More Songs, More Songs: A Grown Ups Retrospective

Grown Ups never intended to be an emo revival cult favorite. Who could imagine that “I’ve been collecting resin with your bobby pins” would become a prophetic lyric for what people would call weed emo? To this day, drummer Jacob Bonham still gets merch requests via the Facebook page. But at the time of formation, Grown Ups was just part of a larger trend that was happening with emo. If you’ve read enough emo trend pieces, you know the story of the emo revival so I won’t waste your time. In 2008 and even before, we were seeing a recreation of emo’s second wave (1990s). The context was a bit different, though. We were at the end of emo’s mainstream moment. And instead of playing hardcore and transitioning to emo, some would start with screamo. For guitarists Doyle Martin and Adam Sheets, their journey begins a few years earlier with Lion of The North and Forever & Always. They were both screamo in the context of a post-Orchid and City of Caterpillar world. Intense moments of catharsis were interwoven with some guitar athletics. It was very much the music you make in high school and feeling all your emotions.

Eventually, I imagine screaming loses its luster. I was unable to get in contact with Martin or Sheets, so any conclusions here are pure speculation. But it follows that making more melodic music becomes an intriguing thing to explore. For Bonham, the story was a little different. Instead of starting off playing aggressive music, he was doing something not too far away from his future band. He describes it in the vein of All-American Rejects and that type of “cookie-cutter bullshit.” It’s hard for him to listen to it now, so much so that I didn’t ask for the band’s name.

“At first, it was just us fucking around. Doyle and I lived in the same house, and it was just a fun summer thing. The very first song we ever wrote was Orange Cat. We wrote that, and Three Day Weekend was second. All of a sudden, we had four songs and was just like, what are we going to do with this?”

Since it was only 2009, vinyl had yet to become the norm for releasing music for small bands. They would release a CD on Kid Sister, a small Chicago label with only a handful of releases, including two EPs by Mountain Asleep and Cloud Mouth. All four songs on Songs would eventually be revamped, but there’s something especially charming about hearing these songs in the context of a demo. They were recorded in a farmhouse garage in Lowell, Indiana, compared to the venerated Atlas Studios, where they would record the following releases. You’re seeing a band still in the process of figuring itself out. Grown Ups had only been together for about six months when Songs was recorded. It feels so much more low stakes compared to what would come after. You get the sense that Grown Ups were still figuring themselves out. “Three Day Weekend” ends with a funny outtake where somebody says shit after messing up one of the song’s riffs. It captured the spirit of this period of fourth-wave emo when it was still in its basement stage. These were just some dudes who wanted to make music with their friends.

That low-stakes feeling of the band carried over to the way Grown Ups operated as well. There was never any thought of ever turning the project into a job. It was before every band got a booking agent. Sheets would mostly book the tours himself, never booking anything super long. They would mostly tour the east coast, occasionally going out west.

More Songs would be a step towards something more serious. The record would come out on Big Scary Monsters and Topshelf Records, which had become a hot spot for emo. As mentioned earlier, Grown Ups recorded More Songs at Atlas Studios. To those outside of Chicago, this was a significant move. Atlas had been home much of the important records in Chicago Punk. Early Alkaline Trio was recorded there; The Lawrence Arms made several records there; The Menzingers would produce On The Impossible Past there in a few years. It puts Grown Ups in the lineage of Chicago punk past and future.

Immediately upon pressing play on More Songs, you can feel the difference from the demo. While it’s still scrappy in some respects, it feels much more like a proper recording. You can pick out each element pretty clearly. And when I think of Grown Ups, this is the version I imagine in my head. I think of the gang vocals on “Three Day Weekend”. I think of the opening riff on “Six More Days of Winter. I think of the feedback that opens “Pears.” The guitar work of Sheets and Martin is pristine, weaving nimble guitar riffs around each other. Bonham’s Dunkin Donuts fulled drum takes propels the songs forward. It would make comparisons like Blink-182 playing American Football songs feel apt, capturing the rambunctious spirit with which Grown Ups infused each song.

Handholder was more of the same. Bonham describes them as going for more of a Can’t Slow Down feel on it. I don’t know if I hear that influence come through, but Handholder feels like a logical end to a short discography. There are only so many places to go when making this kind of pop-punk-inflected emo.

Slowly over time, being Grown Ups started to feel more and more like a job for Bonham. Along with his drinking being out of control, the end wouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone who was around the band. He found out around the same time as everyone else, which was a Facebook post. While people may lament their breakup, maybe Grown Ups was a band that wasn’t supposed to last long. The next few years would see emo reaching towards something Grown Ups was never striving for in the first place. 2009–2011 was emo still in its basement stage. There were no ambitions toward making music a career. Sometimes bands aren’t meant to last for a long time. Three years is enough to create a cult status.

Everyone would go their separate ways, starting new projects over the next decade. Martin would shift once again, starting the beloved shoegaze act Cloakroom. Sheets would stay in a similar lane with Scoundrel, which leans harder into punk than emo. Bonham started Sweet People, which was more in a surf lane but would be pretty short-lived. You can find a SoundCloud link here. But to this day, he still plays his drums and creates visual art. In talking to him, he’s still very nostalgic for those days, sometimes playing those songs that cataloged an important part of his life.

“I still practice all the time. I can still play anything, Grown Ups. Whenever anyone asks me if I’m still playing, that’s the first thing I say. I can still play like that. It didn’t disappear. I might be a little tired after playing. If anything like that would ever happen, I would train like an MMA fighter. I’m going to say this: I’ve fought for it a couple of times. But I was the only pro-party. There was one, ok I would do it. There was one no. I know I could do it. I’m sure one person doesn’t know how to play any of it. It would probably just be Adam and me practicing for a while. I’ll play along to it and be like, ‘’how did I do that?.” I’ll have to go back to my muscle memory.”

Thanks for reading! I do these articles out of love without any chance of payment. If you enjoy what you read, feel free to give me a tip on Venmo (Hugo-Reyes-6).