One of Denver’s biggest bands, The Flobots, are set to release their sophomore effort Survival Story March 16. Founding member and co-emcee Jonny 5 discussed the new album, performing live and life after their huge single “Handlebars.”

MP: How is the new album different from Fighting With Tools?

J5: Fighting With Tools was an album we made when all of us still had day jobs. With this album, every day we got to get up and make music, so we had time to really push ourselves and I think this album reflects that. We’ve really grown as musicians. Our synergy as a band has really reached new heights. The music is just a lot stronger. As far as the content, Fighting With Tools was an album about slogans. This album is about stories, telling our stories — it’s a more personal album — and also telling the stories of all the people we’ve met in the last few years traveling around the world.

MP: How did Tim McIllrath and Matt Morris get involved?

J5: It’s interesting. We didn’t plan on guest appearances for either [“White Flag Warrior” or “Infatuation”], what we did is we worked on the songs until they got to a point where we said, “You know what? We need some help on this. We need to call up some friends to help us give the song what it really needs.” Both Tim and Matt were the first people we thought of. We were really excited that they were both available and very much interested in being part of the songs.

MP: You guys mix styles well. What is the songwriting process like?

From left: Kenny Ortiz, Brer Rabbit, Mackenzie Roberts, Jonny 5, Andy Guerrero and Jesse Walker

J5: It’s a good question. The songwriting is an adventure every time. It’s different for every song, but what’s similar about the process every time is that everybody’s voice matters. There are six members in the band, and every single person is a contributor on every song.

Even if one of us isn’t on the song, we contribute our opinions, so that is a challenging process, but we find that it’s worthwhile in the end because you end up with something that makes six different types of people happy, and we think that makes us have a wider audience and a broader appeal.

MP: Your CD-release party is March 12, what are you looking forward to most about the homecoming show?

J5: We’re gonna pull out all the stops for this show. We have so many fun things planned. I’m looking forward to the audience because there’s so many surprises. It’s always fun to play new songs, but for this show we’re gonna make sure that people are gonna be talking about it the next day.

MP: Does having live instruments affect your live show at all? Do you improvise or is it more straight-forward?

J5: The live instrumentation is part of our appeal. We run a pretty tight ship. We know what we’re gonna do, but the spontaneity comes from the energy of the crowd.

MP: As a band, has your approach to music changed since the massive success of “Handlebars?”

J5: No. In fact, we were very clear when we wrote the album that we weren’t really gonna think about how the songs were gonna be received. We didn’t think about what song was gonna be the single. We just said, “Let’s write the strongest songs we can write.” You’ll notice there are some long songs on the album that are probably too long for a radio edit, but we didn’t care about that. We just said, “What makes a good song? How can we make the six of us happy with this song?”

Because we have really different sounds, you’ll hear a song that’s more acoustic, a song that’s almost like a club banger or something, or a song that’s really rockin’ out and it’s all on the same album. And I think it all gels because it’s all us. I almost like to think that we’re like the They Might Be Giants of hip-hop because their albums have so many different genres, but the spirit of the group’s the same with every song.

MP: You guys are also involved with charity and activism. What have you been working on lately on that side of things?

J5: We are in our third year of music programming at a place called the Denver Children’s Home. [Those are] music workshops for kids who have experienced trauma, neglect or abuse. We’re still doing that and we’re also going to start a Fight With Tools Institute where people can get trained to be involved in their communities. You can go to fightwithtools.org for more information about that.

MP: What’s next for the band?

J5: The main thing is the album, which comes out March 16, and we are so excited about this album. We’re so proud of it, and I know people are gonna love it if they liked the last one because this is taking it all to the next level. After that, we’ll be touring all over the country, hopefully all over the world. And just keep on performing for people and writing songs.