Chris Payne writes books not tragedies
Talking emotional bullshit with the 'Where Are Your Boys Tonight?' author
VANCOUVER – Before the sold-out international tours and TRL dominance, before A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out and The Black Parade, before people even really understood what the fuck emo even was, the scene, as we call it, was just dots on the map. Mesa, Arizona, and Belleville, New Jersey, Lawrence, Kansas, and Franklin, Tennessee. Small communities separated by thousands of miles. And yet they shared an important commonality: music. For what felt like the first time, a vibrant music scene was centered not in New York, Los Angeles, or Nashville but scattered throughout small suburban communities in the continental United States and Canada, its connective tissue composed of long-distance phone calls, handwritten letters, and an emerging technology known as the worldwide web. It was a whisper that quickly turned into a scream, as bands emerged from dark basements and dank VFW halls, into the spotlight and superstardom.
For years, I fantasized about writing the MySpace/LiveJournal generation’s answer to Please Kill Me or Meet Me in the Bathroom: an oral history of all things emo, told by the bands, the labels, and the fans. So I was equal parts impressed and relieved when I learned music journalist Chris Payne beat me to the punch. His book, Where Are Your Boys Tonight?, was published yesterday and offers a mosaic look at the scene, told by more than 150 of the people who helped shape it. Our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, touched on Chris’ love of Jimmy Eat World, growing up in Jersey, why Gabe Saporta is a scene super connector, the staying power of Panic! At the Disco, emo’s Christian connections, and so much more.
ES: You’ve been doing a lot of press for the book. How has it been going?
CP: It’s been fun. It’s interesting to be on the other side of the equation after interviewing so many artists and people, not just for the book, but like when I was working at Billboard, or even before that when I worked in college radio… It’s interesting seeing what people gravitate toward in the book for sure. I didn’t even announce it on my socials or publically until January of this year. I did the first interview in May 2020 and I kept it mostly secret. I didn’t want the people I was hoping to interview to find out about it second-hand or through the Internet. I wanted them to get it from me. But I kept the book secret for so long, now I’m just dying to talk about it.
ES: Who was the first person you interviewed?
CP: It started with Gabe Saporta [from Midtown and Cobra Starship]. I had a good relationship with him from my time at Billboard. I had written a big feature on him when he started his management company, Artist Group, which has actually gone on to make some moves and have some big success. I think he really appreciated that and I had a ball interviewing him… We started from the beginning of his life, his upbringing, coming to America with his family from Uruguay… And there was a lot of stuff about the early Jersey scene, Gabe’s time in Midtown, his connections with Dashboard Confessional and New Found Glory, and other bands. That interview really solidified how intertwined the scene was for me. We had a good rapport together and it was an easy ask to start the book with. It felt good.
ES: It’s funny, I personally didn’t listen to a lot of Midtown growing up but it is one of those bands that the scene coalesces around, I think because of Gabe’s personality. He’s sort of similar to Pete Wentz, in that he just had a knack for meeting people and building connections.
CP: Obviously Pete gets the most attention for being the socialite of the scene but as far as master connectors go, Gabe Saporta doesn’t get nearly enough shine for how integral he was in building the scene and, in some way, commercializing it, for better or worse. One of Midtwon’s first shows was in the Thursday basement with You and I, this New Jersey screamo band. A few years later Cobra Starship literally toured with Justin Bieber in South America. It’s pretty wild.
ES: I was thinking as I prepped for this interview how this scene emerged when there was still some money in music, and how people like Gabe or Pete were able to accomplish so much because they acted as if there was no ceiling or limit on what was possible.
CP: Yeah it was the end of an era in some ways. There is still lots of money in the music industry, it’s just a matter of who’s getting it. But as far as rock music being the center of youth culture in that way, emo pop in the early aughts was the last time that happened. Rap was more influential, even then, but emo wasn’t that far behind. This scene really was a driver of trends and teenage culture that I feel is still underrated. Even something like skinny jeans. Mikey Way, Pete Wentz, and bands like Eighteen Visions were all wearing skinny jeans before Kanye. There was also the use of the internet, embracing not just MySpace but blogging platforms like LiveJournal and Xanga.
