ALBANY—Back in 1999, well before the term “emo” had become part of the common household lexicon, the Lawrence, KS “second-wave” emo band The Get Up Kids were about to record an album that became a defining moment for the genre. Something to Write Home About, the group’s sophomore full-length, saw The Get Up Kids—singer-guitarists Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic, bassist Rob Pope and drummer Ryan Pope—pushing into new sonic territories, notably incorporating the rich keyboards of new member James Dewees for the first time, while lyrically capturing the artistry and honesty for which the band has since become famed.
With The Get Up Kids headed to Albany to perform the album in its entirety at Empire Live amid their Something to Write Home About 25th Anniversary Tour, I had the pleasure of chatting again with Pryor, who I hadn’t interviewed since back in the Guilt Show (2003) days. Energetic and insightful, Pryor took me through the history of this iconic album, as well as the experiences that inspired it.
BRENDAN MANLEY: Something to Write Home About is an iconic record, which the band is playing front to back on this tour. Did you know going into making the album that it was going to take on the life that it has?
MATT PRYOR: No, our only expectation with this record was to make it better than the first record, which I think is anybody’s expectation when they go in the studio: to try and do better than you did the last time.
BM: What was the overall vibe going into making the record? What was going on in your life?
MP: When we finally got into the studio, we had just spent a year trying to find a label, trying to figure out where we’re going to make a record, trying to find the money to do it, and so when all of that stuff finally coalesced into us going out to Silver Lake [at Mad Hatter Studios] and starting the recording, we were really relieved and just grateful to be there. It honestly felt more like an ending than a beginning, because we had been through so much up until that point, that by the time we got to start the record, we were just excited for all of that shit to be over. But then you know, once you start making the record, you get really excited for people to hear it. But yeah, none of us had any idea it would… We certainly didn’t think we’d be still playing this record 25 years later.
BM: How did that label transition from Doghouse to Vagrant—under your own imprint, Heroes & Villains—impact the band and change your trajectory at that time?
MP: The truncated version is our first record came out on Doghouse. We weren’t happy there, so we tried to look for a major label. We kept meeting with major labels and they kept treating us like little kids, and then our manager at the time [Vagrant co-founder Rich Egan] said, “Why don’t you just put it out on my little indie label? We’ll buy you out of the Doghouse contract, so you can be free of that.” Part of that deal was that we would get to start our own imprint, which was Heroes & Villains. Honestly it was as much Vagrant—they had the same attitude that we did, which was, “Take no prisoners.” We just put everything we had into this one thing, and for us that was touring and playing, and for them it was marketing and distribution and all that kind of stuff.
If we had signed to a major label—the major label we were going to sign to [Mojo Records] doesn’t even exist anymore—so that would have probably been an issue. For all we know, we dodged a bullet. This record could have just gotten buried in that major label system and ended up in a closet, on a shelf.
BM: As the story goes, Vagrant co-founder Jon Cohen had his parents mortgage their house for $50k to pay for the studio sessions.
MP: Yeah, I didn’t know about that at the time. I don’t know if anybody did. Ryan [Pope] may have known, because he was out in California a lot. But I just had no idea. I would have been really uncomfortable with that if I had known, which is probably why they didn’t tell me.
BM: The issue with Doghouse even spawned some of the material that you wrote, right? “Red Letter Day” and maybe “Action & Action” have some of that happening in the lyrics?
MP: Not really “Action,” but “Red Letter Day” is about that relationship. There’s a little bit in “Action & Action,” which is kind of a day in the life of the things that were going through my brain at the time, so yeah, there’s probably some Doghouse in there, if I really sit down and think about it.
BM: “Red Letter Day” was originally recorded for Doghouse, so it was basically a diss track.
MP: Yep. That’s exactly what it was. It was the name of the EP, too.
BM: In hindsight, did you get any kind of closure out of that situation?
MP: I mean, I have closure in that it doesn’t bother me anymore and I’ve let it go, but we still have to deal with them. The only real closure would be if we didn’t have to deal with them anymore, but now we still do.
BM: There are a lot of labels from that era that you hear that same story about.
MP: Well yeah and in that sense Doghouse really wasn’t that bad, compared to what I’ve heard about like Victory or Drive-Thru or Tooth & Nail. I think we got off pretty easy.
BM: Another thing that stands out is this album is sonically a lot different from the one before it, Four Minute Mile. Was that intentional? Or was that just another part of the evolution of the band?
MP: Both. Also we were never fully satisfied with the way Four Minute Mile sounded, even when we made it. It was because it was rushed and we didn’t have any experience in the studio and we didn’t have any experience performing the songs live and figuring out what would work in that format. It was also just we wanted it to sound bigger and fuller. I remember specifically, we layered a bunch of guitar tracks on Something to Write Home About, which was probably pretty unnecessary, because you can always just turn the one guitar track up louder, as opposed to doing the same guitar track five times, but we didn’t know that.
BM: It definitely sounds like it’s a more experienced band. There’s also a lot more sonic space on the album.
