Billboard

This is an S.O.S. — the Jonas Brothers are turning 20, and they’re celebrating in a massive way.

To kick it all off, thousands of fans gathered at New Jersey’s American Dream Mall on Sunday (March 23) for the first-ever JONASCON, a free fan event filled with performances, surprise guests, themed activations (like G.I. Jonas laser tag and Jonas Pizza), branded merch and much more. Joe, Nick and Kevin were of course in attendance — making multiple appearances throughout the mall all day long. It was a full-circle experience for the three brothers from Jersey — whose first performances ever (before they became who we know now as “the Jonas Brothers”) were in this same mall, but to much smaller audiences.

“This is, in a lot of ways, is 20 years in the making, and just a culmination of a lot of things going right and a lot of people believing in us,” Nick tells Billboard about the event right before their first performance of the day at Jonas Beach, which took place at the mall’s DreamWorks Water Park.

Later in the day, the Brothers welcomed previously-announced performers, The All-American Rejects and Franklin Jonas, to the stage, but also had several other surprises up their sleeves. Big Time Rush traveled to Jersey for a mall-ready performance of “Boyfriend,” while Camp Rock cast members M Dot, Meaghan Martin, and Anna Maria Perez de Tagle joined podcasters Chicks in the Office on stage for a surprise chat down memory lane.

During their final keynote performance, Joe, Nick and Kevin treated fans to a slew of other special announcements — meaning much more for fans to get excited about for the band’s 20^th year. The band revealed that their next studio album, Greetings From Your Hometown, will arrive on Aug. 8. They also announced the release date for Joe’s long-awaited solo album, Music For People Who Believe in Love, on May 23, their Disney+ film A Very Jonas Christmas (arriving later this year), a new song celebrating Disneyland’s 70^th anniversary, a London Live album (out June 13) and a new song in collaboration with ESPN for Sunday Night Baseball called “I Can’t Lose.”

Even with so much to look forward to in their 20^th year, the lessons they’ve learned aren’t lost on them —  and they hope to pass on what they’ve learned to the next generation.

“I think speaking to any musicians and artists, really believe in your craft and what you’re creating. We had people around us that really lifted us up and [let us] go in the studio and create them. It’s important to have that, because even after time, 20 years later, people are still gonna have opinions,” Joe tells Billboard. “You have to be able to just remember that: This is why you love it, and you create something for yourself.”

Read their full interview with Billboard below.

I’m sure there are countless memories over the past 20 years, but do you have any favorites?

JOE: We can’t pick one, but I think probably […] the van/trailer that we also would drive around the Northeast playing in front of anyone that listened to us — usually in malls. We started in malls, and we would sound check at about 4 or 5 a.m. and mall walkers would yell at us, and then we perform about 10 times throughout the day in front of Build-A-Bear. And now we’re doing it again, just a different size of mall.

KEVIN: There are so many to count. We walked through the Jonas Museum last night while it was completely empty and so fun to see memories from so long ago. My Takamine guitar is there. That was like my first purchase of a guitar ever. It’s the [guitar] we wrote “Please Be Mine” on all together. So it was pretty cool to see that.

NICK: [JONASCON] has actually got to be up there, just seeing the excitement from the fans … and our family is here today with us. Our parents are here. Our dad’s doing a sing along later with the fans, and [our brother] Franklin is performing.

What do you remember about recording your first album?

JOE: Well, I’m gonna go with the album that John Fields recorded with us [Jonas Brothers], because that was one of the launching pad albums for us — we had It’s About Time earlier. But I think when we were really able to define our sound as a band, and those were some of the most heartwarming memories for us […] we had our buddy John Taylor doing belly flops in the pool almost every day. The pool was like 102 degrees. It was our first real experience in Los Angeles.

NICK: I think the early memories of recording and writing music, we really didn’t know what we were doing, to be honest … we still don’t know what we’re doing. We had a bunch of people, to Joe’s point, that just said, you can do it and pushed us. And that was our dad, John Fields, our record label at the time Hollywood and John Lind. We were surrounded by people that just said, ‘You can do it,’ and believed in us, and that’s what took us to the next stage.

Even now, looking up and seeing what these songs mean to people so many years later, even though they were written when we were teenagers, is so incredible to us, and they resonate for us in different ways as we look out and see how the fan base has grown and changed and evolved over the years.

You guys started out around the same time social media started popping off. How do you reflect on having that personal connection with fans from the jump and those early days making YouTube videos?

KEVIN: Short-form content on YouTube. We figured it out quickly.

JOE: If only we were smart enough to create an app. We missed out on that … Our writers room was great, which was actually that van. We flipped the two back seats facing each other, and we’d come up with all these fun ideas. We would always be pitched things that we’d need to promote, but we felt kind of weird trying to sell ourselves like that. So we always said, ‘Let’s just make it fun and come up with stupid ideas.’ Jackass was really popular time. A lot of fake injuries, sometimes that became real injuries, and trying to make it feel natural and put into our own words. Our fans really, I think, gravitated towards that. We still do that stuff.

What do you remember about “Bounce,” the song/music video you put out while filming Camp Rock 2?

NICK: Sidebar — One of funniest checks I ever received was for “Bounce,” and it was for like $10 [because I was credited as the producer].

JOE: Did it go Gold or Platinum?

NICK: I think it went Gold.

JOE: We have a Gold plaque for “Bounce,” which is ridiculous … It was literally made on Garage Band in our Camp Rock dressing room. We had a lot of hours spent on that set, which we didn’t realize at the time, it was our first real movie to be a part of. You’re sitting around a lot, so “Bounce” was created.

Will there be a “Bounce” part 2?

JOE: There is time, you know. We’ll see, the next 20 years might have it.

KEVIN: Only time will tell.

You guys announced your massive JONAS20: LIVING THE DREAM tour, kicking off at MetLife Stadium. What does it mean to be headlining that massive venue in your home state? And do you have plans to bring the tour internationally?

JOE: We do have plans to bring the tour internationally. We also are overwhelmed to be playing MetLife Stadium. We’ve done it with radio shows and things like that, and popped up here and there, we’ve seen countless New York Giants football games there. I remember buying nosebleed seats when we had just enough in our allowance to go and watch a game. So to be Jersey guys who grew up 10, 15 minutes away from the stadium, MetLife. It’s a dream come true — to celebrate with our fans as well. And then we’re starting there, it’s now tradition. We have to start with New York.

[Note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.]