Mayday Parade Wholeheartedly Celebrates 20 Years at Sold Out Anaheim Show

In celebration of the band’s 20-year milestone, Mayday Parade embarks on their extensive Three Cheers for 20 Years Tour, making it to a sold-out Anaheim show on Tuesday May 6th. This tour is their first headlining tour in over six years, and they brought along three support acts to celebrate the occasion with them.

The night started bright and early with Like Roses already on stage by 7pm. The emo band from the Bay Area doesn’t waste any time in warming up the crowd, going all-in for their six songs, with each member of the band having the stage presence most seasoned artists would kill for. Guitarist Devin Zamora brought the theatrics flinging his guitar around, bassist Kayla Gonzalez’s shredding her bass lines on her side of the stage and singer Amy Schmalkuche sounding vulnerable and small one minute and loud and angry the next, taking us through an emotional rollercoaster in the best way.

With the tour being so stacked, the support acts all follow each other in rapid succession, with rock band Grayscale starting mere minutes after Like Roses left. The Philadelphia men start their set off with a couple songs from their latest record, released in January. Starting off with a slower instrumental, leading into two sweeping rock songs, slowly building the tempo to go all out by the third song “Dirty Bombs.” Charismatic lead singer Collin Walsh moves around the stage a lot, accompanied by the more grounded guitarists Andrew Kyne and Dallas Molster, both getting their spotlight through guitar solos and singing backing vocals on songs like “Fever Dream.” The tempo builds throughout the set, with the band interacting with the crowd a lot as well. The love definitely is mutual, as it feels like there’s a lot of fans in the crowd for them, singing along loudly.

Microwave is definitely the hardest band on the roster for the night, and they get the most crowd surfers during their set. The post-hardcore rockers from Atlanta definitely continue with the built energy from the earlier bands. They released their fourth record Let’s Start Degeneracy a year ago, with a headlining show in the same venue, and you can tell they’re very at ease on this stage, with a lot of movement from all the men on stage. It’s almost hypnotizing how they move through their set, calling their own music “psychedelic” as well as featuring a bunch of mushrooms as their decor. The brooding lyrics through Nathan Hardy’s voice are accompanied by a half-blue, half-black haired guitarist Lucas Jones, and his colorful hair reminds of toxins, as if they’re telling you they’re dangerous, urging us to stay away through lyrics like in “Drown” — “that say the best thing for you looks like anyone but me, but some might argue the colors and the toxins are addictive and we can’t help but want more.“

Mayday Parade’s set starts with a video of the band in an interview from approximately 20 years ago, asking about the future of the band. There’s a giant mirror in the back of the stage, reflecting on the past but also looking into the future, which also features as a nod to the fans, as they are a huge part of the reason for the band making it to this point. The celebration of 20 years of Mayday Parade has a setlist ranging from the very beginning with songs off Tales Told By Dead Friends, moving through the years from record to record, ending up with songs off their newest record Sweet.

It’s a deeply nostalgic night filled with memories and history, and because of the way the set is built, we get a lot of the iconic hits pretty early on in the set. Singer Derek Sanders starts off behind the piano, making his way to the keys for a couple songs like Valdosta’s “Terrible Things.” It also turns into a classic Mayday Parade show when Derek’s shoes come off, just before going all out for “Stay.”

All three singers from the supporting bands join Mayday Parade on stage in the tail end of the set, with Like Roses’ Amy Schmalkuche singing on “One of Them Will Destroy The Other,” Microwave’s Nathan Hardy on “Who’s Laughing Now” and the finale “Jamie All Over” gets sung with Grayscale’s Collin Walsh.

Just before we get back to the present with the Sweet songs, there’s another clip of guitarist Brooks Betts talking about how he’s not going to be in this band until his 40s, before starting “Who’s Laughing Now,” the band’s newest single. The encore features a deep cut “One Man Drinking Games,” one of the first songs they ever wrote, before the confetti of “Jamie All Over” blasts out into the future of Mayday Parade. The entire set is a long love letter to their fans, with something in the set for everyone, whether you are a lifelong fan or a fairly new one. Three cheers for twenty years, and here’s for twenty more.

Mayday Parade is still on tour through the US for another month, with the final show in Tallahassee, Florida on June 7th. There’s still tickets available for the remaining shows, and the following Australian tour with support from Jack’s Mannequin and The Home Team, through https://maydayparade.com/tour/.