This summer has seen the reunification of several bands that used to be seminal rock bands, but have since become the nostalgic listenings of music fans. Braid - a so-called emo band that is considered a forefather of the contemporary emo genre - has reunited for a U.S. tour in support of a new DVD that details the last days of their existence.
The DVD, entitled "Killing a Camera," contains never-before-seen footage of Braid's final five shows before their breakup in 1999. Braid guitarist and singer Robert Nanna explained the reasons behind Braid's tour in a phone interview a few days before their June 9 show at the Black Cat.
The Eagle: Why did Braid initially break up?
Nanna: Chris [Broach] - one of the guitar players - wanted to stop touring and go back to school. The rest of us were still into touring and wanted to keep going. Basically Chris wanted to go back to school and we all thought it would be better to break up the band at that point in time. We decided to start a new band at that point.
The Eagle: Now you are in Hey Mercedes?
Nanna: Right.
The Eagle: What does Chris do now?
Nanna: He runs a label. He has a solo project too called Firebird.
The Eagle: So you stayed friends with him after you broke up?
Nanna: Yeah, definitely. It gave us a chance to become friends outside of the band. Basically the day I met him he joined the band so now we are friends.
The Eagle: Why did you decide to reunite and go back on tour?
Nanna: Mainly for people who got into us after we broke up and never got a chance to see us play. We got together to do commentary for this DVD that came out [on May 11] and when we got together to do commentary we were just talking about how cool it would be if we played a show when the DVD came out to promote it and have fun and let people come and see us play. Then since we all realized we didn't have much to do over the summer that we would just do a tour and give everyone in the U.S. a chance to see us play.
The Eagle: Are you going to play any more shows after this tour?
Nanna: We're going to go to Japan. There's going to be a short Japanese tour in September and then that's it. Then we're not going to do anything.
The Eagle: Is it strange to be playing with Braid after playing with Hey Mercedes for the past few years?
Nanna: It is a little weird to play the songs, but since the four of us in Braid had played together for six years straight, had played a hundred-plus shows together, it came back to us really easily, really quickly. It was pretty seamless. It wasn't hard to get back into the swing of playing Braid songs again.
The Eagle: Will you be playing any new songs?
Nanna: No, we're just going to be playing old material instead of writing anything new.
The Eagle: What do you think the crowd will be like at your shows?
Nanna: I hope it will be a mixture of both [old and new fans]. I think there will be a lot of younger kids who were just maybe too young or something to get into us. I'm also excited for old fans who have seen Braid play and get to relive some old memories and excitement.
The Eagle: It seems like a lot of older bands are reuniting recently. Do you think there's any reason so many bands are getting back together to play shows?
Nanna: I don't really know. I think maybe it's just because people want to get excited about stuff again, get excited to go to shows. I think for a while now show attendance has dropped a little and people aren't really as energetic as they used to be. I'm really excited for kids who are excited to see us play.
The Eagle: Are fans of Hey Mercedes conscious of Braid?
Nanna: Yeah, I think most of them. There are probably a good amount of people who heard about Braid through Hey Mercedes. Probably the younger kids. I think being in Hey Mercedes and Hey Mercedes touring nonstop helped people learn about Braid.
The Eagle: How do you react to the assertion that Braid was one of the godfathers of emo?
Nanna: Mixed. I don't know. I guess it's kind of flattering, but when you think about it it's not like we invented something new. We were taking bits and pieces of all these other genres that we liked and making it our own. I would even think of other bands before Braid as the "godfathers" just because we tended to copy some bands as well.
The Eagle: Do you see a lot of what you were doing in newer bands like Dashboard Confessional or Brand New?
Nanna: Some of them. Especially the ones who are straight-forward pop-punk. Especially in the work ethic of a lot of bands - the relentless touring, which is kind of what Braid was all about. And also from talking to people in bigger bands around now, they've actually told me how much Braid was an influence on them. That feels pretty great too.
The Eagle: What do you think of the term "emo"? It has such mixed connotations.
Nanna: It used to bother me before, but now I don't really care that much. You can call it whatever you want. When we first started it was [that] we kind of said, "Yeah, we're an emo band" because the bands we liked we thought were emo bands - like Jawbox or Fugazi. Then it kind of took on this negative context and it got used against us. Nowadays it's just a catch-all term and it doesn't really mean anything to me anymore.
The Eagle: What's one thing you think people should know about Braid, but probably don't?
Nanna: That we are fun, energetic boys even though we might look old.
