Jason Tate
06/17/07, 03:31 PM
With the release of Yellowcard (http://www.absolutepunk.net/yellowcard)'s Paper Walls (http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=242805) exactly a month away (July 17th (http://www.absolutepunk.net/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2714&c=3)) we've decided to release a "teaser" portion of our recent interview with the band's lead singer Ryan Key. The full interview will be posted on the album's release date. It should prove to be an interesting read for everyone: fans and non-fans alike. So without further adieu ...
There has been a relatively quick turn around between the release of Lights and Sounds and Paper Walls, is there any particular reason for this?
Well, you know I had the surgery in May of last year on my vocal chords, and that sort of stopped the train from running for a little while. There were four weeks where I was absolutely mute – couldn’t speak at all. And I was really frustrated at that point, you know, with what was happening to my voice – so I had the surgery and then there was that time where I couldn’t speak; no press, no tour, nothing. So that was maybe the first time in a long time where I had some time to just stop and breathe. Time to myself. And so I used that time to think – because I couldn’t talk - and I suppose, in hindsight, that was maybe the best thing to ever happen for me or for Yellowcard. What it forced was a real sense of perspective – seeing where everything was at that point – and reevaluating our band and myself. Because around that time “Rough Landing Holly” went to radio and the video was done but we weren’t able to tour. And I can’t say if it was because people didn’t like the song, or because we weren’t touring, but things didn’t go anywhere. So, we had to sort of back-up and take a look at things – sort it out and then move on.
So when we could, we headed back out on tour that summer, in September, and this time when we went out, I feel that I went out with a completely new perspective. Maybe a better perspective than I’ve ever had on any of this – at anytime with Yellowcard. It was just a totally different headspace for me. And we were playing smaller shows, which lead to a feeling of acceptance, a feeling of “ok, this is where we are – let’s move on – things have happened but we can’t look back.”
And while I can’t speak for the entire band (which is sometimes hard in these one on one interviews) I can say that I, personally, had a great summer. I loved the shows we were playing – and everything. And while the “old” version of myself probably would have thought our career was over, and after we had worked so hard, and all that, I made a conscious choice not to act or feel that way. Instead I was able to enjoy it – enjoy playing music with my friends – and it may have been the first time in a long time I felt that way. And with that feeling in mind we talked as a band and felt that we didn’t need to take anytime off before putting the next album together. We had been writing as a band while on the road, especially during a lot of the international stuff, in the dressing rooms, things like that. Mainly we just had a bunch of riffs put together. I mean, Ryan (Mendez) is basically playing guitar – all of the time. And that makes it almost impossible not to write music. So we had a lot of riffs, not really whole songs, I think I had a couple songs done – “Keeper” was pretty far along and so was “Light the Sky” when we went into production. And we had enough pieces where we just felt, as a band, we should go in – you know? Just go and do it – fresh – and see what we come up with – and so we did.
So based a little off of that – Lights and Sounds may not have been as critically accepted as some of the band’s previous work. In hindsight – what are your thoughts on that album?
I suppose it depends how you look at “critically accepted” – I mean, when the album first came out, you could say, in many ways, for a variety of publications that it was released to critical acclaim. It depends what and where you read. For example, many publications that had sort of shunned the band before for - actually similar reasons I read in your review of the new album in reference to “pop-punk” - that very word - and I think some of those people came around and said, “oh this record is very different and it’s sort of taken them out of that genre.” And on the other side we have a lot of kids who were previously fans of the band, and they maybe didn’t like that. You know?
So I look at it like this – first, it’s hard to include One for the Kids in this analogy because that album was so different, we wrote it at 18, and many of those songs came from like 3 other bands I had been in. So if you look at these three records (Ocean Ave., Lights and Sounds, and Paper Walls) you’ll find this: Ocean Avenue was a record that was very much about moving out and finding your place in the world and looking at everything that you wanted to be. Lights and Sounds was then a record that was about the realization that you had gotten lost. And where people grabbed onto Ocean Ave. and applied it to their lives – both in the music and the lyrics – Lights and Sounds was a record that came from a completely different perspective. It was completely introverted and came from – I wish I had a different word but I don’t – “darker” place. And I don’t think I ever expected everyone to grab on to those feelings – I think our hope was that maybe we had done something that could transcend the genre. And I really think you have to go through that – we can’t make the same record over and over again. We change as people and we feel our fans do too – they’ve grown with our band. Now you look at Paper Walls, which is very much a record of hope and finding yourself again. It’s after you’ve come through all of that – going to the height of it – and picking yourself back up again. And by “hitting rock bottom” I don’t mean in record sales or fame or any of that shit. I mean personally – emotionally.
So I suppose there was always the hope that we had done something great and maybe different – Sean and his arrangements on Lights and Sounds, for example, was a huge undertaking. And I remember saying back when the album was about to come out that there were going to be some people that were alienated by the record. But that was necessary for our career and for me as a person to get those feelings and emotions behind me. Because, to not really get specific, I was not taking very good care of my body at that part of my life, falling into a lot of the common pitfalls that come with being in a rock band. And I think if I wouldn’t have made that record, Lights and Sounds, I wouldn’t have made it through it and came out of those pits with a new feeling of hope. And now Paper Walls is the story, the feeling, of what it’s like to be out of those holes, looking back, no regrets, but smarter and having grown through them.
