Interviews

Ryan Key - Yellowcard 'Ocean Avenue, Run Lola Run and the Next Phase Inbound'

Paul 'Browny' Brown

CEO/Founder and Editor-In-Chief

Mar 10, 2025

7 min read

Throughout the peak glory years of pop punk (the mid-to-late 2000s), you couldn't escape hearing Yellowcard's statement piece single 'Ocean Avenue' played on mainstream outlets, especially the old wireless radio.

The title-track of their career defining album set the band up for greatness alongside already established names in the scene including blink-182, Green Day, Good Charlotte, Sum 41 and New Found Flory - the only difference was that iconic violin which gave them the dramatic edge against all who came before.

Fast forward to 2017 and the Florida rockers hit Australia for the last time as part of the final stops of their farewell tour - emotions were high and none of us imagined we'd ever see the outfit again... until Ocean Avenue's impending 20th Anniversary came calling and found the lads celebrating their magnificent 2003 album with a world tour which finally makes its way to Australia in next month.

While technically it'll be closer to the 22nd Anniversary, we're not letting facts get in the way of a huge celebration and frontman Ryan Key joined Wall Of Sound for a reflective chat about the album, the memories and anecdotes surrounding it's release and conception, and to look ahead with the bountiful supply of new material that Yellowcard cannot wait to start unleashing upon the world - very soon mind you.

Watch the full interview below or read on for the best bits...

Before touching on Ocean Avenue's success, we took it right back to the inception of the band to find out how that bloody violin - played exceptionally by OG member Sean Mackin - made its way into the instruments. For the ill-informed (myself included) Ryan was ready to take us back to his high school era to discuss the origins of Yellowcard and the organic practices which resulted in the group's formation.

‍"Sean's been a part of the band since basically its inception." explains Ryan, who noted he wasn't in the original lineup in the early years. "But we went to a performing arts high school in Jacksonville where we grew up and it was a super creative environment where something like a violin player from the orchestra would end up playing with the guys from the guitar classes after school. Even though I wasn't in Yellowcard (I had my own band) we were all super deep in that mid/late 90s pop punk [era]. It was the perfect time for us all to be super invested in this scene of music and we all had our own versions of it, our own high school bands; Yellowcard was one of them.

I think Sean was just hanging with the boys after school at a band practice and that lead to 'what if I play on a song?' and that lead to 'what if I play on all the songs?' We certainly never knew how far we were gonna get as a band."

Many forget that Ocean Avenue was Yellowcard's fourth studio album, and only second release with Ryan Key as their frontman and guitarist, so it's safe to say persistence and the right formula paid off for the rising stars when success came knocking.

"The record was a dream sequence, like a outta body experience to have the success we had with Ocean Avenue at 23-24 years old. But it wasn't the intention of adding the violin to say 'let's be different and we'll stick out that way' it just ended up happening."

On top of crafting catchy and everlasting music for the record, the band sort the help of a little known director (at the time) named Marc Webb for the corresponding title-track's video. Long before he directed blockbuster superhero flicks The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2, and the upcoming live action remake of Snow White, Marc was already cutting his teeth in the alternative music scene working on vids with the likes of Good Charlotte, AFI, Evanescence, Green Day and My Chemical Romance.

For the 'Ocean Avenue' concept, he took influence from a little known 1998 German thriller titled Run Lola Run - in which the protagonist must find 100,000 Deutsche Mark to save the life of her boyfriend. Without giving too much away, the events of the film reset after dramatic conclusions - which is reflected in Yellowcard's shortened rendition of the highly acclaimed film that went on to score accolades following its release, including an Audience Award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, Best Film at the Seattle International Film Festival and consequently landed at the #86 spot in Empire Magazine's "100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.

The only reason I was personally aware of the connection between the two, was because we studied Run Lola Run in a Film & TV class during my own high school journey, so of course I hit Ryan up about the creative processes.

"Credit that to Marc Webb the director of the video, he directed 'Ocean Avenue', 'Lights & Sounds' and 'Rough Landing, Holly' which in my opinion are the best videos we ever made." Ryan profoundly gushes, who was a theatre kid before making the leap into music. "He came to us as a director in those early days when you would just get stacks of video treatments and every one of them was 'A kid drops in a half-pipe on a skateboard. His friends are nearby on their BMX bikes...' Every single treatment was like that and we were so not interested in that concept. Without sounding pretentious about it, we just wanted to do more with the visuals and it seemed like every video we were already watching was that concept."

"Out of the stack of video treatments, the one from Marc really stood out because he referenced [Run Lola Run] and it was such a unique take on a high energy rock song to make it so cinematic that way."

As it turns out, the music video and German film left a profound mark upon the frontman, who would later hone back in on his theatrical roots in life away from the band.

"I love watching and creating and now getting into scoring film on my own outside of Yellowcard here in my 40s now. But that all is just to say that THAT treatment really stood out as something special. I could feel how cinematic it was and when Marc and I got into it and started talking about it, that's how we came up with the concept of 'What if we all had Guy Ritchie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels-styled costumes and the muscle cars in the garage?' All that came after the general concept of 'What if the main character had multiple tries to get this right?' based on the film.

And what a moment, we captured lighting in a bottle with that video, we really did."

"In a time where so many videos were so similar, I think 'Ocean Avenue' really jumped out at people because it was so different from what everyone else was doing at the time."

Standing out from the pack is something Yellowcard have always had the upper advantage of. As conversations lead to their reunion and working together - both on stage and in studio again - the frontman shared insights into the future, which is shaping up to be more than just a stack of comeback shows.

"This is a real turning point though, once we wrap up in Australia, that's the end of riding the nostalgia wave. After that we have to stand on our own two feet making new music and doing tours that don't lean on people wanting to celebrate this time capsule moment from 20 years ago. There's so much at stake after this!"

Admittedly, hearing Ryan Key talk about new Yellowcard material was a statement I never thought I'd hear following their dissolvement in 2017. But he's not wrong, the stakes are much higher once they relaunch themselves back into the music scene - and according to Key, it all starts just before they venture back down under.

"We're in a very secretive stage of making new music right now but what I can tell you is we're very close [to] something happening, and there will be stuff when we get to Australia. But when the news does come out, it is so much more than just an album."

"When I say more than an album, I just mean that the news around it; how it was made, who we made it with, it's surreal. I'm pinching myself every day, since April of last year when we started working on it. We've really poured ourselves into this thing."

We know that the group's Aussie set revolves around celebrating Ocean Avenue and more... which begs the question: does the "more" indicate we'll be some of the first people in the world to hear what new Yellowcard sounds like in 2025? Well, take Ryan's word on the subject.

"It's worth the wait. It's very calculated for a reason and we WILL be playing some new music in Australia!"

Uffff!! With that in mind, get ready for THE tour to kick off the next phase of one of the pop punk scene's greatest acts.

Interview by Paul 'Browny' Brown @brownypaul

Yellowcard kick things off in Perth in April 2nd with support from Motion City Soundtrack and Plain White T's - tickets here