MP: Yeah. I mean there are some similarities, but honestly Four Minute Mile was made by a very different band than on Something to Write Home About. It was made by much younger, less experienced people. Babies.
BM: And then after that first record James Dewees joined the band, too. How did that impact everything?
MP: James was our friend. He played in Coalesce and then he and Rob and Ryan rented a house and we would just hang out and drink beer and watch Twin Peaks. Then at one point we decided we wanted to have keyboards in the band and he was available at the time. He’s an incredibly talented person, so we asked him if he would come on tour with us, and he did.
BM: Those keyboards became a major element of the sound from that point on. For me, the listener, that’s one of the things that really stood out on that record, too.
MP: There’s a little bit of piano and one synth track on Four Minute Mile, but that’s it. So that was a turning point, too.
BM: I get a “road weariness” kind of vibe when I listen to the record, especially on “Valentine” and “Out Of Reach.” There’s a distance and longing for people and relationships.
MP: I don’t know that it was road weariness—that would come later—it was more “write about what you know” and we were touring 250 days out of the year. “Valentine,” that story takes place in Europe to a certain degree, so it’s part of it, and then “Out of Reach” is a song about a relationship, but it’s using touring as sort of the metaphor for how the relationship isn’t really working. It’s almost like the touring aspect of it is not really what any of the songs are about, but it’s definitely a big part of who I was as a lyricist at the time. If we were talking in film-making terms or something like that, it would be the setting of where the conflict or the relationship was taking place, and not really what the relationship was about. Does that make sense?
BM: Sure. It was like, dealing with a relationship in the context of being on the road at the same time.
MP: Yeah. Everything I was doing at the time was in the context of being on the road all the time…. At that point I will say it wasn’t weariness, it was just what it was like. I was still at that time very, very excited to be on tour.
BM: Were you used to touring much before that?
MP: No, not at all. These were all our first tours together. We started this band when I was 18 or 19 or something like that, so we hadn’t been on tour at all. I don’t even think we’d played a weekend show in St Louis; we’d only played like all-ages places in Kansas City.
BM: Getting used to that whole lifestyle must have been an interesting time.
MP: Well it’s always funny to me that a song like “Don’t Hate Me” on Four Minute Mile is a song about someone leaving for tour, and it was written by someone who’s never been on tour before. [laughs]
BM: Well, writing about the road is a fixture of rock music.
MP: Yeah. It’s almost a dead horse. [laughs]
BM: What were some of the other things back then that you were looking to express lyrically?
MP: I guess I can be specific. “Holiday” is about a friendship—it’s not about a love relationship—it’s just a friendship that’s gone away or gone south. “Action & Action” is just sort of a slice of life; like all the things that I was thinking about at that time. “Valentine” is an actual story about some people having a transcontinental romance. “Red Letter Day” is about Doghouse. “Out of Reach” is about touring, but it’s about a relationship, using touring as a metaphor for it. “Ten Minutes,” I don’t know what that’s about, because Jim [Suptic] wrote that one. “The Company Dime” is about the year we had trying to find a record label, and the relationships that we had there, because we’d fall in love with the A&R person and feel like they really got us and understood it, and then their bosses would treat us like idiots and it would just ruin the whole thing.
“I’m a Loner Dottie, a Rebel,” is an old song that’s about a one-night stand, which really just kind of ended up on the record because of tone. It doesn’t lyrically fit, necessarily; it was a song that we wrote in the same Four-Minute Mile era. I think “My Apology” and “Long Goodnight,” are probably the most self-reflective on my part, because “My Apology” is about sort of recognizing that if I’m writing all these personal songs and sometimes I’m airing my grievances with other people in them, that sometimes I get it wrong and then it’s just permanently imprinted for all of history in this song that I was I was calling someone out in and I was wrong. “Long Goodnight” is about my struggle with being diabetic. “Close to Home” is about how we didn’t get a whole lot of love from our hometown, and the band had to leave in order to get any kind of recognition. And then “I’ll Catch You” is a love song for my wife. And that’s the record.
BM: I’m glad you mentioned “I’ll Catch You,” which is such an incredible, timeless song. Was that a moment in the studio when you realized that you had just created something magical, or did that happen later?
MP: There are two things with that song. First of all, ballads in general are boring as fuck to record, because it’s so slow. You have to kind of trust that people are going to like it, because ballads really move people, but as a live band they’re just dull.
The other thing I remember, is at the studio they had this old $100,000 Steinway piano that was signed by all the people who played it. Paul McCartney had signed it. That’s what James played the piano part on. But the thing is, he was walking into the room that the piano was in, and he just walked straight into the sliding glass door, because he didn’t see it, and just totally knocked himself in the head. So he was bleeding on the piano keys of this priceless musical artifact. He finished the take I think in like one take, and then he had to lie down. So that song has a lot of James’s head wound in it.
BM: Now that song even gets played all the time at weddings. I’m sure you hear a lot of stories from fans about that.
MP: Yeah, people say that. I think “I’ll Catch You” has been a lot of first dances for elder emos.
