Mayday, Mayday!

After 5 and a half years since their debut, American rock band Mayday Parade made up of Derek Sanders, Jeremy Lenzo, Alex Garcia, Brooks Betts and Jake Bundrick have been through many crucial changes after signing on with major record label Atlantic.

FRANCESCA TAY catches up with lead vocalist Derek Sanders before he prepares for his band’s debut in Singapore alongside with Eyes Set To Kill in The Sweet Collision on Jul 6.

Q: How do you find Singapore so far?

D: “We went up on the Flyer, and it was awesome. It was nice to see the view of everything from the top. At sunset, we went to the rooftop of Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which was unbelievable. I don’t eat meat so there’s a lot of food that I can’t try, but I got some tofu and noodles yesterday, we had lunch at Chinatown and there were all kinds of cool stuff.”

Q: What do you think of the fanbase in Asia?

D: “It’s been unreal! I’m excited to play tonight and it’s a sold-out show here so it’s going to be so cool. We just did Japan for 2 weeks and that was wonderful. They really appreciate the music and they are very respectful, they are very energetic, fun and super kind. It’s cool to see that because we tour the States over and over again in the 5 and a half years that we’ve been a band. Not to say anything bad about them (obviously we love our fans in the States), but maybe they don’t appreciate it as much because they are able to see these bands all the time. But when you go somewhere else that you’ve never been to, or hardly get to go there, they really appreciate you coming over.”

Q: Are there any embarrassing or extreme moments with your fans? (Like groping, stalking etc.?)

D: “That kind of stuff has happened before but nothing too extreme, hopefully it’s nothing too crazy or bums us out. You have to appreciate all the diehard fans, so you can’t let it bother you.”

Q: With regards to Anywhere But Here, how different was it to work on an album without lyricist Jason (Lancaster)?

D: “Obviously, Jason was a big part of the band, he helped out with the songwriting and was the other vocalist, but I guess the biggest thing that was different wasn’t necessarily just that he wasn’t there, but that we signed to Atlantic before we did that CD, so it was our first time doing a CD with a major label and we didn’t really know what to expect or how it worked. We ended up doing a lot of co-writing for the album and going on to do a CD with David Bendeth, who is a big time producer, and he had a much heavier hand on everything and kind of wanted to change things to go his way. I think in the end we definitely loved that CD but the process wasn’t exactly what we wanted and it wasn’t what I think works best for this band, it was a big learning process. With the newest CD we recorded a few months back, which will come out this October, we went back to the original style of what Mayday Parade started out as, which was to make music that we loved and cared about. It’s nice to be back like that and it sucks that we have that transitional period to figure that out, but that’s definitely who we are.”

Q: Is that the reason why you once said in an interview that you didn’t care, or love, the songs in Anywhere But Here as much?

D: “Yeah, we didn’t even get to pick the songs that made it onto the album, and there were a lot of songs that didn’t make it into the album that we wrote that we love and wanted to be on the album, but Atlantic didn’t want us to or wouldn’t let us. Whenever you do that to a band… I think the most important thing for a band is to care about the music they are making, people can tell if you don’t. We learnt a lot from doing that record and now it’s back to the original roots and that’s the bottom-line. Hopefully, people will like it as well, but the most important thing is that we make a CD that we love, and we did with the last album.”

Q: Are there any impressionable songs in this album for the band members?

D: “It’s different depending on who you ask. For me, it’s probably an acoustic track called ‘I Swear, This Time I Mean It’, that’s probably the most personal or meaningful song for me in this album.”

Q: In A Lesson in Romantics, the band had song titles that were longer than the norm and a tad ironic such as ‘I’d Hate To Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About’ and “If You Wanted A Song Written About You, All You Had To Do Was Ask”, however in Anywhere but here, you guys had shorter titles that were more “common”, why is that so?

D: “I don’t know, but there are a couple in Anywhere But Here, ‘If You Can’t Live Without Me Why Aren’t You Dead Yet’, and we still have a couple of those. In the newest album there’s a handful that are longer like that. We always talk about it when it comes to titling songs, we just figure out what we want to call them and just go for it.”

Q: You guys are named the ‘Hardest Working Band’ in 2010 by Songkick, having written around 50 songs in a year, have you guys not rested since then?

D: “We get breaks every now and then, especially around December every year and it’s nice, but we like to stay on the road as much as we can and just stay an active part. When we started this band it was a goal to drop everything else in our lives and just dedicate a hundred percent to the band, and we knew that it wasn’t going to happen any other way, we have to go out there and make it happen. We’ve always tried to stay busy and I’m pretty sure it will continue to be the case for a while.”

Q: Are there any bands that you guys look up to personally?

D: “There’s dozens of bands that we look up to, but I think collectively as a band there’s a lot in this same genre that have influenced us to play the type of music that we play and that would be Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World, Brand New, and The Starting Line. “

Q: For tonight’s show, have you guys worked with ESTK before?

D: “Only on Warped Tour, we both front the same stage in 2010, we got to hang with them a little bit but not as much as if we did a club tour together. It’d be cool to watch them play tonight and hang out.”

Q: Are there going to be any surprises for the crowd tonight?

D: “We’re doing a song that we don’t normally do, off our acoustic EP Valdosta, we’re playing a song called ‘Terrible Things’. Other than that we’re just going to have fun and play music. We’re not doing any new songs yet because we feel that it’s too early and the CD doesn’t come out until October. As soon as you play some new songs, kids film it, put it up on Youtube (not that it’s bad), but we just want to wait a little longer before we start playing the new stuff; But we’re itching and ready to do them because we’ve been practicing new songs and soundchecks just to do them live and I can’t wait. As far as our setlist goes, we’ve been picking the songs that we think everyone would want to hear and not leave out any, and it’s hard because people often ask for certain songs and I feel bad if we are not playing them, but we can’t play them all, so we’ll do our best.”

Photo courtesy of Jean Goh and Upsurge Productions.