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photos: Moe Horta

Have you ever cried while listening to Mayday Parade on repeat to get over heartbreak or is that an original experience? Judging by the response to the bands’ current Three Cheers For 20 Years Tour, we are willing to bet that it is not. 

Since forming in 2005, the Tallahassee emotional rockers have consistently hit the road and have released seven full-length albums that have amassed over 1.43 billion streams. Now in 2025, the hardworking band shows no sign of slowing down any day soon as they recently announced a three-part album, with the first chapter Sweet out now and the remaining chapters due out later this year and into 2026.

To help celebrate 20 years of Mayday Parade, The Noise sat down with guitarist Brooks Betts to chat about the past, present, and future of the beloved group. To see what Betts had to say about playing Warped Tour later this year, reuniting on stage with founding member Jason Lancaster, and what’s next for the pop rockers, be sure to read below. 

You can keep up with the band by following them here and don’t miss seeing them on the Three Cheers For 20 Years Tour or you might end up miserable at best.

You’re currently out on the Three Cheers for 20 Years Tour which is proving to be the biggest headline tour of your career to date - how does it feel to have such a successful tour at this point in your career? 

BROOKS BETTS: Well, when we got pitched the idea of doing the tour, it was from our booking agent, Mike Marquis, and that was probably more than a year ago. We started talking about the plans for this and kind of the lead up to it. We were all sitting there going, “Is he serious? Does he really think that we could go into these rooms consistently?”

You know, it's a little bit scary of an undertaking because if you can't fill the rooms then it just starts to look bad, right? And then you start, like, moving rooms and downgrading. And that's just never a good look. 

But he was very right, you know, that the build up to it and us doing a bunch of support [tours] and not really headlining up until this point - at least the last year we haven’t in the US - it's just really helped fill these rooms out and we're very surprised by it. 

He's not [surprised], but we are. And it's very cool to be doing this level of touring and to be able to bring out all the production that we're doing and just have like a really great team around us with our crew that's making these shows happen on a daily basis. It's gone really well, without a hitch, you know? So we're very happy and stoked to be out here doing it.

20 years as a band is such a special milestone. Looking back to 2005, is this something that you guys could have ever envisioned for yourselves?

Well, I think you'll see it in some of the production, but for me personally, no. It's not something that I thought we would be doing still and not something I necessarily planned on. In fact, I was always just sort of looking towards “Okay, but if I need to segue to something else, what will that be?” and kind of have a plan B and C. 

Even in one of the interview videos that we put up on screen during the show, I say “It's not like I'm going to be doing this when I'm 40” and I am 40 next month, and we're still doing it, and it's just not something that I ever dreamed. 

I always had the idea that if we toured and worked really hard and tried to put out good music...even before the band had success - my idea of success was, maybe if you could sell 300 cap rooms around the US consistently. That was my idea of successful and content.

I would still have been content with that. But I also think that naturally, I always push to grow and become better at what I do. And I think it's starting to show that a lot of bands have not been able to keep that up for 20 years. I think the fact that we're still doing it has a lot to do with our work ethic and the songs that we write as a group and put together and it’s just a team effort. And definitely not something I thought, though. I would have given it five to ten years.

Along the same vein of what you just touched on: A lot of your peers in the scene are also celebrating 20-25 years as a band. How does it feel to have such longevity amongst your peers as artists and friends?

Well, I think it's cool that we've made so many friends over the years. There's tons of bands that we made friends with that are not still touring, but it's cool the ones that are still around, especially in this scene, how we get to connect and combine those fan bases still. And I think that everybody who's still around, is as successful as they've ever been. It's just really cool that there's still a pool of bands to tour with and alternate and rotate out of. 

Also with that too, there are fewer [bands] than there were in the heyday of emo - although one could argue maybe we're still in it or we've got that resurgence coming back now. One thing that's cool about surviving through all of that is that we also start to get some of the really cool support runs. Simple Plan had taken us out recently. All Time Low has always been a great band to tour with and friends of ours. And we'll do another run with them in the future. Being able to do the Yellowcard tour was very cool. We had made friends with them in the past and when they came back and offered us the spot on that tour it was just amazing.

I think that all ties into the fact that we've been around for a long time. And even though we came up in slightly different windows in this scene, because we've been around for so long, the bands that were more worried about the people their age are able to look at us now and be like, “Hey, but that band, we never toured with that band. Let's take them out. That would be a really cool show.” So yeah, we're excited to make more new friends and tour with the old ones. 

Speaking of longevity and anniversaries, Mayday Parade was recently announced for Warped Tour’s 30th anniversary in both D.C. and Orlando. You guys have been vocal about how Warped Tour was crucial to the development of your band in the early days. What does Warped Tour mean to you and what are you looking forward to the most about the festival? 

I think it's just going to be really cool to play and be a part of what the new era of Warped Tour is. Like you said, and we've said before, because Warped Tour has been such a part of our career and many other bands in our scene, I think it's just always going to be something that we want to be a part of, no matter the format or the style.

