Tyson Ritter is going back on tour, and he’s bringing some special guests along with him!
The All-American Rejects kicked off their headlining tour on Friday, the band’s first in a decade, and frontman Ritter is ready for the ride. He tells PEOPLE that he has one person in particular that he hopes to impress — his 2½-year-old son.
“This is a giant big top circus,” he says. “And to be the ringmaster of it myself is a very, very daunting experience, so that my son’s gonna be along for the ride this time, honestly, I think I’m just really so excited to show him that his Dad’s kind of P.T. Barnum.”
“This is going to be a full on Osmonds experience,” he adds.
It didn’t take much for Ritter’s mini-me to become a fan of the Rejects. The punk-rocker says his wife Elena Satine started playing his music for their son early on, and he quickly took to one of the group’s biggest hits.
“It’s really weird when you’re showing somebody your own music, and especially if it’s your son, because you don’t know if he’s gonna dig it if he’s just 2,” Ritter confesses before revealing, “He likes ‘Swing Swing’ — he’ll request it — which is a really flattering experience to have your son request one of your songs.”
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Along with iPods and low-rise jeans, the Rejects were a hallmark of the 2000s. Ritter says the Wet Hot Summer Tour, which runs through Oct. 14, is a symbol of the band’s “perfect little time capsule.”
“We’re just trying to celebrate what we’ve created for ourselves,” Ritter explains. “The Wet Hot American Summer Tour is a celebration of the fact that people are now finally old enough to come out to these shows and the shame that they may have had in their hearts listening to this band at one point is now free and released.”
Tapping back into the nostalgia of the heyday of their “Move Along” record, Ritter says it is “surreal” to reflect on the Rejects being “four guys from Oklahoma” writing songs in a garage in the ‘90s and compare it to where they are today.
“I remember having, like, a few thousand dollars in the bank, and it was the eve of the [‘Move Along’] record coming out, and I remember going, ‘If this doesn’t work, I have no idea what I’m gonna do with my life,’” he recalls.
“Because I remember the fear of the release of Move Along, that record — I remember going, ‘Oh my God, if this doesn’t happen, I’m gonna be working at Blockbuster.’ And now Blockbuster doesn’t even exist, so where would I be?”
Tyson Ritter performing with the All-American Rejects in October 2022.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty
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At the time, Ritter says he didn’t realize the album would become such “an unforgettably transformative” moment in his life. Now over two decades later, he says performing the Rejects’ hits never gets boring (although he notes that another album from the band would require a “miraculous act of compromise and understanding”).
“When you’re singing [a song] in a crowd of people that are voicing it to you in a way that their entire hearts are in their throats, it makes you up for it, you know, like it keeps it new,” Ritter says. “It’s not old yet.”
Once the tour wraps come mid-fall, Ritter says he and his family are moving back to Oklahoma, where he grew up, and he will return to working on solo projects and his new band, Now More Than Ever.
“Right now, I honestly I couldn’t be happier to be not only in the Rejects, but also in a place in my life where, you know, I have this opportunity to be able to continue to create,” he says.
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Source: HIS Education