Support the Music had the privilege of speaking with Derek Sanders, the lead vocalist and core songwriter of the six-year-running band, Mayday Parade. Check out the interview below to learn about Derek’s past with music, upcoming plans, and a track-by-track of their new self-titled album.
Support the Music: How old were you when you started playing in bands or really getting into music?
Derek Sanders: Gosh… I guess about ten or eleven really because I always loved listening to music. When I was growing up, my oldest brother, Todd, would show me and my other brother, Mark, a lot of music and my parents would show us lots of music that we got really into. Then my oldest brother started a band when I was in, I guess, about fifth grade and I just thought that was really cool and wanted to be like him so I asked for a guitar for Christmas and started playing guitar a little bit. He just kind of taught me the basics and then I started taking piano lessons and actually formed a band way back in the early days of middle school… and actually it’s pretty funny that Brooks, he and I met when we were in 7th grade when I was twelve years old, and we started our first band together and we’ve been in bands together ever since.
STM: What is your music-making process like?
DS: It’s definitely a group process, but I do a lot of the core songwriting stuff. I bring most of the ideas, but then we all get together and work them all out as a band. It definitely varies from song to song, but for the most part, we all will try to do our best to come up with as many ideas as we can and whether those are more full song ideas, or some of the guys will just do guitar riffs, or lead guitar parts, or chorus ideas, or whatever. Whenever we’re on the road and we have down time, we’ll try to be as creative as we can and come up with a lot of stuff so whenever we get together and start writing as a band, we have a lot of ideas to begin with and start working on. Then, whenever we spend time together writing, we kind of just, listen through everyone’s ideas and pick the ones that we’re the most stoked about and try and work on those.
STM: You were saying that you write the core of the music, so what inspires you to write the music that you do?
DS: I don’t know. I mean, a lot of it is definitely a lot of the bands that we listen to, that I listened to growing up and throughout my life that inspire me to write the music I write. That’s the same for all of us. There’s a handful of bands that I would say like, Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World, Starting Line, New Found Glory, those are a handful of bands that definitely kind of brought all of us into this scene of music and this type of music. We were fans of those kinds of bands, and we’d go to those kind of shows, and those were the bands that we loved, so we had a sound that we started to create, and obviously that kind of changed and developed over the years…. but, that’s kind of where it all started.
STM: How would you say that has music helped you personally?
DS: In tons of ways, man, I don’t think that I would at all be the same person that I am now, without loving the bands that I loved my whole life. I was going through a period where I started going to shows and getting real into that whole world and once I started to see that world, that’s when I started to see what I wanted to do and feel like I’m any good at. It’s what I have a passion for, and we all know how music can help you get through things. You can listen to songs and really relate to either just the lyrics, or the music, or just the whole thing and you can relate and I don’t know… who doesn’t love listening to music? It’s magical.
STM: You guys have been around for a while, so how do you think your music has changed or evolved since you first got started?
DS: In a lot of ways, I guess it just has because of the sheer fact that we’ve been a band for almost six years now, this November… in a month it’ll be six years. I was nineteen when we started this band, and I’m twenty-five now and I’ve grown up a lot, we’ve all grown up a lot and changed a lot over the years. We’ve become tighter as a band and as musicians, being able to get in a room together and really just create a vibe and just feed off each other. We’ve gotten really good at that, and, I don’t know, I guess everyone says that their music matures and develops over time, but that’s really the way it is. For us, it’s still kind of the same thing; we try not to complicate things too much. Whenever we get together, we just try and write the best music that we can and not worry too much about anything else and try not to let any outside influences get in the way too much… Just try to get together and write music that we love; that’s the bottom line.
STM: What do you think is most important about musical education?
DS: Well, it’s definitely important. The earlier on that you get started with all that stuff, the better off you’re gonna be for it. To this day, at the beginning I didn’t really want to take piano lessons too much, honestly… My mom played piano for most of her life and she actually plays piano at a church in town these days, but anyway, she’d always try to get me into taking piano lessons and I wasn’t really so into it, but then whenever I started to play guitar, I wanted to play a little piano as well. And to this day, I’m super thankful that at an early age, my parents, pushed me in that direction and I think it’s what I was meant to do. I think when you show some people that kind of stuff, some people really click with that. That’s what their talent is, that’s the way their head works. With music, some people were just meant to do that and when you get them started at an early age, you can realize that’s what they were meant to do and I think it’s important.
STM: So what’s up next for you guys, as a band?
DS: We’re about to leave and go on this tour; it’s called The Noise Tour. It starts October 14th and we’re really excited about that. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. It’s been about a month and a half now since we were on the road, and we don’t like to be at home for real long before we start getting antsy to get out on the road again, so it’s gonna be nice and a lot of fun. We’re gonna start playing a lot of these new songs for the first time, and that’s always exciting and interesting… We’re looking forward to that.
STM: How can fans keep up to date with you when you’re out on the road?
DS: Online, definitely, there’s lots of ways. We all have Twitters and Facebook, and all that good stuff. Some of us more than others, but we definitely try to be as accessible online as possible for people to come talk to us.
STM: Fan question from Olivia: Who is Katie?
DS: There’s a guy who used to be in our band named Jason, and Katie was, well it’s kind of a very long and complicated story… She’s a friend of all of ours, but at one point, they were actually married, so now currently it’s his ex-wife, but at the time it was his wife.
