Getting a personal tour of the haunted pool at the Rave from Sean Mackin of Yellowcard, lava lamps, and randomly running into Stephen Gomez (bassist of the Summer Set) while in the haunted pool. Sounds like a typical interview, right? Okay… so maybe the interview I had with Sean Mackin, violinist for Yellowcard, wasn’t your average interview, but it was definitely an adventure in itself. Let me start from the beginning of all the craziness that went on that night.
If you have ever been to the Rave, there is a 99% chance you’ve heard that the venue is haunted. The ‘hot spot’ that everyone tries to sneak into is the pool in the basement of the venue. Personally, I’ve tried to get down there roughly 3 times, but failed every time, so when Sean told his tour manager that we’d take the shortcut through the pool area to get to the dressing rooms where the interview would be held, my friend and I were ecstatic to say the very least. After going past security that guarded the door to the pool, I got a little creeped out. The lighting makes it seem like you’re in a sepia colored photograph and the overall vibe of the place is very eerie.
After passing through the pool not encountering any so-called ghosts and running into Stephen Gomez while playing a Lady Antebellum song on his acoustic guitar, the interview begun in a very 1960’s styled dressing room. I’ve interviewed roughly 15 musicians, but nobody has taught me as much about the music industry as Sean Mackin. Sean has been playing the violin for roughly 20 years now, while the band has been together for 11 years and gave me some valid tips on how to have such great success as Yellowcard has had. “You always need to balance between hardwork and friendship and business. Any time there’s money involved, it’s always going to be strained at a different level. I think that’s important, as long as you don’t loose track of that.”
Yellowcard has recently released their first album since their hiatus from 2008-2010 with their 7th release, When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes. When asked about the sound of their newest album, Sean quite simply stated that “it’s awesome.” Getting into more detail about the album, Sean stated, “It’s our best record yet. We kind of blended all of our sounds and didn’t try really hard; we got together and wrote a bunch of songs. It was the first time we wrote since our hiatus, and we were living in different areas so we were flying back and forth, and emailing songs; it was a really fun time for each of us. It was exciting, since we haven’t written songs in a couple of years. What you get is our most well rounded work to date.” Although the members of Yellowcard live in different parts of the US, it didn’t stop them from producing the very high quality music their fans expect from them. “Usually we have 4 months to do stuff, but this time we did it in 7 weeks. It felt very much like a Yellowcard project. A lot of laughing, a lot of frustrating moments. The studio is very unforgiving. If you’re not good at something, it’s very apparent.” While being in the crowd for Yellowcard’s performance later that night on the Milwaukee stop of the Dirty Work tour, you could tell that the album lived up to their fan’s expectations. 3,000+ people were jumping, moshing, and screaming along to every single song that the band performed, pushing forward to try to get as close to the barricade as possible. Yellowcard’s success is just one example of how if you follow your dreams, they can lead you to great amounts of success.
