after taking an indefinite hiatus these
pop punkers are finally ready to talk
about their time away from the band
welcome to watchmojo.com and today we’re
speaking with Ryan Keefe lead singer of
Yellowcard about their album southern
air and how it addresses their break
let’s talk about southern air tell us
what you guys were going for on that
right now it’s easy to kind of talk
about both the two records we’ve put out
posts hiatus the first one was driven by
the you know band comes back together
and they were charged and the energy
that we felt to go back out and tour
again and I think you feel that on that
record I mean there’s just in your face
constantly
whereas southern air being even though
it’s it’s the second record in the
process I think is more about the time
leading up to when you’re through
thinking yes say yes then that record
itself was
I think I had a chance to kind of look
back and realize how we’ve ended up back
where we are now and what led to that
and a lot of that from you it was my
time back home and I realize how
important those two or three years were
for me to be spending time with my
family and off the road and having sort
of an uncertain future and working a day
job I mean we you know we were out of
money and there was no we had no idea
what was gonna happen
at the beginning I mean we were pretty
convinced that that was it the yellow
card was gonna be done
and I think southern air is so much
about shedding the negativity in your
life and realizing you know how grateful
you are for the things you have in your
life and that’s that’s more what
inspired 70
now I want to talk about awakening a
little bit I want this to be
awakening tell me a bit about the
concept for that song and the video the
song was a riff that Ryan Mendez and I
wrote after Yellowcard had already kind
of disbanded for a while
definitely feel like it’s the best album
opener we’ve ever written I mean it’s
just I love starting the record with
that song I love starting the show with
that song the video I just got an email
saying hey the label wants to do this
animated video we need like a funny tour
story our best to our story kind of for
funniest one we already had done an
animated version for MTV Canada so I was
like I know what I’m gonna do
you know I don’t I don’t know what
pg-13-rated tour story I have to do for
a video but I remembered a story that a
friend of mine had told me about one of
the members of the band getting left at
a truck stop and having to hitchhike and
all this stuff crazy stuff to make it to
the show the next day and so I just kind
of wrote a treatment as if that was
happening to me happening to yellow card
awakening any favorite to collaborations
from them we’d never done any kind of
co-writing before and on this record I
was sort of doing some weekend
songwriting sessions with different
people not not for Yellowcard just just
getting out and working on songwriting I
had the chance to start working with
Patrick stone has always been a friend
of mine but we obviously got a lot
closer writing songs together and our
producer gave us the challenge kind of
of writing a song in a certain tempo and
we were like why and he said well that’s
everything left on the radio right now
this time in this time signature and we
don’t really care about radio it’s not
really a part of what we do anymore and
we’re fine without it but we thought
okay let’s try it
it’s super pop it’s a really pop song
for yellow card I had no idea where to
go with it and melodically and lyrically
and I was working with Patrick on a
couple of other things and I was like
hey man you know you’re pretty good at
writing pop songs what do you think
about listening in this demo and see if
you have any ideas
so together we wrote all the melodies in
the Earth’s
it was a co-write that I thought and we
thought his bam-bams would do it excited
about it wouldn’t be like Oh yellow
cards you know doing these producer
co-writes to get a hit you know that’s
not really what we were doing I was just
hanging out with my buddy and song ended
up on the record so most people seem to
be pretty stuff
pop punkers are finally ready to talk
about their time away from the band
welcome to watchmojo.com and today we’re
speaking with Ryan Keefe lead singer of
Yellowcard about their album southern
air and how it addresses their break
let’s talk about southern air tell us
what you guys were going for on that
right now it’s easy to kind of talk
about both the two records we’ve put out
posts hiatus the first one was driven by
the you know band comes back together
and they were charged and the energy
that we felt to go back out and tour
again and I think you feel that on that
record I mean there’s just in your face
constantly
whereas southern air being even though
it’s it’s the second record in the
process I think is more about the time
leading up to when you’re through
thinking yes say yes then that record
itself was
I think I had a chance to kind of look
back and realize how we’ve ended up back
where we are now and what led to that
and a lot of that from you it was my
time back home and I realize how
important those two or three years were
for me to be spending time with my
family and off the road and having sort
of an uncertain future and working a day
job I mean we you know we were out of
money and there was no we had no idea
what was gonna happen
at the beginning I mean we were pretty
convinced that that was it the yellow
card was gonna be done
and I think southern air is so much
about shedding the negativity in your
life and realizing you know how grateful
you are for the things you have in your
life and that’s that’s more what
inspired 70
now I want to talk about awakening a
little bit I want this to be
awakening tell me a bit about the
concept for that song and the video the
song was a riff that Ryan Mendez and I
wrote after Yellowcard had already kind
of disbanded for a while
definitely feel like it’s the best album
opener we’ve ever written I mean it’s
just I love starting the record with
that song I love starting the show with
that song the video I just got an email
saying hey the label wants to do this
animated video we need like a funny tour
story our best to our story kind of for
funniest one we already had done an
animated version for MTV Canada so I was
like I know what I’m gonna do
you know I don’t I don’t know what
pg-13-rated tour story I have to do for
a video but I remembered a story that a
friend of mine had told me about one of
the members of the band getting left at
a truck stop and having to hitchhike and
all this stuff crazy stuff to make it to
the show the next day and so I just kind
of wrote a treatment as if that was
happening to me happening to yellow card
awakening any favorite to collaborations
from them we’d never done any kind of
co-writing before and on this record I
was sort of doing some weekend
songwriting sessions with different
people not not for Yellowcard just just
getting out and working on songwriting I
had the chance to start working with
Patrick stone has always been a friend
of mine but we obviously got a lot
closer writing songs together and our
producer gave us the challenge kind of
of writing a song in a certain tempo and
we were like why and he said well that’s
everything left on the radio right now
this time in this time signature and we
don’t really care about radio it’s not
really a part of what we do anymore and
we’re fine without it but we thought
okay let’s try it
it’s super pop it’s a really pop song
for yellow card I had no idea where to
go with it and melodically and lyrically
and I was working with Patrick on a
couple of other things and I was like
hey man you know you’re pretty good at
writing pop songs what do you think
about listening in this demo and see if
you have any ideas
so together we wrote all the melodies in
the Earth’s
it was a co-write that I thought and we
thought his bam-bams would do it excited
about it wouldn’t be like Oh yellow
cards you know doing these producer
co-writes to get a hit you know that’s
not really what we were doing I was just
hanging out with my buddy and song ended
up on the record so most people seem to
be pretty stuff
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