Search Results for: Nick Wheeler

After more than two years on the road in support of their Move Along album, the All-American Rejects finally wrapped things up in early 2007, with everyone returning home for a much-deserved break. So how did frontman Tyson Ritter spend his time away from the spotlight?”I’ve had a place for nearly three years now, but I was never home, so I finally got around to hanging some pictures up,” he said. “And now I just wake up, stay in my bathrobe all day and sit at my piano. It’s pretty nice, actually.” He’s being modest. Because ever since the Rejects… Read more »

The All-American Rejects will be honored with ASCAP’s Vanguard Award at the 24th Annual ASCAP Pop Music Awards, which will also salute the songwriters and publishers of ASCAP’s most performed pop songs of 2006. The invitation-only event will be held on April 18, 2007 at The Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, CA. The band’s principal songwriters Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler will also receive two ASCAP Pop Awards for “Dirty Little Secret” and “Move Along,” and will perform during the awards ceremony. Other 2007 ASCAP Pop Award-winning songwriters scheduled to perform are: The Fray’s Joe King and Isaac Slade (“Over… Read more »

The All-American Rejects’ second album is truly a work in progress. There are still so many nails exposed and the paint is still so wet that if this album were an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” Ty Pennington would be bellowing stuff like “Come on, guys! Let’s take it up a couple of notches!” into his megaphone. He would also probably be shirtless. The point is, for a record that’s been in the works for eight months, there’s a whole lot that needs to be done. Like, for example, choosing a proper title. When Interscope Records mailed out promo… Read more »

From Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” in the 1970s to Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” in the ’80s, and R. Kelly’s “If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time” a decade later, songs about stopping time are as numerous as sands in an hourglass. The All-American Rejects extend the time-honored tradition with their third single, “Time Stands Still.” The song, which follows “Swing Swing” and “The Last Song,” is similar to the themes that flow through the Oklahoma band’s self-titled debut album in that they’re all about singer, bassist and lyricist Tyson Ritter’s girl problems. But… Read more »

All-American Rejects are itching for new tunes. The Oklahoma rockers’ self-titled debut was released by Dreamworks in January, but it’s really almost a year-and-a-half old, having been first released last fall by indie Doghouse Records. “We’ve got some new stuff going on,” says guitarist Nick Wheeler. “We’re totally stoked on doing a new album.” More than half of the new album is already in demo form or in the head of frontman Tyson Ritter. “He comes up with the melody and the basic chord structure, and then I’ll come in and do the music-theory, geeky shit to it,” Wheeler says.… Read more »

Subtlety is not a trademark for the All-American Rejects, but neither is specificity. Most of the band’s songs address bad relationships and broken hearts, but details of the scarring experiences are often missing. On the group’s next single, vocalist Tyson Ritter sings, “Life is turned, the day I knew you would leave/ I can barely breathe/ Can you hear me scream?” That’s about as close as the Rejects get to confessional revelation. So what exactly is the tune about? “It’s about 96-beats-per-minute and it’s in the key of C major,” quipped bassist Nick Wheeler in a most unhelpful manner. “It’s… Read more »

Even the most heartbroken among us would benefit from distancing themselves from the pain every once in a while. For Tyson Ritter, a reprieve from his songwriting muse helped make “The Last Song” such a pleasure to pen. “I got inspired to write something that wasn’t about an all-girl topic,” the All-American Rejects singer/bassist said. “Every other song [on the band’s self-titled debut] is about one girl, so to put a song on the album that wasn’t about her, that made it a little extra special.” The second single off The All-American Rejects is one of Ritter’s favorite tracks, inspirational… Read more »

Though some artists have been known to exaggerate a broken heart for the sake of art, the All-American Rejects have no need for such artistic license. For them, the truth is often sadder than fiction. “There’s rarely a happy ending in any of my songs,” singer/bassist Tyson Ritter said. “As far as the guy getting the girl in the end, it’s all fictitious. It’s all made up in my mind, I guess; all wishful thinking.” Such weighty fare fills the self-titled full-length debut by Ritter, 18, and multi-instrumentalist Nick Wheeler, 20. Two kids from Stillwater, Oklahoma, shouldn’t know so much… Read more »

The All-American Rejects are a Stillwater, Oklahoma based band whose incomparable sound fuses modern power pop music with drum loops, rock guitar and infectious melodies and harmonies. The duo that is known as The All-American Rejects is Tyson Ritter (vocals, bass) and Nick Wheeler (guitars, drums, keyboards, & programming). The band released their first independent album in the spring of 2000 securing spins on Oklahoma radio creating a massive local fan base. The songs compiling the album attracted opportunities for the duo such as mass local radio and press exposure, licensing on MTV’s Undressed, and opening bill for The Flaming… Read more »