Yellowcard

It had been almost an entire year since Yellowcard were in town, and I was excited to see them again- especially since they’ll be holing themselves up recording a new album after this tour, which means it’ll be a while before they come back. A few hours before they got on, I had the chance to talk to Pete Mosely and Ryan Mendez backstage and ask them about touring, Lights And Sounds, Green Day, MTV, fire hazards and more – and yes, we did get interrupted by security. It was a pretty deecent interview despite my semi-crappy questions and I’d like to thank Pete and Ryan for doing it, and Anthony for setting it all up. Extra special thanks goes to Ryan who took the time to do it despite it being his one year wedding anniversary with his wife.

Please Note: Some pictures were stolen from the band’s official website and are copyright their rightful owner. Also note that in my questions I said how Sean and LP were the only original members, whichis wrong, LP is the sole original member in the band; Sean joined soon afterwards.

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Bobby: I guess starting with the basics, you guys have been on tour with Emery and Lillix for a few days now; how’s that going so far?

Pete: It’s going good. We’ve got Reeve Oliver out with us again as well. We’re only a couple days deep into the tour, so we’re just warming up to everything, but so far everything’s been really cool and fun.

Bobby: That’s good, have there been any really memorable moments from it so far?

Ryan: It’s kind of early, I don’t know. Usually things don’t happen so… We’ve only been out for a week, so it’s like kind of hard to say right now. Maybe in a couple weeks we’ll have something; I don’ know, it’s still kind of early.

Bobby: Today is a festival celebrating going back to school, how do you like doing big festivals like this?

Pete: It’s weird, because it’s all kind of split up into three sections. Like a third of the people know who you are, a third of the people don’t know who you are, and the other third are just too drunk to even care. But either way, it’s cool because it’s much better playing outdoors, you kind of feel better with what you’re doing; and just a wider range of people to meet and reach out to.

Bobby: What do you think is better, playing shows with 18plus bands, like tonight has 18 bands playing, or a regular tour with just three or four bands?

Pete: I don’t know; they both have their perks. It’s definitely cool when you’re doing a tour with only three or four bands and then a couple dates on that tour are things like this to kind of mix it up a little bit.

Bobby: Earlier, this year when you did a show in Tampa, you did a cover of Green Day’s “Time Of Your Life” is that going to be a song you play at all of your shows or just the one-off?

Pete: No, that was just a special request that was made by a close friend of Ryan for heaven knows why. It was pretty much a one-off thing.

Bobby: Yeah, it’s actually already up on the internet, somebody filmed it and put it on YouTube.

Pete: Yeah, I haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen it up there.

Ryan: Did they? I didn’t even know that, but that doesn’t surprise me at all.

Bobby: That song, “Time Of Your Life” was huge and just blew-up. How important do you think that song was for accepting acoustic ballads in punk?

Pete: There’s always been the acoustic ballad; I don’t think there’s been one by a greasy, Bay Area punk rock band that changed it; but that definitely, not raised the bar, but stretched it out a little bit.

Ryan: I think it made it a little bit more acceptable. I mean, that was my high-school graduation song, so it obviously got way passed that certain point. But I also think a lot of people try to do that now and a lot of people fall a little short; like it has to be really done right for it to be at that level.

Pete: The other thing about that song was that I don’t think it was so much meant to be what it turned into. I think it was just an idea to put a chill song at the end of the record and it turned out to be what set the band up for that period of their career.

Bobby: Okay, let’s talk a bit about your new CD, “Lights And Sounds.” First off, you had Natalie Maines sing on the song “How I Go” which everybody knew there was a guest singer, but nobody knew who it was until around two weeks before the record dropped. Why such secrecy? Publicity or what?

Pete: Kinda, I mean I think it would be good to hear the song first and go “oh wow, who is that?” Rather than go into it going “Natalie Maines is supposed to be on this song,” because then you kind of make your own assumptions before you even hear the song. Before the record’s even out you’d go – if you’re not a Dixie Chicks fan you’d go “Oh, they got some country singer to sing on their record, that’s really lame” and they haven’t even heard the song it. It’s just like everything comes with the release of the record. You don’t hear the songs, you don’t see the track listing, you don’t see the photos, the artwork – and that’s just kind of part of it.

Bobby: On that record, you guys have two bonus songs, “Three Flights Down” and “When We’re Old Men,” do you guys ever play them live?

Pete/Ryan: Nope.

