Recently I reviewed Mayday Parade’s EP “Valdosta”. Well, this past summer I had the opportunity to interview lead singer Derek Sanders [second from left in picture] while the band was on Warped Tour. Check out the interview below!
Everyone has embarrassing moments happen to them. In most cases, they only happen in front of maybe the 25 students in your math class. My most embarrassing moment not only happened in front of a band I look up to, but also 200 people who I’ve never met. And usually people don’t talk about that moment ever again. But me? Well, I decided to blog about it. If anyone has been to the Marcus Ampletheatre on the Summerfest grounds, they know that behind the stage there is a huge wall with doors and balconies. What few people know is that those rooms are where the press area/rooms are. To get to the room I had my interview with Derek in, I had to walk across the balcony during the middle of VersaEmerge’s set. Kind of awkward, standing above roughly 200 people. Anyways, when the interview was over, I was dreading walking across the balcony again, but I had to so I could get back downstairs. What I didn’t realize was that the door that was to the other press room that I had to walk through to get downstairs was locked. I initially turned around to go back inside the room where the interview was held so I could ask Derek how to get back down. But the thing is…that door was locked, too. So, there I was stuck up on the balcony, in the middle of VersaEmerge’s set, standing awkwardly above 200 people, who occasionally looked up and pointed at me. Worst case scenario happened and I ended up interrupting an interview someone was having with Derek by knocking really hard on the door and making a fool out of myself, but hey, I didn’t want to be stuck up there forever and we all got a pretty good laugh from it.
As I mentioned above, and also in one of my first posts on here, many crazy things happened on the day of Warped tour for me. In the middle of the interview, Derek and I strayed away from asking and answering questions and started hanging out and talking about random stuff with the other people who were in the press room with us. If you watch the video you can see in the first image that we’re sitting on a giant reclining couch. Derek got a smidge lazy (I would be, too, if I had to run around all day for 2 1/2 months!) and decided to put up the leg rest. We kept talking and when we decided to get back to the interview, he wanted to put down the leg rest. The thing is…it didn’t want to go down. We tried a couple times and then ended up agreeing on blaming the group of people who were in the room before us. We’re such nice people (; I found out later that day that the couch did get fixed, but then Derek broke it again by trying to put the leg rest up. Moral of the story: you will never have a dull moment if you’re with Derek Sanders from Mayday Parade.