One of our favorite new groups was 'swinging' into town and we couldn't have been happier. Of course we are talking about the Stillwater, Oklahoma rock group The All-American Rejects. On this particular day we were already going to The Donnas concert so we feared we wouldn't have time to make it back to the venue where the Rejects were playing.
Fortunately, The Donnas concert wasn't as long as expected and we arrived about an hour before the concert was over. It was pretty creepy standing outside this venue at this time of night (not exactly a good part of town) so we decided to drive around a little bit to pass the time. When we got back, there were people piling out of the venue so we quickly parked the car.
As we approached their tour bus we definitely noticed that we weren't the only ones with the hopes of meeting them. There was a massive crowd of fans and a lot of them seemed to be of the younger TRL generation. Suddenly the girls in the crowd started screaming at the top of their lungs and our ears were starting to bleed. They were looking up at the roof of the tour bus.
No they weren't freaking out because of the nice wax job on the bus, but because Tyson Ritter (lead singer) and Chris Gaylor (drummer) were on the roof. They started to jump around and wave to all of us and that really caused everyone to freak out. It was like Beatlemania or in this case Rejectmania. Sterling and Earl just looked at each other in disbelief at how crazy these fans were acting. Tyson and Nick eventually jumped back into the tour bus and we hoped they would be coming out soon, if they dared.
Tyson soon emerged followed closely by Mike Kennerty (guitar) and the crowd literally swallowed them up. There must have been a hundred or more fans wanting autographs, pictures, hugs and kisses from these guys (in such a small and confined space).
Then out of nowhere Nick Wheeler (guitarist) came up to the crowd, shirtless, and the crowd also swarmed him as well. It was funny because he was not expecting this and when everyone engulfed him he said "Whoa, Whoa" and had such a surprised look on his face. Chris Gaylor also got off of the bus but he was smart and walked far off to a nice open spot to sign autographs.
The first member Earl managed to meet was Nick and he was one cool guy. Adding a little humor to my item he drew an arrow from his autograph to his body on the small image on my cardboard (like a big index card). Everyone, except Mike, did the same thing for my autographed cardboard and its such a nice little touch.
Since there was such a massive crowd it must've taken a lot of patience for the band to take care of everyone, especially Tyson who had the most fanatic fans. These guys were just so energetic and loved their fans. They began to sign shirts, hats, albums, body parts, clothing, and we did see many shoes being passed around.
We've never seen a band sign for so many fans in our experiences. They made sure every last fan had their needs met. We walked around and got pictures and autographs with everybody and never had a problem with any of them. It took about 40-50 minutes for us to get all of their autographs but it was well worth it. It was such a fun night and we'll never forget it.
