All-American Rejects Sessions: Punk Nostalgia, Underage Drinking & 'The Beekeeper's Daughter'

Pop-punk band All-American Rejects dropped by AOL Music's Los Angeles studio recently to perform a selection of songs from their forthcoming album 'Kids in the Street' -- which is in stores today (March 26). Following the band's typically energetic performance, we talked with singer/bassist Tyson Ritter and lead guitarist Nick Wheeler about their writing process, their early years in the Oklahoma punk scene, the women that drove them to write songs like their new single 'Beekeeper's Daughter' and the reason they'll never put out a dance-pop record.

Mostly, however, we let Tyson and Nick talk amongst themselves, with the occasional aside from rhythm guitarist Mike Kennerty and drummer Chris Gaylor, which proved to be every bit as arbitrary and hilarious as one might expect.

On 'Kids in the Street,' Nick and Tyson went off and wrote the songs together in various locations, which has become something of a tradition for you guys. When and where did that start?

Tyson Ritter: We started writing songs on little adventures across the United States for our second record, 'Move Along.' It was sort of an accident, because we lived in this Utopian retirement community in Florida. We decided to run as far as we could get from Los Angeles and New York, so we found this little sleepy town in north Florida, and it was just too perfect ... When we started writing for 'Kids in the Street,' we kind of just were already in that rhythm, and it took us to the mountains.

Nick Wheeler: Sequoia Grove National Forrest.

TR: Yeah, which is right where the redwoods start getting huge. And then also...

NW: Some town outside of Portland, Maine, on a lake. It was awesome though, that was a good trip.

TR: Yeah. A suburb of Chicago where a bar was across the street from a school.

NW: Oh yeah! [laughter]

TR: It was grandfathered in, so that bar could actually stay there because the school was built after the bar. Every day I'd hit a wall or something, and tap Nick like, "Hey, Nick, want to go to school?" and watch the kids get out of school, as we drink our first frosty brew.

NW: Each day got earlier and earlier.

TR: Yeah, it'd be like 3PM.

NW: "Kids are going to school, want to get a beer?"

TR: So that's sort of the writing process, how it goes. We just skip across the U.S. and vibe off each place we go.

NW: It's always about escaping. Doing this for about a decade now, I don't think any of us can be in the same place for two weeks without going stir crazy. And then it's also a trip coming home from tour, and all of a sudden you're like smack in the middle of real life. That's weird.




I wanted to ask you about coming to L.A. from Oklahoma, I can understand why you'd run for the hills shortly after, but what was that experience like?

TR: Man, I remember we finished our last record, playing two nights at the Roxy. That night we fired our manager, I broke up with my girlfriend and it was like fresh and clean in this crazy city of Sodom. Nick's great, Nick can set up anywhere and he's everywhere he's always been.

NW: Because I don't go outside.

TR: You don't, you don't go outside, but you always have a really comfortable bubble. Me, I'm like such a victim to my environment, so the first two people that I met that sort of introduced me to Los Angeles were these just bad kids. And I was like let's be a bad kid! It's like whenever Pinocchio goes to the donkey area, but he hasn't become a donkey yet, his ear hasn't flopped out yet? So I was that kid for like six months, and all of a sudden my donkey ear came out, and I looked in the mirror and I was a complete jackass. I was going through this spectrum of emotion. 'Beekeeper's Daughter,' our first single, is about me at that moment of just sort of -- I had had it with this town, and had it with the women I'd run into, and I just didn't care. So it was just like branding a middle finger on my face, leave me alone.

NW: We all have said we're never moving to L.A.

TR: Because you meet Winona Ryder, she bangs the talent out of you, and then you write a s---ty record. But we didn't meet Winona Ryder.

NW: Nope.

CHRIS GAYLOR: It was Wynonna Judd.

TR: It was Wynonna Judd [laughing]. That's totally free, that's fair game.

NW: But now I live here [L.A.], and it's really convenient. I drove here today in my own car and I'm going to go home in a minute.

The album seems like it deals a lot with your early years, literally being 'Kids in the Street.' I wanted to know where that came from, that reminiscence of being being punk rock kids back in the day.

