| |
|
|
|
|
| News:
|
|
►Go behind-the-scenes with The All-American Rejects on
the set of their new video for "I Wanna." In true
Rejects fashion, the Paul Hunter (Lenny Kravitz, Gwen Stefani)
directed clip promises to be the ultimate party with kegs, mounds
of bubbles, a kiddie pool, and even two pigs on set. Check out
the clip
here to watch the madness ensue in what Tyson calls
their most fun video to date.
When The World Comes Down is available now.
|
|
► MySpace's
The List welcomed The All-American Rejects for an
exclusive session in front of a roaring Dallas crowd, all
captured in high-def! Tyson, Nick, Mike and Chris rocked out
a special 6 song set featuring a handful of tracks from the
band's latest release When The World Comes Down including
hits "Gives
You Hell" and "I
Wanna" as well as "Dirty
Little Secret" from the band's double-platinum album
Move Along. The Rejects pulled out all the stops for this
wicked performance including an acoustic ballad with "Mona
Lisa" and the beautifully performed "Another
Heart Calls" featuring indie pop act The Pierces.
Catch The All-American Reject's The List performance on MySpace,
and make sure to pick up your copy of When The World Comes
Down today!
|
| All-American
Rejects Bio: |
 "You
can sit beside me if the world comes down/If it doesn't matter
than just turn around/You be the queen and I'll be your clown/You
can sit beside me when the world comes down." ( PCM
Interview)
The All-American Rejects front man, Tyson Ritter, sings the
verse to "Mona Lisa" for the 29th time. "All
right, nice pass," comments the voice behind the glass.
"Some good stuff in there." Producer Eric Valentine
sits behind the console in his Barefoot Studios control room
and imparts his bohemian brilliance. On the soundstage beyond
the wall, the band o' Oklahoma brothers track live a musical
masterpiece. Welcome to the womb of creation where minds meld,
riffs congeal, voices carry, lives alter, skin sheds and a
modern rock multi-platinum success story swing, swing for
the fences.
"I think we're giving away the intensity of the chords
a bit too soon," says guitarist Nick Wheeler, acoustic
in hand, seated on a stool three feet to Tyson's right. "The
one accent is cool but it should build more methodically so
I'm going to throttle it back a bit." Drummer Chris Gaylor
nods in agreement from behind his kit, a canopy of twinkling
white lights illuminates the slow, urgent beat of the three-minute
ballad. Guitarist Mike Kennerty is on the floor, manipulating
the bass pedals of an ancient Hammond Organ that Eric fondly
refers to "something your grandma would play on Sunday
mornings." The instrumental approach results in a warm,
sustained 'bottom' that creates an almost ethereal background
vibration. Ten feet away, behind another pane of glass, seated
at the piano that Stevie Wonder played while recording his
venerable "Songs in the Key of Life' LP in 1977, a man
called Toad adds his ivory two cents to the magical mix.
"Try a downbeat here," suggests Ty as the group
pauses to focus on the piano part. "Am I building after
the solo?" asks Toad. "Yes," respond Ty and
Nick in unison. "It sounds too jerky the other way."
They run through the song, again, from the top, except this
time, the 24-year-old singer removes his headphones to get
a different sense of the vocal in the open air. "Sweet!"
cracks Eric. "Yeah, that was awesome," chimes Ty.
"Okay, one more time."
Those who have witnessed this sacred environment-- where scribbles
on notepads and four track demos laid down on busses and bedroom
floors manifest into the songs (hits) we ultimately hear on
the radio or dig through the headsets of our iPods-- understand
that the only method to the madness taking place within these
padded, soundproof rooms is trust in the process. For The
All- American Rejects, the road to When the World Comes Down,
third long form musical offering, has been anything but a
straight line.
"This record hasn't been smooth sailing," confesses
Nick, sporting a wry grin across his boyish face. "After
the success of Move Along, we felt an innate need to challenge
ourselves to grow. And to challenge our fans to grow with
us. On the last record, all the songs were there before we
even entered the studio. We were completely rehearsed. We
just had to show up, play the parts, producer Howard Benson
pushed the buttons and in six weeks, we were done. The theory
with making Move Along was all about sonic representation.
Take every single instrumental part and double it. Everything
gets compressed and it's not as loud. The process involved
in this record isn't exactly the opposite of Move Along -
a record we are all immensely proud of and grateful for --
but its far more human, organic, real. This LP is where we're
at as people, not just artists, here and now. That's why we
took the bus trips and locked ourselves away in remote cabins
to recreate this sense of torture like we had in the past,
before we sold any records."
|
Bus
trips? Cabins? Torture? How divinely placed are the potholes
on the creative road less traveled? "When we first started
working on "Real World," a pretty aggressive rock
song for us, we all got in a room, jammed it, and it sucked!"
recalls Mike. "So me and Chris went to Florida to Nick
and Ty's place on the gulf coast and hung out for about a month.
Ty has this electric drum kit, tiny ass little practice amp.
We put the drums through the amp and the song came together
really cool. You'll have to ask Ty and Nick about the cabin
and cross country bus trip."
"'Breakin'" came out of the bus ride," says Ty.
"I wrote the chorus at Eric's studio but after several
weeks of basic tracking, I had a meltdown and became totally
claustrophobic; lost my touch. I was going soft on everything,
like falling into this vortex, grabbing things on my way down.
I was depressed and worse, afraid to just let go; certain doom
to an artist. So Nick and me got in a bus and just headed east
on Interstate 10 to wherever we felt like cruising. And 'Breakin''
came together along the way, just me and Nick in the back of
the bus, figuring shit out, chords, verses. The song is so different
for us. It's different and weird. Will it be accepted? We shouldn't
apologize, for the music or the message. The song imposes some
sort of sonic understanding that the clouds will part and the
world will be a better place, like the opening of The Simpsons.
