When the All-American Rejects took the Checker stage at When We Were Young Festival in Oct. 2022, they had little expectation. It had been a decade since they released their fourth album “Kids in the Street,” the capstone on a red-hot run of multi-platinum records and four top-20 hits including 2008’s “Gives You Hell,” which peaked at No. 1 on Billboard Pop Airplay. They’d reemerged here and there, for listless gigs at state fairs and corporate events, but it had been years since they played for actual fans. Would any of them show? Were any still even out there?
So they came on stage, opposite parallel sets from Avril Lavigne and Poppy, meeting the moment with a touch of sarcasm in full Elvis regalia. “It was like nobody remembers this band, maybe they’ll see this old guy and be like, ‘Holy fuck! This guy did not age well!’” recalls front man Tyson Ritter. “I think we got half-tanked before we played. And we got out there and there’s 30,000 people in front of us. We were ringing like a bell. Something happened there at that show that not only woke up people to the fact that we have a legacy, but also it’s still viable in 2025.”
The Oklahoma foursome — Ritter (lead vocals/bass), Nick Wheeler (lead guitar/backing vocals), Mike Kennerty (rhythm guitar/backing vocals) and Chris Gaylor (drums) — built their legacy as an MTV-ready pop-rock mainstay in the early aughts, riding the radio waves with hooky singles and boy-next-door appeal complete with vintage tees and boot-cut jeans. They won over young listeners with sticky songs about broken hearts and adolescent lust that have resonated across the decades, amassing hundreds of millions of streams in the time since.
But the spotlight quickly faded. The band, stuck in a rinse-repeat of recording and touring for years on end, burned out. They were at a loss: Who were they as individuals outside of the group they formed as high schoolers in 1999? “After ‘Kids in the Street,’ we were like OK fuck this for now, and we all fell back to earth on our own,” says Ritter. “We lived in four different places and I don’t think we ever had a collective conversation or a heart-to-heart about, ‘Hey man, are you doing OK?’ The truth is, I wasn’t.”
Today, they’re sitting together at No Vacancy, a Hollywood speakeasy where later that night they’re playing a small show for 250 fans on the eve of “Sandbox,” their first original single in five years. They’re clearly in a much better space. Their performance at When We Were Young had reinvigorated them, and in 2023 they embarked on the “Wet Hot All-American Summer Tour,” their first headlining trek in a decade — and the biggest of their career.
“Sandbox,” which released in late April, is a lyrical shift for the Rejects, a politically inclined song about a war on a playground written through the lens of a child. It’s bright and loud like much of the band’s catalog, yet expands their purview beyond post-pubescent woes. “It feels really comfortable to have a lived experience and to be able to say, wow, I actually care about a broader sense of humanity more so than whether or not she broke my heart,” says Ritter. “This song is a tongue bursting through cheek, just the same way all our songs always had a bit of a wink and a goose. But there is a message in it if you listen to it. I’m proud that we can stand up there on stage and play this and not feel like we’re trying to sing to 14-year-old girls.”
Its Joseph Kahn-directed music video distorts that vision even further, as the band endures a violent bloodbath at the hands (and teeth) of puppets straight out of the world of “Wonder Showzen.” The effort is entirely self-funded in their first turn as an independent act, free from the constraints and expectations of being a line item on a major label spreadsheet.
“The last time it felt like that was when we were writing our first record,” explains Wheeler. “Everything after that was for a major label to be promoted in that way: radio, MTV, etc. Not to say that our process of writing and creating hasn’t been pure, but the last time it’s been solely for us was the first record. And it’s kind of what we’re exploring again.”
The Rejects had spent the bulk of their recording career with Interscope Records, which released the three albums following their self-titled debut in 2002. Ritter recalls how Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine had so much faith in the band that he worked “Dirty Little Secret,” the snappy lead single off their 2005 sophomore album “Move Along,” to radio for 46 weeks before it broke the top 20.
