Father Time: he’s a real son of a bitch. Believe it or not, Matt Pryor, leader of The Get Up Kids (TGUK) now has three children — and they’re 8, 10, and 13 years old. And when he checks in with CL, Pryor is sitting on a swing at his Lawrence, Kansas home, killing time until he has to pick the offspring up from the pool. A Midwestern summer heatwave has finally broken, and he’s talking about the possibility of having more little ones.
“That ship has sailed,” Pryor, 38, says with a laugh.
The sentiment is fitting as he prepares to take one of emo’s most influential bands on a 20th anniversary tour that stops in Ybor City on Monday. Just 29 dates have been announced so far, and they’ll take TGUK all the way to Europe and back to the American west coast before a two-month autumn break.
Pryor's in a kickball league now (“a good excuse to hang out and drink beers on a Sunday”), and our chat even touches the topic of rapid gentrification (“or development, depending on who you ask”), which Pryor is getting to witness from the inside out. He and his wife have talked about leaving the Kansas college town, but the public schools in Lawrence are just too good to walk away from. “I did 12 years of fucking Catholic school. I was an altar boy and everything,” Pryor explains. “I’m not putting my kids through that.”
The entire half-hour conversation feels very grown up. There’s talk about saving money by touring in a rented BandWagon RV, the anxiety you get traveling between cities, and what it’s like to write commercials and work for Downwrite, a website that connects select songwriters with fans who then commission said songsmiths to write a tune for them. He doesn’t really ponder retirement, though. “I don’t really think I am ever going to stop. Like, retire from what?” He continues, “I think a lot of people in creative fields think of it as less of a job and more of ‘it’s what you do.’ There’s never a plan B or anything.”
In the 18 years since TGUK’s Four Minute Mile was released, there hasn’t been anything that quite matches the poppy, intrepid, hyper-melodic and brave sound found on the 30-minute, 12-track classic. The band itself tried with four albums of original music that got pretty damn close, and Pryor’s solo efforts (as well as albums he released with another band, The New Amsterdams) feature plenty of the witty melancholy and introspective lyrics found on Get Up Kids material.
Pryor isn’t writing any music while traveling (he hopes to work on a long-running book project instead), and fans should ditch any hope of a follow up to TGUK’s 2011 full-length There Are Rules.
“I don’t write very well on the road. People get possessive of things that are special to them. I understand that and certainly did the same thing when I was younger,” Pryor says about expectations for his old band. “Ultimately, you don’t make art for fans…you make it for yourself. If you like it then cool, if not, then I don’t give a shit. There are more important things in life to be worried about.”
Still, on each night of the tour, Pryor and the band — guitarist Jim Suptic, keyboardist James Dewees, brothers Rob and Ryan Pope (bass and drums, respectively) — will give fans a reprieve from all those other important things during these first Florida shows with Braid (they’ve played ”over a hundred” dates with them in the Midwest). What’s more, all of the other full-grown, responsible adults in the audience won’t have to worry about hearing their favorite material from the albums that largely defined their 20s. Pryor knows he’ll never make or play music solely for a fan’s pleasure, but he acknowledges what everyone is coming to the shows to hear.
“I appreciate people who like the music that I make a lot, because they are the reason I can make do this for a living, but I think that it’s not my place to do this for them,” he says. “As soon as I take that into consideration, I would stop being true to myself and become more of a public servant than — I hate using the word — an ‘artist.’ I have to focus on what I am or what we are interested in.”
But, really, how much of Four Minute Mile or the Woodson and Red Letter Day EPs are TGUK really going to perform at this victory lap of a show?
“We’re gonna play a lot of old songs,” Pryor promises.
The Get Up Kids perform with Braid, Mon., Aug. 10, 7:30 p.m., at Orpheum, Ybor City; admission is $17 general/$40 VIP (all ages).
