I dunno about you, but Mayday Parade’s A Lesson In Romantics was one of my formative albums. Its carefree attitude, summer vibes, ridiculously long song titles and creative lyrics – for a teen that had yet to gain her driver’s license and was itching to see the world, it hit the spot just perfectly. I’ve seen the band live numerous times since – multiple times in Australia and then a couple months ago, in San Diego on Warped Tour (the last one ever!) – but I’ve never really had a chance to sit and chat with lead singer and face of the band, Derek Sanders.

He’s way more serene than I anticipated – he rarely laughs, sounds pretty serious when he’s talking and has a slow deep voice. But he pulled out some great stories for this week’s column; there’s rabies involved, the band getting arrested and the terrifying disease he battled during his teen years.

truth

Derek: When I was in high school, I actually had to have lung surgery, so that sort of fits in with the concept. So I had a – it’s called spontaneous pneumothorax, where my left lung would collapse periodically.

Uppy: Whoa!

D: It happened a handful of times. It was no fun. Eventually I had to have surgery where they corrected it or whatever, and it was brutal but one of those things you go through and you’re just happy and lucky to be alive afterwards. I had all my friends there for support and everything and that was really cool.

U: How old were you when that happened?

D: I was 16, whenever I had the surgery anyway. I was probably 15 when my lung would collapse, I would have a hard time breathing and it took a while to figure out what was going on. Lots of trips to the hospital and all that. And uh, it’s funny, but I never used to have any sort of a problem with any of that kind of stuff – getting blood drawn and stuff – it never used to bother me, but now after doing it a bunch of times, now I hate having blood drawn and I’m not sure if that’s why. Yeah, so I had to do this operation or whatever and spend a week in the hospital recovering, and then I went to my first Warped Tour that I ever went to just a week after I got out of the hospital. I was still in rough shape and hobbling around, but I had all my friends there with me and we went and saw a bunch of bands and I hung in the back of a lot of it, but one of the bands I wanted to see was New Found Glory, I wanted to get up a little bit closer.

U: Have a little mosh?

D: Yeah! And my friends made a little barrier around me, like circled around me to make sure I was protected and not too roughed up in there. I thought that was really sweet to have my friends there for me like that so I could watch New Found Glory.

U: That is really sweet. So before your surgery, did it affect your singing very much? I expect that it would!

D: Yeah, well, you know, at first it kind of did but with enough time… like these days, I don’t notice it at all. At first I’d be a little more out of breath, from jumping around and all that. Back in those days, I was playing in a band but I don’t think I was singing in a band yet. Maybe like back-up vocals but I was playing in a hardcore band at the time. I was playing guitar. So I think, eventually with enough time I was conditioned to be back to normal.

U: Yeah, that’s an intense experience for a 15-16 year old to go through. I would definitely be wary of hospitals after that and blood tests and stuff too, so I don’t blame you. That’s crazy.

D: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

U: And your lungs have been fine since? They don’t collapse anymore?

D: Yeah, as far as I know there haven’t been problems since so all good to go.

U: Thanks so much for sharing that! That sounds scary and probably something you think back as a crazy time.

D: Yeah, and one more thing with that: we used to joke around to people who didn’t know that all that happened – I have a couple of scars on my chest so I would tell people I got shot by a bow and arrow. And that’s where the scars came from.

U: That’d be a pretty badass way to get those scars, for sure.

Truth

D: There is a somewhat interesting story about getting in trouble with the law, I guess. Nothing too crazy. So this was back in 2006, and this was the year we followed Warped Tour. We weren’t part of Warped Tour, we were just following it in a van and selling CDs to people in the line outside. So we were roughing it back then, just making enough money to move onto the next show. We were in Cincinnati, the Warped Tour venue there was a parking lot right next to this water park.

U: Cool!

D: And all the bands get in for free, but we weren’t technically part of the tour so myself and Jake, our drummer, and Jason who used to be in the band, the three of us decided we were gonna sneak into the water park. So, we were gonna try hop the fence or whatever, but we walk around and see there’s an area of the fence where two of the boards had kind of been pried loose. You could kind of sneak behind them and get in, so we did. We snuck in.

U: Yeah…

D: But almost immediately we were spotted by a lifeguard saying, ‘what are you guys doing?’ and we say, ‘sorry, we’ll just leave’. So we turn around and left and thought, ‘well, we tried’. We’re walking back to the van and then these security guards pulled up and they’re like, ‘hey, you guys broke our fence.’

U: Oh no!

D: So we’re like, ‘no we didn’t break the fence, it was already broken’. And at first they were like, ‘okay get to your van and just don’t come back’ but then they came back again with police officers and said the owner wants to press charges and we have to arrest you guys.

U: Oh shit.

D: Yeah [laughs]. So they put us in handcuffs and they took us to the security office and then to jail and booked us or whatever.

U: No way!

