They got older, but they’re still young.
After over 18 years, US pop-punk legends The Starting Line have today released brand-new album, Eternal Youth.
Despite a three-year hiatus between 2008-2011, the Pennsylvania five-piece — Kenny Vasoli, Matt Watts, Mike Golla, Tom Gryskewicz and Brian Schmutz — who have been together since they first formed in 1999, have still largely been active, but new music wasn’t on the cards until only a few years ago.
Their debut album, Say it Like You Mean it, dropped in 2002 and shot the band to fame with their breakout hit, “The Best of Me”. They went on to release 2005’s Based on a True Story and 2007’s Direction.
Outside of a 2015 EP, that was a wrap for The Starting Line music. Until now.
Eternal Youth is a new chapter for the band. Produced by Will Yip (Lauryn Hill, Panic! at the Disco) and Rich Costey (Foo Fighters, Vampire Weekend, My Chemical Romance), and mastered by Howie Weinberg (Nirvana, U2, Smashing Pumpkins), this is The Starting Line at their very best.
Frontman Vasoli sat down with Rolling Stone AU/NZ to talk about the new album, the long journey to it, potential Australian tour plans, and that time Taylor Swift referenced them in one of her recent tracks.
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Rolling Stone AU/NZ: Let’s start with the elephant in the room. It’s been 18 years since The Starting Line have released an album. Why now?
Kenny Vasoli: There was a sea change happening with our management. When we were exploring new people to talk to, we started chatting with Tim [Kirch], who is now our current manager. And he had a conversation with me about new music.
At that point in time — this was maybe two and a half, three years ago — I was of the mind that, I don’t know if people are necessarily interested in a new full-length from us, and I felt more secure just letting out like three four songs of seven inch style releases at a time. I thought that that was, kind of, the punk way to ride off into the sunset. We could still be creative and people could still hold down jobs and it would be an attainable task for us.
Whereas at the time of making a full length, it seemed a little bit daunting… I don’t know if people are going to care. I didn’t know if I cared about the albums that were coming out by our contemporaries that would wait a few years and then come back. I was being let down by a lot of those efforts and I didn’t want to fall into that. I don’t want to be categorised that way.
I had held the first three records on some sort of pedestal because we were playing them so much and people obviously had an attachment to those songs. And so when I was telling [Tim] that I don’t know if people are gonna care, he just said, ‘I think that’s just insecurity talking.’ And he explained that if we did want to make a record, it would just be a higher likelihood of people getting to hear it in general. He said that even putting our efforts on a seven inch, you’re just minimising the chances of people being exposed to it. And that sounded very sensical to me. So, and as soon as he said the insecurity thing, it really was a perfect reverse psychology on me where I was like, ‘I’m not insecure. I’m better at songwriting now than I’ve ever been.’ And I do feel that in my heart of hearts.
Despite a three year hiatus from 2008-2011, The Starting Line have still largely been active as far as touring and playing together. Is there any particular reason the band didn’t consider making new music or is it as simple as you found success very early in your career and as you get older, priorities changed?
Sort of. I think it was probably different for everybody. I can only speak personally around that time. In 2008, I had hit a wall creatively, I think, with the band and how I would hypothetically proceed writing songs for a new record. Like, there was essentially no new ideas for music once we tapped out and took a breather. So there was a long time — I think it was maybe nine years or so where there was no new music being written at all.
And then we finally did [write] for the Anyways EP and it felt good, but it just seemed like the conversation never really led further than that. That came out and made some people happy and it definitely got some spins, but it didn’t really change the landscape of what we were doing. People were still attached to the old material. And I had kind of just found peace with that.
When we let up the gas in 2008, I think what I thought would happen was people would just sort of forget and there wouldn’t be much of a demand for us to be playing shows. And it was really to my surprise that we were able to have the tradition of playing a holiday show and they keep selling out and, you know, really cool bands that I love would want to play with us. And all of a sudden, it started to look like people respected us almost.
And that was really something that I think was a great confidence booster for us to be like, ‘Now we’re not just these young kids that are on Warped Tour getting the side eye from Bad Religion’ or whoever. Now we’re actually transitioning into being veterans. And I think we wear that cross with a sense of pride.
If bands are looking to us either in the past or now as an influence, I take that very seriously. And now it’s great to be able to have a hindsight view of how you write music, because you know how you did it back then. And now you have all these influences accumulating over the years, and there’s punk bands that have come and gone since.
Speaking of your fellow contemporaries, the pop-punk genre has had a complete revival in the last few years. The launch of the When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas that now hosts 80,000 fans Major bands from that time are back in a big way. Tom DeLonge is back with blink-182, My Chemical Romance are back, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Yellowcard, Good Charlotte etc. Was there a reluctance to get back in on the action so that The Starting Line remains organic, and not coming off like a gimmick?
100%, yeah. Gimmickry and pageantry in music are two things that I revolt against really hard, probably to the point where my band is just putting their hands on their forehead sometimes when I’m waxing intellectual about that kind of stuff! It’s really important to me that we’re a real genuine expression of what we’re doing and it’s not shrouded by motivation to just make money or just fit into the scene with these bands that are crushing it. It has to mean something to us and it has to be an unfiltered expression of what we’re trying to do here. And getting to do that without a label really helps, too, because then there’s no one sticking their hand in the process that is giving non-musician ideas to musicians, which has always been something that never worked out well for us in the past.
