Tyson Ritter: The Rolling Stone Studio Live at SXSW

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Rolling Stone

Music, Music Interviews, Music Commentary

4.0 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tyson Ritter joins Brian Hiatt at The Rolling Stone Studio live at SXSW to talk about the All-American Rejects long-awaited return with Sandbox, their first album in over a decade. He reflects on the band’s lost years, the grind of state fairs and casinos, and why major-label songwriting started to feel hollow. Ritter also opens up about rediscovering purpose after When We Were Young, the raw energy of their house-party shows, the truth behind an old Taylor Swift rumor, and why this new music feels like the most honest work they’ve ever made. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I probably spend an unreasonable amount of my life with headphones on, often because I'm trying
0:05.4	to get an episode ready for you, the listener, whether I'm prepping for interviews or going back
0:10.3	through a discography for the fifth time trying to catch something I missed. That's kind of the job.
0:15.6	And my new headphones, the JBL Live 780s, are making my job a lot more fun. It's all about the sound. There's a warmth
0:23.7	and clarity that you don't always get from wireless headphones, spatial audio that really works,
0:29.5	and noise canceling powerful enough to zap out a busy office or a crowded street. The battery just
0:36.5	goes and goes and it lasts up to 80 hours. And when it's
0:40.0	running low, five minutes plugged in get you four more hours. They come in black, white, blue, green,
0:46.1	and champagne. I went with black. It looks great. If you care about how your music actually sounds,
0:52.0	and I have to assume you do if you're listening to this. Check out the JBL Live 780s. Do you ever find yourself doing your old voice when you sing the old song? Oh yeah, I make fun of it. Yeah. Like on Swing Swing, there's like, the sun is gone. The nights are long. Like, what a div shit.
1:17.6	Hey, I'm Brian Hyatt. We are in Austin, Texas. This is the Rolling Stone Studio, live at South by Southwest.
1:22.6	I'm so excited to be here with Tyson Ritter of All American Rejects.
1:25.6	What's up, man?
1:26.6	Just partying, man.
1:28.6	Making it through this magical shit show. This is a really special time to be talking to you because you
1:34.1	guys have your first album since 2012 coming out on May 15th. It's called Sandbox. And that is a long break.
1:42.8	That is a long break between albums but there was a period
1:46.5	where you weren't sure you were going to make another one take me back to 2022 on stage at the
1:54.8	when we were young festival and the moment when you realize that there's really a lot of life left
1:59.3	in this bound yeah uh that was a really cool festival for us to play.
2:04.2	We hadn't done much in the decade before that as far as any sort of relevant festival.
2:10.5	And we were kind of taking a piss going out there doing it.
	...

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