Think that you’re a hardcore Gibson fan? Well, All-American Rejects guitarist Nick Wheeler has probably got you beat. Aside from owning more Gibson Firebirds than he can count (he literally has a spreadsheet to keep track of his guitars, but estimates that he owns about a dozen ‘Birds), he recently had the iconic Firebird logo inked onto his inner arm as a tribute to his favorite axe. “All of my tattoos are music-related,” he explains. “I woke up one morning a few months ago and my girlfriend said, ‘Let’s get tattoos!’ I didn’t know what to get and I turned over and looked at the Firebird that’s sitting near my bed and I was like, ‘Oh, dude, that’s perfect!’”
Wheeler popped his Firebird cherry during the video for “Swing, Swing” off the band’s self-titled album and has never looked back. “It took me a little while to learn how to stand with it because they’re a little top heavy, but I think that makes it even better because you have to kind of stick your pelvis out to play it live,” he adds. “The Firebird has definitely made me a cool-looking guitar player.” Wheeler’s favorite guitar is the natural-finish Firebird that he used in the aforementioned video—and although he still plays it on records and demos, he refuses to take it on the road. “Growing up, my parents made me buy all my instruments to instill that value in me, but that guitar is one exception,” he explains adding that the guitar was given to him by a Gibson representative. “That thing is my baby.”
Wheeler and the rest of the band are currently in the process of writing the band’s third record. While they’re a few months from commencing recording, Wheeler offers some thoughts about what the album is shaping up to sound like. “It’s definitely going to be bolder than our first two records,” he says, adding that the band have about eight songs written. “There’s going to be more synths and drum loops like there were on the first album, but it’s also going to be a big rock record like Move Along, you know what I mean? Where it goes from there, I’m not really sure yet,” he adds with a laugh. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens.”
When asked if he feels any pressure to top the platinum status of the band’s first two efforts, Wheeler states that the pressure mainly existed on the last record. “For Move Along, we expected to just write a dozen songs and then go in and record them—and then when people told us to keep writing, we were really confused,” he explains. “This time around we know exactly what we want and don’t need to go through the process of finding ourselves again. To be honest, there are some demos from the last record that we laugh at now. We didn’t realize it until Howard (Benson) the producer heard them and he looked at us and goes, ‘Are you serious?’ We had a three-minute orchestral intro that turned into a Judas Priest riff. We were kind of reaching back to our childhoods.” 
Wheeler also recently had the opportunity to fulfill a childhood dream when he and frontman Tyson Ritter joined Bon Jovi onstage for an unplugged performance of “It’s My Life.” During the rehearsal for the song, however, Jon Bon Jovi pulled a surprised. “We got to the second chorus and Jon looks over at me and says, ‘This is where the kid can solo,’” says Wheeler. “I looked over at Richie and I’m like, ‘Dude, I don’t want to steal your moment.’ But he just went, ‘ I’ve been playing all night, you can have it.’” Ultimately, Wheeler ended up staying up until four in the morning in his hotel room writing a solo that night and performing it with the band the next day.
“I took a little bit from the original version and a little bit from the country version and it was what it was,” he explains with a laugh. “I had a blast doing it, though. It was a pretty insane experience playing beside Richie Sambora, the guy who inspired me to play guitar in the first place.”