Check back on the album's release date (July 17th) to read the entire interview. Plenty of questions and plenty of answers ...
There has been a relatively quick turn around between the release of Lights and Sounds and Paper Walls, is there any particular reason for this?
Well, you know I had the surgery in May of last year on my vocal chords, and that sort of stopped the train from running for a little while. There were four weeks where I was absolutely mute – couldn’t speak at all. And I was really frustrated at that point, you know, with what was happening to my voice – so I had the surgery and then there was that time where I couldn’t speak; no press, no tour, nothing. So that was maybe the first time in a long time where I had some time to just stop and breathe. Time to myself. And so I used that time to think – because I couldn’t talk - and I suppose, in hindsight, that was maybe the best thing to ever happen for me or for Yellowcard. What it forced was a real sense of perspective – seeing where everything was at that point – and reevaluating our band and myself. Because around that time “Rough Landing Holly” went to radio and the video was done but we weren’t able to tour. And I can’t say if it was because people didn’t like the song, or because we weren’t touring, but things didn’t go anywhere. So, we had to sort of back-up and take a look at things – sort it out and then move on.
So when we could, we headed back out on tour that summer, in September, and this time when we went out, I feel that I went out with a completely new perspective. Maybe a better perspective than I’ve ever had on any of this – at anytime with Yellowcard. It was just a totally different headspace for me. And we were playing smaller shows, which lead to a feeling of acceptance, a feeling of “ok, this is where we are – let’s move on – things have happened but we can’t look back.”
And while I can’t speak for the entire band (which is sometimes hard in these one on one interviews) I can say that I, personally, had a great summer. I loved the shows we were playing – and everything. And while the “old” version of myself probably would have thought our career was over, and after we had worked so hard, and all that, I made a conscious choice not to act or feel that way. Instead I was able to enjoy it – enjoy playing music with my friends – and it may have been the first time in a long time I felt that way. And with that feeling in mind we talked as a band and felt that we didn’t need to take anytime off before putting the next album together. We had been writing as a band while on the road, especially during a lot of the international stuff, in the dressing rooms, things like that. Mainly we just had a bunch of riffs put together. I mean, Ryan (Mendez) is basically playing guitar – all of the time. And that makes it almost impossible not to write music. So we had a lot of riffs, not really whole songs, I think I had a couple songs done – “Keeper” was pretty far along and so was “Light the Sky” when we went into production. And we had enough pieces where we just felt, as a band, we should go in – you know? Just go and do it – fresh – and see what we come up with – and so we did.
So based a little off of that – Lights and Sounds may not have been as critically accepted as some of the band’s previous work. In hindsight – what are your thoughts on that album?
I suppose it depends how you look at “critically accepted” – I mean, when the album first came out, you could say, in many ways, for a variety of publications that it was released to critical acclaim. It depends what and where you read. For example, many publications that had sort of shunned the band before for - actually similar reasons I read in your review of the new album in reference to “pop-punk” - that very word - and I think some of those people came around and said, “oh this record is very different and it’s sort of taken them out of that genre.” And on the other side we have a lot of kids who were previously fans of the band, and they maybe didn’t like that. You know?
So I look at it like this – first, it’s hard to include One for the Kids in this analogy because that album was so different, we wrote it at 18, and many of those songs came from like 3 other bands I had been in. So if you look at these three records (Ocean Ave., Lights and Sounds, and Paper Walls) you’ll find this: Ocean Avenue was a record that was very much about moving out and finding your place in the world and looking at everything that you wanted to be. Lights and Sounds was then a record that was about the realization that you had gotten lost. And where people grabbed onto Ocean Ave. and applied it to their lives – both in the music and the lyrics – Lights and Sounds was a record that came from a completely different perspective. It was completely introverted and came from – I wish I had a different word but I don’t – “darker” place. And I don’t think I ever expected everyone to grab on to those feelings – I think our hope was that maybe we had done something that could transcend the genre. And I really think you have to go through that – we can’t make the same record over and over again. We change as people and we feel our fans do too – they’ve grown with our band. Now you look at Paper Walls, which is very much a record of hope and finding yourself again. It’s after you’ve come through all of that – going to the height of it – and picking yourself back up again. And by “hitting rock bottom” I don’t mean in record sales or fame or any of that shit. I mean personally – emotionally.
So I suppose there was always the hope that we had done something great and maybe different – Sean and his arrangements on Lights and Sounds, for example, was a huge undertaking. And I remember saying back when the album was about to come out that there were going to be some people that were alienated by the record. But that was necessary for our career and for me as a person to get those feelings and emotions behind me. Because, to not really get specific, I was not taking very good care of my body at that part of my life, falling into a lot of the common pitfalls that come with being in a rock band. And I think if I wouldn’t have made that record, Lights and Sounds, I wouldn’t have made it through it and came out of those pits with a new feeling of hope. And now Paper Walls is the story, the feeling, of what it’s like to be out of those holes, looking back, no regrets, but smarter and having grown through them.
Check back on the album's release date (July 17th) to read the entire interview. Plenty of questions and plenty of answers ...