Uhh… [laughs] No, “not never play again.” There are songs that I would certainly like to not play every night, you know, but…

I was wondering also because you do have those dedicated fans, what’s the most touching or possibly the weirdest tribute that a fan has either made or given to you?

Uh, a beer pong table. Do you know what a beer pong table is?

Yeah. They made it or they gave it to you?

They made it, and they brought it to the show for us to sign it. It was this huge table, and it had, like, really well-done paintings of all of our album covers on it. There’s a lot of marriage proposals that people have told us about, there’s a lot of tattoos. Some kid had me sign his wrist and then got my signature tattooed on his wrist, which I thought was just ridiculous [laughs]. No, seriously, it’s flattering, but yeah, beer pong table sticks out. It was the most creative.

And they let him bring it in?

I think, you know, it was one of those “this is the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of—yeah, go for it!” Plus, he had it in his car and basically arranged it after the show. He wasn’t like standing in the front row holding a beer pong table. That would’ve been weird.

That would’ve been pretty intense. I read online that Jim Suptic had said at one point that you guys are not necessarily proud of all the bands that claim you as an influence. Is that still true, I was wondering, and are there any bands that you’ve inspired that you guys are actually fans of?

I think that what he said got kinda taken out of context. He was trying to say, you know, it’s flattering when people cite us as an influence, but it’s not really why we do what we do. But regardless, the funny thing is that I don’t really know—other than the ones people at interviews tell me about, which is basically Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy—who the bands are that say that we’re an influence to them, other than some of my friends’ bands. So I take it as a compliment. I certainly don’t listen to only my own music. I like bands, whether they like my band or not.

What are you listening to lately?

Let’s see… right now I’m listening to Bon Iver a lot and The National. I like the new Decemberists record. I’m a big fan of theirs. Do you know Thee Oh Sees, from San Francisco?

I don’t, actually.

They’re a great band. Actually, you know, yesterday, a friend of mine got me reignited; I hadn’t listened to Fugazi in like, two and a half, three years, and I was like, “Oh shit!” So, I went on a Fugazi bender yesterday.

I caught you on the Where’s the Band tour, not this past time but the time before, and I wondered whose idea that was, and did you know the other three guys [Chris Conley, Anthony Raneri, and Dustin Kensrue] before the tour? Were you all friends, or were you introduced by the tour?

Conley and I had toured together acoustically the year before, so he and I had done that before. I knew Dustin from when Get Up Kids did a tour with Thrice and Dashboard Confessional in 2004, so I knew those guys. I’d never met Anthony before, but I knew a lot of people who knew him, so we had a lot of mutual friends. It was our booking agent’s idea, actually. We all have the same booking agent. He’s the one that came up with the really, really awesome name for the tour [laughs]– he says sarcastically.

Are there plans to continue doing the tour?

Yeah, it seems to be kind of our once-a-year, you know, in December or January. I mean, we all get along pretty well, so I don’t know—sure.

I hope so, because the Midwest was not so much on the itinerary this time. I hope that I can go next time.

Well, we did the Midwest the first year, and then we did the west coast the second year, and then we did the east coast this year. So by…. 2025, we should be back to the Midwest [laughs].

I’ll pencil that in, then.

If we do one small market a year, then, there you go. And we’re talking about international stuff, too, so.

We do well in Japan. It’s hard to gauge… we’ve toured in Japan and Europe and Australia, and we did pretty well in all of them. About comparable to here. In Japan, everything’s just more over-the-top there in general, so it feels like we’re bigger over there than we are anywhere else, but I don’t know if the numbers actually support it. The fans are more intense… well, not more intense, but they’re intense in a different way.

No beer pong tables.

No, more elaborate stuff, like flags, and waiting outside our hotel with gifts for us, socks with toes, stuff like that.

Is that weird, when you come outside and there’s just a big crowd of people outside your hotel, or is it kind of cool?

I think it’s… strange [laughs]. It makes me kind of uncomfortable. They’re all really nice; they just want, you know, to thank you, so.

