AAR’s Ritter Plays Show Hours After Surgery

Tyson Ritter, front man for The All-American Rejects, had a busy show day in West Palm Beach, Florida on Saturday.

Performing in a lab coat with a leg brace and a surgeon’s mask, Ritter told the audience he had a tumor removed from his leg that morning and was performing against the doctor’s advice.

After the jump, check out more pictures and learn about the Rejects’ collaborations with Rihanna and Weezer.

All-American Rejects’ Tyson Ritter Confirms Rihanna Collaboration
Band’s frontman says he’ll try both aggressive rock songs and ‘fun, clubby ideas’ for the pop star.
By James Montgomery, with reporting by Steven Roberts

For months now, rumors have been swirling that All-American Rejects frontman Tyson Ritter was working with Rihanna on her upcoming album in a partnership made in hitmaker heaven. After all, Ritter already has an impressive string of radio smashes to his credit (”Swing, Swing,” “Dirty Little Secret,” “Move Along” and, most recently, “Gives You Hell,”), and Rihanna, well, she’s Rihanna.

The only problem was, neither party had actually commented on those rumors. Until last Friday, that is. As Ritter and AAR guitarist Nick Wheeler rehearsed with Wale and UCB for their performance on Sunday’s VMAs, MTV News asked him about working with Rihanna. And he was more than willing to talk about the collaboration.

“I actually met with her a couple of weeks ago and the funny thing is, I actually don’t remember half of it,” Ritter laughed. “I remember the first half of meeting her, but then, as the night progressed, somebody decided to drink too much Jameson.”

“But seriously, she’s such a sweet girl that I’m gonna try to give her a little piece of my heart,” he went on. “I wanna get in a room with her, and I wanna see what flies. I’ve got some songs for her, like, little things written, and I wanna see what she wants. See if she wants something aggressive and rock, and I’ve also kinda got some really fun, clubby ideas.”

But that’s not the only bit of collaborating Ritter and Wheeler have been doing as of late. They apparently also wrote a song for Weezer’s upcoming album, Raditude, due October 27.

“We also just did a track with Rivers [Cuomo] for the new Weezer record!” Ritter announced. “When he asked us to do it, I fell on my knees and cried. We were playing this guy’s songs when we were 13 at parties.”

“A few weeks ago, we [went] to his house — so that was cool — sat in a room with three guitars, and just kinda, Ty had a little idea, and we kind of riffed on it,” Wheeler added. “And then we never heard anything. So we’re shooting our video for our next single, ‘I Wanna,’ yesterday, and our A&R guy comes to the shoot with a CD of the finished version, and I was like, ‘Oh, so that happened!’

“And so I shot [Cuomo] an e-mail saying what a privilege it was working with him, and this sounds great, you guys did a great job with the song, you know, stuff like that,” Wheeler continued. “And he replied back, and at the end, it said, ‘Definitely miss your guitar playing on the final version.’ So, I saved that e-mail, and it’s probably gonna stay in my star file for quite a while.”