Mayday Parade
After years of successful tours and albums, Mayday Parade has set out on yet another tour. Vocalist Derek Sanders says the band will sometimes spend eight out of twelve months on the road in a year. The band has played Warped Tour a few times, will head overseas this year and really know what playing live is all about. Derek and I caught up to talk about the tour and what to expect.
Arin: What are you most looking forward to with this specific tour?
Derek: I don’t know. We’re on it now, today is the fourth show and I’ve been looking forward to this so much, mainly I think, because of all the bands on the tour, it’s us and We The Kings and The Downtown Fiction and Anarbor and we know most of those guys from previous tours and its good to be back out with them again and it’s just good to be back out in general. We had two months off so that’s a nice amount of thine to hang out at home and stuff but it’s good to be back on the road and be productive again, so we’re all just really happy.
A: What songs of the other bands do you like listening to each night?
D: Okay, I would say for Anarbor, they have a song called ‘Mr. Big Shot’ and that’s my favorite song of theirs, but that band is just awesome I think they sound better live than on their album. Then The Downtown Fiction, the first song they play I actually don’t know the name of it, but the first song they play is my favorite and then for We The Kings, I don’t know, they have some awesome songs and they sound so good live, it’s hard to pick one song.
A: What do you have planned for after this tour?
D: We pretty much go straight out of this tour, we have like one day off, and then we fly over to the UK with You, Me At Six and we tour with them over there for about three weeks and we’re looking forward to that. We’ve toured with them a couple of times here and it will be nice to go over there and support them on a tour, so we’re looking forward to that and then I’m not entirely sure, but were probably going to do more international stuff in April and May and then we’re doing Warped Tour this summer and then, we’re going to South America in September and then I would imagine we would probably do another tour in the fall in the US maybe and then break for the holidays and that’d be the year.
A: What are you hoping to get out of this year as a band?
D: We’re just going to keep on trucking like we always do. We’ve always spent seven or eight months out of the year on the road so we’re just going to keep working hard at this and that looks like the plan for this year. We’re booked up pretty solid, we may even break our record of the most shows we’ve played in a year, and just have a good time doing that and we get to go to some pretty awesome places and then I wanna start to write some songs for the next album. It’s really cool to be on the road and have the acoustic guitars and start working on some of these ideas that will eventually be the next album.
A: What does your typical day look like on tour?
D: We normally get up around anywhere from ten to twelve or so a we can be pretty lazy, we can spend a lot of time just sitting around doing nothing but a lot of times we’ll walk and try and get some food and we’ll do sound-check every day and then a lot of times there’s a lot of press kind of stuff, a lot of times well go, like earlier on this tour for example, we went to a children’s hospital in Birmingham and played some acoustic music there and we try to do some of that throughout the tour and just a lot of hanging out with the other bands. We do a meet and greet every day, after we play we always go out and talk to everybody after the show and there’s a lot of things thought the day to do and it really is a lot of fun and we’re very lucky to be able to tour on a bus and it’s very comfortable.
A: You mentioned the children’s hospital, but are there any other charities or organizations you guys try to work with?
D: It’s pretty much just been spur of the moment stuff, we’ve been working with a lot of charities and nonprofits from touring, we did the Take Action tour and on Warped we’ll do a lot for different ones like PETA or To Write Love On Her Arms and things like that. We try and support those organizations but we don’t have any that we’ve stuck with, we just try and support all of them I guess.
A: You have some guitar lesson videos and tour diary videos among other things so how do you guys use social networking to stay in touch with fans?
D: It’s hard to pick one, we always try and respond to people and talk to people and it’s really cool that we’re at this age now where everyone can stay so connected and you can talk to your fans at any time and I love doing the videos and I feel like that’s huge and I know I love that stuff for bands that I’m a fan of, I love seeing behind the scenes footage kind of stuff. We all have flip cams and try and put together just little fun videos and I think it’s really cool that we’re able to do that.
