An All-American Homecoming for Tyson Ritter

When you stay in one state for most of your life, you tend to amass a lot of local experiences that, years later, have a lot more significance than you originally thought.

Working both in and out of the Oklahoma media since before I was sixteen, I have come into contact with more than my fair share of celebrities. My kids are somewhat amazed and mystified that their dad once had lunch with professional wrestling and movie star John Cena way back when. Same for when an episode of a since-cancelled Discovery ID show called Solved comes on, and a much-younger version of me appears talking about a cold case murder I reported on.

So it was a little funny to me when we booked Tyson Ritter on the Oklahoma Today podcast, and I remembered, completely out of the blue, that I saw him when I was in college at Oklahoma State University and The All-American Rejects played a show at the Blockbuster Video where I worked.

Wow, that is the oldest sentence I think I have ever typed. Long before the days of streaming and digital media, people lined up for a midnight release to get a two-VHS tape version of Titanic. In advance of the sale, however, the store was jam-packed with locals who came to hear Ritter and his band play. We didn't rent a lot of movies that night, because people were too busy listening to the band.

Even as a college student I was an out-of-the-loop old man, so it was the first time I'd heard of the Rejects, but it was far from the last. Red Dirt country was already spreading across the region by that time, but many of those local stars would soon be eclipsed by Ritter and his pop-rock bandmates as they went national and international with "Swing, Swing."

"Swing, Swing" by The All-American Rejects

The band members were still in high school at the time, and the set up was far from ideal for a small video store, but no one cared. These guys rocked. By the time their show wound down, I was busy with the rest of the staff slinging Leonardo DiCaprio's breakout hit to a line of anxious boat-crash enthusiasts and music was the last thing on my mind.

Cut to the present, and Ritter has gone all around the world and back again, ready to wrap up The Wet Hot All-American Summer Tour with The All-American Rejects at the Zoo Amphitheatre in Oklahoma City on October 14.

If you haven't seen The Rejects in a while, you can get tickets to the show [here,] (external:https://www.etix.com/ticket/p/4595433/the-allamerican-rejects-oklahoma-city-the-zoo-amphitheatre) and I recommend you take advantage now. The band's next performance will be in Brazil in 2024, which is a heck of a lot farther away than Oklahoma City.

Be sure to listen to this week's podcast, where Ritter sits down with our own Nathan Gunter to talk about his career, keeping the band together, and why the shows they're playing now are some of the best of their career. It's a really fun, fascinating look behind the scenes of The All-American Rejects tour and what it means to come home in more than one sense.

Written By

Greg Elwell

Greg Elwell served as research editor and web editor of Oklahoma Today from 2018-2023. He also has worked for newspapers, medical research organizations, and government institutions.