Music

Getting on board with Yellowcard's acoustic tour

By Erin Podolsky
Detroit Free Press

03-20-2008

Lead singer Ryan Key, left, and violinist (yes, violinist) Sean Mackin are members of Yellowcard now out on an acoustic tour. Photo: Special to The Star

Yellowcard has been around since 1997, although the pop-punk group didn't really hit it big until it signed with Capitol Records for 2003's Ocean Avenue.

The group's current tour, backing 2007 album Paper Walls, finds Yellowcard playing acoustic shows. We caught up with lead singer Ryan Key as he prepared for rehearsal for this new breed of show at home in Los Angeles.

Q: Is the band roster different than usual for this tour?

A: Since the tour's acoustic, it's just going to be Sean Mackin, our violinist; guitarist Ryan Mendez and myself. And then we've hired a cello player — or cellist I guess you would call it.

Q: What prompted you to do a lo-fi tour this time out?

A: (Drummer) Longineu Parsons had some stuff going on, and we didn't want to not tour. And we're not going to tour with another drummer, so we wanted to give him the time he needed and we figured it was a good opportunity to do this.

Q: You've done a lot now with MySpace and iTunes. Why?

A: MySpace is something that while we were making our second record for Capitol, it sort of exploded on the music scene. We were so focused on making that record that we kind of missed the MySpace boat when it sailed. So we spent a lot of time getting ready for Paper Walls working on MySpace and answering messages.

Q: Do you have an iPod?

A: I do have an iPod. I have LimeWire on my computer but only because there was a song that I could not find on iTunes.

Q: Yeah, right. Nice try, wise guy.

A: I've downloaded one song illegally probably in the last eight years! When Napster came out, we all did it for like five seconds, but then when we realized what it was doing, we as musicians said, "We should probably not do this." But a couple of months ago, I was looking for this certain song, and I couldn't find it. It was actually this Tracy Chapman song that a girlfriend of mine and I were into in high school; it was like this epic breakup-I'll-wait-for-you song called "The Promise." And I hadn't heard it, and we were talking about it, so I was like, "Oh I'm going to download that because I haven't listened to it since I was 16." But I couldn't find it, so I went on and illegally swapped it. Sorry, Tracy Chapman, like you care.