Mayday Parade: “We wrote our first song and felt immediately that we have to do this because it felt great.”

With their 20th anniversary in full swing, Mayday Parade have reached a point in time in their career which vocalist Derek Sanders describes as “a moment to look back, to appreciate the present, and to keep pushing ahead with open hearts.”

Two decades after they began selling EPs out of car trunks at Warped Tour, the band — Sanders, drummer/vocalist Jake Bundrick, guitarists Alex Garcia and Brooks Betts, and bassist/vocalist Jeremy Lenzo — are not only reflecting on their legacy but also actively shaping what’s next.

The next chapter of their story comes in the form of the band’s ambitious new three-part album, the first instalment of which, Sweet, dropped last week.

For our latest Cover Story, V13 sat down with Derek to reflect on the past and look to the future, with the vocalist excited that the emo favourites story is far from finished.

With bands that have an anniversary, such as a 20th anniversary, were you aware of something like that coming up?

“It snuck up on us, honestly, more so than you would think, because it’s obvious, we started in 2005 and you’d think that we’d be pretty aware of it, but we actually had started recording music and we had this tour planned out and then we were like, ‘Wait for a second. This is our 20-year tour.’ The original plan with this music wasn’t to do the three-part release thing that we’re doing and the tour was just going to be a standard headline tour around the new music, but we thought this is our 20th anniversary, so what can we do?

That’s when we got the idea of splitting the release into three parts to make it a little bit bigger and more grand than anything we’ve done before. Then we got the idea to brand the tour as the 20th anniversary tour that will celebrate the new music as well as going back. We’re going to play a little bit of a little bit of something from each of our albums and our catalogue.

I’m glad that we acknowledged it and we’re embracing it, but honestly, it wasn’t something that we had been thinking about or planning years.”

As you’d been writing already for a new album, where did that expand into the three chapters?

“The plan originally was that we went into the studio last year, and we were going to go in and record half of an album. We went in planning to do seven or eight songs or so and then the plan was to go back in and just record another seven or eight and then put that together as an album.

That was originally what we were going to do and it was looking at the 20-year as well as we liked the name. Part One is Sweet so Sweet, Sad, Sugar is all three of them. We liked that name a lot. That was like a lyric from a song that didn’t get recorded but might end up being recorded as a part of it. We liked that name and we were like, ‘What if we split it up into each section – Sweet, then Sad, then Sugar?’

Then we said ‘We can still go back in and record part two the way we were talking about, but instead of it being the second half of the record. It’ll just be part two.’ We did that recently. We finished that about a month and a half ago or so. We’ll go in later this year and record part three and then we’ll be all wrapped up for the project.”

V13 Cover Story – Issue 88 – Mayday Parade

I read somewhere where you commented about experimenting with it within the genre that you’re in. Is that easier to do by having three releases to work out rather than one?

“I think so. I hope so. That’s the idea. To some degree, we’ve tried to gear it where part two Sad is the sadder songs and then, Sweet was just standard, Mayday Parade stuff. With Sugar, I don’t know what we’ll do exactly, but maybe that’ll feel a little more pop-oriented.

It’s tough to say at this point but, I think, just in general, having, I don’t know how many songs in total, it’s going to be somewhere around 25 songs, that’s a lot of a lot of music. Much more than doing a standard album so I think it does give a lot of room. There’s a song or two off of the first two releases anyway. Sweet and Sad that we’ve recorded so far do feel a little bit of a branch out into some new territory. I feel like that’s always been our goal.

It’s hard to find that balance as we want to have those core staple Mayday Parade songs that people are going to expect and people that have been fans from the beginning. Then also, we don’t want to just keep doing the same things over and over again. We try to always throw in some new elements so that’s been the same approach here, trying to tread into some new territory as well.”

“It snuck up on us, honestly, more so than you would think, because it’s obvious, we started in 2005 and you’d think that we’d be pretty aware of it…”

At 20 years you will have fans out who have been with you from day one and they’ll have an expectation of what you are going to sound like.

“For sure. It can start to feel a little bit boring if we’ve done all this before so I think it keeps things fresh and exciting. It’s also challenging and takes us out of our comfort zone a little bit and I think we appreciate that aspect of it. Hopefully, the majority of bands that have been around for 20 years don’t sound the same. They do grow creatively and I think that’s just the natural way that these things progress.”

Is there a common theme running through them all or are they thematically different?

