Less Than Jake has been one of the top ska and alternative bands in the world for decades. Since winning fans over with Losing Streak 20 years ago, the guys from Gainesville have blended ska, punk, and various other types of music into a sound all their own.

Myspace caught up with longtime trombone player Buddy Schaub at Warped Tour this summer to chat about

Much of the Warped Tour crowd has probably listened to bands like Less Than Jake since birth. What's that like to play to multiple generations of fans?

It’s weird because we’ve actually done Warped Tour like a million times, and a few years ago we realized we were getting older and thought “None of these people know who we are.” We did the after hours bar where you work for tips, and we’d bartend to get people loose a little bit. Then all of a sudden these bands would come over who don’t sound anything like us and say “Man, when I was in seventh grade, Losing Streak got me through everything!” It’s crazy to meet the generations of bands as they’re coming up. For me it sucks because it just makes me feel old.

Years ago, the band would play multiple sets throughout the same day at Warped Tour. How did that work for you guys?

We had done that before, yeah. We played under the pseudonym The Shits at some point on the Ernie Ball Stage. That’s what Warped Tour is all about, too. Usually you know another band, so you just go play on some of the other people’s sets. Like Billy Kottage from Reel Big Fish plays with The Interrupters everyday. It’s pretty cool to have that blend going around and playing with other people. But just playing a weird pop-up set every once in a while is fun too. Some people would find out about it and there were some people who didn’t. We’d play to 20 people sometimes.

What’s it like to have sort of a ska reunion with Reel Big Fish at Warped Tour this year?

We’ve been playing with Reel Big Fish a lot and touring with them since 2007. We’ve kind of done stuff with them, not necessarily around the US, but we’ll keep spacing it out like “We haven’t done the UK yet — let’s go there together!” We still haven’t done Japan yet. We’ve done Australia a couple of times. We haven’t done South America together yet either, so that might be in the cards. We’re a good team though — it’s like one plus one equals three with us. We’re both in that same time period so a lot of our fans are older and have kids and stuff now. If just Less Than Jake’s coming through town they’re like “Oh, maybe we’ll go.” and then they change their mind, like “Oh, there’s a new episode of Weeds on” or whatever. But when both bands come to town and it’s like “I’m going to get a hotel and a babysitter and a bottle of vodka!” and you see them passed out like halfway through our set.

You've recently done some full album shows for Losing Streak and Hello Rockview. What's it been like to revisit those albums again?

It requires a little bit of homework. We did it in 2007 with all of the records, and it six different shows in Florida in three different places, and we recorded it all and did that. Doing that was the most homework — like, there’s some songs you just don't play on a record so we had to go back and re-learn all of that, and some we just don’t play that often. We’ve had some rehearsing, if you will, onstage. You have to go back and study a little. But it’s kind of fun to play a record straight through because when you’re coming up with the order for the album and making the track list, it’s like a whole thing, but then you never really usually go do that. It was the most important thing while you were in the recording process. You get into arguments about which songs should go where but then you go to play it live and you’re like “This isn’t working at all — why did we do this?” But some songs are obviously the B-sides, because people are like “I love that they’re playing the whole record!” but then they don’t know some of the songs.

Every Less Than Jake show involves beach balls, streamers, guys in masks, and a whole lot of other excitement. How did you all decide to have such a big production as your shows?

That’s the best part about us, because it’s not really a big production. We do have these geyser things that shoot CO2 gas that lights up, but they’re just two little things. The toilet paper guns, the balloons, the beach balls — it’s easy to bring around and easier because I don’t have to blow them up. We have a guy for that. It works in this setting because when we come out to do Warped Tour again, there are a bunch of kids that have heard of us before, but they never saw us play, so those are the kids who we’re trying to get to see us play. You’ve got some crazy shit going on like a guy riding in a raft on the crowd and they walk over. That’s part of the reason for us to keep playing Warped Tour. It does have that young, rejuvenated scene for us.