In cartoons, the world looks better. Blue skies and green grass."
In concert with that thought, consider the perfect animation,
the succinct bitter sweetness of the lyric, "Breakin's
what the heart is for." It's downright Technicolor.
Tyson Ritter is the son of an auto mechanic dad and mom who
works for the Oklahoma Board of Education. He is not a tortured
artist. "I didn't relate to Nirvana, the angst and all.
But I do love the Doors, the lyrical pathos of Jim drunken poet,
and INXS, a band that truly understood mojo. Anger in rock works
sometimes but it's the sexual power I relate to. 'Come on, come
on, come on, come now touch me babe!" Ty also had a happy
childhood, loves his parents and calls his mom, 'the coolest
chick anywhere." He lauds her sweeping sense of acceptance
and says he shares stuff with her he doesn't talk about with
his closest friends.
"Ty and I know each other so well that two weeks in the
back of a bus, personal shit doesn't come out," says Nick.
"We're in this together. I've known him since I was 14.
We discussed insecurities but accepted the process. We knew
we were growing. The cabin trip up in Rabun County, Georgia,
where they filmed Deliverance, we'd done like four songs, two
of which are on the record, 'Damn Girl,' and "Falling Apart.'
It was like the 12th day in close quarters and we're cracking
and Ty says, 'give it one more day, one more day' and he sat
down at his keyboard with his headphones on and I was diddling
some guitar part from another song and he says, 'Okay, I've
got it!' and he plays me the chorus from "Mona Lisa,"
and I'm like yeah, but we get back to the rest of the guys and
jam it and there's something not quite right. It sounded like
alt country southern rock but the chord changes were too quick.
Then, completely frustrated, we played it for Eric and he says,
'what's wrong with the demo? Just play it like that.' And it
worked and we decided to track it live and now we love it. A
common theme throughout the process of making this record has
been 'what was the initial inspiration or thought for the song?
Less is more has won out time and again."
Beyond a band, AAR is four friends who discovered one other
and scored the American dream. Tyson and Nick founded the group
and released the EP, Same Girl, New Songs in the summer of 2001.
Mike and Chris joined in 2002 and the new quartet hit stores
with their self-titled long play debut, The All-American Rejects
on October 15th, scoring commercial success with the single,
"Swing Swing." They toured tirelessly and in July
2005, presented their fans with Move Along, a breakout effort
featuring three smash hits, "Dirty Little Secret."
"It Ends Tonight," and the LP's inspiring anthemic
title track. From down home southern boys to multi-platinum
stars, AAR broke through the pabulum of mainstream pop with
a cache of great songs and an authentic connection to their
adoring audience.
|
While
success can often damage the psyche, it just brought the Rejects
closer together. It has something to do with personality and
good breeding. "I was enrolled at the University of Central
Oklahoma, was gonna be a physical therapist," muses Chris.
"'Til I got this call from Ty. Immediately deep sixed school
and joined the band. I love playing drums and wish I could do
this all the time. More I get to play, happier I am, less apt
to get in trouble. I felt like I hit the lottery when I was
making 50 bucks a show and not having to work for a living.
Success is relative. When we got our first gold record, I started
thinking 'yeah, I guess this could pan out for awhile.' The
recording process of When the World Comes Down has united us
in a deeper way. Tyson has really matured in the past year.
We all have."
Evolution. The natural progression from where you were to where
you are. It is not a scientific approach, especially in making
records. It involves an authentic, courageous sense of trust
in something larger, grander, less definable than the three
dimensional world. When you absorb this new LP in its entirety,
as a complete work, rather than a random collection of tracks,
you feel a return to the essence of record making. Even the
production has an old school feel with Eric recording the majority
of the tracks onto original master tape and bringing the pro
tools technology in for mainly vocal overdubs.
Songs like "Believe," a breathtaking homage to a fallen
friend that examines why we're here and where we might go once
we cross over, the ambitious "Another Heart Calls,"
AAR's first duet taken to resonant new heights by the hypnotic
vocals of a pair of Alabama sisters called, The Pierces, the
soaring, roaring, antagonizing, "Hope It Gives You Hell,"
(written on a road trip to Vancouver), the bouncy, effervescent
'Falling Apart,' and the infectious, monster hooked, "Damn
Girl," illustrate seasoned composition, vintage production
and a fierce, experimental spirit that contemporary fans beyond
the Rejects' passionate base will wholeheartedly and enthusiastically
embrace.
"I want this record to be more than just good for us, I
want it to be good for them, our fans," insists Ty. "In
the end, we're just a band, close friends, who care deeply about
what we do. When the bullshit eventually dies, love survives.
I'm no rock star or hometown hero. I'm just a nobody. And like
the song says, you're nobody 'til somebody loves you."
There's an old adage: You never finish a piece of art; you abandon
it. Or as in the case of a live performance track, you wait
for the right…sensation. "There's emotion to be captured,"
adds Ty. "Like with 'Mona Lisa', yeah, it took 30 or more
takes to get the vocal right because it wasn't. The mechanics
might have been right, sound and all, but it didn't feel right.
You know it's right when it feels right. I knew we had it when
I finally dropped into that first chorus and it felt like I
was on a hammock. 'You can sit beside me when the world comes
down,' it sort of swings, like a hammock. I'd like to think
that this is one of the best songs we've ever recorded. Simple
and honest."
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some say Mona Lisa is
one homely gal but millions adore her subtle, wicked smile.
Is the new album by The All-American Rejects a masterpiece?
Who's to say? It is certainly one fine work of aural art not
to mention a disc that'll sound damn good whether the world
comes down…or not. |
| Links |
|
|
|
|