“Not necessarily. It’s tough. It’s hard for us to lock in on a theme. More often than not, the songs that we write are going to be emo, they’re going to be on the sad side of things but, all five of us in the band contribute. We all write songs and bring in ideas, so it’s always a case of selecting what we feel is the best material out of the batch. Then it ends up being a little bit scattered, a little all over the place so it’s tough for us to center around a theme in that way.

If there is one, it’s probably the same sort of thing. These are emotional songs and songs about hardships that we’ve been through. It’s much easier to write a sad song than a happy song. I will say, however, that I feel like some of the material that we have is a little bit on the happier side, at least for us anyway.

Like ‘By The Way’, for example, I know the chorus is a little bit more about hardship and things changing but I feel like the verses are optimistic and a little bit more uplifting and just happier in mood. I think that there’s room… we’re figuring it out… but I do like the idea of sprinkling in some happier songs and not being depressing all the time.”

How challenging was it for you to write 25 songs? It’s a lot of music. When you went into it and started the project as three mini-albums, what were the challenges you faced?

“One of the toughest things is time. We stay so busy. We’ve been grinding, on the road, and in the studio for pretty much 20 years. We had about two years during Covid that we didn’t do a whole lot of playing live music. Now we’re all older and we kids and families and homes and things to do.

I was 19 when we started this band and in the early years, we didn’t care if we were on the road all the time. This was our life. We could put everything into it. Now it does get a little bit strained trying to balance all of these things with our personal lives. It’s that part of it is difficult, but it’s also just still naturally what I would want to do anyway. Even if the band had broken up. I love creating music and coming up with demos and I’d probably still be doing it with any free time I had either way.

It’s not like that though. We’re lucky. I feel we appreciate that this is our life, this is our job and, 20 years in, we still get to do this. We’re about to do our biggest headline tour that we’ve ever done which is pretty wild to say, twenty years into this so, as much work as it sometimes can be, we appreciate it.”

Mayday Parade ‘Sweet’ album artwork

You were 19 when you started the band and, as you said, it didn’t matter whether you were on the road or touring or gigging, what was your ambition back then?

“It’s funny because I think when we started this band, and for a long time, we would look six months ahead of us, or maybe a year at most. It certainly wasn’t this, ‘Oh, we’re going to be doing this forever’, or ‘We’re going to be doing this for 20 years.’ I was pretty young, 10 or 11 years old when I got really into music. Started my first real band with Brooks one of the guitar players in Mayday Parade when we were 12. We knew pretty early on that we wanted to do this, or at least give it a real shot then I figured that maybe at a certain point, I’d move on and do something else.

When we started this band, I think our goal was we wanted to be just a real band. We had been in local bands all of our teenage years, and it was wanting to get signed to a label and put out a real piece of music that is available nationwide or worldwide and to be on the Warped Tour and to be able to tour and play small 300 cap rooms. That was the ambition in the early days just to prove that we could be a real band. I don’t think we were looking super far into the future. It was more, ‘How do we get on Warped Tour? How do we do these things?’”

What do you remember about those early days? Warped Tour was massive when you started as an example. What do you remember about that and recording your debut album?

“I remember that it was all so exciting, especially because things happened fairly quickly for this band. We all grew up together playing in different bands. When we started this band, we signed to Fearless Records less than a year later. It was probably seven or eight months after we started the band that we signed to Fearless. Things just happened quickly.

It was so exciting and a huge part of that was us following the Warped Tour in 2006 and selling CDs. I think a lot of it was that we all were in different bands growing up, but we were all basically trying to find the fit.

Brooks and I were always in bands where we cared so much. It was the most important part of our lives so it was trying to find the other people that felt the same way about it. That was always difficult and I think it was the same for the other guys. They were in other bands and, once we got into this band, it felt like we were okay. Everyone’s bringing something to the table. Everyone’s talented. Everyone has the ambition. Everyone is free to do it. A lot of people were in bands with folks that had real jobs and car payments and houses so couldn’t just take off in a van and leave for months at a time and sleep in a van.

“It was so exciting and a huge part of that was us following the Warped Tour in 2006 and selling CDs…”

Once it was, ‘Okay, now we’ve got the group,’ we were going to go as hard as we can and I feel like we did especially those early years, we put everything we possibly could into making this happen, into building this. All of the money that we made went right back into the band, into how can we propel this thing forward?

It was super exciting travelling the US for the first time and then going internationally for the first time, seeing all these places and seeing the response and seeing the crowds starting to build and grow was so incredibly exciting.

