I feel like it’s just kind of an overall Mayday Parade sound. They’re songs that I think - It’s a good representation of where our band is at right now and what we’re heading towards. And then when the pandemic happened and all of our plans kind of got pushed aside, we thought, “We don’t want to wait until we finish this full-length to put something out.” We just kind of felt like, I don’t know, it would be a good thing to do what we could right now with all of this going on and we decided it made the most sense to take these three songs and put them on an EP and save - We have about three or four other songs that we’re kind of holding off and will go towards the next full-length.īut just in general, they’re three songs that I love very much, that I feel extremely proud of. We had six or seven songs and that was really kind of building up towards putting out a full-length. We actually had gone in both at the end of last year and then in March of this year at two different times and just recorded a handful of songs. Yeah, I mean, what’s crazy is that we didn’t even plan to do this three-song EP, it just kind of was after we had recorded the songs that it came together this way.
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So if you’d like to talk to me a little bit more about the different themes explored in the EP - are there any specific feelings you were hoping to evoke from your listeners? That’s sort of the overall idea, I guess. It’s just kind of moving on, moving forward, and not getting weighed down by negative things in all of our lives right now. So I think a lot of it is, right, like a mindset. And I think that is certainly appropriate right now, with everything that’s going on. I just kind of felt like, the whole EP sort of has this vibe of moving forward and moving on to better things. I mean obviously it’s a lyric in the song, “First Train.” You know, take the first train out of here. Yeah, for sure, that was kind of the idea. So the EP’s title, “Out of Here,” seems like it could be referencing a state of mind. Just trying to stay busy and trying to keep creating in any way that we can, really. Like, recording acoustic versions of songs and covers and whatever. But we’re trying to just make the most of it and we’re trying to do as many things as we can while we’re so limited and while we can’t get out on the road. But there’s also times where I just kind of get, like, frustrated and I can’t even really focus.
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And it’s like, things are just so not-normal that it’s hard because when I do have time to sit and mess around with a guitar for a couple hours, there are definitely times where I write something that I love and I’m able to make some progress. But also it’s just like, I don’t know, it’s like my brain is kind of all over the place. And I’ve been writing a lot, but it’s difficult to even have as much time to spend on it with so many things going on at home. Like, we’re kind of getting ready to hopefully go in and finish up a full-length album before too long. But it also, in a lot of ways, makes things difficult - especially for songwriting. So it’s like, in some ways, kind of nice to not always be jumping back and forth between two different lives and there’s a lot of things that we’re able to focus on with that time. I mean, in the past fifteen years of this band - since we started almost exactly fifteen years ago - this is the longest that I’ve been home in some time without going out and being on the road and being together with the guys. There are things that actually, for us, have been kind of nice in some ways. It’s been so crazy for so many different reasons, but obviously the pandemic being kind of at the forefront of all of that. But I have to ask, has the pandemic had much of an effect on your creative processes?
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So, you recorded in early March, kind of right before lockdowns started happening. I got a chance to speak with Derek Sanders about what he and the band have been up to during lockdown, the inspiration behind their new music, and their unplanned decision to release an EP. In fact, they’ve just released a single called “Lighten Up, Kid” which is to be followed by a brand new EP, and there’s even talk of a full-length album next year. They’ve put out pretty consistent releases in their fifteen years as a band, and despite the utter chaos of 2020, they’re showing no signs of slowing down. They’ve made us smile, dance, sing, and cry (probably more often than we’d like to admit). Having got their start in 2005, they’re a band that has truly grown with their fans. For many of us, Mayday Parade is a go-to band.