MK: When we were recording 'Kids In The Street,' there was just a lot of talk about the good old days, and I think it comes from the song itself. Lyrically, it's rooted in looking back on those times, when we were rambunctious, and didn't really care about the rest of the world. Not in a selfish way, just you want to live your life the biggest way you can, which kind of became an underlying theme. I don't know if it was purposeful or not, but it just kind of bled through into everything.

TR: Yeah we take a lot of skate nights where we just skate past the Santa Monica Pier, and just go on and on about where we've been and where we're trying to go with the record. 'Kids In The Street' is the first record where we actually set out to define something as we were creating it. This is the first record that actually has some sort of cohesive moment. When I think of 'Kids In The Street,' I do think about playing at bars when I was thirteen, and Nick was fifteen, and the frat from across the street would show up at our shows every time and pack the house. We were just these kids playing for these boozing old people that would spoil us and sort of also ruin us a little bit too. I'll never forget -- in reflection it's sort of weird -- the oatmeal cookie shot.

NW: I remember that.

TR: It was always snuck to us like, 'Here you go little boy.'

NW: That was back when I played drums, so I could have a pitcher of beer behind me and nobody would know.

TR: You did!

NW: That was awesome.

TR: "Here you go, little boy, get your rocks on." And I remember, I drove to pull the van around for load-out and I was driving down the wrong way on a one way street, and it was pouring rain and the [ cop] had me do a field sobriety test on the porch of an old lady's house, and it was just pouring and pouring and pissing and pissing, and he's just like, 'Do this!" And I was just like more scared than I was -- I mean I was sober by fear. And he's like, "Oh, f--- it. It's raining."

NW: I don't remember this!

TR: He didn't even say "F--- it." He stopped and just walked to his car.

NW: What was the answer? [laughter]

TR: That was not an answer. Punk rock. [laughter]

MK [to interviewer]: You get anything out of that?

So you guys have been playing in bands since your early teens, was there a moment when you were like "Alright we're going to do this for real," or was it just something you were doing in high school, that never ended...

MK: I think we were always striving to do it for real, whether we were actually achieving that or not, and then you know, it happened.

NW: Yeah there was never like the "I really hope this works out one day." It was just kind of like, this is the only thing I care about so it's cool that it worked out. I was telling Mike this the other day, I was in my garage...

TR: Tinkering away?

NW: Tinkering away. No, I have no tools. Just chucking guitar cases and there was a Euclid Crash sticker on one of them. An old band that we stole him from, and Chris too.

TR: Were they mad about that?

MK: I think one of them was.

TR: That's cool.

MK: But he's okay now.

TR: Yeah we stole these guys from a band that opened for us one night. I mean these two kids -- at the time they were kids -- stood out like crazy. Mike was just an animal, and Chris was hitting the drums like Animal [the Muppet], and it's kind of cool, we stole them from the punk rock dungeons of Oklahoma.

NW: And we were thankfully removed from the cover band scene that we grew up in. We could play our own tunes now.

Was there pressure this time around to make a pop-dance record, since that's in right now, instead of what you wanted to do?

TR: You know, change and evolution as a band ... we've always been the band that comes out with other bands. Back in the day it was us, Simple Plan, Good Charlotte, New Found Glory and then second record: Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, us. Third Record: nothing.

MK: That's when rock died. [laughter]

TR: That's not a slight at any of those other bands; it's just saying we're still the band that is like the dinosaur that is surviving every meteor crash. I think if we did that by appeasing some sort of fleeting trend then you'd hear it in the music. That being said, 'Kids In The Street' is the first record where I think we all four stand behind it and go "Wow, I'm proud of this." We've done something that has taken us ten years to do, find our voice as a band. Bands that just ride on the back of a trend, you know. If we would have put out a dubstep record I would have kicked my own ass. On camera.

MK: People can sniff that s--- out. It doesn't work. It may work in the short run, but it'll kill you in the long run. F--- that.

NW: And of course we want to stay relevant because it's our livelihood and we want to be able to keep doing this forever, but it's definitely like you said, not compromising ourselves or what we want to do, or what we want to say. We're still going to be us and make our records the way we want to.