Interviews

Derek Sanders - Mayday Parade 'It’s Tough to Balance Dad Mode And Work Mode'

Kelsey Trevan

Sep 2, 2025

8 min read

Not only is the Australian weather finally starting to heat up, so is tour and festival season. One of the first tours to break through the cold of winter and kick off spring is the epic emo tour Three Cheers For 20 Years featuring The Home Team, Jack’s Mannequin, and headlined by the one and only, Mayday Parade.

We caught up with frontman Derek Sanders to chat setlists, Australian adventures, Dad Life, and more.

You guys are heading out to Australia very soon, how are you feeling about it?

Man, I’m so excited about it. I always have so much fun over there and going way back, Australia was the second place that we went to internationally just after we did Japan with Paramore. Then Australia right after back in I want to say 2007? We’ve always loved it. It’s pretty wild, you know when I look nowadays, we have our Spotify for artists that gives you all the analytics of where people are listening, and especially for our newer stuff and most of our stuff, the top cities will be Melbourne and Sydney, and Brisbane will be in there too. It’s pretty wild, the love that we get from you guys over there. So it’s super exciting to be coming over and be doing the tour.

Well we’re pretty lucky in that you guys are over here pretty consistently.

Yeah for sure. I feel like usually once a year, or maybe every other year that we always try to make it over there and do Southeast Asia while we’re there and it makes a lot of sense.

Do you have a favourite place in Australia? Don’t worry, there’s not a right or wrong answer here.

Well, you know I feel like it’s kinda changed a little over time. The first time that we went there, Sydney was my favourite, and maybe it was the amount of time we ended up having and we got to explore and see the harbour. Its such a beautiful and cool city so Sydney was always my favourite, but I feel like throughout the years the amount of times that we’ve just had an incredible night in Melbourne, that might be the top spot now at this point, you know?

You’re starting out in Melbourne this time around, will you have some time to just hang out before the tour starts?

You know, I don’t know. We usually fly in like, the day before. Usually it works out that we get in the morning of the day before so we have a full day to rest and spend the night, then the shows the next day. I imagine it’s the same this time around, but I’m not sure if we have to fly out straight away. I’m bad at keeping up to date with all that kind of stuff but hopefully we have time to explore and have some fun.

How do you acclimatise when you’re travelling and in and out of places so quick?

It sucks. You kinda just don’t. I feel like, I almost always get sick. We do Australia and South East Asia, usually it’s both those territories, and I feel like somewhere along the way, without fail, every time I get pretty sick. It’s just so much flying, travelling to get out there, then the jetlag and then you’re playing shows and there’s no times to catch up, a lot of the times there’s barely any time to rest. The first show is in Melbourne, and then we’re playing in Sydney the next day, that means we’ll have to fly pretty early in the morning after the show. A lot of the time it’s the case of you don’t get back to the hotel 'til after midnight, 1am after the show, then you have to wake up at 4, 5 in the morning to fly to the next city and play the next show. That can wear you down and you end up getting sick. We’ll see how it goes but I’ll do my best to drink lots of water and take it easy. We all drink a lot less alcohol nowadays so that helps a lot, and we’ll just do our best to get through it. It might be better to just get there and jump into it, as far as like, forcing your body to acclimate to the jetlag. Probably not.

Hopefully it starts to warm up by the time you guys get here, it has been so cold here this winter!

Oh goodness! Well that sounds delightful right now. I’m in Florida in the summer and we’ve got some crazy hot days going on. I’ll take a little bit of the cold for sure.

What’s the flight like for you being in Florida? I imagine you’d have to fly to LA first right?

Oh it’s a nightmare! I have to fly from Tallahassee to Atlanta, Atlanta to LA, then LA to Melbourne.

That sounds awful!

Oh it is awful, it’s the worst! That’s why, you get there and you feel like you’re losing your mind because you’ve spent just over 24 hours or so flying. It’s a roll of the dice on how it’s gonna go and its one of the least fun parts of this is all the travel, but its well worth it to do what we get to do. But we do it so often that its just part of the job.

You’ve got two kids, do they think it’s cool what you do? Or are they a bit like ‘Okay Dad, you can stop talking about that now’?

