Most bands will go their entire careers and never reach the Billboard 200 charts, let alone crack the top 20 in album sales. But that is exactly what happened to The Academy Is… when its last full-length album, Fast Times at Barrington High, debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard 200 in August 2008.
Most groups would also let this increased visibility become a source of pressure but not this Chicago-based quintet.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, we did this last time, so we need to top that, or we need to make the label happy,'” bassist Adam Siska said. “Or, you know, Rolling Stone put our record in the best 50 of the year or whatever. It’s easy to point to those things and stress yourself out, but at the end of the day, we feel like if we work hard at the music, anything could happen.”
And it was this mindset that ended up paying off in an unexpected and bizarre way a few months ago.
The band had been laying low after the conclusion of the alternative press fall ball tour in November of 2009. They had been quiet, busy writing their new record, with no intentions of doing anything differently. That is, until they got an unexpected phone call.
“We weren’t planning on going on tour,” Siska explained. “We got a call that said, ‘Do you guys want to go on a tour with Kiss for two months?'”
Yes, that Kiss.
“We didn’t really have to think too long about that one,” Siska said, laughing.
The Academy Is … will open for Kiss at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Va., on Saturday.
But why in the world would Kiss, one of the most successful bands in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, want to take a pop-rock band signed to Pete Wentz’s record label on the road with them?
“We get asked that a lot, and I wish I had some sort of cool answer because I really don’t know,” Siska said. “As far as I know, [Kiss bassist] Gene [Simmons] had been exposed to the band by his son or daughter and liked what he heard.”
Thankfully, the band has not taken this once-in-a-lifetime experience for granted, and is instead just looking at it as a new challenge — a very big challenge.
“I don’t think we’ve ever been on a tour where 99 percent of the crowd has never heard our band’s name before,” Siska said. “And we just thought this is something we’ve always wanted to do, which is go out and play in front of a big crowd full of people who have no idea who we are, where we’re from, what we’ve done in the past. It’s like a clean slate.”
Something else surprising the band recently is the positive response the group has been getting from the Kiss Army.
“It’s one of the craziest experiences to be onstage playing and seeing someone dressed up as Kiss rocking out to your music,” Siska said. “It’s one of the most gratifying experiences we’ve ever had as a band.”
But fans of The Academy Is … shouldn’t worry about this tour, as Siska said the band members are only using it to help their creative process.
He said the band has enough material to release a new album right now but is in no hurry to do so.
“We really want this to be the one we’re remembered for,” Siska said about the record. “We’re taking time to generate the best songs possible. So it could come out at the end of this year or it could come out at the end of next year, we’re really in no hurry.”
Maybe the most surprising element of this entire situation is that the tour atmosphere is one of the most relaxed the group has ever experienced, something that is only aiding the recording process.
“There’s a lot of down time,” Siska said. “On most tours, bands sound check 30 or 40 minutes every day, but on this tour we sound checked on the first day, and there’s a digital board that saved all of our settings, so we don’t sound check. Our day literally starts at 7:50 when we walk on stage.”
So instead, the group’s days are filled with a couple of band members in the bus working on a song, a couple outside, watching a movie or reading a book, Siska said, which he added is “really nice for creativity.”
“Around 9 o’clock Kiss comes on, then there’s explosions and fireworks and rock ‘n’ roll madness,” Siska said.
The Academy Is … will play with Kiss at Jiffy Lube Live on Saturday. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets start at $29.
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