Q&A: Mayday Parade’s Alex Garcia talks Florida, Sad Summer Fest and new music

When Warped Tour logged off in 2019, Alex Garcia felt a void. So his band, Mayday Parade started its own summer festival. “Our main purpose was just to keep that alive and not lose that for the scene,” Garcia, guitarist for Mayday Parade, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

The outing, now in its fifth year, gives the band a chance to simply stay alive, and gives members—and those who support the band on the road—a chance at a living.

Like Warped Tour, his band joins the festival every other year, and in 2024 will be in the lineup when Sad Summer lands in Clearwater later this month.

Garcia spent a few minutes chatting about Sad Summer, Florida in general, new music from Mayday Parade and more.

Tickets for the Sad Summer Festival happening Saturday, July 27 at Clearwater’s BayCare Sound are on sale now for $54.50.
[content-1] Tell me about the genesis of Sad Summer because it was intended to be the next iteration of Warped Tour, and it was ready to go the summer after Warped Tour had its last tour. What did that planning process look like since Mayday Parade is one of the founders of the festival?

In the absence of Warped Tour we just knew that it was possible that nobody else picked up the flag. Or, you know, we kept the race running. So we decided to do that, to have our own summer festival that we could control, or at least try to have the fate in our hands of whether or not something could continue. Because we didn't know it. We didn't know if anybody else would, and there actually are other things that have come out since Warped Tour, other festivals, which I think are actually really good for everybody in the scene—that was our main purpose was just to keep that alive and not lose that for the scene.

You know, we're not in the business of really trying to make money on it, necessarily, but we are in the business of keeping our band alive and in a sense, being able to make a living doing that. So we wanted to just make sure that something was represented. We weren't even necessarily trying to take the place of Warped Tour, as in, to replicate it, because that was such a massive production. And then without our booking agent, Mike Marquis, our manager Josh Terry, who are owners at the festival, we wouldn't really be able to do any of this, because we're musicians. We care to represent it musically, artistically, and they are great at doing the legwork and the logistics of things. So we're just in the business of trying to keep a festival of some sort in the summer for everybody in the scene.

It wasn't difficult, I imagine, to find bands to get on board with (Sad Summer Fest’s) first tour.

It wasn't, it wasn't super difficult. There was always a need for it because everybody got used to being able to have a summer tour that they could count on every other year. That's what we did. It became part of our built-in schedule. It dictated when we went into the studio to record. It dictated everything. So your summer festival touring is kind of like the cornerstone of your career.

I was kind of surprised to learn that it's not uncommon for it to be like a one tour on, one tour off kind of thing.

Yeah, we always did even years of Warped. And we're trying to do that with Sad Summer as well, every other year, especially since it's smaller because then you can have other bands on the off summers.

Does Sad Summer give you that same sense of nostalgia as Warped did? Is it comparable, or is it a totally different vibe?

When you're on tour, it's not a totally different vibe, but also, nothing's ever going to be Warped Tour. Warped Tour was about the people who worked it. It was about Kevin Lyman's crew. It was about the 50 bands that you would put on a bill, so many people out there that you could never meet everybody in a summer type summer camp feel, where this is smaller, more concise, more to the point, more focused. In some ways, I think that's better. And I'm not trying to say that it's better than Warped Tour, what we do, but I think having focus is a good thing, having two headliners is a good thing. Being able to build, set up a bill and sell tickets on it based on the fact that everybody knows what time roughly everybody's gonna be playing at, they know if they show up early they get to see new bands and that sort of thing, which is super important to stack a bill that way, where that is one thing that surely we're trying to do that Warped Tour was always really good at, was keeping bands on that were new and not trying to just make it like everybody knows every band on this bill type tour.

And then you've also got When We Were Young that is that type of big festival, so it’s cool that Sad Summer is a little bit smaller and still touring every summer.

Of course, that's an example of what I was talking about earlier, where we don't necessarily want to be the only thing happening. I think any of these things that happen for the scene are great for rock music, period. Rap, hip-hop and pop have been so mainstream for so long, for our entire career. It seems like rock has not been the mainstream, maybe just now does it feel like there's some some tours or some festivals like When We Were Young, or just the resurgence of emo music in general, starts to make you feel like maybe rock is coming back?

