Before they were soundtracking late-2000s heartbreak and neon-lit nights, The Cab were just a group of Vegas teenagers making demos in their bedrooms and supporting other local artists in the scene. Legend has it that frontman Alexander DeLeon, then just 17, tossed the band’s demo CD onto the stage during a Panic! At The Disco show. The right people heard it, and soon after, Panic! and Fall our Boy helped them land a deal with Decaydance/Fueled By Ramen in May 2007, making The Cab one of the youngest acts signed to the label at the time. Their 2008 debut, Whisper War, introduced a sleek blend of pop-rock polish and emotional storytelling that cemented their spot among the era’s Fueled By Ramen (and Myspace) favorites.
Following their ambitious self-released follow-up Symphony Soldier (2011) and a long silence that had fans wondering if they’d ever return, The Cab officially reignited in 2025 with Road to Reign: A Prelude their first new music in over a decade. The comeback also reunited founding members Alex DeLeon, Alex Marshall, Joey Thunder, and Dave Briggs, who are now back on tour supporting All Time Low on their EVERYONE’s TALKING TOUR alongside Mayday Parade, and just completed performing on the When We Were Young stage in their Las Vegas hometown.
For the band, being invited to play When We Were Young was a full-circle moment. Sharing the lineup with Panic! At The Disco, the very band who believed in them when they were just teenagers, felt like a poetic return to where it all began.
Now, older, wiser, and with a renewed sense of purpose, The Cab are reconnecting with the fans who grew up with them and proving that sometimes, the second act can be even more meaningful than the first. Melodic Magazine got a chance to sit down with Alex DeLeon, Alex Marshall, and Joey Thunder at this year’s When We Were Young to ask questions about their return.
Welcome back! You officially returned last year with new music and announcing hitting the When We Were Young Stage after nearly 10 years. How does it feel being back?
Alex Deleon: We’ve been on the fence for a long time about when and if we were gonna get back together. We’re old men now, we’re in our thirties. We started this thing when we were like 14.
We got the call from When We Were Young and found out Panic! [at the Disco] was headlining, playing a Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. I think we all got on the phone and were like, ‘if we’re not doing it now, we’re never doing it. This is too perfect.’
This is our hometown, it’s with Panic! at the Disco. We got this All Time Low tour offer, I think it was now or never. Most of us are married, a few of us have kids. Also selfishly, I’ve been with my wife for 11 years, she’d never seen The Cab, my daughter’s two and never seen us perform. [Marshall]’s got two kids, never seen him perform in The Cab. So we were all like, all right, this is it.
So we pulled the trigger and that was it.
You’re on tour with All Time Low and Mayday Parade currently. How did that come about originally? You mentioned it was around the same time as your When We Were Young call?
Alex Deleon: Yeah, we got the call for When We Were Young and then we kind of put feelers out for tours. Once we knew All Time Low was willing to have us we’re like, ‘okay, this is perfect.’ Those are friends of ours, and we love the Paradox kids. Timing is everything.
What was that like working together as a band again? How did it come about?
Alex Marshall: Alex [Deleon] reached out to me and was like ‘man, do you wanna go to Bali to write music?’ That’s such an Alex Deleon thing. So… we went there, no expectations. Two of the songs (“Rollercoaster” and “Every Little Lie”) on Road to Reign were written in Bali and that was kind of the starting point for what is coming after the prelude.
Alex Deleon: The EP leading into the new album is 10 years of music, right? It’s picking like some of our favorites from songs over the past 10 years.
[In Bali] we did a beach house, a jungle house, and a city house because we wanted every week to change the environment. Week one, we flew out like five friends who are all writers of producers.
Our friend Ryan [Follesé] and Nash [Overstreet], who were in the band called Hot Chelle Rae, some of our best friends, were out the second week. First week was our friend Sean [Dhondt] from Belgium. Dave our drummer, flew out. Every week we just had different people coming in and writing to change our creative mindset.
