The Manageable Expectations of The Starting Line

Formed in 1999, when frontman Kenny Vasoli was still a teenager, The Starting Line hasn’t been too prolific over the past 15 years. In fact, with the release of new EP Anyways, however, the band has made its first new music since 2007’s third full-length, Direction. That’s because the band went on hiatus in 2008, and has just been taking it easy–very easy–ever since. That doesn’t mean, however, that the pop-punks are committing themselves to doing the band full-time. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, and Vasoli, in between his other bands—Vacationer, which he considers his full-time gig, and Person L—is quite happy just keeping it on the backburner and picking it up as and when he and his other bandmates feel like it. While they do, however, we thought we’d pick Kenny’s brain about all things Starting Line to see why they’re so at ease just crossing it every few years.

Noisey: The release of the Anyways EP marks the return of The Starting Line. What does it mean to you to have this EP coming out and to be back in the fold again?
Kenny Vasoli: It feels really great. It feels really right at the moment. I wanted to be cautious about not releasing any music with Starting Line until we were really inspired to write some new material. I didn’t want it to come out forced or too fabricated, and there came a point where I’d worked up the appetite for making punk music again. I saw it as a chance to return to form and I sort of started identifying what it was I liked about punk music and what got me into it from the beginning. So it’s been really refreshing getting back into it like this, and everybody seems to be enthusiastic after such a long wait.

Is it strange to be coming back to it after such a long wait? You haven’t written music for almost a decade. Was it hard to get back into that mindset?

It wasn’t too difficult. The timing really felt appropriate. There came a time when I got a little bit frustrated with things that were happening in my day to day life, and I saw it as a good opportunity to vent through this music that was built off of emotion from the get-go. So I seized that opportunity to get out that frustration in a healthy way and wrote these few songs.

Love

was actually written five years ago. I’m just a naturally slow writer anyway. So while this is a little bit slower paced for me, it’s not really unheard of for me to take seven years to write three songs!

It’s quality, not quantity, that counts, right?
That’s absolutely my motto!

But you’ve been doing other stuff like Vacationer and Person L, and you’ve said that this isn’t your main focus. I read that you said this still won’t be, that it’s something you just want to do when you feel the need and have the time. Why are you happy having this on the backburner?
I guess because it still allows us to be excited about doing it. I imagine if we kept up the sort of pace that we had in the past, I think it would turn into the same outcome, where we’d just burn out on it and become a little bit uninspired. The way that we’ve been doing it since we’ve given up that pace, we’ve been playing maybe one show a year—we usually play a show in the area [Philadelphia] around the holidays—and it allows us to come together in a sort of family reunion style, which always feels really nice. We’re always happy to see each other, and whatever bickerings we had in the past, it all just dissolves over time. When we come together it’s not really a job anymore. It really does feel like a family reunion. And just in terms of being practical these days, I don’t think that I can really keep up the pace of playing a Starting Line show every night on a full-time touring schedule, just because my body doesn’t have the stamina for it anymore to try to sing songs that I wrote when I was a teenager. It doesn’t sound great trying to do it every night!

You were so young when you started out. And pop punk is a young man’s game—it’s full of that youthful naivety and reckless abandon which, I guess when you’re in your thirties, doesn’t exist to quite the same extent anymore.
I agree. I think punk rock in general is sort of a young man’s game. There’s a select group that do it well, but I think that the energy and the angst is built off that attitude you have when you’re that age.

I think there’s a wonderful innocence to the early Starting Line stuff, whereas the new songs seem more tainted by experience. You’ve gone through life and you’ve grown up and there’s a different outlook on life.
Absolutely. I’ve always journaled my life through Starting Line lyrics and you can kind of hear where I’m at on every record and every era of the band. And I wanted to stay true to that. I didn’t want to just fall back on the same sort of thing I wrote about, but at the same time I’m just following a path of writing in the same way that I did.

