Pop-punk favourites, Yellowcard are returning to Australia in April 2025 for a national tour.
It's the first time they've returned since 2017 and they're back to celebrate 20 years of the iconic, 2000s defining album 'Ocean Avenue'."So we're not really calling it like an album play-through, but we are playing almost the entire album over the course of the night," explains lead guitarist Ryan Mendez.
"We felt like we wanted to also, obviously play other songs from other records and just the idea of making a set list that flows as opposed to being like, 'okay, let's play this record here and then let's do an encore with a couple of other songs'.
"We just wanted it to be more of a well-rounded set list than that, but we are playing almost all the songs on the record."
When Yellowcard were last in Australia (2017) it was for their final world tour. However, it was never their intention to reunite. Yellowcard's first reunion performance after the 2017 breakup was at Chicago's Riot Fest in 2022 after receiving an unexpected offer to perform.
"We definitely did not at all think we were going to ever get back together to do anything. The breakup was real. . . some artists will be like, 'oh, we're breaking up' but they know in a few years, they're gonna get back together or try, it's like intentionally sort of going away with the intent of coming back and this was not that at all.
"[The offer] was totally out of nowhere for us. Then it got us all talking and sort of sparked the conversation of like, 'okay well A should we do the show? And then B should we do more than [one show]?'.
"When we went out onto the stage, it was nerve-wracking because it had been such a long time, it was also a huge crowd. I think [Riot Fest] said there were about 40,000 of the 50,000 people at the festival watching us. It was just mental and it was simultaneously, we were nervous and were like, 'oh yeah, this is what this is, this is what we do'."
After their seven-year hiatus, Yellowcard returned to the studio to record their latest EP, 2023's 'Childhood Eyes'. It was an exciting return to form featuring collaborations with Pierce The Veil and Dashboard Confessional.
"Honestly, we kind of all came in with a blank slate. We hadn't really been working on anything that sounded like Yellowcard while we were off. So when we had made the decision to make some music, we kind of said, 'okay well let's all come in with maybe a couple of ideas', but anything that was written. . . was done right before the session just to make everything be as fresh as possible.
"That EP was done in an interesting way, it was done mostly remote. We all got together in Texas where Sean [Mackin, violinist] lives now, close to him for about a week or so and kind of wrote the core foundations of the songs and then after that everything was kind of done remotely.
"I flew to Florida to record drums with Nate, from Anberlin, who played drums on ['Childhood Eyes'] and then the other guys came to LA to do strings and vocals and we did some guitars at home. So we were kind of just doing a lot of stuff remotely. So it wasn't really a traditional studio experience like we have done in the past, so it kind of is sort of its own thing."
When not writing pop-punk anthems, Ryan and Yellowcard vocalist William Ryan Key created ambient electronic project JEDHA. It takes inspiration from the likes of Jon Hopkins, Kiasmos, Max Cooper and more.
Thankfully, this new era of Yellowcard enables Ryan to follow these two passions at once. "JEDHA is something that Ryan and I are definitely still actively very much working on. In fact, I actually got off Zoom remote working with him to do these interviews right now. We're in the middle of scoring a short film right now as JEDHA. So we're doing all kinds of stuff in the meantime, when Yellowcard is in-between stuff.
"It's cool that this new sort of era of Yellowcard, it's like we've simultaneously been playing the biggest shows we've ever played, which is so bizarre but also like the least amount of them total.
"We used to tour ten months a year and do like three US tours a year or two US tours a year and so much international stuff and just non-stop. Now over these last couple years, we're doing one tour in the States and it's huge and then that's it. That's all we do. So there's a lot of time that we're kind of down and that allows for us to do things like pursue JEDHA stuff. It's pretty much the best of all worlds."
Yellowcard have been teasing an unknown project, with recent photos on social media showing their recording progress whiteboard with all instruments completed. It seems the project is still a secret right now, but Australian fans should expect to hear something before the band visits.
"Let me think about the best way to answer this without saying stuff I'm not supposed to talk about," Ryan jokes. "I would say that, I am almost positive that the Australian fans will have heard something before we're there.
"We've definitely been working on music and we're insanely excited for people to find out what we're working on and people will know pretty soon what's going on."
Yellowcard 2025 Tour Dates
Wed 2 Apr - Metro City (Perth)Fri 4 Apr - Hindley Street Music Hall (Adelaide)
Sat 5 Apr - Margaret Court Arena (Melbourne)
Wed 9 Apr - Hordern Pavilion (Sydney)
Fri 11 Apr - Bar On The Hill (Newcastle)
Sun 13 Apr - The Fortitude Music Hall (Brisbane)
