THE ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS Ritter & Kennerty, checkmate.
Having satisfied his brunch cravings with an order for “breakfast potatoes”, Tyson Ritter contemplates a pawn and pushes it forward two squares. Ritter, front-man of The All-American Rejects, catches my eye and wickedly smirks, “it’s your turn”. One of his three fellow accomplices in fighting the powerpop fight, guitarist Mike Kennerty, chuckles good-naturedly. Still dressed in the purple jeans, red velvet blazer and sparkly pink glitter high-top chucks from his previous night’s stage outfit, one wonders if Ritter has showered since last night’s Vector Arena show with Fall Out Boy and Hey Monday… or, even slept.
The four-year-old band that was the ‘Rejects in 2003, wrote for our generation a mix-CD-equivalent to freshly baked cookies and best-friend-hugs. Six years later, we have grown up into a world where independence is valued… but the collection of relationships, still a judgement point. Ritter concludes that “out here on the road, we’re a band of course… but we’re individuals that literally have to depend on our own instincts and selves for everything. Do you depend on me emotionally? I guess, sort of. That’s just common decency. I don’t think it’s bad to be dependant on somebody else. If your not dependant on somebody else, then you live alone. Or you choose to live alone. I think that’s sad. If I couldn’t lean on somebody, I’d just fall over.”

The present-day All-American Rejects, still write of lost and impossible love… just now with holistic reasoning. Ritter muses that we all need help, on their latest full-length, ‘When The World Comes Down’.
When the world comes down… who do you want by your side?
Best friend? Childhood sweetheart? One night stand? Hero/Heroine?
Kennerty considers the pressures of society in the search to find ‘the one’… “It’s been that way for how many hundreds and thousands of years?” Ritter finishes his train-of-thought, “marriage is the whole thing that puts pressure on everyone. It’s a religious thing right?” Kennerty agrees. “We travel for a living. We’re rarely home. So we gotta have some-one to watch our shit.” Ritter quips, “that’s right! That’s right… and I don’t trust my parents anymore. They’re going senile.”

COUP DE MAIN: Last night was the final date of Fall Out Boy’s Australasian excursion with Hey Monday and yourself, The All-American Rejects… How does it feel, to finally be in New Zealand?
THE ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS – TYSON RITTER: I loved last night. The crowd’s energy was great.
TA-AR – MIKE KENNERTY: Awesome. This is the first time we’ve ever been here and we got to play to that many people! It feels pretty incredible. After a while of doing the same places over and over again, it’s really nice to get to go somewhere new and be like, holy shit we can add that to our stories. We’ve been to New Zealand! I’ve always wanted to come here since I saw ‘Braindead’.
CDM: Oh, respect… I thought you were going to name-drop ‘Lord Of The Rings’… So you’re into classic, Peter Jackson?
TA-AR – MIKE: No, no. That movie ‘Braindead’, oh! Well it’s called ‘Dead Alive’ in the States… but that’s one of the greatest horror movies ever made.
CDM: I couldn’t help but close my eyes… it made me sick.
TA-AR – MIKE: It’s so good!
TA-AR – TYSON: It’s a good one.
TA-AR – MIKE: Oh the lawnmower scene. Oh! It’s incredible.
CDM: On your next trip here, film a mock-horror music video as homage…
TA-AR – MIKE: That’d be awesome.

CDM: It’s been a long wait for fans between 2005’s ‘Move Along’ and your new album, ‘When The World Comes Down’. Did your time spent off the radar, put more pressure on expectations for the record?
TA-AR – TYSON: The pressure of the record-writing? We put it all on ourselves.
TA-AR – MIKE: When we did ‘Move Along’… there was a lot of external pressure from our label, from our management. The irony being, that we had this great batch of songs that we were having to sell to everyone else. “This is a fucking good record. It’s going to be good. Trust us.” And they were very sceptical and made us fight. On this record, we came in and they were immediately like, oh it’s going to be great.
TA-AR- TYSON: Ten songs were written and they were like, oh let’s go! Let’s go to the studio guys. They’re just smelling the money. Oh let’s hurry up and jump on the coat-tails of Move Along’s success before it fizzles out. Well, we let it fizzle it out. We didn’t do it on purpose. But we had to wait ’til the record was ready. Everytime we put out a record everybody goes, where’d you go? Well, we’re obviously still here.
It was awesome to be that band that had ‘Swing Swing’… that band that had ‘Dirty Little Secret’… that band that had ‘Move Along’… that band that had ‘It Ends Tonight’ and that band that had ‘Gives You Hell’. Now we’re at five songs that literally, every person in the world knows. I don’t know if we’re going to be that band much longer. We’re almost to the next hand. Maybe that’s when we won’t be that band anymore… when we get to this hand.
CDM: Ten is a nice, round number…
TA-AR- TYSON: Let’s hope.

CDM: Tell me about the title for your new album, ‘When The World Comes Down’…
TA-AR- TYSON: It’s a lyric from a song on our record called ‘Mona Lisa (When The World Comes Down)’. It’s the back-bone of this record. It’s this apocalyptical romantic sentiment that says, you could sit beside me when the world comes down. It’s my attempt at tricking our listeners into being aware globally.
It’s not just about love. It’s me, trying to grow up on this song.
It’s not just a love song. This song has some sort of sense of awareness about it. Greenpeace used it as their end of the year video last year. They put it up against all the activist stuff that they’ve done. It was so powerful. That’s really where the song is coming from. It’s about the fact that maybe if tomorrow doesn’t come, you can share the last moment with somebody… and maybe that’s a beautiful thing.
We were given this beautiful, beautiful Fabergé egg… and we’re carrying it around in a plastic sack. I feel that’s us, in the way that we take care of the world. That’s what ‘Mona Lisa (When The World Comes Down)’ is about. The butter-fingers of the human race. Juxtaposed against the fact that there’s a love song happening. Maybe there’s this one couple that… maybe it’s not your fault. It’s pointing the finger at everybody else but also pointing it back at yourself. If that, makes any fucking sense.

