Untitled Article (type-up)
An awesome article from (presumably) 2007-ish, in Kerrang again, I think! Found via savingcolours, whose Nick-spam and Chris-spam should be admired by all and sundry. ^_^
IF THE four members of the All-American Rejects were to drop dead right at this second it’s difficult to imagine them being any happier than like this, their final moment of life. They’re not onstage at Madison Square Garden, they’re not receiving a Brit Award or a Grammy, and they haven’t just learned that their single is Number One all over the world on Christmas Day.
No, what The All-American Rejects are doing is eating junk food.
“It’s good, ain’t it?” asks frontmas Tyson Ritter. As he says this, Ritter is eating a sausage, egg, cheese, and strawberry jam toasted sandwich. That is neither a typing error nor a lie.
“This isn’t just any fast food chain,” says Rejects guitarist Mike Kennerty. Mike is toothy, nervous, and likeable. The only refreshment he drinks is Dr. Pepepr and the only meals he eats tend to be made up of rendered meat, melted cheese, and saturated fats. He is headphone-wire thin. “This is Sonic.”
Sonic, like The All-American Rejects themselves, is an Oklahoma phenomenon. This is fitting because today we’re in Oklahoma City, a sun-baked strip of mall sprawl of a million people, dead in the centre of nowhere. It’s pretty and it’s hot. The sports shops sell guns; the food outlets sell meat. There are churches everythwere.
A waitress comes out of the restaurant and asks The All-American Rejects if they would mind giving her their autographs.
“My name is Pepsi,” she says, when asked.
Pepsi.
“My parents were kind of crazy,” she says. “I was born in the ‘70s,” she says, as if this explains everything.
Do you think The All-American Rejects represent the state of Oklahoma in a good way?
“I think they’re great for Oklahoma,” she says. “People think of us as being rednecks, and here comes this talented, good-looking band who have good tunes and who are successful. It kind of shows us in a different light.”
Nice work.
“Just one more thing,” says Pepsi.
Of course.
“Do you think they’ll give me a free album?”
**
WELL, THEY can certainly spare one. It might be that Fall Out Boy get the column inches, it might be that Panic! At The Disco have the stage-show ,and it might be that Gerard Way has the international monopoly on marketable alienation. But it’s The All-American Rejects who are the unlikely, even unnoticed, success story of the year. Each member could probably afford to buy the house you live in in cash, yet could walk down the street unrecognized.
“People know our music more than they know us,” says Kennerty. “Like, I love Fall Out Boy - but if you listen to their record, it’s one song. If you listen to us, there’s a lot more textures. We have more variations to our sound.”
These are the numbers. In the United States, The All-American Rejects’ second album, “Move Along,” has nestled in the Billboard album chart for some 59 weeks. It has sold more than 1.3 million copies, and still sells in the region of 15,000 units every seven days. The single “Dirty Little Secet” has been a Top 10 hit, and in downloadable form has been bought 1.2 million times. Since last week’s Kerrang came out, it has been downloaded 13,000 more times.
The All-American Rejects are the first popular punk band to have two consecutive million-selling albums in the US (“Move Along” and the group’s eponymous debut, released in 2002) since the times of Blink-182, Green Day, and The Offspring.
“It’s crazy to think of all the things that have happened to us since we played here,” says guitarist Nick Wheeler. Wheeler was once arrested for murdering a pregnant woman; a case of mistaken identity. At the moment he’s sitting in Mike’s College Bar, looking about one of the first places his group ever performed. “It’s almost like we were a different band back then,” he says.
Mike’s College Bar is a charmingly disheveled drinking shed in the appropriately named town of Stillwater, 50 minutes out of the city. This is where Ritter and Wheeler formed AAR. The pair met at a party; Wheeler was 16, Ritter just 14.
The singer is now 22, and everything in his life has changed.
They used to play here when they were too young to drink, and their audience was older than they were (“which is pretty ironic,” says Wheeler, “given how young our fans are now”). They had fake documentation for when the police came to break up the evening, wondering why a group of minors was making a racket in a pub. During these nights there would be 350 people inside the place, even though the legal limit was just 230. Chairs and tables would be shunted outside. The queue at the bar would be eight deep.