Alex Marshall: “Rollercoaster” was one of the first [we wrote] and then “Every Little Lie.” I remember we had a film guy out with us and he was filming this whole interaction when we were writing “Every Little Lie” and there’s this moment when you’re making something with other people, you get this kind of buzz when it feels right.
And “Every Little Lie” was when we first did the riff in that song, me and Alex looked at each other and were like, ‘that’s right!’ It felt right and that was when it all started clicking to me that it sounded like The Cab.
“Every Little Lie” sounds very “NSYNC”.
Alex Deleon: I grew up listening to NSYNC and Rage Against The Machine and like he (points to Marshall) grew up listening to like really piano heavy stuff. Like if you know us individually in our music taste and you like listen to the songs, you’re like, this makes sense.
Alex Marshall: If it’s a script Coldplay song, it’s probably me. If it’s guitars hitting you in the face and sounds like NSYNC, it’s definitely Alex. And if it’s funky, it’s got Joey Thunder on it.
Do you plan on using the same aesthetic with the continuing albums: the black with gold? Is there any reason for that specific artwork?
Alex Deleon: Road to Reign cover is Kintsugi, Japanese art, which is something’s more beautiful when it breaks and you put it back together.
So for us it was like being gone for so long, calling the band say “broken up” or hiatus coming back together… That was kind of the meaning, the symbolism of that.
Joey Thunder: I think now where the band’s at and how creatively involved everyone is, the visuals mean just as much as the music. We’re storytellers at the end of the day and definitely there will be tie in [with the prelude and album], but that’s something that we’re all talking it over about.
Alex Marshall: Joey is a fantastic artist. I do a lot of creative work for companies and brands and so does Alex. So the understanding of that side of things is so much more in depth than what we had when we were younger. That side is equally as important to the music to us.
“Stay This Way Forever” is included in your recent setlists, what’s that song about to you guys?
Alex Marshall: I mean, we’ve lived in LA for several years, so we went through that scene and that was a really transitional time in our lives. It was just us finding ourselves and going through moments like that in the song.
Alex Deleon: I wouldn’t say it’s like anti LA scene. The lyrics to me are kind of a letter to being in a van touring with your friends. And I think it’s more like anti the LA music like scene. It’s, it’s more like, Fuck these A&R’s who think that they can just tell artists who to be and what to do.
The beautiful part about being in a band is being free, being with your friends, being creative and having people kind of take that from you.. it’s like taking your innocence, like Peter Pan growing up.
So the song is kind of about remembering the best days of your life are kind of when you don’t know what’s happening and you’re just along for the ride with your best friends sleeping in a van. And then like you look back on it and you’re like, ‘fuck were those the best days of my life? Probably.’ So it’s a love letter to that.
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There’s something undeniably poetic about The Cab’s return and performing in their hometown on a stage shared with the very band that helped them get their start. But beyond the nostalgia, there’s a renewed sense of purpose in the air for each of the members of the band. The same spark that once carried a group of Vegas kids into the spotlight has evolved into something deeper. With Road to Reign: A Prelude ushering in their next chapter, The Cab are not only revisiting their past but as their story proves, showcases that sometimes the most beautiful things are the ones pieced back together.
Following their performance at When We Were Young, the band still has some shows left in 2025. Tickets are still available and can be found on the bband’s website, here.
The Cab 2025 live shows:
10/23 – Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theater *
10/25 – Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom *
10/26 – San Antonio, TX @ Boeing Center at Tech Port *
10/28 – Cheterfield, MO @ The Factory *
10/29 – Waukee, IA @ Vibrant Music Hall *
10/31 – Madison, WI @ The Sylvee *
11/2 – Grand Rapids, MI @ GLC Live at 20 Monroe *
11/3 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore *
12/10-11 – Singapore, Asia @ Foo Chow Building
12/13 – Philippines, Asia @ New Frontier Theater