ES: Even something like street teams, which were so major for bands and record labels, and which I would argue pre-dated current stan culture. Having kids going around championing your stuff was really revolutionary.
CP: It’s funny, as much as I was into the scene, I was never in a street team… I remember Victory Records especially, their people – street teams, staff – they’d always be outside of the venue as the concert was ending and shoving Victory CD samplers at you. Kids were really inspired back then. It’s funny to think about just how much work they put in, in light of the current conversations around getting paid for your work and unions and free labour, and the exploitation of people. But also a lot of these bands were very much on the come-up and or near the DIY level. Doing something like that when you’re 15 to promote an indie record label is probably a better use of your time than, like, the mundane after-school extra-curricular activities you do for your college application… In a lot of ways, it was stan culture minus the negative baggage that it comes with now.
ES: What were the bands growing up that got you into the scene?
CP: Jimmy Eat World was always number one. They were the band that changed my life. Bleed American was the first CD I ever bought with my own money. I bought it at the FYE at the Woodbridge Mall in New Jersey. I think I spent $21 USD after tax. Laughs.
ES: Woah.
CP: Before that, I was the sort of kid who listened to [New York’s #1 Hit Music Station] Z100 and [Los Angeles’ World Famous radio station] KROQ sometimes, who watched TRL sometimes. My music library probably had 180 songs in it. I didn’t buy CDs at all, I just downloaded hit songs I had heard on the radio. Then I bought Jimmy Eat World and it was like “Oh my god!” It wasn’t just that ‘The Middle’ was good, the other songs were really good. What a concept! I realized I should maybe buy more CDs because maybe the artists have really good songs that aren’t on the radio. That was literally my thought. Then I bought the first Hoobastank album, and was like “Eh, maybe sometimes the only good songs are the ones on the radio.”
But it went pretty quickly from Jimmy Eat World to more of the scene stuff. The stuff that would’ve been playing at Skate and Surf Festival or Warped Tour. It was really poppin’ at my high school. There was a sort of cross-over between the emo kids, the band kids, and the kids like me who were in all honours and AP classes. Yellowcard, Something Corporate, stuff like that… I went from 0 to 100 in terms of music fandom, being all things Jersey scene.
ES: Has guitar music ever sounded so good as on the song ‘Bleed American’? It still goes so hard.
CP: It was really interesting talking to their A&R guy Luke Wood for the book. He was telling me about the production process behind that song, and the album, and how it stood out at the time. He really put it into context. Even though they were working with Mark Trombino, who is known as being this post-hardcore, underground guy, the drummer for Drive Like Jehu, that album is Pro Tools’d to death in a good way. It’s an extremely Pro Tools rock album. The way the guitars are isolated in the mix, the way Jim’s vocals come to the top and soar. The way little accents, like the solo in ‘Get It Faster.’
ES: I should also say, Jim Adkins is aging like a fine wine.
CP: Seriously. I saw them at Adjacent Festival the other weekend and I walked past him and he looks great. The whole band does. It’s cool. He stands out in some way. I covered When We Were Young Festival for Vulture. I interviewed them in the media area where there were lots of bands. Publicists and managers were passing through. And Jim was just rockin’ a blazer. Not every guy can just rock a blazer, especially when a lot of the people around you are in t-shirts and vintage shit. He was pulling it off. I was like “Yeah Jim, you’re killing it Jim.”
ES: What a great band to have in the scene and have people look up to. They’re so consistent, they don’t seem to have any drama. They’re easy to root for.
CP: They’ve always seemed like the good guys… The way [Dashboard Confessional’s] Chris Carrabba talks about them so glowingly in the book, or the way the younger generation of bands talks about them. They’re just the truth.
ES: I wanted to talk to you about the worship-y vibes that were sort of beneath the surface with a few bands, particularly those from the southeast. Did that come up in your reporting at all?
CP: Oh yeah. In the book I tried to bring to life aspects of this scene that were really important to it back then but sort of lost to history. And one aspect was how much the Christian band thing was part of the scene. A lot of it was southeastern. Oddly enough the label Tooth and Nail Records was Seattle-based. But other bands like Emery or Mae or Showbread… The common line from so many of these bands was “We’re not a Christian band, but we are Christians in a band.” And even Paramore was part of that, they absolutely were. I get why, in more recent years, they would try to brush that aside and I don’t get the impression that Hayley [Williams] is that anymore.