I know that you’re from Kansas and you’re famously proud of your hometown, so I wondered are there other areas in the US that you’re particularly fond of or are looking forward to hitting on your tour?

I always enjoyed being in the northwest, in the Seattle/Portland area. I feel really comfortable up there. And we’re not going there on this tour, but I really am in love with New Orleans; I’ve developed kind of an unhealthy obsession with that place. It’s not… we just don’t really sell that many tickets there. It doesn’t seem to be much of a rock town.

I read an interview online that you had done with Songwriters on Process, and you had discussed with them that you stay home with your kids a lot, which I thought was cool. Are you taking everybody on the road, or what’s your plan for the tour?

No, unfortunately it’s not really economically feasible, plus my wife’s in grad school, so she can’t really take the time off. They stay with Grandma, they go to school, to the Boys and Girls club, stuff like that. And then we try to keep the tours like, this first leg going two and a half weeks, we try to keep things short, so.

Do your kids have a concept of what you do for a living and that Daddy’s famous in Japan?

Oh yeah, very much so. They’ve come on tour with me, on solo. My son was on the last Where’s the Band with me. They’ve all performed on stage in some capacity or another. They all listen to the records. We used to have—my other band, the New Amsterdams, when we were practicing at my house—the band over for dinner when we had practice, so they got to know those guys really well.

Do they know, though—I mean, if they go to the shows, I guess they do—but do they know that they’re hanging out with kind of a famous band, or are they totally not impressed by that?

They don’t care. I mean, my daughter’s to the point where she’s a really big fan of music, but I haven’t really had the opportunity to introduce her to anybody that she’s been really, really into. She’s really into Neko Case right now, and I don’t know that I’ll ever meet her. I mean, I think if I thought it was a big deal, they might pick up on that, but I really don’t, so. I think they see it as kind of different, but not weird, you know?

I know you’ve recorded some kids music. What was your approach when it came time to introduce your kids to music? Did you start with what you like or with certain genres?

We listen to music all the time in our house. It’s the day-to-day sort of thing, so they’re already really exposed to a lot of good music, from day one. It wasn’t really a conscious, “Now we’re going to start learning about music” kind of thing. It was just, it’s always been there. They just started taking piano lessons, so that was a conscious decision.

So now, you’ve come a little ways down the road from being the musician starting out and you’re established now. If you decided in the future that this was the end, what would you do if you were not going to be a musician any more?

Uh… I’ve actually pondered that a lot lately. For a while, I thought about going to culinary school, ‘cuz I’m a pretty good cook, but I realized that I don’t want to work in a restaurant, so it kind of went out the window. And also I’ve already turned one hobby into a career, it seems like that would… I dunno. But lately I’ve been really getting into farming. We grow a lot of our own vegetables and fruit at my house. We’ve kind of turned the property into a little micro-homestead, and I’ve been getting really into that. It’s one of those things I could definitely do full time, but I don’t know that I could make a living doing it full time [laughs]. But I find it really satisfying, growing things.

That’s cool. And now—I’m not sure—do you guys live in Kansas still now?

Mm-hm!

Are you in more of an urban area or more of a rural area where you’ve got more room for that sort of thing?

We live in a college town, Lawrence, like 100,000 people, so I don’t have, like, acreage; I have my city lot. We’re just using every available space for food, or whatever we can.

Are you able to grow anything this time of year, or is this the garden hiatus time of year?

For me, I didn’t… you can grow stuff. You need some auxiliary equipment, green houses, that sort of thing, but I did not get all of that stuff in order before the frost hit [laughs], so that’ll be the plan for next year. This is the time of year when we start our seed, so we have a seed-starting area set up. So we’re growing things, you just won’t be able to eat it for like three months.

Anything else that you want to let people know about the new record or the tour?

The shows are gonna be really, really fun. There’s a lot of cool venues that we’re playing at, and it’s a good mix of old and new. It should be a blast, so. And the bands that are going out with us are really good.

Yeah, you’re with Miniature Tigers, right?

Uh-huh, and then Brian Bonz. He’s a singer-songwriter; he plays with Kevin Devine a lot. It’ll be fun!