits, but I always forget. I speak a little bit of Brazilian Portuguese cuz my girlfriend is from Brazil. So it was quite funny when we played the show in Brazil, because I know a little bit more Portuguese than I do Spanish. I said just a few funny things, which is quite amusing, but no. I want to learn, I want to be able to speak a whole show in Spanish, with a little bit of English, but I love the idea of you at least trying, I just think it’s quite fun. But then there’s a lot of things I say on stage, well, there used to be a lot of things I said on stage that didn’t really translate very well into Spanish. So before the Green Day tour, there’s whole sections that I tried to translate, but my Spanish friends were like, «the English just doesn’t make sense with the Spanish translation.» Cuz there’s one thing that I said before one of our songs, I said, «Ladies and gentlemen…” What is it? Ladies and gentlemen, I can’t remember it now. But basically it was like almost a metaphorical kind of thing and it didn’t really make sense as I was saying it, it was something like “watching you eat your dinner turning your children against you. This is television”. But the way I was saying it, because in English the implication was that I’m saying the things that the song title is… I can’t even explain it, but the translations just didn’t make sense, and I was like I don’t want to go up there and sound like sort of stupid because none of it translated properly, but it’s quite fascinating, since I’ve been trying to learn other languages, or certainly Portuguese anyway, I really appreciate how difficult it is, ‘cuz the differences and how sentences are put together and yeah, it makes me really appreciate people like yourselves, who speak such amazing English, because it’s so hard to speak another language, but I really want to, at least, try.

ItSA: Yeah sure, on that note, and maybe to close up a little bit, because the timing on Zoom is very weird, do you have any message for the South American fans? It could be in English. I mean, you could do it in spanglish if you want.

Bobby: It’d be pretty basic. You would have to have given me a heads up if I was going to do it in Spanish. Hola, ¿cómo están? What else? I get confused about what’s Portuguese and what’s Spanish at the moment. Wait a minute. What have I got here? Check this out, on my desktop, I’ve got some of the stuff written down that I was trying to remember. “Esta próxima canción se llama…” Oh, no, it’s Portuguese, wait, is it Spanish?

ItSA: Oh yeah, that’s Spanish. Spanish and Portuguese are very similar, too.

Bobby: I know, that’s why it’s so hard to remember the difference. “¡Quiero que salten, quiero que griten!”

ItSA: Yes, yes. Very good. Exactly.

Bobby: “Más fuerte” is louder, isn’t it? Yeah. I say “¿están listos para esto?”, that’s the one I was doing quite a lot. But it’s hard for me to remember, like I have to refresh my mind of them. But hopefully they sunken in a little bit now. Hopefully. 

ItSA: Yeah, there’s time still. So yeah, I trust that your Spanish is going to be great.

Bobby: Perfect. It’s gonna be flawless. The pressure is on now. If I had a- if I had a message for people in Chile, I would say that we are so excited to be there, to be playing for the people in that country, and it’s a real privilege and an honor and please come and watch us play, because we will leave it all on the stage, is what they say, we will be doing our best as we always do, but there’s a something extra special about being in Chile, or being in South America in general. It’s really special for us and hopefully it will be special for everyone else as well, because it’s quite a big deal for us cuz we’re not really a big band. I mean, we’re like we’re doing okay, but we’re not like- we’re not some massive known band. So, for us to be there is kind of like crazy, it’s kind of crazy. So hopefully it won’t be the last time though, I hope that we get to come back loads. Maybe I’ll move to Chile.

ItSA: Oh, that would be great. Or Brazil, you can visit here a lot.

Bobby: That would be fantastic, yeah. Brazil’s so big though, Brazil is massive. But Chile, I loved seeing all the mountains in Chile where we were, you could just see this outline of all the mountains around you, it was so cool.

ItSA: La Cordillera, it’s the big, big mountain that separates us from Argentina.

Bobby: Wow, so cool, I love it. But I know The Ramones were like very popular in… certainly in Argentina, but I think a lot of South America, right?

ItSA:Yeah, we’re big fans of everything that’s sort of punk. There’s a big, big metal scene as well, that I don’t know where it came from, but now it’s very big somehow.

Bobby: Well, yeah. Metal is fascinating, is really hard to play, you know? You got to be really really bloody good at playing your instrument to play that kind of music. I love metal, but I really love sort of the classic stuff. I really love The Beatles and Bowie and Elton John. I really love all of that, you know, but I do love all the punk stuff as well, like The Clash. But yeah, I can’t wait to come over there. I’m really excited. Thank you for your time. 

ItSA: Yeah, thanks for your time.

Bobby: Thank you.