CDM: I read that The All-American Rejects had been due to headline the 2009 Honda Civic Tour… but the tour was cancelled due to the economic recession?
TA-AR- TYSON: They pulled back immensely. Technically they didn’t cancel it, cuz they’re still making one car with us. Which I guess, is their way of salvaging it. But I think that this record is amazingly, ironically timed for what seems to be the world at its weakest. There’s this whole economic crisis. The U.S. is the tourniquet of the world right now and they just keep pulling, pulling and pulling, tighter and tighter.
TA-AR – MIKE: There’s a paranoia too. With the media hyping the economic crisis. If you step away… if you watch the news everyday, it really is a financial apocalypse. But when you actually go anywhere… granted there are a few people who have lost jobs and that’s horrible… but the majority of people still aren’t making less money, spending any less money. It’s just the media being like, you’re in a recession! Well thanks for telling me that. I wouldn’t have fucking known, if you didn’t shoved it down my throat every day.
TA-AR- TYSON: Everybody gets all tight. It’s just the media fucking everything up. Everything. That’s what happened with that 2004 election. The media just threw all this shit about the whole Kerry (vs.) Bush thing and turned it into a weird freak-show.

CDM: Can anything be done to change the media circus?
TA-AR – MIKE: Not now. It’s just there’s so much media to be filled. In America, there’s 24-hour news channels… they gotta talk about something.
TA-AR- TYSON: It’s filtered too. So we get the apple-pie version of everything. It’s really interesting. We’re the country of freedom but we have suppressed media. Interesting.

CDM: Thoughts on Obama’s presidential win?
TA-AR- TYSON: I think it’s great. Definitely did not want McCain. Obama is young, peppy, gets more of what our generation can do for the world. We are the important generation. We are the people that are either going to ruin the world, or save it. This is getting really intense. Let’s talk about candy.

CDM: Tyson, apparently you were born at a Van Halen concert…True? False??
TA-AR- TYSON: True. Well, induced.
TA-AR – MIKE: The water broke.
TA-AR- TYSON: Water broke, they threw me into EMT. Eddie Van kissed my Mom on her forehead, waved goodbye and said… “Baby’s going to be a champion”. I’ve got rock’n'roll at least, somewhere in my genes.
TA-AR – MIKE: In your birth canal.
TA-AR- TYSON: In my diapers.

CDM: Lately, have you had time to work on your clothing line, Butter The Clothes?
TA-AR- TYSON: I have totally put that shit on pause. We did a shoot with Nike, which was awesome. This record, ‘When The World Comes Down’, is my baby. Now the baby is finally starting to walk on it’s own. Maybe we can go out on Friday night with Butter. Leave the sitter out there. So eventually I’m going to re-approach it, I’m just waiting for the right time.

CDM: What’s the latest with your record label, Edmond Records?
TA-AR- TYSON: We got a band called The Upwelling, we’re putting out. Record’s coming out in May. It’s called ‘American Stranger’.
TA-AR – MIKE: Excited about that. It has been a long time coming.

CDM: Do you have spare time to scout for new bands?
TA-AR- TYSON: Usually it’s going to fly underneath our nose. But yeah, we’re always snooping.
TA-AR – MIKE: That’s how we found The Upwelling. And another band called The City Lives, that we’re going to work with the label too. We’re always looking out for good music. Who doesn’t want to hear new good music?
TA-AR- TYSON: Kennerty actually produced the first thing we released. The first thing we released out, was this produced record that Kennerty did with Ben Weasel. It was a childhood dream of ours.
TA-AR – MIKE: He was the singer of a band called Screeching Weasel, that I grew up loving. I got the opportunity to produce his solo record. That was the initiation into making records.

CDM: I hear the label likes vinyl…
TA-AR – MIKE: We do vinyl. I’m a dork for that stuff, so wanted to make sure it’s done right. ‘When The World Comes Down’ will be out soon on vinyl. With all our records too, we take a lot of time and care to make sure…
TA-AR- TYSON: … we have the coolest vinyl ever.
TA-AR – MIKE: We begrudgingly forced our old independent record label to waste a lot of money on the packaging for our vinyl. But it’s all worth it.

CDM: Vinyl appreciation is coming back!
TA-AR- TYSON: I think it’s coming back big time. Didn’t Best Buy just add a vinyl section? It’s coming back. It’s on a resurgence because the CD is dying. The only thing that is going to be left is this (points to iPod) and vinyl. It’s going to be cool.

CDM: Share a little-known fact about each of your band-mates…
TA-AR- TYSON: (Chris) Gaylor, has been known to be a falconer. He falcons, with birds. Nick (Wheeler) is very well-versed in wines.
TA-AR – MIKE: … which he enjoys nightly.
TA-AR- TYSON: Kennerty produced the Ben Weasel record. That’s a good one, that no-one knows. I did a Hugo Boss campaign.
TA-AR – MIKE: There you go…
TA-AR- TYSON: I am the face of Hugo Boss for next year.