“We came up playing Soundwave and then Good Things [Festival], so it’s awesome to be back,” A Day to Remember frontman Jeremy McKinnon tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ, finding a rare spot of shade in the band’s compound at Knotfest Melbourne.
“For a while there, it felt like we were here every summer. We’ve missed it [in Australia], and we hope to be back more often.”
The last time Australian festival crowds saw the Floridian rock band was in 2019, the last Good Things Festival to take place before the pandemic. Safe to say, the band and their Aussie fans have a lot to catch up on – two albums’ worth, in fact.
A Day to Remember’s latest studio record, 2025’s Big Ole Album Vol. 1, has been out for just over a week when we meet. Featuring the singles “Miracle” and “Feedback”, the seeds of their latest ADTR formula were sewn as far back as 2022.
Executing a surprise-drop of the album on February 18th, the band delivered an album of material that brought the fervent essence of their earlier material together with a refreshed perspective on the band they want to be moving forward. Pop-punk meets fun, almost gleeful deep dives into crushing breakdowns and chaos.
Being able to revisit the sounds and influences that made their name, while also continuing to push themselves creatively, was part of the process McKinnon says the band thrived on this time around.
“When we did [2021 album] You’re Welcome, there was a portion of that album that, I would say, was a little more familiar to people,” he explains, “[and] then there was another half that was really new for us. We were trying different things; we just wrote what we were inspired to in the moment, and we saw how people felt about it.
“With that, it created this situation… I’d been chasing this feeling over the years where it was like, ‘How can we do something that feels like the next A Day to Remember record, or the next A Day to Remember batch of songs, that doesn’t feel too expected?’
“It always just felt super ‘expected’ to me, at least, to go after [2009 album] Homesick and slap a breakdown on every song. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to do, and that always makes me want to do something different. People wouldn’t expect it.”
As McKinnon notes, almost reversing that way of thinking and leaning into what felt truest to the core sound of the band ultimately opened up a bright new chapter of songwriting and artistry.
“For the first time in a long time, it felt like doing that would be the surprising thing, which made me really excited,” he says. “No one in a thousand years would have expected that we would approach it like that, but we did. There’s a whole other batch of songs that push it even further in that direction, that we’re also excited about coming out in the future.
“It felt good to go in and write like… a modern version of something that could have been on some of those older records, and it didn’t feel forced. It was a lot of fun, honestly. I didn’t want to sit down and write a worse version of something of ours you already liked. It would have been disingenuous.”
Image: Jeremy McKinnon Credit: Michelle Grace Hunder
Speaking of looking back to look forward, A Day to Remember will undoubtedly spend time this year taking stock of what becomes two decades in the game. Twenty years on from the release of their debut album, And Their Name Was Treason, the band have undergone multiple shades of evolution.
Now, as musicians with families of their own and lives outside the band to consider, McKinnon considers how difficult it used to be for artists to balance a rising profile with a young family, as well as meet the demands of being a new band grinding it out to make their name.
Thankfully, he notes how much more adaptable the lifestyle has become.
“It’s tough, but it’s doable,” he explains. “I don’t know how people did it back in the day [without technology]. Even with something as simple as FaceTime, it feels easily accessible to be part of their day.
“I understand how people got into bad shit [on the road], how easy it would be to struggle with drugs and stuff their whole lives because back then, without the links to back home, they were trapped. Backstage, nothing to do, without the easy access to call people, to call home. I know it’s a long time ago, but it’s something we still talk about.”
Thinking of A Day to Remember’s earlier years where they would be booked year-round on tours and festivals, purely to cut their teeth in different markets, McKinnon simply says this time in their career was “psychotic.”
Psychotic, maybe, but necessary at such an important stage for the band’s career.
“When Homesick came out, we were booked for like, four years straight,” he remembers. “Thankfully, we’re at a point in our career where everything is spaced out. You play these bigger places, you play like a festival like this… there’s only so many times you can play in front of a crowd this large. We’re very lucky in that sense as well, that we can space it out and plan it to have more time at home. It makes us happy.”
McKinnon would be the first person to tell you that while A Day to Remember’s longevity is one he didn’t expect, he’s excited for what the next decade will bring.
“For us to be a band this late into our career, and people still give a shit? Just that alone is a blessing,” he laughs. “I actually had a conversation with somebody about this the other day. I was like, ‘Regardless of what people think, if they like [the music] it or not, it’s just cool that people give a shit about what we do.’
“A lot of people don’t have that luxury. Even really talented people, sometimes they aren’t afforded that. They put all the work into something and no one even fucking notices that it’s happened. For us as a unit, we’ve never been tighter.”
More information about Knotfest Australia is available here.