STM: Fan question from Commie: What do you want your fans to get out of this new cd?
DS: I don’t know. I want people just to listen to it with an open mind. I know it’s really hard to listen to a new piece of work that a band has done and not start off already comparing it to the old stuff. I know that’s difficult to do, it’s hard for me to do as well. But, just try to listen to it with an open mind and see if you feel anything from it, if you can relate to it in anyway, or if it just makes you feel anything. But the bottom line, like I said, is that we made a CD that we love and that’s the most important thing. Hopefully people can listen to it and love it as well.
DS: That song, I started writing a long time ago… A lot of these songs were written like I said on the road, or the ideas were thought of on the road, and Oh Well, Oh Well is a song that I started working on a really long time ago that I’ve been really excited about ever since I started working on it. I think I knew from a really early point that I wanted it to be the first track on the album just because of the way that it opens. I think it’s one of my favorite songs that we’ve ever done, if not my favorite song that we’ve ever done. It means a lot to me personally, and it means a lot to all of us in the band.
DS: That’s a song we worked on back on Warped Tour and was excited about for a really long time. I love the feel of that song, the vibe of that song, that kind of a swing- feel to it. I don’t know, it’s definitely one of my favorites. I think it’s really catchy, it’s got a really cool guitar solo… Alex really stepped it up on this album and did some incredible stuff with all the guitar work he did. The one in that song, No Heroes Allowed, is really awesome, I think.
STM: When You See My Friends
DS: That ones also again, one of my favorites… Sorry, I won’t say that about all of them. It’s also, I think, the majority of the guys, it’s one of all of our favorites and Mike, our tour manager, he’s been a fan of that song for a long time. It’s his favorite. I just love the energy in that song and all of the changed between all the different parts, it’s really cool.
DS: Whenever we went in, we never really had a full idea of that song, whenever we went into pre-production to do that song with Zack and Kenneth, and they kind of came in and really helped us shape that song a lot. We had a lot of pieces there, but they weren’t in place. Whenever they came in, they really helped put that song together and make it what it is, which is really cool.
DS: That one to me, is just one of those, not to say this in a bad way, but just kind of one of those more generic pop-rock kind of songs on the album, which I think it important. It has its place on the album. It’s not super complicated or super complex, but I think it’s a fun, catchy song that I really enjoy.
DS: That one is one that I definitely feel a lot and care about a lot. I love that song. I’m a big fan of the ballads. I’ve been kind of a sucker for the ballads, and that ones kind of one of the big, heaver ballads on the CD. Again, that’s one I started working on a really long time ago. That’s probably actually the first song that I started writing out of all of these on the album. So it’s been a long time coming that I’ve been waiting for everyone to hear that song. But it’s really cool, now to have it out and it seems to be getting a really good response and a lot of people are saying it’s their favorite so it’s really cool.
STM: Call Me Hopeless, But Not Romantic
DS: That’s a song that Jake actually wrote most of that one. He wrote most of that when we were writing songs for Anywhere But Here. That one was one that we didn’t pick to go on that album. We actually recorded it as a B-side to go on that album, but then still didn’t end up releasing it. For this album, I’m really glad we decided to put it on. I think it’s a really awesome song and really powerful.
STM: A Shot Across the Bow
DS: I felt kind of the same way about that one as Pricless. It’s kind of just a fun, pop-y, catchy song that has it’s place there on the album. The lyrics in the chorus are really dark although the music is pretty catchy and pop-y, which I think is really cool and reminds me a lot of Saves the Day, how they used to do that, and that song kind of reminds me of that, which is really cool.
STM: Everything’s an Illusion
DS: That’s another ballad-y kind of one that I think is a real powerful song, it’s real good. Again, that’s one that Jake wrote the majority of. It’s actually about a friend of his that passed away, which is a real sad story. But I think it’s a real good song, a real moving song.
STM: I’d Rather Make Mistakes Than Nothing at All
DS: That’s a song that almost didn’t come about at all because whenever we were going in to record with Zack and Ken, we had about sixteen or seventeen songs and kind of right before we picked the twelve that we were gonna do, I ended up coming up with the idea at the last minute, showing everyone, and we liked it. So, most of that was written in the studio, just in pre-production. I think it turned out really cool. I love the bridge in that song, it’s my favorite part of the song.
STM: Without the Bitter the Sweet Isn’t as Sweet
DS: If “Oh Well Oh Well” isn’t my favorite, then that would be a tie for my favorite. That one almost didn’t make it on the CD either… Whenever we were narrowing down the list, that song almost didn’t make it, which would’ve sucked, I think, because I love that song.
STM: Happy Endings are Stories that Haven’t Ended Yet
DS: That’s a song that we pretty much wrote whenever we got together at the beach house in January. We didn’t have the idea for that one before hand, we kind of just came up with that whole song whenever we were all together at the beach house. It’s really, really cool, I love that one a lot. I think it has a really different kind of feel… There’s not really a set chorus, it’s got a couple parts that change and it’s got a different structure. I really like that a lot. I think it’s really cool and a great way to end the CD.
Be sure to catch Mayday on the current Noise Tour with You Me At Six, We Are The In Crowd, and other exciting acts. For ticket and more band info, check the links below.
Facebook.com/maydayparade
Purevolume.com/maydayparade
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