| | | |  | Yellowcard was formed in 1997 in Jacksonville, Florida. Originally, the band was made up of five members: Ben Dobson (vocals), Todd Clary (vocals,guitar),Ben Harper (guitar), Sean Wellman (violin), Warren Cooke (bass), and Longineu Parsons (drums). The...
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| Interview | In 1997 Yellowcard began life in Jacksonville, Florida. Today in 2004, following a couple of line up changes and fresh from winning the MTV2 Award for their single Ocean Avenue at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards Yellowcard are taking their unique brand of punk-rock to the world.
The boys were in Australia for a brief period of promotional work earlier in the year but this week they were back playing sold out shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. I sat down with Sean:Mackin [violin], Pete:Mosley [bass] and Longineu Parsons (LP) [drums], for a chat about how things are going for this band on the rise.
Access All Areas.net.au:So, how has Australia been treating you so far?
Sean:It’s been really good. We played a proper show in Melbourne at the Hi-Fi, it was sold out and I think it was one of the loudest shows that we’ve played in over six months. Intense, to say the least.
Access All Areas.net.au:Can you tell me about the line up changes you’ve been through since 1997?
Sean:In ‘97 Ben and LP: started jamming together, with the other two original members that aren’t with us anymore, our old bass player Warren Cooke and Todd Clary. Ben and I were playing music on the side and they asked me to play a song with them and I started learning other songs so that’s kind of how I evolved into the band. In 99-200ish we lost our two singers, Ben Dobson and Todd Clary, just a conflict of interest, time, that sort of thing. So Ben had asked our old friend Ryan Key, from high school [to join the band]. And that was our Yellowcard line up that everyone kind of knew with Warren, Ryan, LP: and Ben and myself. In 2002, the summer of the Warped Tour, we had yet another conflict with our old bass player Warren, he got married, some things started changing in his personal life so he left. It was August [2002] that we asked Pete:to join our band.
Access All Areas.net.au:Pete:[after taking a year or so off from Yellowcard], how was it coming back?
Sean:[doing an impersonation of Pete] It was great, I love it!
Pete:It was awesome it worked really well. I mean, I toured with these guys for six months and then spent another three months writing and recording Ocean Avenue. And when I came back the first show that I did back with them was [The Tonight Show] with Jay Leno, which is a pretty big thing to do. And it was their first appearance on that and it was my first show back; kind of a big first show back but it felt like I had been gone for like a month, I’d been gone a year, but I walked right back into it, and it was easy.
Access All Areas.net.au:Changing your lead singer was a pretty dramatic change to make. How did that come about?
Sean:Yeah, I don’t really know how we exactly went about it. I think when we changed lead singers and kept the band name was more because the founding fathers of the band were still there. When we had the idea of Ryan joining the band we weren’t going to be on that small of a market, just being a Florida band, we wanted to expand and we quit school, we quit jobs and we moved to California because we wanted to go 100% at it. That was the mental plan behind it. We were going to take the core members of Yellowcard that started the band, with a new singer and devise something that we could market everywhere, rather as just, you know, Jacksonville.
Access All Areas.net.au:Is moving to California the theme of the new album, Ocean Avenue?
Sean:It more or less became the theme. It wasn’t on purpose. But when we started writing Ocean Avenue I guess it was more or less about real life experiences and when we put the CD together, the song listing, it came across and very “this is our story from Florida to California”.
Access All Areas.net.au:How do you classify the music of Yellowcard?
Pete:We’ve kind of been thrown into or label with the whole pop/punk genre with bands such as Sum 41, Simple Plan, Good Charlotte, Blink 182 and we have those roots, the whole punk/rock scene, but we’re kind of just trying to be a rock band. We listen to bands like Blink but we also listen to bands like Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters and we don’t like really labelling ourselves. We don’t like being pigeonholed into any kind of genre of music. We kind of just do what we do.
Access All Areas.net.au:Having a violin in your band doesn’t really pigeonhole you too much, does it?
Sean:When I joined the band it was kind of a natural thing because Ben and I had been playing acoustic and classical music so we…had had a musical relationship before. But I think when it comes for stereotyping and music and stuff like that I think it’s because we share the same influences like Blink and Sum 41 and all those bands they listen to NOFX and the last real era of punk/rock music so we kind of get stuck as being part of that but I think maybe, hopefully listening a little deeper our band has a little bit more depth than those other artists.
Access All Areas.net.au:Every song on Ocean Avenue seems to have a story behind it, can you tell me about Believe [about September 11]?
Sean:I think [Ryan] was writing more from a tribute song or a thank you card kind of stand point. You know, more inspired by the fact that there are real life heroes, people that would give their lives to save others and I think that’s the [influence lyrically]. I think musically it came together really easy. We hadn’t really written a song like that before and it was something that was just really easy to put together between all of us. It was definitely a strong topic so I think we just kind of ran with it.
Access All Areas.net.au:You’re really into the touring side of things, how many shows did you do last year?
