American Football’s tastes have changed since the band debuted their self-titled album in 1999. During a 15-year hiatus, the members started new careers, new families, and various musical projects. In that time, American Football became an icon of Midwestern emo. The band reunited in 2016 to release a new album followed by its third American Football LP this spring.
Before he performed in a “Drunk or Die” t-shirt, we caught up with frontman and guitarist Mike Kinsella backstage at Chicago’s Riot Fest and his cousin, bassist Nate Kinsella, to talk about life as touring dads, fitting brewery visits in between school pick-ups, and collaborating on a beer for their latest record release.
You can read the full interview on October. Check out a few of my favorite moments below.
Do you guys remember your first drink?
Mike: This is nothing but embarrassing. I didn’t drink at all through college. I turned 21 and just didn’t drink. I finished school and then was on tour with the band Rainer Maria. After some show in Orlando, Florida at the Social, Caithlin was drinking a Cosmopolitan. I was like, ‘You know what, give me a Cosmopolitan.’ So, my first drink was a Cosmopolitan and I loved it.
Nate: I think mine was in junior high. I was stealing drinks from the fridge at a friend’s house. I got kinda drunk, because I had never done it before, and then his mom came home. I was talking to her and I thought I was, like, pulling it off, but I was not. I was telling his mom about what a great student he was.
Chicago now has more breweries than any U.S. city. Do you have any favorite local beers?
Mike: I go to Half Acre and fill a growler. It’s by my kid’s school. There are two different schools. I pick up one kid and bring him there. He sits on the railing while I pick a new beer and fill the growler, and then we go get my daughter. We have a routine.
Nate: I’m in New York. I’m kind of picky and I only like Bell’s Two Hearted, Pilsner Urquell, and Peroni. I like to try beers, but I always go back to those.
Have your beer tastes changed over time?
Mike: I’ve gone full circle. After the Cosmo, I moved on to Rolling Rock. It was an easy beer to sort of, like, get addicted to. Then I started with just Anchor Steam for a few years. Then I would get into some sours and shit, and now I’m back into Coors Light and Budweiser. Quantity over quality now. It’s the dad in me.
Nate: Yeah, I remember not liking IPAs at first, but I really like them now in moderation. If I’m just gonna have one, I’ll get a strong IPA.
Mike: Touring, you can start drinking at, like, 2 p.m., and I do. There’s so much downtime. If you start with the IPAs, then you’re kind of done by 4 and are like, ‘Ok now what do I do?’ If I wanna keep drinking all night, then I have to stick to the easy ones.
Nate: We got to name a beer for our record release.
Mike: Yeah, we put out a beer and designed the can. We had them at our record release party.
Nate: It’s called Doom in Full Bloom from Champion Brewing Company in Charlottesville, Virginia.
That’s awesome. How were you involved in the process?
Nate: We chose a type of beer—we can all agree on pilsners.—and we were able to name it.
Mike: [Head brewer, Hunter Smith] reached out and asked to collaborate. I was like, ‘Perfect timing. We have a new album coming out.’
Nate: We wanted to name it ‘Life Support,’ which is the name of a song on the album, but there are pretty heavy laws in place prohibiting people from any health claims or telling people, ‘This is good for you.’
Mike: Like you couldn’t advertise your beer as having medicinal value or call it ‘Life Support.’ [Laughs] Even though it seems like everybody would know that’s not life support.
The new album is beautiful. I imagine it’s challenging to work on a project like that when you all live in different places with different schedules and priorities. How do you approach a project like that these days?
Mike: It’s a lot of file sharing and sharing a calendar. It’s all planned in advance. A year earlier, we were like, ‘When does anyone have any time to put any mental thought into writing a record?’ Everybody has a different role, sort of. So, the drums are recorded in our drummer’s garage in Denver, and then we yay-or-nay it. So, technology I guess.
Nate: It’s way more administrative than it seems like it would be. I remember playing in bands as a kid and then all of sudden we would realize, ‘Hey, we have enough songs to play a show!’ It’s not something that we ever tried to come up with. We would meet twice a week and it would just happen organically. But now, we are very much planning this every step of the way.
Whatever didn’t work on the second record was my motivation on the third record. – Mike Kinsella, American Football
What felt right about now to make this record. Schedules coincided?
Mike: We did reunion shows and it was more fun, I think, than any of us thought it would be. We didn’t really keep up when we broke up 15 or 20 years ago. Then we realized it was fun to hang out, and that if we wanted to keep doing it we would have to write new songs because we only had twelve songs to play. So, we wrote a second album.
Honestly, whatever didn’t work on the second record was my motivation on the third record. Like, we can do better, if we’re going to do this in front of people. I like the second record, but I think subconsciously we were writing toward making an American Football record. This time we just wrote music that we like.
Nate: Yeah, the second album presented some itches that we wanted to scratch. Like, this could be cooler or we could one-up this.
What beer would you pair with the new album for someone listening to it?
Nate: How long is it?
Mike: Probably 44 minutes [it’s 47 minutes]. It’s the opposite of what I do in my life, I would drink one good beer and just sip it. I would get something like a mead, where you’re like, ‘Do I even like this?’ Then you sip it through the whole album and it takes you that long to finish it.
Nate: I can’t top that. That’s great. Something that’s a little bit painful. It hurts but you’re like, ‘I need to kinda get fucked up right now.’
Jessica Mlinaric founded Urban Explorer in 2010 to inspire curious travelers by highlighting history, culture, and hidden gems in Chicago and beyond. She is the author of ‘Secret Chicago’ and ‘Chicago Scavenger.’ Jessica has visited 20+ countries and 30+ U.S. states. She has more than 16 years of experience as a marketing strategist and works as a freelance writer and photographer.