When I think back, now we tour in a much more comfortable way in buses and things are a lot easier but the best days of touring were those early days where you’re crashing at people’s houses and sleeping on the floor but you’re doing it, you’re out there, living your dream and seeing it build and there’s magic in that.”

What do you remember about the time when you got together and you thought, This is the band, this is what we’re looking for?

“I remember it very well because there were two bands that split to form Mayday Parade. There was a band called Defining Moment that I was in with some of the guys, and then there was a band called Kid Named Chicago that the other guys were in. I remember seeing Kid Named Chicago play for the first time and being blown away by how good they were, in particular by how good of a drummer Jake was. We always struggled to find a great drummer and it’s pretty tough to be in a good band if you don’t have a great drummer.

Right away I was thinking ‘We gotta figure out how to play with this guy’, and so we became close with them. We played a lot of shows together, local and regional shows. We practiced at the same small warehouse that a bunch of bands rehearsed at and we practiced at the same place.

I had been flirting with the idea for a while of bringing the two bands together, taking some members from each and coming together then we played a show together in South Georgia. It was probably about two hours from Tallahassee where we all live. On the way back from the show I was riding in Jake’s car with him, and I was so nervous, but I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to bring it up. I’m going to just ask him what he thinks about us doing a band together.’ I said, ‘Jake, I’m going to ask you something,’ and he goes, ‘I already know what you’re going to ask and the answer is, yes, we should start a band.’

That night we called the guys together that we wanted, and we talked through it with everybody. Everybody was on board, but we wanted to do a practice first to make sure that this was a real thing and that this would work. The next day we went up to the spot where all of our gear was and we could rehearse we just got together and started jamming. We wrote our first song ‘Three Cheers For Five Years’ and I think we all felt immediately that we had to do this because it felt great.

From that moment on, it was just like I said. Let’s go at a hundred per cent. We took everything that we had learned from all of our experiences from touring and the other bands that we were in as well and learned so much from doing that so we knew these were the steps that we needed to take. That included writing and recording and pressing and releasing a six-song EP so that we could follow the Warped Tour and sell it. We took all that knowledge, put it in and just hit the gas and went straight out.”

What is the biggest lesson you learned in those early days?

“I think it would probably be that similar to us even getting off the ground, and then also to us continuing to build this thing is that we have to put in the work. We have to believe in it. I feel like I’ve known so many talented people, really talented musicians in Tallahassee. There are a lot of amazing musicians in Tallahassee that I grew up admiring and thinking, ‘Oh, this band or this person or whatever is surely going to make it big. They have what it takes,’ but I feel like I know a lot of those folks never figured out that you just have to go do it.

“The best days of touring were those early days where you’re crashing at people’s houses and sleeping on the floor but you’re doing it, you’re out there, living your dream…”

You can have the talent, but you can’t just expect it to happen for you. Once in a while, someone might get lucky and the right person discovers them and takes them there but that’s not going to happen most of the time. You have to ask ‘How can we be proactive?’ and that was what we learned.

A lot of that honestly was Brooks our guitar player who I’ve been playing music with he always had the attitude of ‘What can we do? Let’s call around to all these venues and see what shows we can get added to. Let’s buy some recording equipment and record some demos. Let’s figure out. Let’s get some t-shirts pressed. Let’s email these promoters. Let’s not sit around and wait for this thing to happen. Let’s do everything we can to make it happen.’

Even then, once we were established and put out a successful debut record, now all of a sudden we find ourselves on Atlantic Records, which is a major record label and they’re putting all this money into us.

At that point, we had a moment of, ‘Oh they know what they’re doing. They know how to make us a massive band, so we’ll just trust the process.’ I think we learned from that but then we didn’t, we said We don’t agree with. Their vision of what we should be and we have to steer the ship if we’re going to make it through this thing. We have to be happy and comfortable with what we’re doing at the end of the day.’”

The music industry has changed a lot, especially in the last five years. For a band that’s been around for 20 years what do you think of the opportunities that have opened up for bands now?

“It’s such a give and take. There’s a lot of pros and cons. I think what’s cool about right now is that anybody can make it happen with the internet and social media and everything. You don’t have to be this big established artist or have a record label behind you and all this money behind you. You can just put out something that people attach to and it can go viral and you can have the opportunity in a way that it was not 20 years ago and that’s cool and exciting.

It’s also tough that, because of how easy it is to record music on a laptop. Anybody and everybody can record music and put it out there so you’re just flooded. It’s left to the people, the population, to decide what’s good and what’s worthy of success or not.