In time the band progressed to Oklahoma City itself, and Green Door club. The room is now called The Conservatory, and is this city’s CBGB or Highbury Garage. The only difference being that it’s on a street so quiet you half expect Clint Eastwood to come ambling by on a horse. It was here, in 2002, that drummer Chris Gaylor joined the band, alongside Kennerty. The club smells like sweaty clothes and spilled beer, like too many cigarettes and too many late nights. Its walls are black, there is wiring hanging from the ceiling, plasterboard and slats poke through the walls. Tyson Ritter stands on the stage - in the exact same spot he would be were he getting ready to shout, “Good evening Oklahoma City” - and, a touch misty-eyed, says: “Man, we played some great fucking shows here.”
The Conservatory holds 350 people. The nest time The All-American Rejects play the city it will be at the Lloyd Noble Center, a basketball arena that houses 12,000 people.
“Did we get lucky?” asks Tyson Ritter, running the question round his mouth. “Fuck yeah, we got lucky.”
What’s the biggest misconception about AAR?
“That we’re a pop band,” he says. He’s grinning as he speaks, as he says, “we’re not a pop band, we’re a confused rock band.”
**
“HEY CHECK this out!” These are Chris Gaylor’s words. He’s standing at the counter of Size Records, next door to The Conservatory Club. Suicidal Tendencies are screaming “I shot Reagon!” over the shop’s stereo system. Gaylor has in his hand a seven-inch single by a band called Bi Products. This is the first ever disc the drummer played on, when he was 16, back in ’95. The music is hardcore punk, tinny and furious.
What do you think the 16-year-old Chris Gaylor might have made of the 27-year-old drummer of the melodic, commercial AAR?
“I don’t know if he would have been too upset,” is his answer. “Even back then I listed to a lot of pop-punk bands. I listened to Green Day. I guess the 16-year-old me might be a bit pissed off, but not much. Even back then I wasn’t that disgruntled.”
If you’re one of those people willing to question The All-American Rejects’ authenticity, it is also worth taking a look through Mike Kennerty’s record collection, in the house he shares with Gaylor and two other friends. It is vast and complete, note perfect for even the most exhaustive and discriminating punk collector. Bad Religion’s “Suffer” is here, NOFX’s “Punk in Drublic” is here. Even X’s “Los Angeles” is here, an original vinyl pressing, with a flyer advertising Germs T-shirts.
While Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler have left town and now live in Florida, Kennerty and Gaylor have put down roots in Oklahoma City. They live in a gorgeous, roomy, four-bedroom home in one of the city’s many suburban subdivisions. They have a home cinema projection room. The walls are adorned with framed pictures of Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye, Glen Danzig, and Joey Ramone; gig posters for Green Day; movie posters for Raiders Of The Lost Ark” and “The Evil Dead.” The house was bought for $300,000 and the mortgage costs each resident $450 per month. You could easily imagine this home being flaunted on MTV’s ‘Cribs.’
“Don’t make out that we’re rich bastards,” says Gaylor. “Because we’re not.”
Still, this is the kind of house you could imagine a drug dealer living in, which is ironic because Chris Gaylor used to be a drug dealer. He “started out with pot,” getting in “an ounce or two at a time.” He then moved on to acid; microdots, which is the drug in pill form. He even had a friend who would cut his forehead and grind the tablet into the cut, “but he was kind of crazy.” Gaylor then “got into the coke thing”. Or, if you prefer, he “went skiing for a while”.
He turned his back on the whole scene because, well, things began to get a big stern. Friends began using syringes. Another friend began carrying a shotfun in the trunk of his car. One more friend was found with a quarter pound of grass, and went to prison for two and a half years.
Which brings us on to Tyson Ritter, who is sitting in Mike’s College Bar: nicely pissed, very happy.
I’ve heard a rumour about you. Wanna hear it?
The singer leans, almost jumps forward and says, “Oh yes! What is it?”
That you’re a heroin addict.
Ritter thinks about this for a moment, as if he were sipping a new brand of bourbon and considering his opinion of it. Then he says, “That’s awesome!” And then, thinking about it, he asks, “Do I look like a heroin addict to you?”
Interesting. Here’s the thing: for a band that has risen without a trace, Tyson Ritter is a fabulously charismatic presence. Tall and thin, with cheekbones like shark fins, he exudes star quality. He’s genuinely likeable. His voice is Southern and slow, as soothing as hot chocolate. But he is a bit spacey. Which is how I’d imagine a heroin addict to be.
“I’m as spacey as fuck!” he exclaims. “That’s how I imagine a heroin addict to be as well. Only I don’t have the track marks.”
As he says this, Tyson Ritter is wearing a short sleeved T-shirt. If he’d been wearing long sleeves today, I’d have asked him to show me his arms.