Mayday Parade is from Florida, and there are so many great musicians across genres who are from Florida. Do you think it's special when you do get to stop in Florida on a tour, is there like a different energy from the crowd? Does it feel more like home?

You know, it's funny, because Tallahassee is where we're from, and it's not our biggest shows, but just being back there does feel like there's a different energy, and a lot of that's because you're playing for so many people that you do know, lots of friends come. Orlando is our biggest market in Florida, and that's always very cool. I mean, Island, maybe more so than ever do I kind of get that feeling of when I'm in Florida, I just feel home, you know, more so than I did in the past, if that makes sense, but, yeah, it's one of those things Where's a big state that feels different all the way across. I don't get that feeling as much. Sorry, South Florida, I don't get it as much down in Fort Lauderdale as I do the other places. But still it's all it is all home. By state line it is still home.

Since Sad Summer was created with the smaller bands in mind—that's part of the reason there's only one stage, so that you can really give the newer or smaller bands a chance to really shine—Are there any on this tour that that are your favorites, or what you might call a “must-see” for people going to Sad Summer?

You know, to be honest, it's not like I know all those bands very well. I'm very excited to be on tour with We The Kings, Knuckle Puck, The Maine, but as far as all the other bands that are on it I'm actually really bad, like Real Friends, we've toured with, the Summer Set we've toured with. Hot Milk is great, but like Diva Bleach, Daisy Grenade and Like Roses, I have not even taken the time out of my schedule to even listen to it. So now I'm going to have to after this interview, now I'm going to really feel the heat of, like, I check these guys before we get on the road with them.

Since “emo” has really cemented its place as a genre, especially with Sad Summer and When We Were Young still happening, what bands or musicians do you see being the next gen of emo?

To tell you the truth, I really don't know if I could put my finger on it. I think there's bands—we played with Origami Angel recently during some of our holiday shows that we did, and I thought that was a really cool rendition of where the genre could go. But to say it's going to be one or the other, I don't even know if you can do that, you know what I mean? It would be like comparing My Chem and Panic! at the Disco. And if everything sounded like that, that would be two separate roads.

So I think you're just gonna get the vibe. I think maybe the better way to answer your question would be to say that the essence of emo is lyrical content. So it's not so much the sound. It's not even so much, whether it's more rock or more pop or or whatever direction it goes. It's about the lyrical content. It's like the sappy of the sappy stuff. You know, it's the angst of the angsty stuff. It's stuff that connects with a young high school fan base is just searching for something that isn't on the radio or isn't the mainstream or shoved down their throat every day. It's something that they can find outside of what their parents listen to or what anybody else around them even listens to. Maybe they have that one friend who listens to this niche style of music. That's where I think the essence of the genre came from. It’s not being like all these other things, but there wasn't one style you could point to, the same way that there were hardcore metal bands that still fit the genre, but then you've got Dashboard Confessional, totally the other side of the spectrum, right?

Who also recently gave you guys a little shout out on Twitter.

Yeah, yeah. I think Gary Quentin did a little something with them over at Bonnaroo. We've always kind of ran in and out of shows with them and we've never done a proper tour together, but we've talked about it. I think something like that in the future could be cool. We're definitely big fans.

They're also from Florida, right?

A: I know that Further Seems Forever is from Florida and he (Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional) was in that band. Which is funny because we did do very early shows in our career with Further Seems Forever.

I saw in 2022 you covered Helena, so do you have anything else fun or different planned for the setlist this tour?

Nothing crazy. We're gonna try and get in a new song that people haven't heard yet and then we're going to try to keep it eclectic for our long seven, going on eight album career, it's really difficult.

I think that the cover thing is fun, but I'm not the one who voted to do that. Everything usually comes down to a vote as a band and, that was one of those things that I would not have voted for because, although it is fun, when you're doing a festival show like that you only have so much time, so you'd really rather kind of play as many original songs as possible. It's a tough call, it's very split down the middle.

You said you have a new song, does Mayday have an album in the works? Is it already recorded?

We're working on stuff. We have material we want to release a bit slowly, maybe a couple at a time, like single type stuff. It's still up in the air, but we are gearing up to do a full record at some point. We've done a lot of tracks, and we're going in to do more, and we're very excited about that.
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