“We’re not trying to sell you finance tickets to Coachella…” The All-American Rejects are playing a series of low-key – but pretty wild looking – shows in the States right now, and fans are loving it.
The All-American Rejects have gone viral for doing a random ‘house party’ tour this month, appearing at various low-key locations in the Midwest for free (or, in one instance, for just $5).
For the past week, the alternative rock titans have performed in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri – with that latest date on May 18 even featuring a surprise visit from the police to shut things down (although, according to setlist.fm, the band were allowed to play one more song anyway).
In Minneapolis, in a video captured by @marissamccall that has been watched on TikTok over one million times, frontman Tyson Ritter tells the crowd of what they’re doing (transcribed by Kerrang!): “I want to thank you for coming out and giving a shit about a rock’n’roll band that supports the common man. We’re not trying to sell you finance tickets to Coachella, we’re not trying to sell you Ticketmaster fucking penalty fees, we’re not trying to sell you $25 parking. We’re just trying to sell you some songs you might have grown up with, and let you fucking let go with us in this non-denominational church of rock’n’roll.”
Speaking with KBIA News, Tyson reveals, “The whole thing about this has been sort of like this weird synchronistic happenstance of reactivity. We played this random house party, and of all the shows we played in the last 10 years, it was like this big wake-up call to the reality of, ‘Oh, this is why we started doing this.’ We played in house shows. We played backyards, VFWs and I just told my manager, I go, ‘That worked, let’s do that.’”
See how the internet’s reacted to the whole endeavour:
And check out the band’s videos from each show (so far) below:
