American Football
5:40pm, Orange stage“About half a song in, I remember being like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m not going to make it.'”
So recalls Mike Kinsella of his 2010 Fun Fun Fun Fest set, where too little food and too many beers threatened to derail the appearance. Fast-forward five years and he returns to FFF fronting another pop-punk reunion, this time at the helm of his post-Cap’n Jazz project American Football. A lot’s changed.
“I’m sorry, just a minute,” he apologizes while switching to dad mode when one of those life updates interrupts his tale of debauchery over the phone from Chicago. “Oh my God, he talks as much as his mom.”
American Football released only one album before breaking up, then reunited last year after a 15-year hiatus. Since then, the group’s been playing weekend shows in between raising families.
“It’s sort of like a new part-time job that we walked into,” Kinsella explains.
And growing families aren’t the only shift.
“At the time we broke up, we weren’t that popular. Really. Not at all,” admits Kinsella. “Even at the time we broke up, this sort of festival scale didn’t exist. Lollapalooza was already happening, but it didn’t have anything to do with the punk scene we were involved with.”
Now, Kinsella is selling out shows and snagging festival spots.
“I think the labels we worked with and the bands we played with were involved in this cool scene that kind of took off after we were out of it,” he explains of his retroactive success. “It’s just a big tree that we’re at the bottom of, maybe.”
Fueled by this anachronistic rise, American Football has a new album in the works, largely collaborating over the Internet.
“We all live in different cities, and we’re all raising kids and have other jobs. Logistically, trying to find the time to be creative is challenging.”
This article appears in November 6 • 2015.