The Get Up Kids - 25 Years of Something to Write Home About

Wednesday, February 12th 2025
The Get Up Kids w/ The Anniversary
25 Years Of Something To Write Home About
7:00 - All Ages
$30 Early Bird / $33 Advance / $37 Day of Show

THE GET UP KIDS
Kansas City, MO
https://www.thegetupkids.com/

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 twenty something 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 ANNIVERSARY
Lawrence, KS
https://vagrant25.bandcamp.com/album/your-majesty
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.