PropertyOfZack sat down with Derek Sanders in New Jersey not too long ago at the beginning of the band’s tour with All Time Low for a short interview. Derek and I discussed the new tour, their self-titled album, switching from Atlantic to ILG, and more. Read up and enjoy!

We’re just a few days into your summer tour with All Time Low, The Starting Line, and We Are The In Crowd. How have the first few shows been?
It’s been awesome. There have only been two shows so far, but they’ve been so much fun. It’s good to be out again with All Time Low; we’ve toured with them a few times in the past. They’re great dudes and are such a good band and are fun to watch live. We’ve toured with We Are The In Crowd before too, and they’re great people. It’s good to be with friends. We all also love The Starting Line a lot.
POZ: It’s set to be a pretty massive tour any way that you split it, but is it just a little bit more of an added bonus that The Starting Line are out here for a few shows with you now?
Derek: Of course. I only wish they were on the whole tour because they’re only on four shows. We did Soundwave and they were on that and we did Slam Dunk and they were on that, so we’ve gotten to see them a lot.
 
Before this tour you guys headed out to Japan with The Summer Set, Anarbor, and With The Punches. How was that tour? 
That was incredible and such a good time. All those bands were so fun to hang out with. We really hadn’t hung with any of those bands a whole lot before that tour, so we all became good friends and had a really good experience. It was awesome.
 
Mayday Parade released “Oh Well, Oh Well” just a few days ago and fans were hit pretty hard by it. Was the reaction better than expected?
From what I’ve looked at, it seems like a lot of people like it. We all love that song. We’re playing it on this tour for the first time.
POZ: Have fans been into it live?
Derek: Obviously it’s a little weird to play a new song for the first time, but it seemed cool and it’s really fun to play.

We’ve spoken before just about how even though you guys are happy with what Anywhere But Here did for the band that the actual music got a little bit away from what you wanted to be. Is it just a great feeling to know that the fans are right back behind you with the sound of the new song?
From the beginning, that’s all we really were about; making music that we loved and wanted to play. It’s why we all started doing this in the first place, so it’s good to go back to that and to make an album with that being the only priority. I feel like that’s hopefully why people have liked us all along.
 
Is the rest of the album going to be in a similar vein?
I think so. There are a lot of songs that have different feels to them, which is what we always try to do. There are definitely a couple ballads, which I love. I’ve always loved doing the ballads. They’re some of my favorite. I think it’s a pretty good representation of the album.
 
When might we see another new song released?
This isn’t set in stone, but I would think maybe in the beginning of September or something. The album’s out on October 4^th, so I’d imagine maybe a month before that.
 
Is there a music video in the works for any song?
We’re trying to do a music video for “Oh Well,” and we’ve had it in the works for a long time. It’s taken us longer than we thought. We wanted to have it done and out before the album comes out, but we’re in the works for it. We came up with the whole concept ourselves for the video and hopefully it’ll be really cool if we can do it how we want to do it.
 
The album was announced, but then it took another week or so for it to be announced that Independent Label Group would be releasing the record rather than Atlantic. Can you discuss what happened with Atlantic?
A lot of it had to do with radio not being a big focus for our band for all of our career. We’ve focussed on touring and building our fan base that way. We’re not against radio, but that’s the biggest thing Atlantic had to offer.We talked to them about going somewhere else because we loved the label but we thought that it was a weird fit for the band. We were more comfortable on Fearless, a small independent label, where we were more of a priority. It’s a long story with a lot to it, but they let us go, and ILG picked us up. We worked with them before for A Lesson In Romantics. They’re great guys and they were really stoked on the album. We’re more comfortable on an independent label where we’re more of a priority. 
 
This tour ends in late-August. When can we expect to see a new support tour or headlining tour revealed for you guys in the fall?
I’m pretty sure we’re going to be going out right about at the time that the album comes out in the beginning of October. We’re going to do a headline tour. I can’t say the bands yet, but it’s going to be really cool. It’ll be a full US tour in October and November. I would imagine we’ll have December off after that, and then we’ll be doing a full solid year in 2012. We’ve done a lot of international stuff this year and we want to keep that up and go to even more places. We’re really excited about it.