The 2012 Where’s The Band? Tour has been announced and will feature Chris Conley of Saves The Day, Ace Enders of The Early November, Anthony Raneri of Bayside, Evan Weiss of Into It. Over It., and Matt Pryor of The Get Up Kids. Dustin Kensrue of Thrice will also be playing on select dates. Check out the dates below by clicking “Read More”!
Matt Pryor will be releasing his sophomore solo album, May Day, in January. To begin support the release, Pryor has announced a string of intimate house shows in December. Check out the dates below by clicking “Read More”.
Matt Pryor (The Get Up Kids, The New Amsterdams) will release his sophomore solo album, May Day, on January 24th. The album features 12 brand new tracks, which were recorded at Pryor’s home studio. Check out the artwork and track listing for the record below by clicking “Read More”.
The Get Up Kids played in Sydney, Australia in August this past summer. The entire set from the show is now streaming online. Click “Read More” below to stream the show!
Matt Pryor of The Get Up Kids launched a Kickstarter in May that raised nearly $24,000 for a new solo album called May Day. Details regarding the release of the album had since been quiet, but it has now been confirmed that Pryor is aiming to release the album in January. You can read an update from The Get Up Kids below by clicking “Read More”.
The Get Up Kids posted an update yesterday that seemed to suggest the band would be going on an extended hiatus once again. After much dismay from fans across the world, the band has confirmed that they are not “disbanding at all,” but instead taking time to work on some other projects. Read a statement from the band below by clicking “Read More”.
The Get Up Kids recently reunited after years of being apart and even released a brand new album earlier this year called There Are Rules. The band will be heading out on a European tour shortly, but just announced that they plan on heading in their separate ways for the foreseeable future after the tour finishes. You can read a brief statement from The Get Up Kids below by clicking “Read More”.
PropertyOfZack had the chance to speak with David Conway from Doghouse Records and Working Group Management just a few weeks ago for a fantastic Label Talk interview. If you’re not familiar with the label, Doghouse started by putting out records from The Get Up Kids and Hot Water Music, among other classics, but has now shifted their focus and has bands like A Lot Like Birds and With The Punches. David and I discuss the new direction for the label, management, and a whole slew of other great points. Read up and enjoy!
We’re doing this interview to discuss Doghouse Records, but you work on an incredible amount of other projects as well. Can you just give a description of everything you do to begin with?
I’ve been with Doghouse since 1999 or 2000. I started as an intern in Boston. I was also running my own label really horribly out of my parent’s basement, but that had a couple bands, which was good. I did the first Senses Fail and Halifax records and I did a terrible job with it. I pressed records at the wrong resolution. So I was doing that and went to Doghouse to intern and then started working for Doghouse 6 months later. I went to college at night and worked at Doghouse during the day. Then, I left Doghouse and worked at Atlantic doing A&R and totally hated that and called Dirk who owns Doghouse and asked him if I could have my job back at Doghouse and I also told him I wanted to start a management company and for some reason he said yes. So we started Working Group probably in 2007 and starting signing, that’s when Doghouse had a deal with Warner Bros and Atlantic, so we were doing stuff with them and starting Working Group. So those have been my two main focuses for the past long while. Doghouse has kind of morphed a bunch over that time period. From having a deal with Warner where we were just like trying to find bands that we thought could up stream to Warner Bros, so it was kind of like the dark ages in a way. It was a label that had so much culture in the late 90’s and early 2000’s and then when the All American Rejects blew up and there was the buzz of anything blowing up when they sign with Jay, we did our deal with Warner Music and it was like, “Shit, let’s find stuff that we think can be pop stars and can be huge.” The business model became like, let’s find stuff that we can up stream, instead of what it probably should have been, which was more nurturing and still try and keep a genre for the label and a scene in place. It was pretty random for a little bit. Right now we finished our deal with Warner Bros. We up streamed Meg & Dia, The Honorary Title, and we did at that time too, but none of that stuff really took off on that label so we don’t have that deal anymore. We did a deal with Red and we’re kind of in the middle of re-launching the label right now in a totally different way that I’m really excited about, like the way that the business is structured and the bands that we are bringing in. So that’s different right now and then I have maybe 5 or 6 bands that I do through Working Group and the same staff for Doghouse and Working Group, there’s about 8 of us total; A bunch out here and two guys in LA right now. So it’s kind of weird. Same staff, new company, and we are just trying to do stuff that we’re proud of. We wanted to build a company that people wouldn’t hate. We’re still learning every day and trying not to be shitty.
Looking back at it, do you guys kind of regret the whole up streaming nature of just trying to find bands that could potentially blow up on major?
Yeah, it just wasn’t a healthy way for us to be a label. I don’t know. Yeah we just signed a lot of stuff and maybe the thought process was wrong. A lot of labels are doing that. At that time there was a lot of bands getting signed. We became kind of the pop scene to the major labels. At that time I just didn’t know anything about radio or pop or what that stuff needed to be so I think a lot of that stuff wasn’t right for the deals that we had made. We kind of figured out what stuff we should do on the managing side that we understand, and then created a lot more streamlined kind of model for Doghouse so that we can work with bands and have the same expectation and exceed on the business and creative level.
The Get Up Kids are promoting “Rally ‘Round The Fool” as their brand new single from There Are Rules and the band just released a b-side to the single called “Past Is Past.” You can stream the new song below by clicking “Read More”!
The Get Up Kids have released a new music video for “Rally ‘Roud The Fool” that can be seen right here. The track is one of many that was released on the band’s last album, There Are Rules, which hit stores on January 25th earlier this year.
One year ago this month we got back on stage together for the first time in 3 and a half years. Since then we’ve been traveling to europe and back and all over the US, writing new songs, gigging with our friends and having a blast. This weekend we are going back to the scene of the crime. The Record Bar in Kansas City is one of our favorite places and we’re very excited to end this chapter where we started it. This “reunion” ends in KC. From now on we enter into the next phase of the get up kids, new tunes, new adventures in australia and japan and wherever else the wind takes us. We’re a new band and we’re excited to see where we will go in the future. We hope that you can make it out to one of the shows in Kansas City, if nothing more because all of the proceeds are going to go to the Anne Winter fund. Anne was a huge influence on and supporter of this band and all of our projects since the very very beginning. She was a powerful force for good in Kansas City and she will be missed by all of us. We hope that you can come out and donate to her family. We want to say thank you to everyone who came out to see us on this tour and everyone who has supported us. We can’t wait to play you some of these new songs. Thanks for everything.
-the g.u.k.
For the 10th anniversary reissue of their landmark album, ‘Something to Write Home About,’ the Get Up Kids compiled years of archival footage for a bonus DVD. Among the many highlights is a scene where the Kansas City punks took part in the time-honored rock tradition of smashing their equipment to bits. “That was the last date of the 2001 tour we did opening for Weezer,” frontman Matt Pryor tells Spinner. “We just smashed all of our s—-. It seemed like a fun thing to do at the time.”
The decimation of the instruments wasn’t as wanton as it might seem. “Oh, it was totally planned, like ‘Top that, bitch!’” says Pryor. “It was very Jerry Lee Lewis of us.” Surprisingly, the stunt got no reaction from Rivers Cuomo and his bandmates. In fact, Weezer never reacted to anything the Get Up Kids did. “They never said anything to us for that entire tour,” Pryor recalls. “They’re the only band I’ve toured with for a month that I’ve never spoken to. They’re jackasses.”
We’ve confirmed in an interview (available in full next week on this very site) that The Get Up Kids have 9 new songs. They may come out as EPs or be a special vinyl only release. Tentative release date is next year.
- Via Absolute Punk