With Interscope, they hit their stride, etching a consistent spot atop MTV’s “Total Request Live” countdown and playing shows across the world. But as the sound of the mainstream shifted and the industry embraced the streaming economy, rock-leaning acts started to lose their footing as genres began to fracture. Ritter remembers playing “Kids in the Street” for a “table full of suits” who gave the record an icy reception. “All I saw were dead faces that were ready to go back to their desk to look at the corner of their screen for their girlfriend and wait for the fucking five o’clock bell to ring,” he says. “The industry had changed and that was a benchmark moment. Like, you don’t get to do it this way anymore.”
The Rejects decided to leave Interscope on their own terms. “We weren’t dropped,” notes Ritter. “We negotiated our way out of that building because it didn’t feel like it was a home for us anymore. They had Imagine Dragons records.” The band continued to tour relentlessly, and the burnout set in. “We did a couple of tours in that break and they just didn’t feel right at all,” says Gaylor. “By the end of them, we were like, I don’t want to do this. Packing on the bus to go home like…” He widens his eyes as if stunned, staring into the abyss.
Twelve years of grinding as a touring act had also taken a mental toll on the group. You could see it on their faces when they performed across the country. “Every show that we had played up until that point in the doldrum of that hiatus was kind of like, fuck this band, kind of. I don’t know,” says Ritter. “I love seeing you guys but also kind of fuck this band. That was at least the energy I was bringing to the show. It was toxic, it was great.”
Ritter recalls a breaking point on tour with Blink-182 in 2016, when his anger manifested towards Wheeler. The two are the primary songwriters of the group, often taking long retreats together to write their albums, and were its first two members. But Ritter describes being unable to contain or even rationalize his feelings, needing a target to shoulder the blame.
“I just gave it all to him, and it’s easier when you can’t find that thing that’s no one’s fault, because you just want to put a face on it,” he says. “And I just shoved Nick down an emotional flight of stairs. That really created a broken fence that we had standing tall and beautiful for over 15 years.
“The fuck this band of it all, I think about that attitude I brought to some of those shows,” he continues. “I can’t believe I did that. I was casting out because I needed anything to fight with, when all we needed to do was to really see the great success that this band is, appreciate it and want to give it life.”
“The grind there was for so long,” adds Wheeler, “and the fact that it became our entire identities, that would cause resentment. Like Tyson said, it’s displaced emotion. I resent this, I don’t know why, therefore I don’t really want to do it that much.”
It’s why their performance years later at When We Were Young had such resonance. Ritter and Wheeler spent much of the time on the subsequent “Wet Hot All-American Summer Tour” in conversation, repairing the relationship that served as the backbone for the Rejects since its inception. Last year, the band put out a cover of Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta” just to prove they could have a “communicative experience” in the studio. Now, they’re about halfway done with their fifth album, tentatively due for release next year, and are about to embark on their biggest tour yet as openers for the Jonas Brothers on their fall stadium run.
As an independent act, they’re also exploring new ways to write music. In the past, they’d typically arrive at the studio with all of their demos meticulously rehearsed so a producer could polish them up. (“We were tired of the songs by the time we were recording them,” says Gaylor.) Now, they take their time conceptualizing songs, sending parts back and forth and holding Zoom sessions to discuss arrangements. They’re producing their record with a friend, throwing ideas against the wall and releasing one song here and there as the streaming economy allows.
Time is a recurring theme as the Rejects reflect on their quarter-century journey. The group members are in their 40s; Ritter is a father, and each of them has forged separate careers in music and beyond. But they managed to find a way back to one another, with the shared passion that inspired them to come together in the first place.
“We just had to wait for the timing for everything to align for this to work again, if it was going to,” says Wheeler. “But the gift of that,” adds Ritter, “has been so rewarding now because I love this shit. I told myself today, like, I really want to play. It’s been two weeks, I’m like, I just want to fucking play, man. And I think that’s a good sign, right? Like we actually want to do what we do?”
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