PropertyOfZack could not be more stoked to be releasing our brand new interview with Matt Pryor today. Matt Pyror is the lead singer for The Get Up Kids, but Matt and I discussed his new solo called called May Day, his Kickstarter campaign (that you can donate to here), and touring, amongst other things. Read up and enjoy!

You’ve been quite busy over the past few months with the Where’s The Band? Tour, followed by the release of There Are Rules, followed by a long tour in support of the record. How has the first half of the year been treating you so far?
Good. It’s been busy. I actually prefer touring and working in the winter because I do a lot of gardening and homesteading in the summer time. So I get bored during the winter.

There was a large amount of general excitement over the release of There Are Rules after such a long gap of time had passed; are you happy with the reception the record has received so far?
Yes and no. There are those in the world who only like our first two albums and then there are those who accept us as a changing and evolving group of artists. I’d say it’s split down the middle. The reception from the people who are willing to allow the band to evolve has been really positive. The people who don’t want us to do anything but play our first two records over and over again aren’t going to like anything new we do anyway.

How was it putting it out on the band’s own label?
It was good; it was a lot of work. It still is a lot of work. It’s good though because it feels very productive.

We’re speaking today in regards to your new solo album that is being called May Day. You launched a Kickstarter for the record about a week ago with the goal of $10,000 over a month, and you’ve reached over $15,000 in a week. How does that feel?
I am completely amazed and thankful. I’m completely blown away. I can’t even describe how blown away I am. I honestly thought it was going to take the whole month to maybe get to the goal. So I’m floored by it; it’s awesome.

It’s a reasonable thought that the Kickstarter could essentially triple in expected funds. What would you do with the extra money for the release?
It would go into marketing the record and/or what would really be nice is if I can get enough money to the point where I can have a tour support fund. There are lots of places that I would like to go that just cost a lot like South America or anywhere out of the country for my solo stuff. It’s cost prohibited because your overhead is so high with plane tickets and everything. It would be kind of cool if there was a reserve that I could tap into to do more extensive tours.

Did you have any trepidations about using Kickstarter?
My only trepidation was that I was putting the goal to high. I think as a concept it’s fantastic. I’ve been intrigued by them and the other band funding sites for a while because the way the music industry is going you either have to evolve or you can just sit around and complain about how things worked ten years ago. This just seems like it’s a really good way to connect with your fans and to get them involved in the process and continue to make music,

I think a lot of music fans in general have begun wrapping their heads around the tool, but I think some fans of you personally were a little thrown off because it’s not necessarily something that they would picture Matt Pryor, the lead singer of The Get Up Kids, doing. Do you understand that to an extent?
I think this is very much in-line with the way that we came up in this seen. We were putting out 7”s when we were teenagers and putting them in Maximum Rock N’ Roll and doing that whole scene. It’s very much like a community-based organism and I feel like this is just an extension of that because you’re still relying on fans. You can’t go and play in somebody’s basement that you’ve never met before without having a certain level of trust in just the generosity of the scene and I think that this is really just an extension of that.
POZ: Is it interesting how that’s come full-circle?
Matt: Yeah, I personally feel like this model, and I hate to use business terms like that, is more in-line with the DIY ethic that we used when we first started playing in bands. It’s awkward to talk about money directly, especially with fans, but the fact of the matter is, if you’re going to make a record, you’re going to be taking money from somebody whether it be a record label or borrowing it from your dad or trying to do something like this. I see this as a positive model because the majority of the people are really just pre-ordering the record. They’re just pre-ordering it before I’ve recorded it.

There have been a couple of overwhelmingly large donations in the Kickstarter. Is that kind of a surprise?
That’s kind of one of those, “Haha, nobody’s going to go for this” kind of thing. We used to do that with record labels. I remember this one time when we were on tour opening for Weezer and this A&R dude busted into our dressing room and was like, “I’m going to sign you guys right now.” I was like, “Alright, I want $2,000,000 for one record.” No one’s ever going to go for that, but what the fuck, maybe you would. You just kind of go with it. There are all these strategies that Kickstarter suggests and one of them is to have these sort of crazy and outlandish prizes that you don’t think anybody would go for, but then somebody might. It’s crazy, but it happened.