BM: That must be kinda cool?
MP: I mean, yeah. It’s not why I do it, but I’m certainly appreciative of it.
BM: I’m sure that when you write a song, you don’t really have any way of knowing that it’s going to become that song.
MP: Of course not, but I mean at the same time, if I write a love song that’s for my wife and then people use it at a wedding, that’s not that far of a stretch, you know? It’s not like you misinterpreted what the lyrics were about. It’s not like playing Rage Against the Machine at a Republican convention.
BM: I know you produced the record yourself, but what did co-producers Chad Blinman and Alex Brahl bring to the table?
MP: Well Chad was the engineer at the studio. He was recommended to us by Vagrant. I don’t know if he worked at that studio or if he just had a connection there, but he co-produced the record with us and did the regular engineer stuff. And then Alex was our touring sound guy. Because we had never met Chad before, we wanted Alex to come out with us, just to make sure, because he knew what we wanted to sound like, because he’d been mixing us live. We were just going to meet this stranger, so we wanted to have someone with us who knew how to work the gear, who knew what we wanted to sound like, and maybe could be an interpreter to a certain degree between the band and the engineer.
BM: I’ve read before that the title Something to Write Home About was Jim Suptic’s idea?
MP: Yes, he was talking to his mom and he was calling home from the studio and it was something that she said. And then like most of our album titles, it’s the very last decision that gets made. Also like most of our album titles, it was like, “Well this one’s fine. If we can’t think of anything better, we’ll go with this,” and we never did.
BM: There’s just something so classic and appropriate about that title. It just hits it on the head.
MP: It’s a bit of a called shot, you know? It’s a bit arrogant, like, “Look at this important thing that we made.” But it’s turned out to be alright.
BM: The cover is great, too. Is there a story behind that?
MP: Just that it was done very, very quickly. We wanted our friend Travis [Millard] to paint something for it and basically we’re just like, “Here’s the record, go figure it out.” Originally he made these really weird, kind of grotesque sketches, and we were just like, “Probably not.” Then he came back with these robots and we were like, “Sure, that’s cool. Go for it.” Now it’s all of our merchandise.
BM: Where does the album rank for you among the rest of The Get Up Kids’ discography? Is it your favorite?
MP: It’s not my favorite. Especially today, it’s difficult to look at it objectively, because we’re playing these songs every single night. But my favorite record was Guilt Show [2004] until we did Problems [2019], which was the last record that we did. That’s my favorite record. I think it basically accomplished what the goal was, which was to see what Something to Write Home About would sound like if it was written by people with 20 years more life experience. I think that we achieved that with Problems. If you like Something to Write Home About you’d like Problems as well, especially if you were 20 when you heard Something to Write Home About and you’re 40 when you hear Problems.
BM: I’m assuming there are certain songs off Something to Write Home About that you hadn’t played in a while and needed to dust off. How did that go?
MP: Oh, fine. It’s like riding a bike, you know? At this point we’ve been doing this tour since August, so it’s all pretty much in the pocket now. It’s not like any of the songs are “Bohemian Rhapsody,” or anything super complicated.
BM: True but there often seems to be songs that bands don’t like to play live, but have to when doing an anniversary tour for an album.
MP: There’s not really anything like that on this record. There are no stinkers that we just despise. If anything, we don’t play something like “Company Dime” that often, because it doesn’t get as big of a response, but it’s not because we don’t like the song.
BM: What else is in the set? Do you play the album, and then do a ”greatest hits” mini set after that?
MP: Yeah, we usually start the encore with “Campfire Kansas,” because that’s a fan favorite and it gives me a chance to have a break. Then we’ve been doing like an eight-song encore that’s a variety of stuff from our whole catalog. We’ve been trying to play at least one song off of most of our releases and then also some of the Four Minute Mile stuff, leaning heavier on that.
BM: What’s next for the band after this tour? A new album? Anything solo? Anything New Amsterdams related to talk about?
MP: The only thing that’s on the books right now is we’re going to Europe in May and June and then we’re going back to Europe in August. We’re trying to finalize Japan and Australia; it’s not locked in 100% yet, but that’s the goal. We’re trying to get to all the places that we went to the first time when Something to Write Home About came out, but now we can’t do it all as like 250 shows in a year. Nowadays, it’s got to be spread out.
BM: I’ve read recently and I’ve heard you talk about it before that you wish that the record could have been tuned down a bit, because you were screaming at the top of your range.
MP: Well I don’t wish it; the record sounds good the way that it is. That’s more of a commentary on having to sing those songs on tour; the way your body changes as you get older and you don’t have the resiliency that you did when you were 22 when you’re pushing 50. I have to do a lot more stretching and warming up and self-care than I did when I was younger. But that’s not really a complaint; it’s just more of an observation. We can tune it down live, but I can still hit the notes now. I don’t know, maybe on the 50th anniversary tour we’ll be at that point.
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The Get Up Kids headline Empire Live in Albany on Tuesday, February 18. Tickets can be purchased here.