Bobby: Personally, I think the songs were distribute horribly with how you could only get them if you bought the record at Best Buy or WalMart and the rest of the people had to scour the internet and go out of their way to find them. Why did you do that?

Pete: Marketing scheme.

Ryan: Politics.

Pete: Unfortunately, there’s a record label that goes along with doing this and certain decisions are made outside of our realm.

Ryan: They’re always sitting there trying to figure out what they can possibly do to make this biggest, grandest, newest marketing scheme and its like “Well, let’s do this.” It helps their relationship with these huge chain stores, I mean, it’s all just politics and usually the band doesn’t have that much to do with it.

Bobby: How about the lyrics, you only put the lyrics for “Three Flights Down” in there behind the CD. Why did you put that there and not the lyrics for “When We’re Old Men?”

Pete: The reason why one song and not the other is because “Three Flights Down” is kind of like the closure of the record. It was originally supposed to be the hidden track, but they made it available either if you got it on iTunes or maybe the first hundred thousand presses or whatever had it as a secret song. But the song itself is kind of closure to the record. With the record opening up with “Three Flights Up” and then there’s an actual song “Three Flights Down” that does have lyrics. It’s just sparks interest with “oh, what song is that” and then they go find it.

Bobby: The album didn’t do as well as people had hoped, as of early July it had only sold 315,000 copies which is a lot short of the 2 million that “Ocean Avenue” sold. A lot of people were saying that that’s partly due to the fact that you didn’t tour as much because of Ryan’s vocal problems. How important do you think touring is for a band in promoting a band?

Pete: I mean, I think it’s very important. I think there are two different kinds of bands. I’m not gonna say this just because we’re in Canada, but say a band like Nickelback who has single, after single, after radio single and they don’t really tour. They’ll play only festivals, only huge festivals. And then there are bands that will just put out whatever and then they’ll have a hit or not, but the purpose of their band is to go out and play music – and Yellowcard’s always been like that. We’ve always been finding wherever and whoever just to play in front of. We had to cancel a couple shows, a handful of shows, and we did miss a month of touring due to Ryan but I don’t think it was so much the touring that made this record different from the success of “Ocean Avenue.” In perspective, “Lights And Sounds” sold a lot more initially then “Ocean Avenue” did; not to say “Lights And Sounds” is gonna pick up and reach two million eventually… But I think a lot of why “Lights And Sounds” wasn’t what it was expected to be was just a lot of timing. A lot of things just change in the industry, it’s very fickle, and you think you’re creating something that might work and when it turns out you’re dealing with a whole new machine and a whole new monster and you have to fight your way back up to the top.

Bobby: Like you just mentioned Nickelback, who release hit single and single after single, which is another reason some people said the CD didn’t do as well of the start – because the two singles kind of fizzled out pretty soon after they were released. How important do you think one hit single, or two hit singles, are to record sales?

Pete: It’s very important.

Ryan: Almost the most important thing, especially in the States; kids in the States, they hear it on the radio or watch it on TV. I read something where there was a study that showed how a higher percentage of record sales still come from kids finding out about the band on the radio more than any other medium. So it makes all the difference in the world.

Bobby: In an interview with MTV, Sean was quoted as saying how you “all went too far” with this album and how you “showed too much” and how you were “too jaded and a little too dark” which made the album “a little less sparkly and light to people”, do you guys kind of agree with that, where you went a bit too far and a bit too dark?

Pete: I agree with the fact that the record wasn’t as easy to take in as previous works. I don’t think we went too far. I don’t really know exactly where that came from. I mean, this record was, the writing process for it was so much different in a way that we were just really focused. And we were kind of in the frame of mind that maybe song writing and honing in on the skills that maybe we weren’t focused enough. I mean, there’s different ways to look at it. Maybe if we just did it the easy way and didn’t think too much about it then it would’ve been another “Ocean Avenue.” Maybe we did think about it too much if it’s like a record sales question. But for the most part, we made a record that we wanted to make. Rather than taking the pressure of following a certain amount of success up, rather than taken that pressure and making “Ocean Avenue Part Two” knowing that would work, we kind of ran the other way with it and said “we’ve got the opportunity to make something that we want to make” and that’s what we did.

Bobby: Okay, well the band has been around for quite a long time now, since the mid-nineties, but only two of the originally five members are still in the band – Sean and LP. I know a lot of times fans have a hard time getting used to new members. There was the big kafuffle over Ben last year when Ryan joined. I read on the message board how some people didn’t like you Pete based solely on the fact that you weren’t Alex. How hard is it, do you think, joining a band that is already well known and has a fan base?

