Lawrence.com

Talk about emo.

In the few days since The Get Up Kids officially announced their impending dissolution, the band's website has been flooded with the kind of reactions typically associated with finding out one's huggy bear has been sleeping with another teddy.

"I totally put in a GUKs CD on the way home from work and cried," wrote "Julesiah" from Detroit.

"I heard the news this morning and felt like I'd been punched in the stomach," added another.

Other fans retained a sense of humor about the situation.

"I think it's selfish that you would put your families in front of a million little kids that you have never met," quipped "2na_fish" from Nacogdoches, Texas.

Mostly, however, discussion centered around the phenomenal impact the band had on its fans - memories tied to songs; doors opened to musical and personal revelations; road trips with "Something to Write Home About" cranked up to eleven and breakup pain medicated with "Red Letter Day."

Most impressive, perhaps, was the list of countries that sported contributors: Britain, Belgium, Canada, Scotland, Argentina, etc. And that doesn't even count the e-mails that hit drummer Ryan Pope's inbox on Thursday - from Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Australia and London.

"A lot of people took our band extremely seriously," Pope said. "Just with that alone ... Forget about thinking we were going to be huge; I think we were."

Wouldn't believe it

Indeed, there was a time when the prospect of selling millions of records seemed perfectly reasonable for The Get Up Kids.

The band - which also includes singer/songwriters Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic, bassist Rob Pope and keyboardist James Dewees - had been growing in leaps and bounds since releasing its seminal emo album "Four Minute Mile." With major-label distribution deals and some MTV-quality videos under their belt, bigger stages seemed to beckon.

"That didn't last very long - I would say a couple weeks we thought that," Ryan Pope reflected. "It's just because we had a lot of people blowing smoke up our asses; a lot of people telling us, 'You guys are going to be huge.' And we were young and we kind of believed it."

Not that the band should feel like it has fallen short in any way. After all, few bands can say they've embarked on multiple tours across the world; released four full-length albums (the biggest of which - "Something to Write Home About" - sold more than 150,000 copies); helped build a leading independent record label (Vagrant) from scratch; and heavily influenced a style of music (emo) that started in leftfield and landed in the embrace of the American musical mainstream.

Not bad for five kids from Kansas City.

"It's nice to see all the response that we've gotten from kids on the website," Pryor said. "That makes me smile; makes me happy that people had a good time doing it. Because I had a good time doing it too."

Man of conviction

According to Pryor, the band actually "broke up" nearly a year ago while touring Australia.

"That particular tour broke the camel's back, because I just wanted to be home with my kids and my wife," said Pryor, who has two young children. "I told (my bandmates) I didn't want to tour as much any more ... Their response was, 'We should either do it a hundred percent or we shouldn't do it at all."

Instead of making a formal announcement, the band let the idea simmer for awhile when they returned home.

"I still thought there was hope," Ryan Pope said. "I was kind of a wreck for a little while. We all were, 'cause we were like, 'Well, now what are we supposed to do?'"

Slowly, other opportunities began emerging. The Pope brothers accepted an invitation to join old friend Robert Suchan in forming a new incarnation of the band Koufax; DeWees made a new Reggie and The Full Effect record and toured with New Found Glory; Suptic hooked up with former members of The Creature Comforts to form Blackpool Lights; and Pryor worked on a new record with his other band The New Amsterdams.

Eventually, it became abundantly clear that The Get Up Kids no longer needed The Get Up Kids to write the next chapter in their musical memoirs.

"I'm pretty at peace with it, to be completely honest," Pryor said. "In the same way that our early touring years were a big part of my late teens and early 20s, I think they were at least a fraction of a part of some other people's late teens and early 20s."

"You always have kind of a fondness for that time in your life," he continued. "If you just keep trying to repeat that same moment in time you're going to end up half-assing it and it's never going to be the same."

Long goodnight

To that end, The Get Up Kids can rest in peace knowing they didn't shy from taking chances in the interest of growth.

The band's third album "On a Wire" (2002) ditched the bouncy vibe of "Something to Write Home About" in favor of a darker, more introspective palette. "The Guilt Show" (2004) mixed the best of both worlds, with a number of songs that Pryor described as the band's "hippy jam" phase - intense studio experimentation and ambitious arrangements.

"We went with our gut all the time," Pryor said. "We just kind of did what we thought was right even when - in retrospect - it turned out to be wrong ... I'm proud of us for that."

The band's swan song will be a two-week U.S. tour in June that will conclude July 2 in Kansas City (the town the band generally sites as its place of origin). The tour will coincide with the release of a live disc the band recorded during two January shows at the Granada.

"I hope that everyone will come and have a good time and dance like they don't give a shit, 'cause that's what we're going to do," Pryor said. "(We want it to) be a big party; like a New Orleans funeral, where everyone's just really happy."

On with the show

Pryor will unveil The New Amsterdams' forth full-length later this fall and likely accompany the release with a limited touring schedule. In May, the brothers Pope will head to Europe to accompany the overseas release of the new Koufax album, which hits U.S. shores in June.

Meanwhile, Reggie and the Full Effect's fourth album "Songs Not to Get Married To" is set to be released March 29, and The Blackpool Lights will stay busy demoing new material and playing area shows.

If there's one thing that all of the above projects indicate, it's that The Get Up Kids have far outgrown the emo tag that the band has shouldered - for better or worse - since the release of "Four Minute Mile."

Though The Get Up Kids' undisputed influence on bands like Dashboard Confessional is likely to be a large part of its legacy, Pryor said he'd rather be remembered for staying true to the band's own convictions.

"If someone wants to say that we were influential on a band, then that's cool," he said. "But to say that we were influential on something that was just basically a marketing term - that really doesn't interest me at all."

"We didn't set out to do anything like that," he continued. "We just set out to have a good time."