ES: Not at all. I think she’s questioning, to say the least, right?
CP: Yeah. But early on 1000%. They were praying as a band before they went on stage. They didn’t curse. And also they were little kids. Laughs. So many bands had a grey area where you couldn’t tell… With so many of these Christian bands, you would read the lyrics and almost nothing about it made it obvious they were Christian. It wasn’t like they were singing praise songs. They were just maybe more subdued when it came to talking about adult life and were a little more interested in singing about devotion in very oblique terms.
ES: What I think is so interesting about it is that they would pull aspects from worship culture into the scene. I’m not a Christian, but I’ve been to enough masses to recognize the hands-in-the-air-surrender-pose. Like, “Oh shit, I was throwing it up at the altar for Paramore.”
CP: I was raised Catholic. It wasn’t a super intense thing, my parents just did it because their parents did it. I dipped out pretty much right after I was confirmed. So I was familiar with some of these concepts. But I’ll hear people talking now and saying “I was a youth group kid and my parents wouldn’t let me listen to non-Christian music but because of bands like Underoath and mewithoutYou, there was cool post-hardcore music my parents would allow.”
ES: I did want to ask you about Paramore and the misogyny Haley experienced. Even just the rumours that dogged her about constantly wanting to leave the band.
CP: Fortunately, where we are now, I think Hayley’s gotten her flowers and the respect she always deserved. I started to see the shift with 2013’s Paramore and then 2017’s After Laughter. It was shocking to see how critics positively embraced that album. I think a lot of it has to do with kids getting older. The people interviewing Paramore and Hayley were different from the people talking to her for Rock Sound magazine. It was more kids, women, and queer people who grew up with the band… People who know the framework for Paramore and where they fit into the musical landscape and who can ask better interview questions. It’s well-documented that she’s been through a lot, but fortunately, I think the band has finally gotten the respect they deserve.
ES: Were you able to interview her for the book?
CP: No. I reached out several times to different people close to the band. Management, etc. I interviewed them a bunch of times during my time at Billboard. We did some great interviews. I dunno. I never got a response, unfortunately.
In putting the book together and talking it over with my editors, it was pretty clear that it needed Hayley’s voice. In gathering and licensing quotes from other more recent interviews to include in the book, I’ve put a lot of care into painting the Paramore lineage and how they fit into everything, and what I feel is appropriate. I feel pretty happy with how it came together when all is said and done.
ES: I always fantasized about doing this exact sort of project so I’m very happy that you did the work and brought it to life. Was it hard tracking all of these sources down and managing their quotes to craft a larger narrative?
CP: Objectively it’s mind-boggling. It’s so confusing. But I think because I’ve always been so into oral history, it just makes sense in my head. I had a sense of how a book like this would go… A lot of the structure came from putting together my book proposal and having my chapters planned out. There are 38 chapters in the book. My proposal had a lot more. A couple of things got cut because they were too far outside the main narrative, or they were redundant. Some chapters got folded into one another. I had a sense of what the narrative arc of the story would be, that it would span from the late 90s into 2008, and then briefly end in the present day. And as weird as it seems, I actually wrote all of the chapters chronologically. I had always planned as starting it in New Jersey, so it helped that I had so many connections with Jersey scene people. Living in New Jersey and New York my whole life, it just worked out that I knew a lot of people whose voices fit in those early Jersey chapters.
ES: When it came to interviewing Pete Wentz, were there any revelations or things you didn’t know?
CP: I was really excited to ask Pete about this band Racetraitor that he was in. They still exist, they’re still killing it. They’re like this leftist, super confrontational hardcore band from Chicago who were talking about racial inequality, but also stressing themes like systemic racism. How major corporations and the Republican and Democratic parties, are in some ways keeping racism as a structural part of American society. They were talking about that in the late 90s, in ways that were just becoming more mainstream in 2020 with the George Floyd protests. They are a fascinating band and they are so important. Wentz was in the band for a few months, and even when he wasn’t in the band he was in the pit supporting them. He was a minor celebrity in the Chicago hardcore scene before he was Pete from Fall Out Boy. Racetraitor had gotten some love in terms of retrospective pieces. Noisey had written about them. But I had never seen Pete talk about his time in Racetraitor in any sort of meaningful way. He wasn’t a principal member of the band when he was in it. Chapter 4 is all about Pete’s arrival in hardcore, his childhood. It’s kind of his origin story, as told through Racetraitor. It’s one of my favourite chapters in the book.
