The All-American Rejects (1/5)
Unless you never listen to the radio or watch TV, chances are you've heard The All-American Rejects. Their music has been used in adverts, video games, and trailers for Battlestar Galactica. They play radio-friendly crowd-pleasing rock music, and they are completely precious and wonderful and want your love. It has been brought to my attention that a large chunk of people I know have no idea who Mike Kennerty is, and to them I say, oh darlings you are in for a treat.
We should begin with a little history, and deal with the band one at a time. It all starts, you see, in a tiny town in Oklahoma.
The year is 1997. Titanic, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Alien: Resurrection are raking it in at the box office. The Spice Girls are unavoidable, taking over the music world with kickboxing and a push-up bra. New Labour gets into power in Britain with a landslide vote. Things, as their party music claims, can only get better. And in Stillwater, a small agricultural college town in Oklahoma, some people throw a party and book a covers band to play.
In this covers band is a fifteen-year-old boy. He's been playing guitar for several years, been teaching other kids to play for a few, and he can play other instruments too. He doesn't have a whole lot of friends at school. His parents own a flower shop, and when he was younger he broke into his sister's room to copy her rock album tapes. Everybody else in the band plays guitar, so he said he'd play drums. His name is Nick Wheeler.
Working the door at this party is a thirteen-year-old kid who plays football (American football, that is) and lives with his dad, who's been letting him stay up late if he can sing classic rock at the top of his voice since he was little. He's bright, but his favourite thing is goofing off. He's kind of chubby and doesn't have tons of friends at school. His parents are divorced, and his mother and stepdad had a daughter, so he's got a baby sister. He's never picked up an instrument and played it. His name is Tyson Ritter.
Tyson gets talking to some guys in the band who were playing at the party. He can play bass, he says, if they need a bass player. They say sure, that sounds good. At this point, he neglects to tell them that he's never played bass in his entire life. Instead, he goes home and asks his dad for a bass for Christmas. He gives up football, and keeps asking and asking and asking for a bass for Christmas. His dad is pretty disappointed in his decision to quit football, and Tyson's pretty convinced he's not going to get his bass. Until Christmas morning comes, and the last present turns out to be exactly what he wanted: a bass guitar. He locks himself in his room for the rest of the Christmas holidays and teaches himself at least something, so he can show his face to the band.
When he does, he confides to the drummer that he can't, in fact, play a note, except what he's taught himself. Nick says don't worry, I'll teach you. So Nick teaches him to play the bass, and helps him train his voice up enough that he can front the band, because Tyson's a pretty good singer and Nick thinks he could pull off being the frontman of a band.
One by one, the rest of the band drop out to do high school things, until in the end it's just Nick and Tyson. Tyson plays bass and sings, and Nick does everything else. Tyson loses weight by running the five miles to Nick's house composing songs in his head, and plays them for Nick when he gets there. They discover that they like writing songs together, so they keep on doing that.
At this point (1998), over in the town of Edmond, OK -- which is considerably bigger than Stillwater, boasting four Starbucks to Stillwater's ... none -- there is a band called Mr Crispy. It contains two people significant to this history.
Firstly, there is the guitar player. He is eighteen years old, and after high school he knows all he wants to do is music. He's a good player. His name is Mike Kennerty.
Secondly, there is the drummer. He is twenty years old, and he is hardcore. He deals coke, hash, and possibly ecstasy and the like. He tells a lot of stories about not getting caught by the cops. He is also a damn good drummer and a total sweetheart. His name is Chris Gaylor.
Mike is on the left, Chris in the middle sprawling all over a guy called Andy.
A few years pass. Over in Edmond, Mr Crispy at some point dispands, and Mike joins Euclid Crash; a band which has a female singer/keyboardist, Tory Ayers, and puts out an EP. It's punk rock, and it is, in this narrator's opinion, completely precious. Meanwhile, in Stillwater, Nick and Tyson come up with the name The All-American Rejects, and type it into a Borders database to check it isn't taken. It's the first one they've thought of that isn't, and so they keep it. (It is later discovered that there is another struggling band called The All-American Rejects, but given our Rejects' rise to success, the other band changed their name. Or, as Kennerty put it, they LOSE.)
In 2000, Nick graduates high school and goes to college all the way over in OK City. He lives in a frat house, though he doesn't join the frat, and gets drunk a lot. Within a month, he is flunking out, and he misses Tyson, so he drops out and goes back to Stillwater.
In 2001, they record some songs in Nick's room, and burn CDs to sell at gigs. They play Mike's College Bar and every other local venue (though Mike's is ... kind of it) and save up to tour more widely. At one point, they play Mike's with Euclid Crash, who they had previously played with at The Green Door in Oklahoma City.
By the summer of 2001, Nick and Tyson's tour has caught the attention of a small label, Doghouse. Their demo is picked out of the trash by the wife of an executive at Doghouse, and a representative from the label comes to see them in Tulsa. He signs them. They go back to Stillwater and start writing more songs. That autumn, they go to Tyson's grandmother's cabin out in the woods, just the two of them and their guitars, and write Swing, Swing.
Tyson finishes high school early. They both ask for nothing but money for Christmas. Tyson's dad, who is a used car salesman, sells them a van. Early 2002, they pack up the van and drive up to New York with $1000. They sleep on their producer's floor, lose a lot of weight because they can't afford much food, and record their first, self-titled, album. Tyson plays bass and sings, Nick plays everything else; guitars, keyboards, drums. When it's done, they drive back to Oklahoma and move into a house together, nicknamed the Batcave. There is a Batman sign with "THE REJECTS" in it hung over the door, to make it "official".
They've been playing for years, just the two of them; on stage, Nick sets up a drum machine to back them, but now they have a record deal and the band is starting to go somewhere, they need other members. They've kept in touch with Mike, and he is at that point free, so they ask him to join the band that summer. They have a drummer, a guy they know called Tim, but he leaves after a while so they need another drummer. They know Chris from around, and Mike's friends with him, but at first Nick and Tyson are wary of asking him to join the band because of his dealing -- though, as he says, he wasn't even dealing coke any more by then! He ends up joining in October of 2002, and the band is complete. Chris and Mike move into the Batcave.
They have a pretty big hit with Swing, Swing, and start touring more and more. Dreamworks Records picks them up, and they tour all over the world. They put out a tour DVD for the Too Bad For Hell tour. Summer 2003, Swing, Swing is all over the UK. They also release The Last Song and Time Stands Still and My Paper Heart from that album. They move out of the Batcave; Mike and Chris buy a house together in Oklahoma City, and Nick and Tyson move to Destin, Florida.
Interscope Records signs a deal with them, and then ... they disappear from the radar for a while. Chris and Mike set up a side project, a metal band called These Enzymes, and Nick and Tyson write songs for the next album. It takes them over a year, but in 2005 they release their second album, Move Along. Their first single, Dirty Little Secret, is a hit. They release Move Along, It Ends Tonight and Top Of the World and tour for two years straight, all over the world, playing festivals and small venues and huge venues. Their songs start appearing on commercials. They become TRL's darlings.
Now we come to the present. They are officially on hiatus, but keep playing one-off concerts and festivals. A second DVD, Tournado, is due for release on 17th July 2007. Mike and Chris just finished playing on Ben Weasel's new album. Nick and Tyson have gone home to work on new songs. So far, according to Nick, they have "one song. It kicks ASS." Firstly, I am excited; and secondly, that is such a Nick thing to say.
[Band history | pictures | music | video footage | teh gay]