Interview: Nate Kinsella of AMERICAN FOOTBALL at Newport Music Hall

As AMERICAN FOOTBALL heads back on the road, bassist Nate Kinsella said a recent show at the Brooklyn Paramount reminded him just how far the pioneering Midwestern emo band has come since forming in 1997.

“It's funny. We all have families and kids,” said Kinsella, cousin of frontman Mike Kinsella who joined the band when AMERICAN FOOTBALL reformed in 2014. “My two kids are seven and nine and they’re getting big real fast, so it’s hard to be away.

“They hadn’t seen me play live before so I brought them to the Brooklyn show. I was nervous because they were there, but the show went really well and I was so stoked they got to see that. They were like, ‘Oh, okay’ and they kind of got to see the scale of what we do.”

AMERICAN FOOTBALL will play 8 p.m. on Aug. 10 at the Newport Music Hall (1722 N. High Street, near the Ohio State University campus). The bassist admits he can’t remember the last time he played Columbus, but he has vivid, yet not necessarily fond, memories of his first visit, playing in the basement of Bernie’s Bagels on High Street in 2000.

“Is that place there anymore?” Kinsella asked. “I was in a band from Minneapolis and we hopped on a bill with an all-girl thrash punk band. Our thing was we would play as quietly as possible, and our songs were really long and really quiet. We were no match for Bernie's Bagels.”

That quiet, brooding style eventually became synonymous with Midwestern emo, and AMERICAN FOOTBALL became one of its defining bands.

“The term (emo) was around when I was a teenager. And um—it was just short for emotional hardcore. Hardcore was like aggressive, so it didn't quite fit for me,” he said. “Having (music) develop slowly, at like a pace, you would wheel your grandmother through the botanical garden at, feels very midwestern to me.”

Much has changed in the world of AMERICAN FOOTBALL since its early days. Fans who attend the Newport concert should see an older, wiser band than the one that started in Urbana, Ill. The band's latest release finds Mike and Nate Kinsella, guitarist/keyboardist Steve Holmes, and drummer/trumpeter Steve Lamos trying to make sense of the compromises, depression, alimony checks, and fractured relationships that come with middle age.

That maturity comes through most clearly on "Bad Moons." In that song, Mike Kinsella confides, “I'm scared and I don't want to grow up …/Ask my ex-wife/She met Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide/I know, I know, I know that should be a "Y"/But none of my "whys" ever get answered.”

Nate Kinsella, whose bass tracks help shape “Bad Moons,” said the song and the album reflect the emotional landscape the band is currently navigating.

“I am really proud of that one,” Kinsella said.  “'Bad Moons' was a song that I had on the back burner for quite a few years. I made solo albums and the song didn't make it on any of them. I remember playing it for the guys and they were like, ‘This could be an AMERICAN FOOTBALL song.’ Mike just did an outstanding job with the lyrics. The arc of it is so drastic. It starts so small and it gets so big and it covers so much emotional territory lyrically.

“It takes so much energy to create something from start to finish. To spend the time writing it and recording it, it should feel like I needed to do this. We're all writing from a place that keeps us interested and feels current to us now. In a few years, we'll look back (at LP4) and see it as a phase … However, you never really see that when you're in it. You're just kind of following your creative impulses.”

It was those “impulses” that are the backbone of AMERICAN FOOTBALL. In an interview with NME magazine, Mike Kinsella said “it’s just dumb luck that this band caught on.”  The band started out as “an art project” of sorts as Mike Kinsella, Holmes, and Lamos released a self-titled EP in 1998 and a debut album on Polyvinyl Records while attending the University of Illinois.

However, the band quickly fell apart after members finished college and/or moved away from Illinois. Ironically, the impact of the album far outlasted the first incarnation of the band. Thanks to music sharing formats like LimeWire, AMERICAN FOOTBALL gained a cult following.

“I think they were just in college filling their time with a hobby that they all enjoyed,” said Nate Kinsella, who wasn’t in the original version of the band. “They really thought nothing of it. After they recorded their fun project, they moved on.

“But it grew so much bigger than anyone anticipated. Everyone was surprised and we continued to be surprised. The trajectory of it is not something we take for granted. We're kind of scratching our heads every step of the way.”

The original EP featured no bass tracks and Mike Kinsella played bass sparingly on the LP. After Polyvinyl Records re-released the first record with added live tracks and unreleased demos, the group reformed for sold-out gigs in Illinois and New York.

When the band eventually reunited, one thing had changed. AMERICAN FOOTBALL added Nate Kinsella to the roster. Growing up, he originally experimented with drums but switched over to guitar and bass after hearing NIRVANA’s “Nevermind.”

“Bass is in the background and I’m a background kind of person,” he said with a chuckle. “I love the bass because … it’s invisible but everyone knows its influence.  You get to form the rhythm and the melody in the music.  You can play a bass note under any chord and change how the song feels.”

Just as a bass line can change the feel of a song, adding family to a band can alter its chemistry. The landscape of rock music has been altered by the volatile mixture of family friction. (See the Kinks’ Ray and Dave Davies, the Black Crowes’ Chris and Rich Robinson, or Oasis’ Liam and Noel Gallagher for examples.)

Nate Kinsella said the politics of being in a family business are something that has evolved over time.

“We've really had to learn how to be good communicators as adults,” said the bassist, who is planning something special with Mike’s older brother Tim. “I'm proud of how far we've come with just giving everyone the floor to voice their needs, but it doesn't mean that conflicts don't arise. We have an open dialogue and open conversations about things that can be troubling or uncomfortable.

“The whole band feels like a family, honestly. Even though I'm related to one person, it feels like I'm related to everybody.”

Whether it's his children watching from the crowd or his bandmates sharing the stage, that sense of family carries through.

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