It’s been the same five guys since these five guys had joined the band too. So I keep that really precious to us, that we are the same five guys and we’ve never replaced anybody and we could have easily tapped out with anybody in this band. at some point in time, myself included! I joke all the time that like, if I have a bad show, I’m like, ‘Oh, you guys are gonna call up Dan from Real Friends, I know it!’
We’ve grown this attachment and brotherhood to each other where it’s sort of beyond music at this point and it really is family to us. So we take it very seriously. And if we are gonna get back in the studio and express ourselves creatively, it has to be genuine. I think people smell it when it’s not, or it just fades away into the abyss of history. And I’d like to think that if there’s any reason that people are still listening to the first three records, it’s because we were unapologetically just trying to be ourselves. And that’s what we’re still trying to do.
The Starting Line burst out of the gates in 2002 with your seminal debut album, Say it Like You Mean it, which featured some of the band’s biggest hits like “The Best of Me” and “Leaving”. What did success look like to you then?
My bar was really low for what I considered success. I think because I joined the band when I was 14 years old and by the time we were making that record and touring, I was 16, going on 17. And so, for a 16, 17 year old, I really just wanted to be like playing shows with my favourite bands. And our second show ever was with Saves the Day, right after Through Being Cool came out. And to me, I was already like, ‘Boom, it’s done. We’re there, we made it! Two shows in and we’ve already surpassed all my goals.’
So anytime something else would happen, like [when] we got signed to Drive-Thru — I remember I came home from track practice and I got the phone call that we were getting signed to Drive-Thru and I had to tell my parents.
So it was really all gravy after that and even to this point.
The Starting Line got a lot of mainstream attention when you were referenced in Taylor Swift’s song “The Black Dog” from The Tortured Poets Department. Did you get a massive boost of attention when that dropped or was it just a fun moment for the five of you?
There was a bump [in streaming numbers] for sure, but it’s not like our streams doubled or anything like that. We had a thank you post and that seemed to get a lot of the Swiftie[s] attention, but that’s about it. I mean, we’ve never had contact with her and also our keyboard player Brian has posited to me like, ‘Hey, maybe it’s not even about us. Maybe she just happens to say “the starting line” in it.’ Maybe there’s something else called “the starting line”? If we ever brought it up to her, she’d be like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I like that theory that we misunderstood the whole thing and it has nothing to do with us [laughs]. I think I heard that there’s a country song called “The Starting Line”. so maybe it’s about that. Technically, we don’t know.
With Eternal Youth, are The Starting Line back for good, or is it a case of you all will return to the band when the timing is right for you?
I think we’re back full force. We’ve been trying to be back as full force as we can for a few years now. And I think that this is the proof of concept that we can, will, and are doing this. And I’ve been methodically convincing everybody in the band to quit their jobs! I’ve got two down now, and I just have two left to go. I’ve never had a job. I’ve always just been pushing all my chips on the music thing. Brian quit his job first, I think earlier this year. And then Tom, we just had a retirement party for him. He tapped out of his job weeks ago.
Are there any plans to tour Australia in the near future?
There’s a lot of talk of it. As you know, the flights, they take a while and I hear they’re not cheap. So I think we’re trying to cross that threshold into a financially viable situation where we can get over there. But believe me — I mean, it’s one of the most gorgeous continents on the planet. It’s not me holding up the process.
You guys were last here for Soundwave 2011. Have there been offers from festivals to come back?
I think there have been some offers. I just think that they haven’t made sense financially. So that’s been a tough one. We want to get there, but we can’t spend the nest egg doing it.
It took 18 years but The Starting Line’s fourth album is here. Is there anything you’d like to say to fans about the record and where you go from here?
This is so tough trying to boil it down how much it means to me, ’cause I feel I get so excited about this era of us now that I can’t even quite get the words out. You just have to take my word for it that if you’re gonna find an entry point into The Starting Line, I think now’s the time.
I’ve always felt like we had an immense amount of potential ever since I first started jamming with Matt Watts and the guys he put together in his basement. This group of guys has always felt really special to me and there’s something about this — just getting together with guitars and a bass and drums and a keyboard and a PA system and there’s no other funny business or shenanigans with it.
I mean, there’s no effects on the record, there’s no delay, there’s no pitch correction. It’s very true to form of how we sound on a stage, which I don’t think we’ve ever gotten to do before, you know? Explaining it like that makes it sound like it’s going to be like a raw undercooked punk record, but it’s not. I think it’s a perfectly-cooked punk record that doesn’t need much seasoning, [it] just needs salt and pepper and a little bit of olive oil. And that’s all we gave it.
It just feels so good returning to this form of playing music, because there’s an instant gratification of punk music that I’m picking up on now and really enjoying. And I think I maybe took it for granted when I was younger. It’s such a blessing to just be able to make music with very little ingredients. And I think that some bands get a little bit ambitious with all the possibilities in the studio. I think we showed a lot of restraint with our purpose in there.
I hope people just hear it the same way that I do, because I’m very proud of it.
Eternal Youth is out now.
