Shawn Brackbill
The second album by The Get Up Kids, Something to write home abouthas just been released as a digital deluxe reissue.
“I think if the Beach Boys are still allowed to be boys, then the bar is set high,” said singer and guitarist Matt Pryor of The Get Up Kids, justifying his band’s name even though it is soon approaching the 50-year mark.
The observation came during a Zoom interview with the Current from Santiago, Chile, where the celebrated and influential emo band was preparing for a performance.
Pryor has reason to think. The second album by The Get Up Kids, 1999 Something to write home abouthas just been released as a digital deluxe reissue, with the vinyl release planned for September.
Don’t worry. The album is still full of emotion, even if the fans who bought it back then are now middle-aged.
To celebrate this milestone, The Get Up Kids are embarking on a U.S. tour performing the album in full. The Kansas City-based group will perform at Paper Tiger on Sunday, August 25, with the Smoking Popes opening the show.
The following interview with Pryor has been edited for length and clarity.
We are all 25 years older since Something to write home about Does this distance affect your performance, especially when you try to evoke the emotions of these songs?
Well, I don’t think much about the feelings or the content when we play it live. I’m more about the performance. I’m 47 and I sing like I’m 22. It takes more preparation, training and planning. We have this thing we always call “gig neck” when you start playing the show and you’re throwing your head back and forth so much that your neck and shoulders hurt. And then your shoulder hurts from carrying a guitar for two hours. I do a lot of yoga when I’m on tour to counteract that. But as far as connecting to the songs, more than anything else I try to connect with the audience. It’s not like we haven’t played a lot of these songs over the last 25 years.
For songs that haven’t been played live in years, do you need muscle memory, or do you have to pull out the record and memorize it note by note, like you’re learning a cover?
Sometimes you have to do that in the beginning. But usually it comes back pretty quickly. The songs we wrote early in our career are more complicated because they just don’t have a song structure. We were teenagers and we just made things up as we went along. It’s like, “Why does it take three minutes to get to the chorus?” It doesn’t make sense. I think I wanted to be more of a guitarist and less of a singer back then. As I got older I kind of flipped that around. So I have to relearn how to play guitar that way.
In the 90s, the term “emo” wasn’t as catchy. How has it evolved from the more indie-punk-esque term it started as? It seems to have evolved from certain chord setups and a style of music to what it means today.
I’m the wrong person to ask that. There are things that other people impose on us, not things that we’ve ever really aspired to or really thought about. We like what we like. And we just try to do that. For me as an insider, it’s hard to compare ourselves to other bands of the same era or, I guess, the same genre. And a lot of the bands sounded pretty different. I hear big differences between us and Mineral, or us and Braid. Jimmy Eat World probably comes closest to that, because early on we were actively trying to emulate them to some extent. But they’re kind of a pop band, and so are we.
Is it true that the parents of Vagrant Records co-owner John Cohen borrowed the money to Something by taking out a mortgage on their house?
That’s what I was told. I didn’t know it at the time it happened. I probably didn’t find out until at least 10 years after the record came out. But I heard it was true.
Remember the recording of Something to write home about that you would like to share with us? Something that was fun or particularly challenging?
We just holed up and slept in the studio all day. It was a unique experience. We were staying at a friend’s house and sleeping on the floor, and he hadn’t told his roommates that we were staying there. There were six of us and we all just showed up and slept on his couch. And the roommates were kind of put off by our presence. We were just having fun.
But now it’s a great story. Now they can record it and say, “These guys slept on our couch during production.”
I think so, if they want to. I don’t know how much recognition you get for that. We were frustrated for over a year because we were talking to major labels and they weren’t taking us seriously. So it was just really nice to not have to worry about that anymore and to be able to say, “This is what we’re doing now.” It wasn’t about becoming superstars. It was about getting enough money so we could actually make a good sounding record.
$29.50-$35, Sunday, Aug. 25, 7:30 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com.
Subscribe to the SA Current newsletter.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Þjórsárden| Or subscribe to our RSS feed
