When Kansas City quintet The Get Up Kids unveiled their second full-length album in 1999, they had little idea how much of a turning point it would signal.
Recently signed to California-based label Vagrant Records, they had been tasked with following up their rough-around-the-edges debut ‘Four Minute Mile’ with something bigger and better. Recruiting keyboardist James Dewees into their ranks and heading into a Los Angeles studio with co-producers Chad Blinman and Alex Brahl, in the summer of 1999 – ‘Something To Write Home About’ was born.
The iconic double pick slide of propulsive opener ‘Holiday’ giving way to 45-minutes of visceral longing, rage, and love, across twelve hook-filled singalongs The Get Up Kids redefined the scene. Bridging the gaps between indie rock, pop-punk, and emo, the earnest, heart-on-sleeve songwriting of ‘Something To Write Home About’ has gone on to inspire everyone from Fall Out Boy to The Wonder Years over the last quarter of a century, regularly cited as one of the greatest pop-punk and emo albums of all-time.
A band whose impact on the scene has proved monumental, The Get Up Kids are celebrating the album’s anniversary with a brand-new deluxe reissue, including a disc of previously unheard material.
To talk about the creation of their iconic record, Rock Sound sat down with the band’s Jim Suptic to dive into the importance of their latest milestone…
ROCK SOUND: Going back 25 years to when you first started working on these songs, where were your heads at when you first stepped foot into your practice space in Kansas City?
JIM SUPTIC: “When we did our first album, we had two and a half days to record it. We were working with Bob Weston from Shellac, who we all love, but it felt like a missed opportunity. That record was pretty much just our live show, and with how fast it was recorded, it came out almost like a live record. After that, we wanted to make a proper record. We wanted to spend time demoing the songs properly, and those demos are all featured on the second LP of this reissue. We were better musicians, we were more focused, and we wanted to make a good record. During that year, we’d been touring with Jimmy Eat World, and they had shown us the demos for ‘Clarity’. When we heard those, we knew we had to step it up. There was a sense of friendly competition.”
RS: By the time you got to the studio in LA then, did you have a solid plan of action?
JIM: “We played a lot of those songs live first because we were touring so much back then. There were only a couple of songs that we had to fully flesh out in Los Angeles, but we did a week of pre-production. We rented out a practice space in LA, and we ended up being there for a month and a half. I had never lived anywhere for that long outside of Kansas City. It was exciting to get to know LA that well.”
RS: During the recording process, when you were knocking out takes of songs like ‘Holiday’ and ‘Ten Minutes’, was there a moment where it clicked that you had something truly special in the works?
JIM: “On the flight home from LA, I was listening back to the songs, and I was proud of it. I knew we had some good songs, I thought it was catchy, and I thought it sounded so much better than what we’d done before. It’s easy to look back with rose-coloured glasses, but the double pick slide at the beginning of ‘Holiday’ that starts the record is iconic. It’s something we really didn’t think about, but so many people talk about it.
I was lucky enough to be backstage at a Foo Fighters show when they played in Kansas City right after we had finished the record. I was talking to the lead guitarist, Chris Shiflett, and when I told him we had been working on a new record the first thing he asked was, ‘Are there a bunch of pick slides on it?’ I was blushing so hard, it was hilarious.”
RS: At that time, nothing that was commercially popular sounded like ‘Something to Write Home About’ either…
JIM: “I found it so interesting to see where our band got lumped into the scene. We’re an indie rock band, but we’re also a punk band, and people didn’t know how to take that. At the time, we thought that if you sold 100,000 records in the United States, that was crazy. We looked to bands like Superchunk and Jawbreaker, and to us, that was the peak. To us, selling out The Bottleneck in Lawrence, Kansas – which holds around 450 people – was the sign that you’d made it. At that time, KROQ was the tastemaker of all the alternative stations in the United States, and all they played was nu-metal. We were the outliers, for sure.”
RS: You’ve been sharing some footage from early shows recently, filmed at the likes of CBGB’s and The Fireside Bowl… What does it feel like to see yourselves playing those songs so long ago, knowing where they’ve taken you since?
