Mayday Parade have had a busy 2018 and plan on keeping their schedule packed through the end of the year. Back on June 15th, the band released their sixth studio album, Sunnyland — their first via Rise Records. Then they spent all summer long on the final cross-country edition of Warped Tour.
Subtream actually caught up with Mayday Parade guitarist Alex Garcia earlier this year to talk about Sunnyland and everything that went into it. Ahead of their upcoming fall tour, we were able to re-connect with Garcia to get fans excited for what is set to be an incredible tour, where the band will be supported by This Wild Life, Yellowcard’s William Ryan Key, and Oh, Weatherly.
After their stint on Warped Tour, Mayday Parade went quiet for a few months, Garcia explains. As a matter of fact, when we spoke this past Friday, he mentions that they had just completed their first day of rehearsals for their “Welcome to Sunnyland” fall tour. “Just constructing the set, making cool transitions and making that part of it,” he mentions while highlighting that the band usually gets together a couple days before tour to rehearse, especially with new material that they have never played live before. “Any time we take a couple months off or whatever, we kind of want to do that just so that we’re fresh. It’d be a shit show if we didn’t do it.”
As was mentioned already, Sunnyland came out back in June of this year, and then the band hit the road on Warped Tour. Due to the shorter sets involved with that tour, Mayday Parade wound up only playing two songs off Sunnyland live — “Piece of Your Heart” and “It’s Hard To Be Religious When Certain People Are Never Incinerated By Bolts of Lightning.” The band didn’t have much time between announcing the record and releasing it, about a month and a half or so, compared to the usual near-three months given to promote their previous records. Garcia states he wasn’t sure for the entire reason for this, but stated the band did want it out in time for Warped Tour.
With the quick album release and immediately going onto Warped Tour, Mayday Parade are eager to perform more Sunnyland songs and give fans the full experience. At the time of our conversation, Garcia wasn’t ready to spill how many new songs the band will be playing. However, outside of Warped Tour, the last full tour Mayday Parade did was a ten year anniversary tour for A Lesson In Romantics. This plays into the decision for the set, and though it will be a mix of their entire catalogue, Garcia explains that “There’s gonna be plenty of songs from A Lesson In Romantics, but any older song is gonna be from other albums as well, it’s not gonna be so A Lesson In Romantics heavy.”
“It’s very exciting,” Garcia mentions when talking about the band looking forward to finally doing a proper tour for the new record. “Sometimes, we’ll do tours well after a cycle is over and there’s kind of, like, no overall aesthetic to it. This is for [Sunnyland] and everything has a nice look to it. It’s cool. It’ll be very interesting to see how people to react some of the new songs.”
This is as much as Garcia will mention in regards to that aesthetic that the band have created for the “Welcome to Sunnyland” tour. While he is standing in the their rehearsal space looking at the stage set up, Garcia won’t drop any specifics on what they have in store for this tour. All of that being said, he does state that the designers for this tour created the set up specifically for Sunnyland in order to make that certain aesthetic that they had wanted.
While the wait has been long for a proper tour supporting Sunnyland, Garcia thinks that might ultimately be for the better. “A lot of times, I always find that, when you release an album, it takes a long time for you to see — or at least for Mayday Parade to see — any sort of effect from whether or not people are into it,” he mentions. He then recalls the first time they played “Oh Well, Oh Well” live and how it was nothing but blank stares and dead silence, and now it is one of their more popular live songs. “I always told myself, at least, that it took a solid year before I saw a noticeable like ‘Okay, that’s a song that people want to hear us play live.'”
That time to digest is important, Garcia feels, allowing fans themselves to feel out the music, learn the word, and establish which tracks are their favorites. He contrasts this to fans going to see The Story So Far or Real Friends, where fans are constantly moving in the crowd and up on the barricade, something that he doesn’t notice as much with Mayday Parade shows. “I always tell myself that it’s because they’re listening and they’re really watching the show, and they’re not so much participating in it, and that’s okay. That’s not a bad thing,” he explains.
Before our conversation ends, we briefly talk about what Mayday Parade has planned for the rest of Sunnyland and promoting the album. Garcia continues to stay hush overall on details, but promises that they are working on some music videos for other songs to push from the album. There is no revealed date or anything when to be on the lookout for those, but the Sunnyland era is very clearly just getting started. It starts tonight with their hometown show in Tallahassee, Florida, and it should be one for the ages.
Check the dates below to see if Mayday Parade are coming near you on this “Welcome to Sunnyland” tour.
10/02 – Tallahassee, FL @ The Moon
10/04 – Birmingham, AL @ Iron City
10/05 – in New Orleans, LA @ HOB
10/06 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
10/07 – San Antonio, TX @ Alamo City Music Hall
10/09 – Dallas, TX @ HOB
10/11 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
10/12 – Las Vegas, NV @ Vinyl @ Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
10/14 – San Diego, CA @ HOB
10/16 – Anaheim, CA @ HOB
10/17 – Berkeley, CA @ The UC Theatre
10/18 – Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades
10/20 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
10/21 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
10/23 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
10/24 – Denver, CO @ Summit Music Hall
10/26 – Chicago, IL @ HOB
10/27 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave
10/28 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
10/30 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
11/01 – Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
11/02 – Royal Oak, MI @ Royal Oak Music Theatre
11/03 – Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre
11/04 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
11/06 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
11/07- Toronto, ON @ Rebel
11/08 – Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom
11/09 – Sayreville, NJ @ Starland Ballroom
11/10 – Boston, MA @ HOB
11/13 – New York, NY @ PlayStation Theater
11/14 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore
11/15 – Silver Spring, MD @ Fillmore Silver Spring
11/16 – Charlotte, NC@ The Fillmore
11/17 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
11/18 – Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works
11/20 – Jacksonville, FL @ Maverick’s
11/21 – Tampa, FL @ The Ritz Ybor
11/23 – Lake Buena Vista, FL @ HOB
11/24 – Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution Live