“Oh, that’s awesome!” he almost gasps. “Would you really?”
Yeah, I would. So, are you a heroin addict?
“No.”
Are you a recreational drug user of any kind?
As he rises to leave, to have his photograph taken one more time, Tyson Ritter has a think, and realizes that he “likes that rumour. Keep it going,” he says. “Tell the world I’m a heroin addict.”
And so here they are, The All American Rejects, the most famous band you might not yet have heard of. Or maybe you're one of the 60,000 Odd people in the UK who already own a copy of Move Along, for who the All American Rejects are already your own (not particularly) dirty little secret.
"I'm glad we came out at this time," says Tyson Ritter. "Bands come and go. I'm proud of the fact that we made two platinum albums back to back. I think that's really good going."
The question is, will it last? In a sense it doesn't really matter. The All American Rejects had a platinum album in 2002, and another one four years later. By the standards of the day not only have they survived, they have prospered. In this time, Good Charlotte have risen and fallen. As have New Found Glory.
**
IN that sense, AAR have not a thing left to prove. What is pleasing, though, is that, for the band, while success is desirable, it doesn't quite seem essential. In 2005, when the band had finished recording 'Move Along', they took themselves out on the road. It had been some timesince they'd done this: the principle writers, Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler, had spent almost a year crafting the songs for the group's second set. So, unsure of where they stood in the grand scheme of popular punk, they toured American.
Now, here's the thing. Despite having a platinum album to their name, The All American Rejects went out on tour in a van. NOt a big, shiny air-conditioned $300 a day tour bus- a van. They played to 400, 500 people a night and they did this for two months.
And here's another thing. They'd do it again.
"People ask me where I'd like this band to be in five years' time," says Mike Kennerty. "And the answer is, I honestly don't know. But I think back to the tour we did in the van and the fact that each night there were a few hundred people out there who were pleased to see us and who were singing along to our songs. If in five years' time, wed managed to maintain that level of interest, I'd be content. Even if it meant going out in a van every time. That's still be good enough for me.
**
Article type-up originally found here.
So, whatcha think, guys? Agree with Tyson's 'hot-chocolate' voice? Like the fact that Chris used to have BATSHIT INSANE friends? (Yeah, cos, er. Those he's got now are toootally normal, right? *grin*) Also, Mike: nervous? really? And howsabout Nick's murder charges? O.o
IF THE four members of the All-American Rejects were to drop dead right at this second it’s difficult to imagine them being any happier than like this, their final moment of life. They’re not onstage at Madison Square Garden, they’re not receiving a Brit Award or a Grammy, and they haven’t just learned that their single is Number One all over the world on Christmas Day.
No, what The All-American Rejects are doing is eating junk food.
“It’s good, ain’t it?” asks frontmas Tyson Ritter. As he says this, Ritter is eating a sausage, egg, cheese, and strawberry jam toasted sandwich. That is neither a typing error nor a lie.
“This isn’t just any fast food chain,” says Rejects guitarist Mike Kennerty. Mike is toothy, nervous, and likeable. The only refreshment he drinks is Dr. Pepepr and the only meals he eats tend to be made up of rendered meat, melted cheese, and saturated fats. He is headphone-wire thin. “This is Sonic.”
Sonic, like The All-American Rejects themselves, is an Oklahoma phenomenon. This is fitting because today we’re in Oklahoma City, a sun-baked strip of mall sprawl of a million people, dead in the centre of nowhere. It’s pretty and it’s hot. The sports shops sell guns; the food outlets sell meat. There are churches everythwere.
A waitress comes out of the restaurant and asks The All-American Rejects if they would mind giving her their autographs.
“My name is Pepsi,” she says, when asked.
Pepsi.
“My parents were kind of crazy,” she says. “I was born in the ‘70s,” she says, as if this explains everything.
Do you think The All-American Rejects represent the state of Oklahoma in a good way?
“I think they’re great for Oklahoma,” she says. “People think of us as being rednecks, and here comes this talented, good-looking band who have good tunes and who are successful. It kind of shows us in a different light.”
Nice work.
“Just one more thing,” says Pepsi.
Of course.
“Do you think they’ll give me a free album?”
**
WELL, THEY can certainly spare one. It might be that Fall Out Boy get the column inches, it might be that Panic! At The Disco have the stage-show ,and it might be that Gerard Way has the international monopoly on marketable alienation. But it’s The All-American Rejects who are the unlikely, even unnoticed, success story of the year. Each member could probably afford to buy the house you live in in cash, yet could walk down the street unrecognized.