There’s a line on “Anyways” which says “It’s so hard to be human in so many ways / Overthinking most of my life,” and it seems to me that that’s almost the center of the song, and the focus of the EP as a whole, and what The Starting Line is about now. Would you agree?
Yeah. I think you’re right. That is at the heart of a lot of the questions that I’m asking myself, and that I’m finding a lot of people my age are asking themselves. I think it was a comedian, Jake Johannsen, who said “it’s just hard to be a human” and it was in a really playful way, but it really resonated with me, because it is such an awkward experience in general. There are so many facets to the human psyche and the way that we all relate with each other and relate to ourselves is a complex thing and it’s a little bit difficult to navigate sometimes. So to hear someone else say it is kind of comforting, so I hope people can hear it and have the same sort of comfort.

With that in mind, has the intention of The Starting Line changed? I imagine when you’re 17 or 18 writing those songs it’s very much a vehicle for catharsis, whereas now, do you see it as something else?
No, I think it’s still that. Every sort of music that I make is an expression of myself in one way or the other, and The Starting Line’s music has always been an expression of extreme emotion, whether that’s rejoice or frustration or angst or whatever—it allows a little bit of release for it. So I always use it that way, as a springboard into expelling some energy.

You’ve been playing bass with, among other bands, Say Anything. Did doing that help shape or inspire these new songs in any way?
Yeah! Max [Bemis] is definitely one of the people I think is pushing the genre ahead. There was actually a select group of records that came out recently that got me really excited about punk music again—the latest Cloud Nothings album got me really excited and the latest Desaparecidos record really blew me away. I’ve been saying that in a lot of interviews lately, but I really want people to be aware of that record because I don’t hear enough people talking about it, and to me it’s just such a cool pop punk record while still being political and biting. It just hits all the nerves of a punk record.

I think it was probably my favorite record of last year. I’ve been here in America for over three years now and I’ve become so much more energized politically since being here because you see just how much is wrong with America when you live here. So that and the Anti-Flag record were two from last year that really stood up for something and said, “This isn’t right. This needs to change.” Is that the kind of thing you could ever see yourself making?
I don’t think I wear that hat very well! I respect the hell out of it and I really gravitate towards bands like Anti-Flag and Desaparecidos, but it’s almost like a way for me to get my news in a sense and get the message of the people that feel strongly about it. I don’t really have that flame burning in me to shout that kind of stuff. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about it. I also come from a family where my brother is a conservative campaign manager and that was his passion from an early age, so to avoid confrontation I’ve skirted the issue of politics. I’ve learned to do that, so I won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole when it comes to my lyrics!

Speaking of lyrics, then, what do you see inspiring you as you move forwards? You mentioned frustration earlier when talking about “Anyways,” but I also found it quite apologetic in some ways.
I think that’s fair. I think it’s a coming to terms with certain thing that I wasn’t happy with about myself, and that goes with another one of the songs, “Quitter.” I was just really in a frustrated place and I was just trying to be honest with myself about what it was that I was unhappy with. With my other band, Vacationer, I’d always made a point to write optimistic lyrics that I could sing all the time and which were affirming and could heal me as I sang them. But Starting Line was always centered around frustration, and to sing those songs every night can be a little bit of a drag because you keep reminding yourself of those feelings. But then I underestimated that sometimes you need that, so it was good to compartmentalize that into Starting Line lyrics, because I have this place that acts like a garbage disposal and I got to get all the garbage thoughts out of the way by writing those songs and owning up to it.

That makes sense. So what are your plans overall? Do you mind that people almost think you’re in a perpetual state of reunion?
Ha! People are always in some ambiguity over what our status is and whether we’re getting back together, but I think that it’s going to keep being what it is. We get together a few times during the year, play the shows we’re excited about playing, but I don’t think we’re going to over-extend ourselves. But I also don’t see it ending any time in the near future.

It seems like you don’t have many ambitions for The Starting Line now, but what are your hopes and aims for the band and this record? Is there something in the back of your mind that you’d really like to achieve?
I really feel like I’ve hit a sweet spot with what I’m doing creatively and I get all my food groups as far as the music I want to make, so I just want to keep doing it. I have very manageable expectations.