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Let’s talk about pressure. How do you follow-up a smash hit record with 2 million in sales, grow artistically, and keep your fan base hungry? The answer is pure talent, unadulterated passion for music and the willingness to take risks. ALL of which define Yellowcard’s latest release, “Lights & Sounds” which followed on the heels of “Ocean Avenue,” one of 2003/04’s best selling records. The music business is probably one of the most fickle and fragile businesses; as one minute you’re critically acclaimed and the next minute you’re struggling for survival… In Yellowcard’s case, their survival isn’t in question as they have the talent and the guts to weather any storm that the business of music can brew up.

MusicPix interviewed Ryan Key, frontman for Yellowcard prior to their show in Cincinnati, Ohio. Actually, it was more like a conversation. Listen in…

Listen To: "Lights and Sounds" - Windows Hi / Lo

See "Lights and Sounds" Video - Windows Hi / Lo - Real Hi / Lo- Quicktime Hi / Lo

Interview With Yellowcard's Ryan Key

MusicPix: We’ve enjoyed watching your career and getting to know your band. We think that Yellowcard is an extremely talented group of musicians. You’ve matured musically with your latest release, “Lights & Sounds” as your material gives the listener a taste from a diverse menu vs. following a repetitious formula. We want you to know that we applaud your courage to grow and to differentiate yourselves in a business that makes that hard to do.

Ryan: Thank you and yes, it’s not easy. And definitely with this album, it has proven that it’s not been easy. This album hasn’t had that super mass appeal but people who’ve listened to it have had the same reaction that you’ve had…For the most part, they feel like it’s a good place for us to have gone. It’s definitely challenging though.

MusicPix: No question. And having such enormous success (over 2 million sold) out of the gates with “Ocean Avenue,” do you sometimes consciously or unconsciously wish that your debut was a little less auspicious?

Ryan: No, it wasn’t really out of the gates because we didn’t have a song on the radio until the same day the album came out. They’re wasn’t some big corporate roll-out for the album…we had just completed one leg of the Warped Tour that summer and we just toured, toured, and toured. It wasn’t until that following summer that it was just insane…on MTV and all that crazy stuff. And still it was a pretty gradual kind of thing...it definitely hindered and put a lot of weight and a lot of pressure on this album. I think as a band, that we did everything in our power to consciously ignore that pressure. Just do it. Put the record out. Write what we want. Make an album. It just doesn’t matter if we were selling a hundred million a week or whatever…just keep that attitude of that because we’re not working at Chili’s anymore…you know what I mean? We’ve just tried to keep that attitude. This album has been more about trying get back in touch with our fans that we had when we first started being a band and I think that’s important…they aren’t all radio or MTV fans necessarily. The shows are smaller and more intimate and the people that are coming to these shows are people that have been fans of the band for many years, or are people who got on board during “Ocean Avenue” that became real, true fans of the band…they follow the band, buy merchandise and support everything that we do and you have to go through that in your career. You have to remind those people that they are important to you…

Yellowcard Concert Photos

MusicPix: Do you feel that your fan base is consistent? It feels like "Lights & Sounds" is almost another debut album because it’s appears to speak to twenty-something’s ++ and “Ocean Avenue” was directed toward teenagers. Do you agree with that assessment?

Ryan: I think that some of what happened with “Lights & Sounds” maybe that it jumped over a little bit and maybe a little too far because the Ocean Avenue fans were a little younger and that wasn’t our intent and do that on purpose. Many people…like my parents and their friends like the record and they didn’t know about Yellowcard because they weren’t in our target demographic or whatever you want to call it. I think that’s why we’re out playing the songs live, just trying to get everybody, even the younger kids, introduced to this album and get what we can out of it. I don’t think that it will ever have the success that “Ocean Avenue” had but it doesn’t mean that we don’t really support the album.

MusicPix: What about Holly Wood…the fictional character in Lights & Sounds… She’s used as a navigational tool to portray the bands experiences and she shows the duality of a love / hate relationship. So what do you truly love about the music business and what do you truly hate about it.

Ryan: I love the music part of it. I love our fans. I love playing live shows. The question answers itself…What part of the music business do you love & hate? I love the music, I hate the business... as we go into our late 20’s and I’ve been playing music with these guys for ten years and we know each other better than anybody…even our own families. We know each other. When you put that much business and so much work that goes into it, it’s hard to sustain that same feeling that you had when you’re 19 years old and playing in your parents garage…the world didn’t matter and what the world thought of the band didn’t matter-there were no bottom lines, no advances and no managers-[the business] it changes it and everyday we remind ourselves that we’re the luckiest people on earth. We have to keep having fun doing it and you can’t let the business part of it overrun what we do. You just have to keep yourself in check.