It’s a little bit of both. I think they definitely always have thought its pretty cool and appreciated it, they’ve grown up even as babies and infants sitting side stage and watching shows and coming out on tour whenever they can. My kids have been able to come out for brief periods of time and ride on the bus, and go to different cities and they always really enjoy that experience, so in a lot of ways I think they do appreciate it. It’s tough, my daughter is about to be 14 so its pretty hard to impress her with anything really! Sadly, the truth of it as well is that I’m away a lot so they’re both kind of like ‘you should quit your band and stay home’, so it’s, you know, they think its cool but they’re also like we’d love it if you weren’t gone so it’s a tough thing.

Do you think they get a little jealous that you get to come to Australia and South East Asia?

I think so. Maybe not my son, whose 8, but my daughter for sure, there’s places that she wants to go. Recently she’s been on a huge Japan kick, and loves Japanese culture and Anime and really wants to go to Japan. It’s a mind-blowing thing for her that I’ve been there that I’ve been there 6 or 7 times and I think that’s when she starts to get a little bit that way.

Do you think that you’ll be able to take her out there on tour one day, or is that more of a family trip kind of plan?

We’ll have to see how it goes. I would love too obviously, but its tough. Even them coming out on tour in the States is difficult to have your family there, especially if its just my kids and my fiancé isn’t there or whatever, it’s tough to balance Dad mode and work mode, especially on an international tour. It could be possible, but we’ve also been talking about a family trip to Japan as well.

How do you go putting together a setlist for a tour like this?

It always kind of depends on many factors really. This tour that we’re doing is in celebration of our 20 year anniversary as a band and we kind of decided to, basically go through and do like an eras kind of thing where we start at the very beginning and play through a little bit, at least a couple songs from each album or each release so this one actually came together a little bit easier than most of them. Every album is gonna have the stand out two or three tracks that are sort of the most popular and the ones people want to hear, so you start with all of that and that gets you 80% of the way there. It hasn’t been too bad for this one, but the more music we release the more difficult it becomes to put a setlist together that you feel like, you’re weighing a bunch of things. Obviously you want to play most of your popular songs, but you don’t want to always only play your most popular songs, you do want to put in some deep cuts and rotate those, and you do consider the people who have come to see you year after year, tour after tour and you want to shake things up to make it a little bit different. Usually, the guys trust me to put something together, then send it to them and then we kind of tweak things or have notes or maybe change things around. Usually I start building it myself though.

You guys have so many songs, do you ever find yourself going ‘I don’t remember what the next verse is’ while you’re singing?

You know, it’s never really been a problem, but every now and then, and I feel as I’m getting older it might be a little bit more difficult. Every now and then I’ll have that moment of ‘oh my god I don’t know how this next verse starts’, but thankfully I think there have been like 2 times ever in the 20 years of us being a band that I’ve got to a part that I’ve actually, couldn’t get it in time or couldn’t sing it and I just stand there while the verse happens and feel like a complete moron. I think that it’s only happened like twice. Now saying that, I’m sure it’ll happen on his next tour.

I feel like these shows, you’re close enough to the crowd where if you get stuck you’ll hear someone singing and be like ‘oh yeah, that’s where I’m at!’

That’s a good trick for if I’m ever feeling anxious about it, I try to see, you know, you’ll pinpoint people that know all the words to all the songs, even the deeper cuts and those are the reliable ones to focus on if I ever feel like I’m gonna get lost up there.

What's the one thing you’re looking forward to the most about Australia?

I think I would say, certainly being in Melbourne. I feel like we always go to Heartbreak, are you familiar?

Oh yeah, that’s a great little dive bar!

That’s kind of become, for the last 10 years or however long, that's been a staple. We have to go there either on a night off, or on a show night after the show which can be a little crazy, but we’ll definitely do that. It’s tough to say, a lot of it is the nightlife, going out, meeting people, having drinks. I feel like the people are so much fun and there’s just a different kind of energy, so I really enjoy going out and hanging with folks. It’s a recipe for such a great time whenever you have, again whether it’s a night off or of a show, some folks from each band you know, if its some of us and some of Jack’s Mannequin and some of The Home Team, all kind of rendezvous out somewhere and just mingle with locals and bounce around, get some dinner, go to a couple bars, that's always one of the most fun times ever so I look forward to a lot of that!

Well we can’t wait to see you, and we’re so excited to having you back.

We look forward to coming out and see you guys soon, thank you so much!

Interview by Kelsey Trevan @theaussiegridgirl

Get your tickets to catch Mayday Parade, Jack’s Mannequin & The Home Team across Australia here.