D: Yeah, yeah. And it was horrible because we’re trying to sell CDs and this was going to mess up that, obviously, so we had to get in contact with the other guys and tell them we’d been arrested and they had to come bail us out. We had to go to court the next day and you know, it was such a nightmare. We ended up being charged with trespassing and we had to pay a fine or something, but we got lucky that we got to go to court the next day and get it all sorted out. But we spent like six or seven hours in this booking room [in the jail], with all these dudes making fun of us and talking shit to us. They gave us this lunch that was a baloney sandwich and an apple, and this guy goes, ‘I’m gonna trade you my apple for your sandwich’ and I was like, ‘alright cool, take it, I’m not gonna argue with you’. But yeah! It was a stupid thing, but the owner just wanted to charge us with this fence even though we didn’t break it. But I guess he probably didn’t believe us that we didn’t break it. We still play that Cincinnati venue every time next to that water park and I think about how crazy that was.

U: What a nightmare over something like wanting to go into a waterpark. And why didn’t they just let you, like, pay the $100 to fix the fence and be done with it?

D: Yeah, exactly. We would’ve gladly done that then have to get handcuffed and do all that… it was pretty stupid. We were 19. We were kids at the time.

U: Was it scary being in handcuffs? Like, were they forceful or anything?

D: It wasn’t too bad. I think the police officers kind of felt for us a little bit. The handcuffs are kind of tight and not very comfortable but they weren’t being, like, forceful or anything. They were kind of joking about how the owner was trying to charge us with breaking and entering, which is a felony.

U: Riiight.

D: They were like, ‘I don’t think they can charge you with a breaking and entering into an outdoor swim park, you know’? Anyway, the guy was out to ruin our lives but luckily it was just trespassing.

Lie

D: The one that comes to mind… a long time ago, probably 10 years ago, in the early couple of years of the band, and for some reason the joke got started that Alex had rabies. Like he’d been bit by an animal and had rabies. 

U: Okay…

D: I really wanna know how we started with that, but I did an interview at one point and I was joking around and said that, I said that Alex had rabies but I think it was clear that I was joking. But it wasn’t taken that way and everyone thought it was real. I remember for SO long afterwards, for like a year afterwards, people would ask me about it and ask me, ‘what happened with Alex and how did he get rabies?’

U: Poor Alex!

D: And he was so mad at us. He was constantly having to defend himself and explain that he didn’t have rabies [laughs].

U: That’s pretty funny. Did they think he was bitten by a raccoon or something?

D: You know, honestly, I don’t even remember. I think we probably said something like that but it was so long ago that I don’t remember how it even started.

U: Well, I’m happy to do Alex a service now and tell everyone that he is not rabid!

D: You can finally clear the air now, tell everyone Alex never had rabies. And then I have another little one – this one wasn’t really in our control, where something silly happens that turns into something else. But this one was, we were on tour with Emery – this was a long time ago as well, maybe early 2008? Maybe 2007. We were on tour with Emery and As Cities Burn and a band called Cry Of The Afflicted. And the singer of Cry Of The Afflicted, he and I looked a lot alike. We were always getting mistaken for each other. So I had this idea where one day, we were playing in South Carolina somewhere, we dressed exactly the same. We wore black shirt and whatever, and during our set I said, ‘hang on guys, I’ll be right back’ and I ran off stage and I STAYED off stage with my microphone and he ran out with a microphone that wasn’t plugged in, and he was pretending to sing on stage but I was actually singing off stage.

U: Oh, WOW. Doing an Ashlee Simpson!

D: Yeah, we were doing a fake-out. And at one point he dove out into the crowd, and then I came out onto the stage. People were confused, like, ‘wait, what? What just happened?’ And we did it as a JOKE… but because of that, this idea got started that I had a stuntman, a stunt double, who would jump out into the crowd for me because I didn’t want to jump out into the crowd.

U: That’s so silly.

D: That’s where people’s minds went! That I had a stunt double guy, even though that’s the most insane thing ever.

U: People are crazy, aren’t they? They’ll run with whatever story!

D: Yeah, exactly. I’ve heard it for so long, ‘I heard you have a stunt double!’ I’m like, ‘oh my gosh, no.’ Like, I wish I had a stunt double.

U: It sounds like a great idea because I’ve had so many terror stories about missing the crowd and hitting the barrier and breaking their noses and stuff. So you know, I’d have a stage dive stunt double!

D: I used to jump out into the crowd but then after a couple scary times where you get pulled and swallowed down, you can’t move, it can definitely be a bit terrifying if it goes wrong.

Mayday Parade’s sixth album, Sunnyland, is out now. They’ll be returning to our shores this December for the first ever Good Things Festival!

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If you’re a musician and have some stories to share and some secrets to tell – be it hilarious or heartbreaking, humiliating or honourable – send us an email at twotruthscolumn[at]gmail.com.

We might be telling the whole world about the time you accidentally killed your brother’s pet snake and replaced it without anyone knowing in no time.