LP: Over 300. Different venues, I mean we toured for the last four years, like straight, non-stop, we’ve been going strong. I would say in the course of two months we probably got, like, four days off, if that sometimes.
Sean:I think in 2003 we played, the books say like 320 shows or something like that and a lot of that is, last year we did high school shows during the day [and] club shows at night. This year we haven’t done as many shows but I think the count is still like 280 we don’t ever really stop. I think we’re very fortunate. Enough to be able to play music and being able to afford a living by doing that. We’ve always been a very hard working band so it’s not that tough for us to keep the nose to the grind.
Access All Areas.net.au:When you knew you had made it and got that first pay cheque, what did you do with that?
Sean:We haven’t really gotten a first pay cheque yet.
Pete:Everything, all the success, we haven’t been able to see and understand because we’ve been on the road the whole time, like we’ve been in the middle of it so we haven’t been able to stand on the outside and see exactly what has happened with us.
Access All Areas.net.au:Does it ever get to be too much?
Pete:You definitely reach a point of “I want to get the hell out of here and I want to go sleep in my bed in my time zone”. But it’s, you know, we somehow find a way to keep it going. As much as it’s definitely, at this point we’re definitely getting pretty burnt, pretty drained but this is an amazing thing to be able to do….And so for all the times that we maybe experience five days of being burnt out but then our weekend comes and something rad will happen to us and we’ll be like, OK, that’s why we’re doing this, awesome.
Sean:It’s just a double edged sword, we realise we’re very lucky for what we’re doing but we work eight days a week, so I don’t know, we have our points but we’re extremely lucky.
Access All Areas.net.au:Congratulations on the MTV2 Award. Did winning that award make you think it is time to take Yellowcard to the world?
Sean:I don’t know if it encouraged us to take it internationally, like we always wanted to do that. But I think with our rigorous tour schedule in the States and the demand and whatnot over there it always kind of, we hadn’t really been able to do it as much, and also it’s really expensive so I think now with being recognised from that there’s a lot more heLP: that is willing to come from outside countries. Then come next year we’ll be able to afford to tour internationally on our own.
Access All Areas.net.au:Do you keep in touch with your fans?
Sean:Yes. Not just through the message board I think at shows we’re a little different band, we’ll hang out with our kids, stand at the merch[andise] stand a lot, watch the opening or the headlining bands from the crowd. I think we’re a little different band than everyone else, I think that it’s cool that we’re very accessible to our fans because it gives us a little outlet for them and an outlet for us to show how appreciative we are of them I mean we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. I think our internet fans is what sort of started the Yellowcard spark. If it wasn’t for the internet we wouldn’t be where we are now so I think that just basically our appreciation of our fans is why we do it.
Access All Areas.net.au:Do you find time to write new material while you’re touring?
Pete:No. It’s really hard to get into that kind of element. Every now and then you might have an hour to sit down on your guitar but to get into any kind of song writing element is impossible when you’re in a different city every day it’s very, it’s just hard to do.
Access All Areas.net.au:So how did Ocean Avenue come about?
Pete:We went and locked ourselves in a mountain house about two hours south of LA. The five of us went to this mountain house for three weeks and everyday from noon to six we’d play, rehearse and spark ideas and then at six we’d call it quits and every night Sean:cooked us dinner and we’d sit down at a table together basically as a family and put on some quiet music and eat dinner and then get wasted.
Access All Areas.net.au:What would you be doing if you weren’t in Yellowcard?
Sean:Maybe open my own restaurant or teach music, or both. That’s what, I always wanted to be a teacher so, who knows.
Pete:Oh God. I’d probably be a…the time off that I took last year I got involved in construction, and I was a residential construction supervisor and I learned a lot from that and I actually really enjoyed it and kind of miss it, just having a normal day job like that, I really got into it, that’s probably what I would be doing.
LP: I’ve been playing drums since two so that’s what I’d be doing. I’d still be playing, you know, for the past, since ‘97 or whatever been playing with these guys but I played jazz so that’s probably what I’d be doing, with my Dad’s band or someone.
Access All Areas.net.au:What’s next for Yellowcard?
Sean:The WORLD!
Pete:We play a show in Auckland and go play three shows in Japan, go back to the States and have our three days off in between tours …And then we’re doing a fall tour in the States, which is I think like six and a half weeks. That’ll carry us through to the beginning of December and then we’re doing a sting of, I think like eight high school shows and then that’s when our time off comes, I mean our writing time. |
| Biography | Yellowcard was formed in 1997 in Jacksonville, Florida. Originally, the band was made up of five members: Ben Dobson (vocals), Todd Clary (vocals,guitar),Ben Harper (guitar), Sean Wellman (violin), Warren Cooke (bass), and Longineu Parsons (drums). The band released their first album, Where We Stand (Takeover Records), in 1999 and met with some success, but some began to undergo some changes.
Their current singer left and was replaced by Ryan Key who convinced the band that they couldn't be successful in Florida, so they decided to move to Southern California. |
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