Things are going to be a little bit different. That tour is built around no headliners and keeping a very low ticket price, you know. In return, at the same time, you didn't get paid a lot to do Warped Tour. You hustled merch and you hustled to make new fans every day, and that was your reward for being on that tour, right? More so than a great payday. Because there were so many bands that played, that money had to get split amongst so many people. And then also because the ticket prices were so low, there wasn't a lot [of money]. But what you did get a lot of, was fans coming in, fans buying merch, and new fans. And what an amazing pool of new fans to try to gain. 

Warped Tour really was kind of everything for us in building our foundation as a band. There's many other aspects, but that one is maybe one of the biggest and can't be ignored. So to do it again and see it in its new form, it's very exciting. I'm proud to be a part of it. We love Kevin [Lyman] and his whole team. Lisa Brownlee has been a big part of what we've done. I can't say enough about how great they are.

Back to your current tour, this past May Day (May 1st) saw the full band reunite on stage with founding member and co-vocalist Jason Lancaster for the first time in 18 years. How did it feel to share the stage together again after all this time?

I think it was a really special moment, you know, to have Jason come up and do like a surprise couple of songs. I think we knew that would certainly be something that the fans would enjoy and would find very special and interesting. We knew it'd be fun for socials and stuff. Like the people who couldn't be there at least, could see it in video form. 

And yeah, it's just been so long. There was...I think there was a time where it was tough to get away from that idea that we were six members and now we're five. And you had a missing element, you know? 

This far into the career, it's just kind of like we've just settled into what Mayday Parade is and has been for most of our entire career. So it didn't feel like too much of a departure, or like a weird, confusing switch up to have him join us for a special moment like that on this tour. 

And I sat back and wanted to take that in as well, and certainly took the time, while concentrating on not messing up my guitar parts, the moment was very cool.

Looking at Mayday Parade in the present, you just dropped the first part of what will be Mayday Parade’s first self released full length record. How rewarding was it to do this on your own? 

Well, if anything, it was difficult [laughter] It was more difficult. A lot of extra work on all people in the band and our management. It's just a lot of working parts where you're trying to fill in the gaps of what a label does and you are hiring other people to help / third party companies to help facilitate that.

I think that maybe having to be more hands on has made a better creative process, and maybe [made] us have to be a little bit more interesting with what we're doing, as opposed to like, “here's an idea” and we just say, “sure.”  Or maybe the label, a lot of times, has an idea artistically with what they want to do with something and thinks a lot about like, “Okay, well, this is a vision that we have. We would love to go this direction.”  Whereas the concept had to come more from us right off the rip. It's just made us more involved, which is cool. 

I won't pretend to be artists outside of music, though, you know? And that's the whole thing. That's the one thing I don't love about it is, I don't love having to be super creative aesthetically with things, even though it's a big part of bands and what you do. And I'm glad that we're doing that. I just like to work on the music myself.

Like album artwork?

Yeah, yeah, all that. And that's what’s been more difficult just in the time, like what it takes to put that stuff together. But, you know, I think the back end reward is that you have more control. We've always had a lot of control with what we're doing; that's never been really a thing, except for maybe our second record, right? When we were on the major label. That's when it was strong-handed by somebody outside [of the band]. 

We've always had complete artistic control. What I'm saying is that I just think that it's made us be more aware of what we're doing and trying to make sure that we stay relevant. And I think I've never played more music in my life than I am now. I've just constantly got a guitar in my hand. I'm really enjoying the writing process and the studio process. And yeah, I hope it is translating in the release and with the fans.

With Sweet being the first installment of the three EP series, followed by Sad and then Sugar, what was the inspiration behind these themes and what can fans expect from the future EPs?

Well, I think that we tried and I think we sort of accomplished it without overly worrying about the terms and the feeling of the music, right? I think if you listen to Sweet, I think you do get more of an optimistic story from the music.

I can't say 100% that it will continue that way, because our idea is to try and be able to work around something conceptually and have these cool things that are just like little extensions of the music, but not overly focused. I've never overly liked the idea of concept records. Because to me, if it falls into place that way, that's kind of cool. That's great. You take the little things that connect to the terms and you have fun with that and spin off of it. 

But I think you put yourself in a box by trying to be so concept oriented. It's like, “Oh, well, I want to write something that's based on this story.” And I'm like, “Okay, that's great, but maybe that's not the best thing.” Like maybe you box yourself in too much, where [instead] you could literally write about anything, anytime. And that's what we're still doing.

As exciting as it is to look back on the last 20 years of Mayday Parade, what does the future look like for the band?

I don't think that we're going to slow down. Hopefully there's no reason to slow down, you know? I do think that the future is seemingly endless. Like I said before, you think you'd do it for five or ten years. And we're at 20 and it's just not slowing down, so I don't really know what that means for like when people will stop caring about our music.

I just don't see it slowing down and if anything, picking up. I always say as long as the fans are coming out to shows, we'll keep doing it.