THE GET UP KIDS

The Get Up Kids

In the two and a half decades since the release of their landmark second album Something to Write Home About, the four core members of The Get Up Kids — Matt Pryor, Jim Suptic, Rob Pope, and Ryan Pope — have explored side projects, helmed solo ventures, and held stints in high-profile bands. They’ve also started businesses, found spouses, and raised kids. Still, run into them on the streets of Lawrence, Kansas, these days, and you’ll find that — perhaps beneath a beard — each has retained the high-spirited, unwavering authenticity that fans stood feet from at basement shows before the band’s sophomore breakthrough.

Something to Write Home About has landed in a similar place: recognizable as the same electrifying, scrappy album it was upon release, but also transformed by time into one of the most seminal records of the band’s scene. And to mark 25 years since its arrival, The Get Up Kids will perform the album in full throughout a lengthy North American headline tour.

Released in September of 1999, Something to Write Home About has been established as an important late-millennium rock-and-roll document; a convergence of power pop, alternative rock, and punk, it provided the parameters for emo’s Midwest-centered second wave. Youthful yet assured, the album expands and refines the sound of the band’s 1997 debut Four Minute Mile. Amplified and acoustic guitars by Pryor and Suptic are coupled with keys and synths provided by former member James Dewees. Throughout, strings and celeste mesh with pop-indebted harmonies as the Pope Brothers’ rhythm section propels each song. The lyrics, carried primarily by Pryor’s pugnacious vocals, use relationships as a springboard to explore betrayal, conviction, and ambition. His plainspoken poetry is in turn direct and oblique, all kindling for fresh fires in addition to those already burning for decades of faithful listeners.

Today, Something to Write Home About still sounds like the lodestar it was for its fleet of followers, but it also retains something singular: an affecting, unaffected quality richer than its genre associations, bigger than its hooks, and deeper than mere twentysomething turmoil. And through emo’s reappraisals and revivals, the band–which now includes keyboard player Dustin Kinsey–has carried on, releasing albums, remaining friends, and playing all over the world.

The upcoming Something to Write Home About anniversary tour will be a chance for fans to rediscover the album or to revel in a classic they’ve never forgotten, and experience it live with the brash, big-hearted band that loves it as much as them. “Anybody can start a band when you're 20 and go on tour and have a couple of years of fun with that. But what it became, at least to us, is the reason that we can still do this now,” says Pryor. “We are doing this as a celebration, and we're going to have a party every night on stage.”

The Vacation

The Anniversary brought their own blend of male-female vocals, jangly guitars, and synth keyboards to the emo scene after signing with Heroes and Villains, an imprint of Vagrant Records, in 1999. Hailing from Kansas, the group began expanding their fanbase beyond the Midwest with the release of 2000's Designing a Nervous Breakdown, a strong debut that earned them comparisons to their label owners, the Get Up Kids, as well as another boy-girl synth pop band, the Rentals. At the core of the group were three lead vocalists -- guitarists Josh Berwanger, Justin Roelofs, and keyboardist Adrianne Verhoeven -- with drummer Christian Jankowski and bassist James David filling out the rhythm section. Borrowing from the theatrics of '80s rock bands, the Anniversary reveled in adding glittery pyrotechnics to their live shows, and their recognition grew during the new millennium.

The band issued a split EP with Superdrag in fall 2001 and later collaborated with the Pulsars' Dave Trumfio for their 2002 sophomore effort, Your Majesty. After the release of Your Majesty, the Anniversary began demoing tracks for their next album but were eventually derailed by creative differences, which forced the group to split up. After the breakup, Berwanger, Jankowski, and David formed the Only Children, while Verhoeven sang in a number of bands before releasing an album in 2008 under the name D*R*I*. Roelofs pursued other projects, too, releasing a record under the name White Flight. In 2008, Vagrant paid tribute to the group by releasing the double-disc set Devil on Our Side: Rarities and B-Sides, comprised of demos that spanned the group's entire career, as well as singles and compilation tracks.