Yellowcard singer Ryan Key talks about the upcoming amphitheater tour
“Now it’s just Jedi time,” says the singer about the pop-punk band, which is playing in front of its biggest audience yet
BURGETTSTOWN – True to the adage “know your audience,” multi-platinum pop-punk band Yellowcard has revised its setlist for a summer tour in support of alternative rockers Third Eye Blind.
“We put the setlist together very deliberately because we thought most of the people at these shows were going to be Third Eye Blind fans,” said Ryan Key, lead singer of Yellowcard. “They’re going to be our age or older and they’re going to be ’90s kids like us who grew up with bands like Third Eye Blind.”
So Yellowcard dug deep into its discography to select songs “where we really leaned into that alternative side of the ’90s and our earliest inspirations for making music. Obviously, pop punk and more punk-leaning music ended up shaping the Yellowcard sound,” Key said. “But we didn’t pick up the guitar because of the punk records; we picked up the guitar because of Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam and just because of this absolute rock revolution that came at the end of that decade. We put some of those songs that came from that inspiration into the show because we thought they might grab the attention of some Third Eye Blind fans who have never heard of Yellowcard, or if they have, they’ve heard ‘Ocean Avenue,’ and then by the end of the show they’re like, ‘Oh, that band,’ you know? But I think it works. Honestly.”
Speaking via Zoom from a Seattle hotel room in front of his mobile streaming and gaming center, Key said the first two nights of the tour went great and he expects more performances as the Yellowcard-Third Eye Blind tour continues to venues including Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, on July 5, Pavilion at Star Lake in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, on July 9, BankNH Pavilion in Gilford, New Hampshire, on July 11, Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, on July 13, PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, on July 14, Broadview Stage in Saratoga Springs, New York, on July 16, Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, on July 18 and Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.
“You can tell this isn’t going to be a big, traditional Yellowcard show where everyone’s running around like crazy and crashing into each other,” Key said. “People are there to just get excited and sing along and groove to the music. And that’s why our set list is very mid-tempo. It’s very rock. And I think people are recognizing the musicality of these songs. And that’s kind of what we were hoping for. Again, we’re only two shows in, but there was definitely a feeling of, ‘Oh, that was the right choice.’ The right songs that we chose.”
Before Third Eye Blind fans get their fill of radio hits “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Jumper,” and “How’s It Gonna Be,” they can hear Yellowcard cuts like “Cut Me, Mick,” “Keeper,” “The Hurt is Gone,” and the title track from last year’s EP, “Childhood Eyes.”
This 2023 EP ends with “The Places We’ll Go,” a collaboration with Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, in which Key sings, “Last year was 20 years/it’s crazy how fast/Were we ever this young?”
That same year, Yellowcard toured to mark the 20th anniversary of their breakthrough and critically acclaimed album, Ocean Avenue, and Key can hardly believe how quickly time has passed.
“It’s a really interesting concept in general to still be doing Yellowcard because we thought Yellowcard was over. And it’s far from over,” Key said. “There seems to be a lot of life left in this band.”
Yellowcard took a hiatus from 2008 to 2010 and disbanded in 2017 with an announced farewell show before the band reunited in 2022.
“We were just at a point in the mid-2010s where we were feeling pretty down and out and touring nine or 10 months a year and not really getting the results we hoped for, and it was just exhausting,” Key said. “And people were starting families and making less money year after year. It felt wrong. It no longer felt like we were ascending — like we were moving in any direction at all — but more like we were treading water or, if anything, regressing and sinking a little bit. All of this is just crazy for us to do. Last summer was the biggest tour we’ve ever done in our entire career. We sold 6,000 to 8,000 tickets in some markets and that was absolutely absurd. We’d never seen numbers like that. And here we are again next summer on another amphitheater and arena tour.”
In his lyrics, he alluded to the 20 years that had flown by: “I don’t feel old or tired after 20 years. I’m full of energy and I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, making music with Yellowcard again. But I think that’s what you feel when you look back at the band’s legacy and realize that all those people filling those huge venues still love and care about Yellowcard, and then you realize how long you’ve been around. In the best way.”
