The resurgence of The All-American Rejects is real and it's now. 3 months after playing a viral house party at USC, the band was one of the standouts at this weekend's Warped Tour in Long Beach, CA.
LISTEN NOW: The All-American Rejects at Warped Tour
Backstage the band was full of gratitude and excitement talking with Megan Holiday, remembering how Los Angeles' KROQ broke their music and helped them land a deal, and stoked about the next chapter after reconnecting with fans on ground level.
Planning to play a pop-up show in Los Angeles earlier this year, AAR reached out to the local college radio station hoping to hedge their bet just in case it didn't go well. "The next night we played USC and we were eye level with these kids," Tyson Ritter remembers. "This is the moment to me. They lift up this kid who I saw in his eyes when he reached above the shoulder, that he had never crowd surfed before, and there were 2 40s in the air next to him, and I saw the veil lift and I said, 'this is it.' We tapped into something for this kid."
The band had the option to take 50k from a label, or stay on the fan level to introduce new music to the masses. "We were gonna either bark into a vacuum or take that $50,000 and put it on the road, and get an eye level with our fans and show them that we got new music. And that's what we did."
Now the band has been working on music for almost a year, and they are ready to start talking about it. "We've been toying with the idea of maybe making new music for a while now, but now it's been almost a year that we've just been really excited working on tunes and we haven't really got to say much about it," says guitarist Nick Wheeler. "We got over half a record done and we're f***ing pumped. We haven't been excited about making music in a very long time, that's why we haven't made music in a very long time."
"It's not just that," adds Tyson. "When you have a legacy that started when you were in your Huggies, it's not just about feeling when it's right, it's, what is right? Because that was somebody else. Every time Nick and I talk about something about that band, I removed myself from him. Not because I don't love him, it's because I love him that I don't put him on me. Every time I go, 'dude, can you believe those guys did that s*** for us?' I talk about this band, I talk about them, because what we are now is we have a lived experience."
To hear much more from The All-American Rejects, check out the full interview above.