You can go home again

(Credit: Gety Images/Noel Vasquez)

Matt Pryor, the singer-guitarist for Kansas pop-punk band the Get Up Kids, may be experiencing déjà vu. Four years after his band's breakup, the quintet is touring again, and Vagrant has re-released "Something To Write Home About," the album the Get Up Kids recorded 10 years ago.

"Something To Write Home About" sold 200,000 copies, but two subsequent CDs—"On a Wire" and "Guilt Show"—didn't fare as well, and friction and burnout eventually led to the group's splitting apart in 2005. By this time, however, the Kids' music and lyrics were solidly locked into the hearts of hardcore fans, some of whom thought of the group as the "godfathers of emo." The year of the breakup, Pete Wentz told Alternative Press that Fall Out Boy wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Get Up Kids. "There should be a How To Be a Pop-Punk Kid Starter Kit with bands like the Get Up Kids, so kids would know whose shoulders bands like us are standing on," Wentz said.

The Get Up Kids have since apologized for their alleged role in inventing emo. Last year, the group decided calling it quits wasn't such a hot idea, either. "The band broke up really because we didn't know how to say we needed to take a long break," Pryor maintains. "The key to longevity is to take time off."

The band's members didn't need a break from music. They needed a break from one another.

All five members continued their musical careers. Rob Pope started playing bass with Spoon while he and his brother, Get Up Kids' drummer Ryan Pope, took over Black Lodge, the studio the Get Up Kids created to record "Guilt Show." Guitarist Jim Suptic formed Blackpool Lights and co-founded the label Curb Appeal. Keyboardist James Dewees worked with Reggie and the Full Effect and became a touring keyboardist for My Chemical Romance and New Found Glory. Pryor, meanwhile, devoted more time to his other band, the New Amsterdams, a solo album titled "Confidence Man" and two albums he recorded with the Terrible Twos, a group that entertains kids with songs about pizza, dinosaurs, poop and owls.

Despite juggling many projects, the former bandmates last year considered the 10-year anniversary of their most successful album and planned a reunion show.

"We'd gotten together and decided to give this a whirl and see if we enjoyed it," Pryor recalls. "So we decided we'll do one show and if that goes really well, keep doing it. We called our friend's bar and said, 'Hey, will you hold this date for us?' The place only holds, like, 200 people, so it was mostly our friends. And then, once word got out, people started trying to come in from out of town and it's like, 'Yeah, don't do that. The place is tiny.'

"We got together a couple days before, relearned the songs and knocked it out," Pryor adds of the band's November 2008 show at the Record Bar in Kansas City. "It was a blast."

The band later played sold-out reunion shows at New York's Gramercy Theater, San Francisco's Great American Music Hall and the Los Angeles Troubadour, and performed in May at the Bamboozle festival. "Bamboozle is a particularly young festival, so we felt kind of like the old men at the party," Pryor says. "But we're stoked if anybody wants to see us."

After learning that many people did, the band reissued "Something To Write Home About," along with a photo booklet, a DVD of a recent concert and other goodies. Ten years ago, the album lived up to its name, and Vagrant Records co-founder Jon Cohen's parents literally bet the house that it would. They reportedly mortgaged their home to lend their son the money his label needed to produce the album.

"I didn't find out about that until, like, last year," Pryor says. "I knew they took out a loan to do the deal, but I didn't know that's what it was contingent upon. So yeah, I probably would have been a lot more stressed out about it if I'd known that."

Fortunately, that bet paid off with an album Cohen still refers to as "one of the most important records we ever put out," and the re-release is as stress-free as the band's comeback tour, which kicked off Sept. 11 in Kansas and will hit Fort Lauderdale Thursday. Apparently, when you have children and other projects, playing rock 'n' roll with friends is something one can take less seriously, and that seems to make it more fun for Pryor, whose three children range in age from 2 to 7. Maturity can change the songwriting process, too, especially in a band known for its heart-on-sleeve lyrics.

"We got together in the drummer's sun room, and wrote a song a day for 10 days in a really spontaneous, free-spirited way," Pryor says of a recent songwriting session. "We would bounce ideas off each other, and if they didn't stick within 30 minutes, we'd just scrap it and move on to the next thing."

On the current tour, the Kids are playing old songs such as "My Apology," "I'm a Loner Dottie, a Rebel," and other material from "Something To Write Home About," though Pryor says the re-release was just an excuse for the band to reunite after a hiatus that has enhanced their relationship. "It really wasn't so much what we learned during that time as much as what we didn't do and how we got to be away from each other," he says.

"I think the shows are really, really awesome," Pryor continues. "We're playing better than we have in years, maybe a decade. We're having a lot of fun, and I think it shows. I hope people come out, because it's a good time."

The Get Up Kids will perform 7 p.m. Thursday at Revolution Live, 200 W. Broward Blvd., in Fort Lauderdale. Kevin Devine and Mansions are also on the bill. Tickets cost $17.50. Call 954-727-0950 or visit Jointherevolution.net. Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.