Dallas-area folks show up to buy advance copies of The All-American Rejects’ forthcoming album and get it signed by the band at Good Records. Photo by Madelyn Edwards.
Which 2000s-era alternative rock bands could inspire a large group of people to stand in the sweltering late-August heat in Dallas to buy their records and score autographs?
Fall Out Boy? Definitely.
My Chemical Romance? No doubt.
Paramore? Is this even a real question?
As of Aug. 28, it was proven that The All-American Rejects also have fans who will take off from work and risk getting sunburned for a chance to meet them.
The band stopped off at Good Records on Garland Road to autograph copies of their forthcoming album Sandbox on Thursday afternoon. Before 1 p.m., people made a line from the record store to the pie shop Humble to buy the album on vinyl. Then, on the other side of Good Records, another line formed of fans who had purchased the album and were waiting to meet the band. That line wrapped around the shopping strip building.
Who are fans of The All-American Rejects, who produced hits like “Dirty Little Secret,” “Gives You Hell” and (of course) “Move Along?”
One of them was Mya Campbell, 22, the youngest person I interviewed at the event, who discovered the Rejects through another bygone pop culture classic, Glee.
“When they sang ‘Gives You Hell,’ I was like, ‘What is this band?’” Campbell said. “That’s how I found a lot of artists that I listen to, through Glee. I’ll be listening on the radio, ‘Oh, I think I heard this on Glee,’ or I’ll hear it on Pitch Perfect, or something like that. I’m like, ‘This sounds familiar.’”
Campbell hasn’t kept up with the band over the past few years until they recently caught her attention again.
“When they popped back up, I was like, ‘Where have you been?’” she said.
Twenty-eight-year-old Richard Rodriguez from Oak Cliff remembers that the Rejects’ 2006 album Move Along was one of the first albums he ever bought.
“My cousins and I would just gather around. We’d sing it and stuff. We would pretend we were in a rock band,” Rodriguez said. (His favorite song from the album was the deep cut banger “Night Drive.”)
Rodriguez got in line at 10:45 a.m., well before albums went on sale at 12:15 p.m., but not as early as some folks who were already in line. He was initially nervous that he would be too late to secure his copy of the album, but he did and was in line to meet the band.
“I can’t wait to listen to this,” he said about the new album.
Longtime All-American Rejects fan Richard Rodriguez showed up at the Rejects’ album signing at Good Records on Aug. 28. Photo by Madelyn Edwards.
Campbell heard about The All-American Rejects coming to Good Records though a website and newsletter she subscribes to and was thankfully free from work that day. She drove to our neighborhood from Carrollton to attend this event.
“I wasn’t going to miss it because I missed the show last night,” Campbell said. (The Rejects performed at the skateboarding facility/community nonprofit 4DWN, south of Deep Ellum, on Aug. 27.) “So, I was not going to miss this.”
To prove even more that Campbell is a dedicated fan — she bought the vinyl record but doesn’t have a record player.
“Unfortunately, I will be listening on Spotify with the rest of the people, but this will be a great decoration, my very first vinyl,” she said. “This is a milestone.”
Rodriguez attended the performance at 4DWN, which he said included a lot of free party favors, and got to say hi to the Rejects’ frontman Tyson Ritter. Rodriguez said he planned to thank the band for the show while he gets his record signed.
Around 1:30 p.m., 34-year-old Valerie Avila of Oak Cliff and 32-year-old Silvia Chavez of Cedar Hill emerged from Good Records with their signed copies of Sandbox. They both started listening to The All-American Rejects in the seventh grade.
“You’re always going to be a fan of them because they were your childhood favorite band,” Avila said, adding that her favorite Rejects song is the heartbroken ballad “My Paper Heart” from the band’s first album in 2002. To this day, she still sings along to it.
Valerie Avila and Silvia Chavez show off their newly signed copies of The All-American Rejects’ forthcoming album “Sandbox.” Photo by Madelyn Edwards.
Chavez found out about the signing event while “doomscrolling” on TikTok and shared the news with Avila.
“I wouldn’t have known if I had been productive that day,” Chavez said.
Both Avila and Chavez described a pleasant experience of meeting the band, despite some expected nervousness.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to act real cool,’ and then they came in, and I was like … ‘Why are my hands shaking?’” Avila said. “And then, you meet them, and they’re just normal.”