Pete: This is a question for him.

Ryan: Aspects of it are very hard. Especially the situation with Ben, I mean he was somebody that the fans were so fond of and everything. So it’s always going to be hard to take the position of somebody like that, people they think of him when they think of the band so no matter whose gonna replace him, people are just going to be closed-minded about it – and I think they really were at first. But I think it has kind of changed now. I think people have really come around more. I mean, I’ve been in the band a year now and we’ve done a lot of touring in that year. We’ve toured all over the world, all over the States, I mean this is our second time doing Canada; and I think people know that things are going to be okay. The band’s not going away, I know how to play guitar; you know what I’m saying? I think that most of the people have come around a little bit, or a lot actually. Even the kids on the website, a lot of the hardcore fans who were like “no way” at first are totally stoked now. We go around, we do a lot of touring, and I go out, I make an effort to meet the kids and be like “hey, you know, I’m a person too. I’m nice; we can hang out and stuff.” And I think a lot of people have turned around. It definitely takes some effort though. It doesn’t just happen right away. People are very protective; they’re very scared of change. They’re used to what they’re used to, so yeah, it can be very hard.

Bobby: Okay, speaking about change, the band has been around for a long time now. How much do you think the music industry on the whole has changed over the past five, ten years? Especially with the internet and everything.

Pete: I think the industry operates the same way that it always has, it’s just finding new ways to get the music out there. The only thing that really changed about the industry is the music patterns. There’s always something new every five years, always a new target audience. There’s definitely been a decline in record sales because of things like the internet, file sharing and what have you. But it’s still the same monstering machine that strives of either exploiting or selling music. They have ran into a bit of a wall with trying to find a way to sell things, to sell records. Lately, albums have become more about just finding that hit single and now they’ve made it available so that kids can just buy that hit single without even having to buy the whole record.

Ryan: Takes away the competition of having to buy a record.

Security Guy: How you doing bud?

Pete: Good, how are you?

Security Guy: Good. Do you got a pass?

Pete: Yeah, I sure do.

Ryan: We’re in the middle of doing an interview actually.

Security Guy: Awesome, thanks guys.

Pete: Thanks. *Security guys goes away, we laugh* Three guys just having a conversation.

Ryan: Just hanging out; three random dudes just talking to a tape recorder.

Bobby: I love going to concerts, I try to go to as many as I can, but of course there are some more memorable than others. So thinking back, what are some concerts that you’ve been to that were really memorable for you?

Pete: My first concert ever, I saw NOFX play at this underground bar in Jacksonville, Florida. A thousand people, it was supposed to fit a thousand people, but they had fifteen hundred people crammed in on top of each other. That was my first show ever; it was definitely like…I don’t know; it was just “holy shit.” I didn’t know what the fuck to expect, I was in like eighth grade.

Ryan: My first ever was like that exact same thing, except it was Lagwagon. The same exact underground thing in Santa Barbara, actually the thing was called The Underground which was kind of funny. The exact same, exact scenario. Like twice as full as it was supposed to be, like total fire hazard, but it was just unreal – I had no idea what to think. It was rad. I had never even heard the band before, I’d just heard my friends talk about them and say “oh, these guys are fast, you’ll like them.” “Okay, sweet” – you know? *laughs* For me, I saw Stone Temple Pilots when I was sixteen and that was amazing for me. I mean, I’ve always been a big Stone Temple Pilots fan, and it was rad to be able… I won tickets on the local radio station, and after that it was just rad to be able to go see a show at that level. That was a pretty memorable one.

Bobby: I guess we’ll end with an easy question, if you guys could have one thing at this moment, anything at all, what would you have and why?

Pete: I’d have my dog, my dog with me.

Ryan: That’s a good question, and I don’t even know an answer.

Pete: You already have your wife with you.

Ryan: I know, see my wife’s already here visiting because I would say that; but she’s hear visiting right now so I just don’t know. The one thing that I would say on a normal tour would be my wife, but she’s here right now.

Bobby: Okay, fair enough, thanks a lot for doing it. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Pete: It’s pretty hot today for Canada.

Ryan: Yeah.

Pete: We’re used to coming here in December.

Ryan: It’s nice though.

Pete: Yeah, it feels nice; just warmer than Edmonton usually is.

Ryan: Warmer than I would expect, definitely.

Pete: We’re also usually here when it’s like fucking January. Yeah, we come at the smartest time of the year.

Bobby: Okay, thanks a lot.