“People know our music more than they know us,” says Kennerty. “Like, I love Fall Out Boy - but if you listen to their record, it’s one song. If you listen to us, there’s a lot more textures. We have more variations to our sound.”
These are the numbers. In the United States, The All-American Rejects’ second album, “Move Along,” has nestled in the Billboard album chart for some 59 weeks. It has sold more than 1.3 million copies, and still sells in the region of 15,000 units every seven days. The single “Dirty Little Secet” has been a Top 10 hit, and in downloadable form has been bought 1.2 million times. Since last week’s Kerrang came out, it has been downloaded 13,000 more times.
The All-American Rejects are the first popular punk band to have two consecutive million-selling albums in the US (“Move Along” and the group’s eponymous debut, released in 2002) since the times of Blink-182, Green Day, and The Offspring.
“It’s crazy to think of all the things that have happened to us since we played here,” says guitarist Nick Wheeler. Wheeler was once arrested for murdering a pregnant woman; a case of mistaken identity. At the moment he’s sitting in Mike’s College Bar, looking about one of the first places his group ever performed. “It’s almost like we were a different band back then,” he says.
Mike’s College Bar is a charmingly disheveled drinking shed in the appropriately named town of Stillwater, 50 minutes out of the city. This is where Ritter and Wheeler formed AAR. The pair met at a party; Wheeler was 16, Ritter just 14.
The singer is now 22, and everything in his life has changed.
They used to play here when they were too young to drink, and their audience was older than they were (“which is pretty ironic,” says Wheeler, “given how young our fans are now”). They had fake documentation for when the police came to break up the evening, wondering why a group of minors was making a racket in a pub. During these nights there would be 350 people inside the place, even though the legal limit was just 230. Chairs and tables would be shunted outside. The queue at the bar would be eight deep.
In time the band progressed to Oklahoma City itself, and Green Door club. The room is now called The Conservatory, and is this city’s CBGB or Highbury Garage. The only difference being that it’s on a street so quiet you half expect Clint Eastwood to come ambling by on a horse. It was here, in 2002, that drummer Chris Gaylor joined the band, alongside Kennerty. The club smells like sweaty clothes and spilled beer, like too many cigarettes and too many late nights. Its walls are black, there is wiring hanging from the ceiling, plasterboard and slats poke through the walls. Tyson Ritter stands on the stage - in the exact same spot he would be were he getting ready to shout, “Good evening Oklahoma City” - and, a touch misty-eyed, says: “Man, we played some great fucking shows here.”
The Conservatory holds 350 people. The nest time The All-American Rejects play the city it will be at the Lloyd Noble Center, a basketball arena that houses 12,000 people.
“Did we get lucky?” asks Tyson Ritter, running the question round his mouth. “Fuck yeah, we got lucky.”
What’s the biggest misconception about AAR?
“That we’re a pop band,” he says. He’s grinning as he speaks, as he says, “we’re not a pop band, we’re a confused rock band.”
**
“HEY CHECK this out!” These are Chris Gaylor’s words. He’s standing at the counter of Size Records, next door to The Conservatory Club. Suicidal Tendencies are screaming “I shot Reagon!” over the shop’s stereo system. Gaylor has in his hand a seven-inch single by a band called Bi Products. This is the first ever disc the drummer played on, when he was 16, back in ’95. The music is hardcore punk, tinny and furious.
What do you think the 16-year-old Chris Gaylor might have made of the 27-year-old drummer of the melodic, commercial AAR?
“I don’t know if he would have been too upset,” is his answer. “Even back then I listed to a lot of pop-punk bands. I listened to Green Day. I guess the 16-year-old me might be a bit pissed off, but not much. Even back then I wasn’t that disgruntled.”
If you’re one of those people willing to question The All-American Rejects’ authenticity, it is also worth taking a look through Mike Kennerty’s record collection, in the house he shares with Gaylor and two other friends. It is vast and complete, note perfect for even the most exhaustive and discriminating punk collector. Bad Religion’s “Suffer” is here, NOFX’s “Punk in Drublic” is here. Even X’s “Los Angeles” is here, an original vinyl pressing, with a flyer advertising Germs T-shirts.
While Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler have left town and now live in Florida, Kennerty and Gaylor have put down roots in Oklahoma City. They live in a gorgeous, roomy, four-bedroom home in one of the city’s many suburban subdivisions. They have a home cinema projection room. The walls are adorned with framed pictures of Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye, Glen Danzig, and Joey Ramone; gig posters for Green Day; movie posters for Raiders Of The Lost Ark” and “The Evil Dead.” The house was bought for $300,000 and the mortgage costs each resident $450 per month. You could easily imagine this home being flaunted on MTV’s ‘Cribs.’
“Don’t make out that we’re rich bastards,” says Gaylor. “Because we’re not.”
Still, this is the kind of house you could imagine a drug dealer living in, which is ironic because Chris Gaylor used to be a drug dealer. He “started out with pot,” getting in “an ounce or two at a time.” He then moved on to acid; microdots, which is the drug in pill form. He even had a friend who would cut his forehead and grind the tablet into the cut, “but he was kind of crazy.” Gaylor then “got into the coke thing”. Or, if you prefer, he “went skiing for a while”.
He turned his back on the whole scene because, well, things began to get a big stern. Friends began using syringes. Another friend began carrying a shotfun in the trunk of his car. One more friend was found with a quarter pound of grass, and went to prison for two and a half years.
Which brings us on to Tyson Ritter, who is sitting in Mike’s College Bar: nicely pissed, very happy.
I’ve heard a rumour about you. Wanna hear it?
The singer leans, almost jumps forward and says, “Oh yes! What is it?”
That you’re a heroin addict.
Ritter thinks about this for a moment, as if he were sipping a new brand of bourbon and considering his opinion of it. Then he says, “That’s awesome!” And then, thinking about it, he asks, “Do I look like a heroin addict to you?”
Interesting. Here’s the thing: for a band that has risen without a trace, Tyson Ritter is a fabulously charismatic presence. Tall and thin, with cheekbones like shark fins, he exudes star quality. He’s genuinely likeable. His voice is Southern and slow, as soothing as hot chocolate. But he is a bit spacey. Which is how I’d imagine a heroin addict to be.
“I’m as spacey as fuck!” he exclaims. “That’s how I imagine a heroin addict to be as well. Only I don’t have the track marks.”
As he says this, Tyson Ritter is wearing a short sleeved T-shirt. If he’d been wearing long sleeves today, I’d have asked him to show me his arms.
“Oh, that’s awesome!” he almost gasps. “Would you really?”
Yeah, I would. So, are you a heroin addict?
“No.”
Are you a recreational drug user of any kind?
As he rises to leave, to have his photograph taken one more time, Tyson Ritter has a think, and realizes that he “likes that rumour. Keep it going,” he says. “Tell the world I’m a heroin addict.”
And so here they are, The All American Rejects, the most famous band you might not yet have heard of. Or maybe you're one of the 60,000 Odd people in the UK who already own a copy of Move Along, for who the All American Rejects are already your own (not particularly) dirty little secret.
"I'm glad we came out at this time," says Tyson Ritter. "Bands come and go. I'm proud of the fact that we made two platinum albums back to back. I think that's really good going."
The question is, will it last? In a sense it doesn't really matter. The All American Rejects had a platinum album in 2002, and another one four years later. By the standards of the day not only have they survived, they have prospered. In this time, Good Charlotte have risen and fallen. As have New Found Glory.
**
IN that sense, AAR have not a thing left to prove. What is pleasing, though, is that, for the band, while success is desirable, it doesn't quite seem essential. In 2005, when the band had finished recording 'Move Along', they took themselves out on the road. It had been some timesince they'd done this: the principle writers, Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler, had spent almost a year crafting the songs for the group's second set. So, unsure of where they stood in the grand scheme of popular punk, they toured American.
Now, here's the thing. Despite having a platinum album to their name, The All American Rejects went out on tour in a van. NOt a big, shiny air-conditioned $300 a day tour bus- a van. They played to 400, 500 people a night and they did this for two months.
And here's another thing. They'd do it again.
"People ask me where I'd like this band to be in five years' time," says Mike Kennerty. "And the answer is, I honestly don't know. But I think back to the tour we did in the van and the fact that each night there were a few hundred people out there who were pleased to see us and who were singing along to our songs. If in five years' time, wed managed to maintain that level of interest, I'd be content. Even if it meant going out in a van every time. That's still be good enough for me.
**
Article type-up originally found here.
So, whatcha think, guys? Agree with Tyson's 'hot-chocolate' voice? Like the fact that Chris used to have BATSHIT INSANE friends? (Yeah, cos, er. Those he's got now are toootally normal, right? *grin*) Also, Mike: nervous? really? And howsabout Nick's murder charges? O.o