ES: That sounds great.
CP: So much of what I wanted to do with this book was capture quotes, and pieces of information, stories that weren’t out there before. I know there are so many die-hard obsessive fans of this music, I couldn’t be rehashing quotes from some Alternative Press story. I knew there had to be revelations in this book that had never been heard before… Mani from Racetraitor is all over the book. He’s fascinating.
ES: It’s crazy to me that Panic! At The Disco is maybe the scene band with the most cross-generational appeal. A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out is, like, a central pillar of the scene.
CP: They truly changed everything. For me, in the way I process things, I was 16 when Fever came out. To me, that album and ‘I Write Sins Not Tragedies,’ felt like one of the first huge songs and superstar artists that came purely from the Internet. Soulja Boy came a few months later, so there were other similar things happening around them. But yeah, it feels like the start of online phenomena creeping into mainstream “real life” culture, which is totally commonplace now. I’m not just saying that because I’m repping my shit for the book. Looking back at how much it blew people’s minds that a band that had never played a show before and had come from the middle of nowhere…
ES: Literally from Vegas. So twisted!
CP: Everyone had to have an opinion on them. They were so polarizing, because they “Hadn’t paid their dues,” and played with backing tracks because they had never toured before and wrote a bunch of overlapping parts for the record that they would never be able to execute when they played live. So many bands hated them.
ES: Whenever I fantasized about writing a book like this, I always wondered how I would approach Brand New. How did you approach that band their legacy? [Editor’s note: In 2017 Brand New frontman Jesse Lacey was accused of sexual misconduct, including allegations from two women who shared accounts of sexual harassment, manipulative behavior, and child grooming on Lacey’s part. The allegations have not been tested in court.]
CP: I tried to really spell out the approach and be transparent with it in the book. I knew that it was impossible not to include Brand New in the narrative. They were one of the most popular and influential and celebrated artists in the scene. The way I approached it, in light of all the allegations that surfaced against Jesse Lacey in 2017, was I wanted to portray how Brand New drove the narrative of emo’s mainstream explosion, in that context of the era, without glorifying Jesse Lacey himself. It was extremely hard to do because they were so popular, so celebrated. Their appeal was so specific and cultish, it was hard to put into words unless you were there. I did my absolute best to find a balance where I show the role they played in the narrative without glorifying Lacey and – as much as I could – reminding people about the serious accusations against him. More than anything I hope the book brings no hardship or pain towards those that were hurt.
ES: I imagine it could be intimidating because that band remains so popular and their fanbase is so aggressive about it, and for better or worse they were so emblematic of the problems that existed in the scene at the time. At one point they were arguably one of the three biggest bands the scene had produced.
CP: Yeah and to be clear, I was a huge Brand New fan. At one time they would have been one of my top 5 bands. I considered Deja Entendu one of the top albums of the era. But, like, if they got back together I’m not going. I’m not going to that show.
ES: They were one of my favourite bands too. And it sucks because I spent so much time defending Jesse’s actions, and it just hit a threshold where it went from “Oh he’s an asshole,” to “Oh, no, he did genuine harm to people.” It’s weird to break up with an artist and I’ve always thought that was a wound in the scene that’s never fully healed.
CP: The way the scene, or some of the scene, responded by quickly condemning him, had a lot to do with why Brand New almost immediately canceled their huge farewell arena tour. It was encouraging to see so many people condemn them in that way… In some ways, it shows how the scene and the people participating in it have grown.
ES: Not related to the book but where do you sit on The 1975?
CP: Laughs. I haven’t really kept up with [Matty Healy’s] recent controversies. In the general sense, from what I’ve heard, I’m obviously not behind it. But I’ve been into all of their albums up until this point. The second album is my favourite.
ES: Are they emo?
CP: Uh, no. Emo adjacent we could say.
Chris Payne is a music journalist and author of Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008. He lives in Brooklyn.