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Lead singer Tyson Ritter details the band’s hectic week playing viral house parties and shares what’s next
The All-American Rejects don’t put up with bullshit. So when they announced their new album and played it to a crowd of industry people in Los Angeles, it was too much inauthenticity to handle. “We were like, ‘Man, this is what everybody does, and I fucking hate that this is what everybody feels obligated to do,'” lead singer Tyson Ritter tells Rolling Stone.
The next night, the band played a free show for a local college radio station at the University of Southern California, just a few blocks away from their last gig. It felt like a whole different world. “It was feral, alive, and vibrant,” Ritter says, recalling the young, boisterous crowd.
That was early May. Since then, the All-American Rejects have tried to redefine live music with their DIY house party tour. The band put on impromptu live shows in six U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Midwest flyover stops like Ames, Iowa, and Columbia, Missouri, before wrapping the whole thing up in Nashville. They’ve made stages out of backyards, bowling alleys, and cornfields with videos of their system-defying speeches and raucous crowds going viral. In just a couple of weeks, the All-American Rejects’ house parties became the hottest show experience of the season.