You have about fifteen songs that you’ve written over the past year for the album. How did you separate your solo material from that which ended up on There Are Rules?
There Are Rules was written collectively. Nobody brought any completed songs to the table; it was all just us sitting in a room and jamming out ideas. Even if I had wanted any of these songs to be on that record, they wouldn’t have been.

How have you grown as a writer in general just from Confidence Man to May Day?
I think I’m more comfortable with it. I had always shied away from being a “solo artist” because it’s just strange to just see your name on all the material whether it be on a record cover or a flyer. One of the reasons that I started doing it was to get over that, and I think it’s been a good experience for me and I’m more comfortable with the concept of it, though not completely comfortable. I think that’ll come forth in the song writing.

Are there any general themes on the record?
Nothing that specific yet. I wrote a lot of the stuff that I have now over the winter so that got a little dark. Things have been a little more positive since I started working on it again lyrically speaking and I think that has a lot to do with the seasons. I write musically seasonally so the winter was really bleak, but the stuff in the spring seems to be uplifting. Uplifting is too strong of a word, but you know what I mean.

Musically, how would you compare it to Confidence Man?
It’s probably very similar. It’s just me and it’s very stripped down and any of the instrumentation of it may or not be traditional instruments or may just be what I can find in my garage office to make a kick sound out of.

Were you happy with the reception Confidence Man got in 2008?
I wasn’t expecting it to be like a number one album, but all the reviews were positive and the response from fans who came to shows was positive. I’d say I was very happy about it.

Will you be recording the record by yourself and will it be released on Quality Hill?
I will be recording it by myself. It will be released independently; I don’t know for bookkeeping reasons if it’ll be under the name of a different label just so The Get Up Kids can kind of remain separate. That’s boring business crap though.

When are you hoping to have it released by?
I would ideally like to have it come out in the fall. The Get Up Kids are touring Europe in the fall, and there’s nothing on the docket after that, but you never know and I need to wait and see when exactly there will be enough of a break to put this record out and tour on it. It’ll either be in the late-fall or the beginning of next year.

Are you hoping to record it over the summer?
I leave for The Get Up Kids/Saves The Day tour on June 2^nd. I’m hoping to have the whole thing in the bag by the end of the month.

It’s a while off, but will you tour in support of it on dates other than on the Where’s The Band?
As long as there are things that make sense.  I have three kids that I don’t like being away from, so as long as it makes sense. And like I said before, if I could use some of this extra money to get to interesting places where I haven’t played before, that’d be great.

You recently also just released a three-way split with Chris Conley and Masafumi Isobe. When were those songs tracked?
Last fall, I think. Sometime last year in the fall.
POZ: Has the feedback to that been decent?
Matt: I don’t really know because it’s only come out in Japan and all the reviews I’ve read of it are in Japanese. I don’t have any idea if anyone likes it. I know people like my version of “Freakish,” but that’s about all I’ve heard.

Then to just push forward with The Get Up Kids, you guys have a ton of dates booked with Saves The Day and then are doing another tour in July. Has support been confirmed for the second tour?
Not to my knowledge. I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to work, honestly [Laughs].

And the only other touring on the books right now is that UK tour in October?
We’re going to Australia and Japan at the end of July and the first half of August. Then we may have a couple weeks off before the month in Europe.

Are there any other plans in terms of writing and recording?
We’ve been kicking around this idea of recording an EP, but we’re having a hard time scheduling everybody to be in the same place at the same time. There Are Rules took a year and a half to make because we all have such crazy schedules with our other projects and personal lives. That’s the last thing that we discussed, but we haven’t come up with a set of dates to get into the studio yet.