Mayday Parade Anniversary Tour Artwork

It’s tough and it’s changed a lot and there’s a lot of give and take. I do not love doing all of the social media, the TikToks, it is just not my personality and it’s not why I started doing this so it can be frustrating that it feels like you have to, to a certain extent. We’re trying to find a way to do what works for us and the stuff that feels a little more silly perhaps leave that aside and then do the stuff that’s more fun for us.

It’s always changing and we’re always navigating it but, at the end of the day, I think we’re lucky to still be here doing it.”

You were 19 when you started the band. The core of the band has been together since day one. What do you put that longevity down to and how do you feel your relationships have changed over the years?

“It’s tricky. If you look at most bands that have been around for 20 years, they probably do not have the same lineup as when they started. I think a lot of it is that we did grow up together. We were friends for so long coming into this and we all have the same appreciation for it. I think a lot of it also is that we truly are a collaborative force. We’re a democracy whereas, with a lot of bands, you’ve got the leader, you’ve got the singer or the songwriter and they call the shots. Eventually, inevitably, there’s going to be this divide, and a lot of times, money comes into play. A lot of times in situations like that, the person who’s writing the songs makes more money than the rest of the band so it’s just a recipe for disaster.

That’s never been the case with us. It’s always been that way everyone has an equal say in how we do things. There are loads of times that I’ve felt so strongly about how we should do something, but I get outvoted and that’s just the way that it goes. Money is split evenly between all of us so I think that has a lot to do with it for sure. Also, we love each other. These guys are my brothers. They’re my best friends and my brothers. Things have changed to some degree, but we still all truly love and appreciate each other.

There’s rarely any sort of conflict at all but, if there is, it’s usually pretty surface-level, maybe a little argument here and there, but there’s never been any big blowups. I think we’re all pretty levelheaded and just appreciate that we get to play music.”

That’s a great thing after 20 years. What have been your highlights?

“There’s been so many of them that it’s hard to hard to say. Thinking about it, a lot of the things that stand out to me would be early on just because it carries a different weight when it happens for the first time. I remember us playing Bamboozle Festival in New Jersey in 2008. We all still talk about how insane it was.

We didn’t know what it was going to be like and we weren’t on the main stage. We were on a side stage and we were back behind the stage before we went on so we had no clue how many people were out there until we walked on stage to play. It wasn’t an insane number. It was maybe six or 7,000 people but, at the time, we could not believe that the entire amount of space that could be filled was filled. We had never played for a crowd like that before and it blew all of us away. It had us feeling like something was happening here. This is special.

I feel like there were a lot of those moments early on just because they were firsts. Our first time playing Warped Tour, our first time moving our way up and playing the main stage on Warped Tour. That was such a huge moment.”

Looking towards the tour and the setlist are there going to be any deep cuts in there that you’ve not played for a while?

“Yes, there will be but it’s tough. It gets harder and harder every tour. I actually put together the set the final set for this recently as usually the guys let me put it together but then they’ll weigh in and we’ll make any tweaks or changes. This one was incredibly difficult, but also, almost a little bit easier because of the fact that we usually would not play a little bit of something from every release.

For this tour, we feel like we should represent every album and every EP. So, because of that, you start with what are the bangers, what are the hits from each release and then that takes you most of the way there and you’ve got just a handful of songs to figure out. With those few songs, we did try to pepper in a couple of the deeper cuts but it’s always tough to balance as you don’t want to just do the same set for the fans that are seeing you for the 20th time but a lot of times you play those deeper cuts the crowd’s not as excited about it so it’s a tricky thing. I think this is a really strong set though.

There will be some deep cuts in there and this’ll be, I’m hoping, our most entertaining live set as we’re doing the biggest we’ve ever done with production so I think it’s going to be pretty epic, at least for our standards.”

Just to finish them, can you sum up what 20 years of Mayday Parade means for you?

“It’s tough to even put into words. I know I talked about it, but this has been a dream of mine since I was 11 or 12 years old and I think probably the same for the rest of the guys around the same age. It continues to be something that I’m just so grateful for that. This life could have gone so many different ways and it’s pretty hard to imagine a better life.

I love singing, I love playing music. I love creating music and I still get to do that after all this time. We hope to stay at it as long as we can and we hope to do it well. We don’t want to just autopilot our way through this. We want to continue to put love into it and a lot of hard work into it and we appreciate the folks that have given us love and support to carry us all this way.”