The five years he spent finding his own path during Yellowcard’s split “were an incredible experience of growth and learning,” Key said. “And then coming back to it and all these incredible opportunities and biggest shows we’ve ever played, I was able to really reflect on my journey and finally have a real sense of gratitude and understanding of how much weight that carries. I try not to be too didactic because everyone has to go through their own experiences, but if it makes sense, I like to share my journey, my experience and that it’s never too late to work on yourself. If someone had a bad experience with me 20 years ago, I’m not going to be able to make up for it, but I can make sure no one has a bad experience with me now.”
It’s been a wild ride, “with more downs than ups, honestly,” Key said. “Publicly, it’s been incredible, and yes, we’re so grateful for the opportunities we’ve had, but behind closed doors, there’s been a lot more darkness than light. And now, this chapter that we’re in is really just a pure light side. Now is just Jedi time. The energy and positivity in the band is incredible. The creativity and drive; there’s a connection between us that I don’t think has ever existed like there is now.”
Sean Mackin on violin and vocals is still the other band member from the early glory days, lead guitarist Ryan Mendez joined in 2005.
By reducing their touring schedule from nine months a year to eight weeks, “we’re achieving bigger and better results than ever before,” Key said.
Key and his bandmates drew energy from their spring release, “A Hopeful Sign,” a collaboration that saw post-rock band Hammock take some of Yellowcard’s most beloved songs like “Southern Air,” “Only One,” “Telescope,” and signature track “Ocean Avenue” and reimagine them in a more atmospheric, cinematic setting. The “Hopeful Sign” tracks are not remixes; rather, Key re-recorded both the piano and vocals in his home studio.
“The most important thing was being able to work with Hammock. I’ve been a huge fan of theirs for so many years,” said Key. “It’s such an unexpected and crazy collaboration with the godfathers of post-rock.”
Ten years ago, this collaboration might not have worked so well.
“But I think our fans have grown up enough now that ambient versions of songs they know and love are perfect for them right now,” Key said. “It’s kind of a meditative version of Yellowcard and really gives the songs a whole new perspective and meaning. You take a song like ‘Ocean Avenue,’ which is fun and more hopeful, and now it’s this sad, heartbreaking song about loss and goodbye and doesn’t have that charged energy that I release into the world and have on the ‘Ocean Avenue’ album. People have been through a lot in their lives, so it makes sense now to hear ‘Ocean Avenue’ in a sense of loss and reflection.”
When Key thinks back to the release of Ocean Avenue in 2003, he can’t pinpoint a specific moment when he and Yellowcard realized they had made an iconic album.
“There were a lot of things pointing to it. When we made the first music video and saw it on MTV and ‘Ocean Avenue: The Shooting of the Video,’ we thought, wow, this is a song that doesn’t even get played on the radio and this video feels like a movie set,” Key said. “The label was all in with ‘Ocean Avenue’ and we could sense that pretty early on, but you never know. What if the song just doesn’t resonate with people? By the end of the summer of 2004, when we were at the Video Music Awards and won an award and played the show, we were overwhelmed in both a good and bad way.
“Overwhelmed by the excitement, like, ‘Holy cow, this is incredible. We have a huge record. We’re a huge band. How did this happen? Two years ago, we were playing in a garage, literally, rehearsing for local shows. But we were also overwhelmed in a challenging way. It happened pretty quickly. We were really young. There were a lot of personalities issues in the band at the time. I don’t think we were prepared for that success. We just didn’t have the tools to deal with it. I try not to let it get me down. I try to learn from it. Any mistakes or regrets I have from that time, I try to use as tools for what not to do. And I try to focus on how grateful I am, even though I don’t have the fondest memories of that time. Even though we reached a high level of success, it was a stressful and tense time in my life and in our whole life, and it became hard to enjoy it, so you kind of party through it. I try to look back now and find those moments that remind me how incredible it is that we’re still doing what we’re doing, and so many people still come to see us play. There are so many reasons why we shouldn’t have made it through that era as a band. And there are so many reasons why we shouldn’t have made it through that era where we broke up the band for what we thought was forever. And we’re still here and still alive, and that’s just incredible.”
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