MusicPix: The duality of “Lights & Sounds” intrigues me as it feels like it is representative of the doubled-edged sword of success. Is that what you had in mind?

Ryan: Yeah, totally. It applied to a lot of things and not just music. I put this character into a few of these songs because I didn’t have a character in my own life at the time. I didn’t have a relationship at that time, there wasn’t a whole lot of turmoil with other people, it was more with myself. I had to create something that I could have that relationship. I had to define that relationship within myself that’s why she’s appeared in a few of the songs. That duality is like being in love with someone…there’s always a good side and a bad side to all of that. Having someone to be with but there are always freedoms that you have to give up. You can apply that double –edged sword perspective to many aspects of your life.

MusicPix: You’re the primarily writer which requires a ton of trust from your band mates. Trust is important in any relationship but in business, it’s critical because trust can bear the weight of success or failure. How do handle that pressure?

Ryan: I don’t know. I just do my best to be a good leader and make keep us all on the same page and try to keep everyone equal. I never want anyone to feel that I’m abusing the position of the face of the band, or the frontman or whatever it is I am. I try to do the things that hold the trust of the other guys in the band and I truly believe that I can’t do this without them. I couldn’t go off and start some other project on my own and be successful because I fell into this band many years after they started and I found the right people to play with. I don’t think that I could do it with other people or by myself. I’m the primarily writer, but it’s still a team effort. I don’t think that it’s any different than being a captain of a team.

MusicPix: Your response feels full of integrity to me…I hear it in your voice so I know it to be true…

MusicPix: Prior to your enormous success, I understand that one of your original goals was to be on the Warped Tour. Having done that and beyond, what are your goals now?

Ryan: Honestly, for me and I can’t speak for everyone, I would not complain if we were to do another record and get back to the place that we where, as far as the success of the band, that we were with “Ocean Avenue.” We made it that far and I think that we can do it again. For us, it was never about being famous but it’s just about taking the band as far as we can and some bands choose not to do that. We’ve always believed that the sky is the limit. The bands that we like are the one’s that mattered for many many years and we’d like to becone of those bands. It may sound ambitious but…

MusicPix: Nothing wrong with wanting to soar with the eagles…What are the ingredients of a band that can pass the test of time?

Ryan: The most important ingredients, for lack of better words, are hit songs. You have to write songs that identify with every person on this earth. You have to write songs that cross over genres of music to people who wouldn’t normally listen to a rock band- they have to find something in a song that inspires them. A band like U2, or a Pearl Jam, or even an obscure band sound like Oasis, that have melodies and sometimes lyrics that cross…a band like Nirvana. Those were the bands that I grew up on. A couple guys in the band grew up with Beatles and the Beach Boys and are more Indy rock minded…I would love to be that way, but that’s just not the way I found music growing up. I was one of those kids that found music through the radio and MTV and sort of defined a little bit of what I do and how I write my music now. If I was raised on Indy rock, I would have probably turned out a totally different musician. For me, I enjoy being a part of the big picture and it’s fun to get into the pack of bands and artists that are charting and that have songs on the radio and try to be different and try to beat the system and beat the game…that’s all a part of the fun for me, for us.

MusicPix: I’m curious about the scene in video for “Rough Landing Holly” as your put on the operating table… was this sort of a premonition to your throat surgery?

Ryan: We shot the video quite a bit before and it’s yeah it was kind of funny that we did the video and released the single and we had to completely halt all touring and everything because of my surgery. But it was a totally directorial thing. Mark Webb, the director that does our music video is a pretty brilliant dude I think. It was just a part of his vision of the song.

MusicPix: Are you 100% recovered?

Ryan: So far so good. The shows have been really good.

MusicPix: I understand that you’re interested in acting?

Ryan: It may be down the road. There’s nothing worse than than that stereotype of ‘oh, I was in a band and now I get to be an actor.’ My whole life…that’s what I did. I didn’t start playing music until I was 12 or 13 years old and even then, music was on the back burner because the whole thing was to get into school. My dream at that time was to go to Boston University and be in their BFA theater program. I ended up at Florida State University in their BFA acting program but I was in a conservatory and it was the road I was on. If I ever get lucky enough to do something with it, I’m sure I’ll get the stereotype of ‘oh, look, you know, now he wants to be an actor.’ Especially right now, it’s not even in the passenger seat of Yellowcard.

MusicPix: Whose decision was it to move to NYC (Pete Mosley/bass) after the phenomenal success of Ocean Avenue?

