Panic! at the Disco's guitarist Ryan Ross says that last year's Summerfest was one of the best shows the group has ever played. It's a good thing, too, since the festival atmosphere and legions of fans had the band battling nerves before taking the stage.
Around that time, the band's single "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" had blown up on radio, its video was in heavy rotation on MTV and VHI and the band was in the midst of its three month headlining, cross-country summer tour.
Now a year later, Panic! at the Disco has been upgraded from the U.S. Cellular Connection Stage to the Marcus Amphitheater. Unlike last summer, however, things have been fairly quiet for the Las Vegas natives recently.
"We haven't even played a show for three or four months now, so we're all kind of anxious to get out there," Ross says of playing Summerfest. "We've played in Milwaukee four or five times now, and every time it gets better and better."
The band has been working on its follow-up to its platinum-selling debut, "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out." Whenever bands have as much success as Panic! had on its first album, there is always that speculation of a sophomore slump. Ross says he's more than aware of it.
"There is definitely that pressure. A lot of people try and say they aren't affected by it. The only thing we can do is try and write songs we enjoy like the last time."
Ross admits some of the songs from the last album had a sort of bizarre novelty.
"From a radio and MTV standpoint, all of our singles (off the last record) were pretty strange pop songs. It would be hard for us to try and recreate what we did on those because it would be obvious that's what we were doing," he says. "It's going to be different this time around. Different doesn't always mean better, but hopefully in this case it will be."
The singles he's referring to -- which, besides the aforementioned "Sins", include "Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off" and "But It's Better If You Do" -- all featured fast-paced, frenetic lyrics with strong, melodic choruses. Each subsequent music video similarly featured a panache style with elaborate settings, detailed costumes and theatrical storylines. Panic!'s video for "Sins" claimed Video of the Year at MTV's Music Video Awards in August 2006, a thrilling end to that whirlwind summer.
"We're very hands-on (with our music videos,)" Ross said. "We (initially) got a lot of standard video treatments that every director writes for every rock band -- you know, the standard videos in a warehouse, the storylines interjected by performance shots. We're not interested in doing that. We wanted to try and make it worth it to watch our videos."
The enormity of the success Panic! at the Disco has found caught the band off guard. No member of the band -- which includes Brendon Urie (the lead singer), Jon Walker (the bassist) and Spencer Smith (the drummer) -- is over the age of 21.
"I never thought I would be able to travel to some 16 different countries by the time I was 20 years old," Ross says. "And I never thought I would be able to do what I had wanted to do with my life before the time I was 21. I don't know, it's been a blessing. We get to make music for a living -- it doesn't really get much better."
And making music has been the band's main focus these past few months. But will this year's Summerfest crowd be privvy to new material?
"We're still trying to figure out if we are going to play anything new or not. I would like to try and play a new one," he said. "We've got about nine songs complete with lyrics and melodies and everything. Right now we're still finishing writing the last three or four songs."
Unlike the last record, where Ross wrote all of the songs on his own (and in so doing infused each with tongue-twisting lyrics and obscure references to various books and films), Ross says this record has been a different process.
"I'm still writing all the lyrics, but musically this time it's been more collaborative. We're all writing the music together, whereas before a lot of it started with just me by myself."
Regardless of new material, Ross says this year's Summerfest show is going to be completely different from last year. For one, the Marcus Amphitheater is as big of a spotlight as it gets, seating some 23,000 people. Ross says they're up to the challenge.
"We're excited about it and we're trying to make sure it will be something special for our fans."
