Mayday Parade has been a five-man band for five years, but it hasn’t always been that way. It was a six-man group just over six years ago. The band had to deal with the departure of co-lead vocalist Jason Lancaster in the early years of the band, but that didn’t stop them from continuing to be a highly successful group. Lead vocalist Derek Sanders tells MOVE what it was like to deal with Lancaster leaving and the rest of the band moving on to bigger and better things, such as Vans Warped Tour and stopping by Columbia on the latest tour.

**[MOVE]** What made you guys decide to do a co-headlining tour with We the Kings?

**[Derek Sanders]** We’ve known the dudes for a long time. We did a tour with them back in 2007, and we’ve stayed friends with them since then and done a couple of tours. We think it made a lot of sense for this tour to do the co-headliner and have The Downtown Fiction and Anarbor. I think it’s a really good package.

**[MOVE]** What is your favorite thing about going to new cities?

**[DS]** The whole experience. Meeting people that you never would have had the opportunity to meet any other way. Just seeing how people live in different parts of the world is really cool. We try to stay active and go out to bars after the show because for the most part we’re at the venue all day at the bus, so we don’t get to see a whole lot of the cities that we’re in. We’ve gotta keep in mind to try and get out and live life.

**[MOVE]** What are you looking forward to most playing in a college town?

**[DS]** The coolest thing about playing in college towns is the partying that happens. A lot of times we’ll try and go to house parties or any kind of college parties. It’s fun to see that side of things because I didn’t go to college so it’s cool to experience a little bit of that.

**[MOVE]** Was there a reason behind self-titling your fifth album versus an earlier release?

**[DS]** I think it kind of goes a lot with Jason leaving the band and us moving on. The other thing was, whenever we did the album _Anywhere But Here_, we kind of made a lot of compromises on that album. It was a weird time for the band. I feel like we didn’t really know exactly what we were, who we were or what we stood for with the band. We learned a lot with that album. With this newest album, we went back and did it the way that we need to do it. We know what we want and what we don’t want now, and we wanted to make a statement with that by self-titling the album.

**[MOVE]** What it was like losing Jason as a member of the band?

**[DS]** It was really weird and it was probably the hardest thing we’ve had to go through as a band. The hardest part about it was that he left in the middle of the tour, so we had to figure out how to do everything without him and kind of had to wing it. Also psychologically it was weird because we had all committed to a brotherhood with this band and it was sad to see him go and move on without him. That was way back in the early years of the band. We’ve been in this band for over five years now so we’ve all moved on a lot. This is who we are now.

**[MOVE]** Is there any other news/anything else in the works you want fans to know about?

**[DS]** We have a video coming out soon for the song “Stay,” but other than that our plans are just to continue touring throughout this year. Then we’ll start working on a new album. We have no plans to slow down anytime soon and we’re having a lot of fun doing this, so thanks to everyone for giving us the opportunity.

The End of the World Tour featuring Mayday Parade, We the Kings, The Downtown Fiction and Anarbor hits The Blue Note on Tuesday.