The observation came during a Zoom interview with the Current from Santiago, Chile, where the acclaimed and influential emo outfit were, pending a show.
Pryor has reason to reflect. The Get Up Kids’ second album, 1999’s Something to Write Home About, has just gotten a deluxe digital reissue with a vinyl release scheduled for September.
Don’t worry. The album still packs in all the feels, even if fans who bought it back in the day have settled comfortably into middle age.
To celebrate the milestone, The Get Up Kids are on a U.S. tour performing the album in full. The Kansas City-bred group will hit Paper Tiger on Sunday, Aug. 25, with the Smoking Popes opening the show.
The following interview with Pryor has been edited for length and clarity.
We’re all 25 years older since Something to Write Home About dropped. Does that distance impact your performance, especially trying to summon up the emotion of these songs?
Well, I don't think much about the feelings or the content when we're performing it live. It's really more about the performance. I'm 47 singing like I’m 22. It requires more preparation and training and planning. We have this thing that we always call “gig neck,” where you'd start playing the show and you're like whipping your head around so much that your neck and your shoulders hurt. And then your shoulder hurts from wearing a guitar for two hours. I do a lot of yoga when I'm on tour to counteract that. But as far connecting with the songs, I try to connect with the audience more than anything. It's not like we haven't been playing a lot of these songs over the last 25 years.
For the songs that haven’t been played live in years, is there muscle memory involved, or do you have to go get out the record and figure it out note by note like you would to learn a cover?
Sometimes you have to do that initially. But usually, it comes back pretty quick. The songs that we wrote in the early part of our career are more complicated because they just have no song structure. We were teenagers and just making shit up as we went along. It's like, “Why does it take three minutes to get to the chorus?” It doesn't make any sense. I think I wanted to be more of a guitar player and less of a singer then. I've kind of flipped that as I’ve gotten older. So, I have to relearn how to play the guitar in that way.
In the ’90s, the term “emo” wasn't such a punchline. How has it evolved from the more indie-punk thing it started as? Seems like it went from specific chord voicings and a musical style to whatever it means now.
I'm the wrong person to ask about that. There are things that other people put on us and not things that we ever really aspired to or really gave much thought. We like what we like. And we just try to do that. It's hard for me as an insider looking out to compare us to other bands of the same era, or, I guess, 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 is probably the closest one, because we were actively trying to kind of emulate them to a certain degree early on. But they’re kind of a pop band, and so are we.
Is it true that Vagrant Records co-owner John Cohen’s parents loaned the money to finance Something by mortgaging their house?
That's what I was told. I was not aware of that at the time when it happened. I didn't learn that until probably at least 10 years after the record came out. But I’ve heard that it is true.
Do you have a memory of the recording of Something to Write Home About that you'd like to share with us? Something that was fun or particularly challenging?
We just holed up and spent all day in the studio. 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 gonna stay there. There were six of us, and we all just kind of fucking showed up and stayed on his couch. And the roommates were kind of put off by our presence. We just had fun.
But now it's a great story. Now they can put on the record and say, “These guys crashed on our couch when they were making this.”
I guess so, if they want to. I don't know how much credit you get for that. We had spent over a year being frustrated with talking to major labels and them not taking us seriously. So, it was just very nice to not have to worry about that anymore and say, “This is what we're doing now.” It wasn't about trying to be superstars. It was about trying to get enough money that we could actually make a good-sounding record.
$29.50-$35, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 25, Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary's St., papertigersatx.com.
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