Mayday Parade performs at The Salt Shed in Chicago on May 16, 2025.
By Nina Tadic
In the year 2025, with concerts being a staple for most music fans, and tickets being more expensive and harder to get than ever, artists are constantly striving to find ways to make their live shows a unique experience that will pull folks in. The newest trend that, without reinventing the wheel, has hooked everyone across genres, is a career-highlights style tour (see: Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour).
Artists playing singles and hits on tour is not a “new” creation, but choosing to do a sort of anthology of fan favorites from each release is, and it is sheer genius. Mayday Parade, currently celebrating twenty years as a band, is currently out on their Three Cheers for Twenty Years Tour, which is just that – and it is selling tickets like hotcakes.
On Friday night at Chicago’s Salt Shed, the tour’s four-band bill played to a sold out room that filled up quickly and stayed packed until the end of the night.
Like Roses performs at The Salt Shed in Chicago on May 16, 2025.
The first band to warm up the crowd, Like Roses, knew exactly how to capture the audience’s attention. With emo rock tracks that are complete earworms, this band is one to watch, and held their own like seasoned veterans of the stage their entire set. The members’ chemistry onstage while simultaneously killing it on their instruments is something very rare, and will take them even further than it already has.
Grayscale performs at The Salt Shed in Chicago on May 16, 2025.
Following Like Roses was Grayscale, a pop punk band that is far from new on the scene, and has had quite a following nationally and internationally for nearing a decade. Performing a track off of each of their previous releases, as well as a good handful from their current album, The Hart, they made sure to provide for the old school fans and anyone that just got into them (or was just discovering them), a great move for any opening act.
Microwave performs at The Salt Shed in Chicago on May 16, 2025.
The final opener of the night, and one hell of an act live, was Atlanta, Georgia’s very own Microwave. With blow-up, glowing mushrooms onstage, hazy streams of light hitting each of them, and some incredible emo music, this band truly knows their style, and was fantastic to witness. Performing a mix of tracks off their older albums while interspersing a few from their most recent release, Let’s Start Degeneracy, their set was 1000% about having fun and jamming out, which is exactly what they did. Fans of their older bodies of work like Stovall and Much Love got a few treats on the setlist, as well, and all of the fans in the audience got the best treat by getting to watch this group of men turn into firecrackers onstage. Fluctuating between shoegazey, slower moments and guitar shredding and howling yells, they were absolutely captivating in the best way – a perfect lead-in for the band running the show, Mayday Parade.
Tales Told By Dead Friends (2006), A Lesson in Romantics (2007), Anywhere But Here (2009), Valdosta (2011), Mayday Parade (2011), Monsters in the Closet (2013), Black Lines (2015), Sunnyland (2018), What It Means to Fall Apart (2021), More Like a Crash (2023), Sweet (2025) – this wild string of titles and years marks every Mayday Parade release being highlighted on the Three Cheers tour. Eight full length albums, two EPs, and a single spanning over the course of the last twenty years. A huge undertaking for any band, and something most people would consider massively impressive. Performing a rock set spanning two hours, where very few and far between are songs that are ballads, Mayday Parade is massively impressive, and this tour showcases that in a way that is truly indescribable.
Mayday Parade performs at The Salt Shed in Chicago on May 16, 2025.
The band’s stage set-up was an amazing tool throughout the night to transport fans from era to era, release to release, year to year – LED panels doubling as video screens on stage right and stage left, risers at the front of the stage a la Warped Tour, and a “portal” dead center that was actually a concave mirror for fans to see themselves (the crowd) – made for special moments during every minute of the performance, even at the very start.
While the band walked out onto the stage, the LED screens played snippets of an interview from their very first “official” Warped Tour (note, in said interview, one of the band members did confirm that the band had previously followed the Warped Tour unofficially and peddled CDs to the entry line every day, something not unheard of back then). After hyping the crowd with a great throwback video, they kicked it into high gear with a single, “By the Way”, off of their new release, Sweet, before digging into the deep cuts and taking it all the way back to 2006 with the Tales Told By Dead Friends EP.
“Just Say You’re Not Into It” and “Three Cheers for Five Years” both saw every member of the band running up and down the stage nonstop, moving, playing their instruments, you name it. Vocalist Derek Sanders singing at the top of his lungs with arms covered nearly to his elbows in fan-made bracelets, guitarist Brooks Betts jumping off the risers time and time again – some moments did not just feel reminiscent of the Vans Warped Tour days – they were genuinely reliving those days in real time. Fans clearly anticipated the Tales Told EP for quite some time, as well, because every word could be heard clear as day echoing through the giant, high-ceilinged, cavernous space of the Salt Shed – something that held true the majority of the night, but especially during the deep cuts like Valdosta’s “Terrible Things”, Mayday Parade’s “Stay”, and even the encore tracks (major fan favorites: “One Man Drinking Games” and “Jamie All Over”).
Mayday Parade performs at The Salt Shed in Chicago on May 16, 2025.
It’s also worth noting that the LED screens onstage were used to signal to fans what “era” was coming next via animations of each release’s album art, and then more specifically to set the tone of each song (“Terrible Things” saw black screens with small floating lights, which the crowd mimicked with their cell phone lights, etc).
It is blatantly clear that this tour was not put on lightly, and that the band poured over every detail on that stage – not just the sounds, but the lights, the screens, their mannerisms and interactions with fans (gracious, kind, and very clearly over-the-moon to be performing such a huge anthology of their work). Though plenty of bands and artists are taking a crack at their interpretation of an anthology tour, an eras tour, a greatest hits tour, a career highlights tour (pick your favorite, all are pretty accurate depictions) – not many bands are putting their hearts and souls into making sure it is genuinely worth their fans’ time to the fullest extent.
Mayday Parade has always stood out as a band that wants to put on a fantastic show, and they’ve been doing just that since they were kids following the Warped Tour. This is no different, it is just on a significantly more massive scale – and one that they’ve earned by never cutting corners on their production, performance, and genuine appreciation for their fanbase. If there is one takeaway from the Three Cheers for Twenty Years Tour, it is just that – the details matter, and they can truly amplify a performance tenfold – something Mayday Parade continues to master time and time again.
(Photos and review by Nina Tadic – follow Nina on Instagram at @ninatadiccreative)
