It’s embarrassing to admit but I panicked a little when Curtis Mead e-mailed me. He’s only three or four years older than me but that was a big difference when I was 13 and idolized the band he played bass in. A mutual friend suggested he ask me if I could help get the word out in Indianapolis about the shows his reunited band, which went by the name Split Lip early on and Chamberlain in the later years. Our social circles began to overlap a big as I entered my 20s but I never had any real occasion to get to know him -- any time he was around I felt like that awkward 13 year old kid again who idolized Split Lip and then talked mad shit on them as they morphed into Chamberlain. The cosmic joke is that over the years I learned why they became disillusioned with the hardcore punk scene and I began to appreciate them again in a different way.

Over the last few weeks I got to know Curtis a little bit and to a lesser extent guitarist Adam Rubenstein and vocalist David Moore through a series of e-mails and long phone interviews. I generally dislike the idea of reunions but I’ll make an exception for this one. Maybe it’s because I have a soft spot for the band, maybe because it was a chance to reach back into my own past and sort out a mess of conflicting emotions, maybe it’s because it looked like the former band makes were having so much fun on the video I saw of four of them playing at South By Southwest last year. Split Lip/Chamberlain is playing at Birdy’s next week and my story is coming out a few days beforehand. It was a fun project to work on, I’ll share it when it publishes. And I’ll see you at the show.