The All-American Rejects are In Their New Era, and They’re Having a Ball
Story // Molly Hudelson
Photography // Mallory Turner
Photo Editing // Bianca Mehnert
MUA // Abigail Smith
Photo Assistant // Noelle Denton
Location // Projkt LA Studios
This fall, The All-American Rejects released their take on Harvey Danger’s iconic 90s staple “Flagpole Sitta.” The cover comes four years since the band’s last release, and more than a decade since their last full-length album – and while they never made a formal break-up or hiatus announcement, guitarist Nick Wheeler reflects that “after touring and making records the same way for a decade, we just decided to take a step back and have some life experiences after just doing the band for all of our twenties.”
Throughout this downtime, The Rejects still played the occasional one-off show or tour support slot– but a string of festival appearances in 2022 “made us all aware that not only were the fans still there for us, but our love for this band and doing this together was still there.” A spark was re-ignited, inspiring them to embark on a headlining tour in the summer of 2023 to “see if we can do this… if people give a shit and come out and see our shows.” While they were unsure of what to expect, the Wet Hot All-American Summer Tour proved to be their biggest headlining tour to date, with over 200,000 tickets sold.
During this pivotal run, The Rejects were “intentional but also trepidatious” about recording and releasing new music together. The road brought many late night post-show hangs in the front lounge of their tour bus, where Wheeler’s phone was often connected to Bluetooth, playing “a lot of nineties shit” like “Flagpole Sitta.” Upon hearing the song one night, bassist Tyson Ritter quickly declared that they should cover it. Covering a song that they all loved and had grown up listening to proved to be the perfect opportunity to see how it felt getting in the studio again; Ritter calls the recording process – which took place this July – “the purest moment we’d had in a while.”
This past spring, The Rejects performed a stretch of shows at Navy bases, which Ritter shares were a turning point for the band’s renewed positive outlook. The Rejects had formed in 1999 in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a small town where “everything is owned by one guy;” starting the band felt like their only hope at getting out. He thinks back to their mindset at the time: “Holy shit, if we don’t do this, we’ll actually never know what the world is like. We’ll never know what vast communities of culture look like…. In the year 2000, 24 years ago, if you didn’t leave your state, you were condemned to only understanding your world as this tiny little thing – until the internet took off and connectivity became something that was worldwide.”
But it wasn’t easy. Ritter recounts the early days of touring: “I didn’t talk for 12 hours every day. My voice was destroyed every day. I was always recovering.” Performing, he says, is a great privilege, but life on the road requires sacrifice. Wheeler acknowledges the challenges of life on the road and adds that part of being able to enjoy it now is getting older and having to take better care of himself. “If I don’t workout and stretch consistently, I feel like complete dog shit. So just being more aware of that and treating ourselves better, that probably has something to do with it.”
That optimism and enjoyment is evident in the Rejects’ brand new video for “Flagpole Sitta.” Shot by the band’s tour videographer, Andy Knight, it combines footage of the band on stage, in the recording studio, and on their tour bus over the past two years. Discussing the video, Wheeler thinks back to the rejuvenation they felt in the fall of 2022: “People were reaching out to us saying, ‘it looks like you guys are having so much fun.’… It’s been magical the last couple of years, and we just wanted to share that.”
Although many fans have stuck with them for years, the audience demographics at an All-American Rejects show in 2024 are “all over the map,” Wheeler says. “You don’t really know an All-American Rejects fan when you see one. We were never a lifestyle band where people wanted to dress like us. We just wore vintage t-shirts and jeans.” Thanks to streaming services, kids are finding the All-American Rejects and not realizing or caring that some of the songs are more than 20 years old. “It feels really good that people are finding our band in a more organic, pure way, still at that impressionable age where you find music that you’re going to love forever.”
“We’re very different people and in a very different place personally and musically,” Wheeler goes on to say. “And so if we are to move forward with new music, we’re going to challenge ourselves and probably challenge you guys too, but hopefully it’s something that we’re all excited about.” They don’t have concrete plans for a new record yet – Wheeler says the group are just “vibing.” “We’re having a ball and yeah, we can’t wait to see what happens after this song, be it in the studio or whatever, and get out there and play some more shows.”
