10/30: Interview: Jimmy Eat World go back to 'Futures'

Ed Masley
The Republic | azcentral.com
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Jimmy Eat World.

It's been 10 years since Jimmy Eat World hit the charts at No. 6 with their fifth album, "Futures," which spawned the Top 10 modern-rock hits "Pain" and "Work."

It was hailed at the time in Alternative Press as "a beautiful example of what 'heart-on-sleeve' music should be." And it isn't just beautiful, either (although "Drugs or Me" is definitely that and then some). It rocks those emotions with real authority on such obvious highlights as the title track and "Pain."

To mark the anniversary, they're taking "Futures" on the road and playing the entire album front to back. We caught up with Jim Adkins to discuss the tour.

Question:So you're doing "Futures" in its entirety?

Answer: Yeah, we're playing "Futures" as a record and then some extra stuff that was kind of from around that time that we never had in rotation for playing out and just a mix of other fan-favorite things that we can throw in there with whatever time we have left.

Q: Are there songs from "Futures" you'd never played live?

A: Yeah. I don't think we've ever played "Night Drive" before. And I don't think we've ever done "Drugs Or Me" before. And most of the material has taken a back seat over the years to whatever new songs got interjected into the set. A lot of songs, the last time we did them was 10 years ago on the original "Futures" tour.

Q: Was there relearning involved?

A: A little bit. And a little bit of going back to actually listen to the record and seeing what hooks are there that we might not have been doing regularly. Over time, they had kind of evolved where it gets away from the original recording. So in some cases, we're kind of going back to that as a source.

Q: So you're being more faithful to the record than you had been?

A: For the most part, yeah.

Q: What do you recall of the making of that record? You were coming off of "Bleed American."

A: It was pretty intense. I think working with Gil Norton was a big change for us. Everybody has a slightly different take on what they like to hear and how they like to get there. And Gil was really into the details of things and made us focus on the transitional parts for getting into and out of different sections of songs – a level of detail that we hadn't considered before. When there were sections of the song that kind of bumped into each other, we worked on how can one kind of lead into the other to make both sections more effective. I'm sure you can go through and read interviews with Foo Fighters about working with Gil and the level of detail that he gets into. You could see him getting completely engrossed in the material. He was just so invested in it and he's not even in the group. So that sort of forces you to step up and take a closer look at everything too.

Q: What led you to work with him?

A: The records he's worked on. For a lot of producers, that kind of gets you in the door, what projects you've worked on. And just meeting with him. He came out to our studio in Tempe and we showed him some demos we were working on. And we right away got into it, got dirty, started working. You can conceptualize all day about what it might be like getting into the studio with somebody in a creative working environment but until you actually just do it, you don't really know. So I think getting in there and actually doing stuff with him actually sold us on working with him.

Q: You'd obviously had a big huge hit on the record before, "The Middle." Was the pressure on to come up with another song like that?

A: No. I'm sure it was there. No one really talked about it. But Gil is no stranger to having that over his head, the pressure to follow up a hit. But if it was happening, it was happening in the background and he kind of defused it so that we could focus on what we needed to do. If anything, I recall that if something was getting too close to sounding like "The Middle," that would be an issue because the worst thing that could happen would have been to make "The Middle Part II" and be stuck being known for a really small area of what we like to do. I think we've done a good job of leaving creative doors open by exploring whatever it is that we're thinking is challenging and exciting at the moment. And that leads down a lot of different paths. The worst thing that we could have done is probably just to solidify being known for one kind of thing.

Q: How did you end up hooking up with Liz Phair?

A: You know, the song "Work" just kind of reminded me of a Liz Phair song. I can't tell you exactly which song. Just "Exile in Guyville"-era Liz Phair. Just something about it kind of reminded me of something she would do. And our A&R guy happened to know her. So I was just like, "Well, see what she's doing." Just ask and see what happens. So she came down and did it and it was cool.

Q: What was that like working with her?

A: It was great. She thought it was fun having a cameo spot and not having to be "the person." So it was a nice time.

Q: Going back in and listening to the album, how has it held up for you?

A: Oh, we're still really proud of it. It's kind of surprising to go back and listen to. It's a really dense record. There's a lot happening. We were definitely in a stage where we thought more was more.

Q: And you feel like you've gotten away from that approach.

A: As time goes on, you try different things. We try to put ourselves in different mindsets as time goes on just to keep things challenging.

Q: Was there a prevailing mindset going in as to what kind of record you wanted to make?

A: No, not really. I think it was just about capturing the period of time with whatever we had written from the last record until the recording of that one. It was more about putting together the best songs we had, regardless of what kind of songs they might be. Trying to do the best job with the best material we had. And it just ended up being defined by that time, really.

Q: What's the appeal of this sort of tour for you?

A: It's really a fan-generated kind of thing. People were asking for it so we started to do it. And the fans really like it. People know the deep tracks on the record and they're really excited about it.

Q: Do you anticipate a "Chase This Light" tour in a few years?

A: I think this is probably the last time we'll do something like this. In the future, I could see us doing an album at a show here and there maybe or something special, but I don't see us doing a tour where we do something as extensive as this. But we have seven or eight albums now and every time we put out a new album, unless we're playing a Bruce Springsteen-style set, it's like "what do you cut?" "What do you not play?"

Q: Having done this experience, are there songs that are likely to stick around on future set lists?

A: Yeah, sure. It's nice having all these other songs road-rehearsed. And I think in the future, any set we do will be a lot more varied because of it, because we now have all this extra material that we haven't played a lot.

Details: 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30. Marquee Theatre, 730 N. Mill Ave., Tempe. $34. 480-829-0607, statesidepresents.com.

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