The group toured extensively last year in support of the reissue, playing shows in South America and throughout the U.S. It’s currently back on the road, and the Get Up Kids play at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 19, at the Beachland Ballroom.
“It was quite a project and kind of surreal and strange to revisit that mindset,” says bassist Rob Pope via phone from a St. Louis tour stop. “I was 21 years old when that record came out. Going back and digging through the old photos brings up the good stuff and bad stuff and everything in between. It’s an important record to our fans and to us.”
Pope says the album, which veers from ballads to rockers, is a fun record to play front to back.
“It’s a very dynamic record,” he says. “We talk about it all the time. ‘The Company Dime’ and ‘My Apology’ are right next to each other. We can’t figure out why we put them next to each other, but we don’t have the option to change that now.”
Pope says he hadn’t heard the original four-track acoustic demos included in the reissue for decades.
A new music video for the single “Holiday” features old footage of the band playing rowdy DIY shows at record stores and VFW hall, capturing the DIY approach the band took in its early days.
“It’s all pre-Y2K,” Pope says when asked about the footage in the video. “It was a wild time. The first couple of tours we did in 1997 and 1998 were house shows and VFW Halls. Our band built up during those years. It was like, ‘Last time, we were here, there were 20 people and now there is a line of 400 people.’ We played a lot of modified arts spaces. Bands like us were not welcome into traditional venues. We were underage and not able to book shows at clubs that were 21 and over. Luckily, there was a good network of bands of our ilk that had been developing for decades.”
The band went to Los Angeles to record Something To Write Home About, its second record, and sharpened its performance in the studio.
“The first record we did in three days, and it sounds like that,” Pope says. “It sounds like a band in a room. It’s like a first pancake. We had done the touring and the work. We showed up really prepared and were excited to have way more time and resources and the ability to experiment a little more. For no reason other than the lack of time, we weren’t thrilled about the quality of the first record.
The term emo had started to be bandied about, and critics quickly attached it to the Get Up Kids. Pope says it’s been a blessing and curse to be categorized as overly sensitive punks.
“We have been forced to embrace the term,” he says. “If you had asked us at the time in 1999 if we were emo, we would have said, ‘Fuck that.’ The genre and category have overpowered anyone’s ability to withstand that. It wasn’t a consideration. We just knew there was a cool scene of bands that were like-minded with Braid and Jimmy Eat World and Mineral. It felt very much like a scene that was going on.”
The band’s last studio album came out in 2019, and Pope says the group is considering cutting another record.
“We’re kicking it around,” he says. “We got stunted with COVID and a lot of personal stuff within the band, but it’s not off the table. Our focus is on this tour and celebrating that and then we’ll regroup and see if it’s in the cards. I’m proud of that record. I want to make sure we make music of that caliber and quality, and that requires a lot of planning. We’re really grateful for the interest people still have. We always say we’re very important to a very small amount of people. It’s awesome. It’s been unbelievable.”
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This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 12, 2025.
