Getting To Know Lennon McAslan

When I was in middle school, times were a little different than they are now for middle-schoolers. I lived in a small town that didn’t have any live events and it was hard to discover new music. My family had a desktop computer that relied on dial-up to connect to the Internet. For this reason, I was unable to spend hours on the computer searching for music. My mom worked from home and couldn’t allow my siblings or me to block the landline while being connected to the Internet for extended amounts of time. When I was 12-13, my only source of new music was the radio. Because of this, I was really into pop music. You would find me listening to the likes of P!nk, Jesse McCartney, and Ryan Cabrera, to name a few. That was until one of my best friends introduced me to the band that got me into the scene I’ve now been part of and loved for the past decade.

My friend had always been more into music than I had at that time and she had an older brother that knew more unknown artists. I asked her to loan me some albums she thought I would like so that I had something to listen to other than the radio music I usually turned on. As a result, my friend loaned me her copy of Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard and that was when it all changed for me.

As I first played Ocean Avenue I knew I was listening to something amazing. When I played it through my boom box, I already felt myself connecting to this music. It was powerful and was musically different from everything I tended to love, but I loved it nonetheless. I continued listening and loving it more and more as Ocean Avenue played on. For me, the staple tracks on the album have always been “Way Away,” “Ocean Avenue,” “Inside Out” and “Believe.” These four songs were my favorites because of the way the instruments built throughout. They were catchy and fun to dance around to, which was typically all I cared about at that age. “Way Away” has that quiet build in the beginning and then attacks you with the full band. I couldn’t get enough of the diverse guitar sound in “Inside Out,” while “Believe” begins with the violin playing through the speakers that I can still listen to on repeat. “Ocean Avenue” is the anthem title track that I used to listen to on repeat just screaming the words and pretending I knew how to play the drums. Though none of these reasons are why I fell so in love with Yellowcard.

Ocean Avenue was the first time I really identified with songs and understood what they meant. I remember when I was 12 and was on my school’s volleyball team. It was a small school so all of my friends and I had decided it would be fun to join the team together; we’d have practice every day after school and get to travel during classes for away games. The only problem was, I sucked. I had played and excelled in other sports but for some reason I was never terribly good at volleyball, which was very frustrating for me. As a result, I made the team but I only got a couple minutes playing time per game, which honestly never bothered me. I felt as though if I contributed something to the game it was worth the effort of the endless practicing and the constant struggle of trying to improve.

I still remember the game like it was yesterday. We were playing the best team in our district and my coach wanted everyone on her A game. We had practiced long and hard for this match because we were undefeated at that point in time. All of us wanted to go out with an undefeated season, something that hadn’t happened in a while for our school’s volleyball team. The game was an away game for us, so we left school early that day, took a bus ride about 45 minutes away, and then started practicing. We watched our competition for a bit and saw they were indeed very good and we saw why they were also undefeated. My coach got our starters ready, amped us up, and we were out for the win. The game started strong and throughout the entire match it was a close call. We were up a point; they went up two points. We broke ahead by three points; they scored three points to tie the game. It was neck and neck the entire night and as a result, my coach never subbed me in. He wanted our best players on the court the entire game, which as I said before, wasn’t me. I was benched all night with three other teammates just watching our friends sweat it out. I was devastated. I knew we all wanted to win the game but it was still just a game and a team sport. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just play my three minutes and be done. It didn’t seem like I was asking for much, but it didn’t matter. We lost the game and that only fueled my hurt.

On the bus ride back to town, none of my teammates wanted to talk after our devastating loss and I couldn’t agree with them more. I put Yellowcard’s Ocean Avenue into my portable CD player and let “Way Away” drown out my sorrows. It was that night that I first remember feeling in sync with the lyrics to a song. “There’s nothing for me here it’s all the same…Way away, away from here I’ll be. Way away, away so you can see how it feels to be alone and not believe (feels to be alone and not believe), feels to be alone and not believe anything.” These words played over and over in my head and I remember thinking that even though I felt abandoned by my coach and underappreciated, Yellowcard understood how I was feeling. They knew what it was like to want to be anywhere else just to get away. They knew that I was feeling alone and didn’t believe in my volleyball team anymore because I didn’t get to play that night. The entire ride back to town, I listened to “Way Away” over and over feeling better each time and also feeling invigorated. I thought about how if I felt so in tune with this song, what other songs could I possibly need to hear.

As trivial as this event sounds, it’s the reason I fell in love with pop punk and the catalyst reason for me still being in this scene. I love lyrics that I can relate to and feel connected with.

I owe my curiosity and dedication to music to Yellowcard for being the first band that showed me there was more to music than just instruments and pop.

I will forever be grateful for being introduced to this band. They will always hold a special place in my heart and be one of my favorite bands. Throughout the years I’ve been able to see Yellowcard live on various occasions, and they are still killing the scene releasing heartfelt songs I love to this day. I was able to scream “Way Away” at the top of my lungs at a show of theirs recently and my 13-year-old self was extremely happy. I’m proud to say they are the band that got me into the music I love today.