JIM: “It’s been interesting reminiscing about all these things. From when The Get Up Kids first started to when we broke up, that was 10 years. Since we’ve gotten back together, it’s been another 15 years. However, that initial 10 years feels like twice as long as the 15 years. Since we broke up, I’ve had two kids, I went back to university and got a degree, and we put out two records. The videos have got me in the feels because it’s like watching seven years of my life flash before me. You remember so much of it, but you also remember none of it. I was recently looking back at the first time we went to the UK, when we were on tour with Braid through the winter of 1998. It was all pubs, and they all looked the same. I remember the London show, and I remember Leeds, but it’s such a blur.”
RS: In terms of remastering the record for the anniversary, where did the idea to begin that process come from?
JIM: “Honestly, a lot of times doing things like this is a money grab. Bands often say they’ve remastered a record, and when you listen to it you can barely tell the difference. This new remaster sounds so good though. The guitars are bigger, and it feels fuller, so I would rather people listened to this version than the original. There are certain moments where it captures our initial ideas so much better.”
RS: How did it feel to listen back to the original demos of these songs that are featured on the album’s second disc?
JIM: “We had written a bunch as a band, but Matt [Pryor] had also done some acoustic guitar demos. Listening back to them, Matt’s lyrics are totally different. At first, I wondered if hearing those was something that people cared about, but when Nirvana put out a box set of demos, I was super into it. It’s not about if they sound good, it’s just interesting to see the songwriting process. On the song ‘Valentine’, I originally had this guitar lead that was too much. Luckily, I came to my senses and simplified it. You can see where our heads were at as we progressed. That was the beauty of being able to demo the songs, we could sit on them and nitpick our parts.”
RS: The reissued album also comes with a booklet filled with photos, handwritten lyrics, and other reminders of that time in the band’s history. Are you a particularly sentimental or nostalgic band?
JIM: “I’ve saved quite a bit of stuff over the years, but we’ve also asked a lot of friends who toured with us what they had. Nostalgia is a weird thing, because you don’t want to be trapped in it. This was our most popular record, and that’s fine. However, we’ve done a lot of stuff that I think is great since then. I’m happy that we’ve never done a full tour of this record, and if we’re going to do it, now’s the time. We’ve always been a band that did whatever we wanted to do. and if you were along for the ride, you were along for the ride.
I never understood bands that don’t play the stuff people want to hear, and just focus on their new stuff. I saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers many times, and every time I saw them, they’d have a new record. They’d play three of the new songs, and then play a bunch of hits. It’s okay to play the music that people love. God forbid, people want to come see my band across the world.”
RS: You’re going to be playing the album in full on tour later this year. Even though you’ve played some of these songs’ countless times, do they still feel special when you share them with your fans in those moments?
JIM: “For sure, and that’s what makes it fun to play. At practice right now, we’re running through the songs we haven’t been playing. On this next tour, we’re doing songs that we haven’t played in 20 years or more. That’s fun, but songs like ‘Holiday’ and ‘Ten Minutes’ we play at every show. It can get a bit boring when we’re rehearsing it, but then you play it live. Everyone’s singing it back to you… and that what makes it fun.
What’s funny is that songs always change when you play them live. I love going back to songs we haven’t played in a while and trying to relearn the guitar parts. I was listening to ‘I’ll Catch You’ a lot recently, and it has such a swing to the acoustic guitar. I’ve been doing my guitar part completely differently live, so at the upcoming shows we’re trying to capture a little bit more of the sonic nostalgia. As our bass player Rob [Pope] likes to say, we’re trying to create it as it was.”
RS: Did you ever expect you’d still be talking about these songs 25 years later?
JIM: “No, not at all. I remember the first time we went to Europe, and people in Italy were singing our songs back to us. I was 19 at the time, and that was powerful. I’ve met so many friends all over the world through music, and it’s been a wild ride. It’s crazy that we’re still doing it.
I’m glad that I helped create art that’s still meaningful to people, and I know we were never the biggest band in the world, but we always were consistent. We’ve played Pukkelpop four or five times, and we were always on the same stage, but every year there was a different headliner. Those bands had their one hit of the moment, but we were still there year after year. I’m not a multi-millionaire, but I’m okay, and I still get to do this. Even if we’re a footnote in rock n’ roll history… a lot of artists would die just to be a footnote.”
‘Something To Write Home About’ (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)’ is out on August 23.