Q&A - Texas Is the Reason

The breakup's an eventual part of any band's life -- and more and more often the reunion's becoming another part of that cycle.

Bands break up and get back together all the time, but Texas Is the Reason's upcoming reunion's different. Few bands with only one full-length under their belt -- 1996's Do You Know Who You Are? (Revelation) -- and so many years of dormancy -- nine, to be exact -- can stir up the sort of passions that Texas Is the Reason did with its announcement of a one-off reunion show in New York in November. Although demand forced the outfit to extend its stay at Irving Plaza for a second night (read full story), the seminal emo act has no plans to keep the reunion rolling any farther.

For the emo generation, it's a dreamlike reunion. While active, Texas Is the Reason's album and self-titled EP helped to develop the sound and scene that nurtured bands such as The Promise Ring and The Get Up Kids. After a major-label bidding war ensued -- leaving the act ready to ink with Columbia -- Texas Is the Reason (guitarist Norman Brannon, singer/guitarist Garrett Klahn, bassist Scott Winegard and drummer Chris Daly) unceremoniously split in the middle of a tour in 1997. Now, nearly 10 years later, it has a final chance to find some closure -- and treat fans to a rare glimpse into the past. Aversion caught up with Brannon to reflect on the upcoming shows.

Were you a little surprised at the amount of interest your reunion caused?

It's hard to say. I mean, on one level, no, because over the past 10 years, it seemed like all anyone ever asked me about was Texas Is The Reason. And how I answered those questions really depended on the day. I mean, most bands don't seem to exist in the public consciousness this long, and I'm grateful for that, but you know, I'm not a very nostalgic person. So to some extent, doing this reunion was almost like calling everyone out. I was thinking, "Were all these people over the years really serious about their passion for this band? Or did they just run out of things to say to me?" And in the end, it turns out all these people were sincerely passionate. I think that would be surprising to anyone after 10 years.

In hindsight, with all the influence your band's had on later generations, the amount of excitement about Texas is the Reason from the underground and mainstream in '96, do you have any regrets about folding so early and not seeing what you could have done with the band?

Not at all. Besides, I'm still not convinced that we would have translated to the mainstream in 1997, when we were signing with Capitol. I totally remember sitting down with presidents of major labels and saying, "I totally respect the fact that you like our band, but we don't write choruses. You can't be on the radio without a chorus and you can't sell records without radio." I still think that's true. Regardless of how much we were derided in the underground for being poppy, we never wrote traditional pop songs. I mean, the last song we ever wrote was seven minutes long with a one-chord bridge, you know? But ultimately, we broke up the band to save our friendships, and these guys are still my best friends. I could never regret that.

Not many bands could release a single album, break up and get back together nearly a decade later and arouse interest like Texas is the Reason. Why do you think your songs have been able to stand up so well over the years?

We got lucky. For one thing, our records are still in print and are relatively easy to find. That's a big thing, I think. There were a lot of great bands that were friends of ours, like Christie Front Drive or Samuel, whose records are really hard to track down in 2006. The fact that Revelation and Jade Tree managed to keep their heads above water over the years -- we definitely derived the benefit of that. I'm also pretty proud of the production on the records: We didn't spend a ton of money making those records, but they still sound pretty great on a sonic level. Our producers, J. Robbins and Brian McTernan, were good, and I guess that's why they're still making records today.

But yeah, whatever was going through our heads at the time struck a chord with other people in that unexplainable kind of way. It's impossible to say what it is. But it's amazing that I can play these songs 10 years later and still feel as excited by them as I was back then.

Without degenerating into the "we're not emo" dialogues of 1997, at one time bands like you, The Promise Ring and The Get Up Kids were the architects of emo. Now, the style seems to refer to MySpace kids with black makeup, bad metal-punk and a Hot Topic fixation. How do you think that term mutated from being used to describe acts with a punk background playing pop to the wrist-cutting, silly hat-wearing thing it is today, and how do you feel about such a strange connection between Texas is the Reason and today's emo bands?

Well, I'm not going to pretend that I was never an overdramatic 15-year-old kid who sat in his room, in the dark, playing Side Four of The Smiths' Louder Than Bombs over and over again. Who knows what I'd be listening to if I were 15 years old now? I mean, yeah, the whole spooky-emo look is terribly confusing to me as a thirty-something man, but the first record I ever bought in 1979 was Love Gun by Kiss. I get it. I understand why kids are attracted to imagery as much as they are music.

Personally, I think the biggest difference between bands like, say, Texas or The Promise Ring and some of the newer bands who are out now is that we were old enough to remember when punk wasn't mainstream.We were around before Green Day and Nirvana. We went to all-ages shows, made fanzines, and groaned when our favorite bands signed to pseudo-major indies like Combat or In-Effect. We were old enough to absorb some of the scene's idealism, and that informed how we operated in our new bands, when we eventually stopped playing thrash hardcore. A lot of the newer bands don't even really know what it was like before the Warped Tour existed -- and, in the end, that's okay.

I don't believe that you have to know what Reagan Youth sounds like to play punk rock. And I don't believe that what we did was better or cooler than anything that's happening right now, but it was different.

How exactly the term "emo" mutated so drastically over time, on the other hand, is probably one for the musicologists. It doesn't affect me one way or the other.

Sorry for sounding jaded, but it seems almost all of these one-off reunion shows by punk acts are just the first step toward a bloated reunion tour and a sub-par new album. You've already changed plans from a one-night-only show to a pair of shows. What's keeping you from reneging -- even more -- on your promise to only play one show and do a full reunion tour thing, and if you do, is it OK for all your fans to call you hypocritical assholes?

In my own life, I've only ever seen two reunion shows on purpose: I saw Kraut open for GBH in 1989 at the Ritz and I saw Big Star play at the Metro in Chicago in the late '90s. I understand what it means to be jaded more than anyone. But I've always thought that people were far too precious about these things as well as if Big Star's newalbum, whether you liked it or not, could ever "ruin" their first couple of records or something. I mean, that's just neurotic.

We added a second show because certain people were selling tickets for the first night for, like, $100 on Craigslist hours after it sold out. That is fucked up. We can't stop the scalpers, but if we can relieve the demand for scalped tickets even a little bit, then I think that's a good thing.

In the end, nothing is keeping us from doing anything. We didn't make that statement about how this a one-time only thing because we were trying to win points in some sort of misplaced nobility contest. We made that statement because it's a simple fact: we have personal and professional lives that wouldn't allow a full-scale tour even if we wanted it. But ultimately, we're interested in celebrating what we did together for a weekend, and then moving along like we've always done. I wish that sounded more interesting than it does, but it's the truth.

-- Matt Schild