Ryan: We made it together. We were in New York City on the Warped Tour…either the Philly or Jersey date- and we were up in the city at this hotel and up on the roof having a party. We were just out on the balcony and we said that we should move here. Everyone says you’ve got to live there for a year. We need to do it right now.

Yellowcard Concert Photos

MusicPix: We have a series of questions that we ask every artist we interview called the MusicPix Six:

MusicPix: What is the first musical instrument you played and at what age?

Ryan: The piano when I was probably about 7 or 8 years old.

MusicPix: What artist/performer influenced you the most?

Ryan: The most? Jeez. It’s such an even tie between Green Day and Ben Folds. But if I had to pick one, Ben Folds.

MusicPix: If you weren’t in your current band, what band would you like to play in?

Ryan: I would like to play with Ben Folds. He’s such an inspiring songwriter to me. Not so much musically but more lyrically…as I got into my late teens, I found out about that band, listening to those records really opened up something inside of me that I was able to express myself differently than I had before and that’s when I really started writing songs that people would say, ‘oh, wow, that’s a really cool song.’ For me, I would really like to be a part of something –to collaborate and write songs together. He’s five or six years older than I am but we grew up in the same area in the South and I think that we would have a lot of similar stories.

MusicPix: What are your 3 ‘desert island’ albums?

Ryan: Ben Folds Five- Whatever and Ever Amen, Weezer-Pinkerton, and, and, and, uh, Green Day-Nimrod.

MusicPix: Who do you think is the most over-rated in the music industry?

Ryan: Oh man, come on, I can’t answer that question! It would get me in trouble. It’s hard to say, but I think that our genre, but we’re a part of that. Somewhere along the way, it got really easy to just put a record together and you didn’t have to be that good at playing guitar. It’s more about other stuff. I don’t know what that stuff is…

MusicPix: The packaging of that stuff and not the talent…

Ryan: Yeah, yeah…It’s become really easy to just make it. I’d like to believe that we were before that…that we were a part of building the scene that is driving right now. We could go into another entire section of the interview because I went through this really dark time and got really bitter about it and I detached myself from the scene of bands. If I had any regrets, and I don’t have many of them, that would be one of them. I think that that’s not any way to live thinking that someone doesn’t deserve what they have and you don’t really know how hard they worked for what they have. I think that we would maybe be doing a little better right now if we had embraced our peers and embraced the other bands that are our age and do what we do. I think that I could have done better at that. I think everybody works for what the get for the most part. And those who don’t, those would be the ones I would call over-rated.

MusicPix: What’s your ‘perfect world?’

Ryan: I hope that one day I have a family…a good looking woman by my side by my side that loves me with a couple of cherubs running around. My deck on the beach, on the Atlantic Ocean in Florida near my family, is kind of what I’m shooting for here.

MusicPix: One of the new songs is about fatherhood and I could feel that longing to be a parent… It’s a gas and I hope that you get to experience that world!

Ryan: Me too…

The Band

Ryan Key – Lead vocals, Rhythm Guitar
Sean Mackin – Violin, Backing Vocals
Peter Mosely – Bass, Backing vocals
Longineu Warren Parsons III ("LP") – Drums
Ryan Mendez – Lead Guitar, Backing vocals

Discography

Midget Tossing-1997
Where We Stand-1999 (re-released in 2004 and 2005)
Still Standing EP -2000
One for the Kids-2001
The Underdog EP -2002
Ocean Avenue -2003
Lights and Sounds -2006
Sessions@AOL EP (released on iTunes)

The Tour

07/19/06 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade
07/20/06 Saint Petersburg, FL Jannus Landing
07/22/06 Harrington, DE Delaware State Fair
07/24/06 Lake Buena Vista, FL House Of Blues
07/25/06 Jacksonville, FL Plush
07/26/06 Houston, TX Verizon Wireless Theater
07/28/06 Fort Worth, TX Ridglea Theatre
07/29/06 Bonner Springs, KS Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
08/01/06 Denver, CO Ogden Theatre
08/03/06 Los Angeles, CA The Wiltern LG
08/04/06 San Diego, CA San Diego Street Scene
08/05/06 Las Vegas, NV House Of Blues
08/07/06 Tucson, AZ The Rialto
08/08/06 Albuquerque, NM Sunshine Theatre
08/09/06 Tempe, AZ Marquee Theatre
08/10/06 Bakersfield, CA Rabobank Arena
08/23/06 Santiago, CHL Teatro Caupolican
08/24/06 Buenos Aires, ARG Luna Park
08/26/06 Mexico City, MEX Salon 21
08/27/06 Monterrey, MEX Auditorio Del Technologico
09/02/06 Seattle, WA Bumbershoot Festival
09/28/06 Norfolk, VA The NorVa

By
Gwyn Tyme