Grown-Ups: Done Growing Up

Chances are, you haven’t heard Calgary no-fi punk crew Grown-Ups, aka the husband and wife duo of Josiah and Sara Hughes. But if you’re reading this, you’ve likely heard about them without even realizing it. Perhaps it was earlier this month when Colin Hanks appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers and detailed how on March 9, he spent the night in Calgary with a couple of strangers he found on Twitter watching the True Detective finale. That couple was Josiah and Sara Hughes. Or maybe you heard of them a few years ago, when a T-shirt appeared on Etsy, blasphemously yet hilariously merging the DIY imagery of hardcore legends Black Flag with the chaste teen pop world of Justin Bieber. That was them too, trying to make some cash to help them pay some bills and go out on tour.

Grown-Ups will play their final show on April 26 in Calgary at the world famous Tubby Dog restaurant/concert venue. And although their music may have failed to reach the masses, the duo, sometime trio, succeeded in doing everything themselves – from releasing a full-length, Stopped Caring (via Modern Documents) and a lathe shaped like E.T. (via Scotch Tapes), to touring across North America with bands like Fucked Up, White Lung and Nü Sensae and becoming a staple of the Sled Island Festival the last few years. While some people measure the success of a band with sales, blog hype and Best New Music stamp, Grown-Ups demonstrated that it is possible to make music just for the fun of it.

Noisey caught up with Josiah and Sara over Skype to find out why they’re done with being Grown-Ups, what Tom Hanks’ eldest son is like as a houseguest, how serious a cease-and-desist letter from the founder of Black Flag can get, and why they’re trading in their punk cred to go all twee.

Noisey: Any special plans for this final show?
Josiah: Not really. We’re playing as a four-piece for the first time ever. Our first bass player, who helped us form the band, is going to play second guitar. And our last bass player will play bass. We’re just going to try and make it really fun.
Sara: We’re going to play lots of songs. It’s probably only half-an-hour, but it’ll feel like two hours.
Josiah: And also Ayoo Angie is playing with us, that’ll be really awesome.

So why are you packing it in?
Josiah: Part of the reason why we feel like we’re done with it is because we never had a set out plan. We started the band for Sara to learn drums, and then it’s taken all these different forms as we’ve written songs. And we kinda got annoyed by the lo-fi tag, even though we were lo-fi. But it was out of necessity, whereas that was the selling point for all those bands five years ago. It’s really hard to define what we did, which is why we feel like we’re done with it. We’d rather start something new with set parameters from the beginning.
Sara: Our new band’s called Pre Nup. And it’s more twee.
Josiah: Our songs are getting a lot wussier, so we’re going to stop this one and pick up where we left off a week after our last Grown-Ups show. Another thing is that we’re sick of people quitting our band to find themselves or because they don’t want to tour. So we’re gonna start it just with the two of us as the main members, and then recruit people for live shows. I’ve already written two songs that were Grown-Ups songs that really shouldn’t be Grown-Ups songs. We’re just going to stop trying to be aggressive.

Your Grown-Ups predates the Adam Sandler movie, Grown Ups, right?
Josiah: Yeah. And there is that pop-punk band Grown Ups, which I swear I did an in-depth Google search for and they didn’t come up. Once we settled on it, of course I found them right away.

But they’re without the hyphen. I believe your band name is grammatically correct.
Josiah: Yeah, I don’t know. I was worried that ours wasn’t right, but I think it is right with the hyphen.

While we’re at it, I read there was also a band from the ’90s called the Grown Ups.
Josiah: There are so many bands with the same name. Plus, we were getting sick of the name.
Sara: Yeah, I don’t like Grown-Ups anymore.
Josiah: There is another band called Pre Nup too!
Sara: No, but they’re dormant! They don’t do anything.
Josiah: It’s not like we’re naming our band Fucked Up or anything.

You guys invited Colin Hanks over to watch the True Detective finale at your house, which is totally crazy. And then he gave you a shout out on Twitter and talked about you on Late Night With Seth Meyers. How big was that for you?
Josiah: For the band specifically, I haven’t noticed anything yet. I think the whole story is so ridiculous. And it was totally Sara’s doing. I was being a naysayer the whole time.
Sara: When I told Josiah I had tweeted at him, he was being so sarcastic about it.
Josiah: We were actually at our best friend’s DJ night when Colin Hanks messaged us, so we had to run home and clean up because our house was such a pigsty. Our song on the new 7” is called “Pigpen” because that’s what Brock [Thiessen], my editor at Exclaim! calls me. Before he even met me he said, “I can tell your desk is likely covered in chip bags and empty beer cans.” He was completely right. So, our house was a fucking pigsty, so we ran home and through everything in our room. And then he just knocked on the door.

And then he was just very casual?
Sara: So casual. It was kinda insane.
Josiah: And he was really into our record collection.

I’ve actually read that he has good taste in music.
Josiah: Yeah. He was tweeting about Burger Records right before he came over. And he has our Grown-Ups record, so hopefully he’ll get to that eventually. The whole thing was hilarious. We used to be known as the band with the Black Flag-Justin Bieber T-shirt, and now we’re the band that met Colin Hanks.

Did he stay after True Detective?
Sara: He was here for about three hours and said he only had one beer to Seth Meyers but he was lying. He had two. But yeah, he stayed after the show was done and talked about Scientology because I had a book out.
Josiah: And he made a really good Tom Hanks joke. He talked about how Hollywood plays it safe, and only writes vehicles for big stars. And I said, “Yeah. That’s why Tom Hanks is in everything!” And he was like, “Yeah, that fucking guy is ruining Hollywood!”

Let’s talk about your Bieber Flag shirt. It gained a lot of attention. When I met Miley Cyrus a few years ago I was wearing that shirt and she said it was “really cool.” I don’t think she knew what the Black Flag bars were though. Did you ever hear from Bieber’s camp? I know you heard from Black Flag…
Josiah: Yeah, we got that cease and desist from [their label] SST, but it came from Etsy’s internal messaging system. I don’t think that’d hold up in a court of law though! I don’t remember hearing from Justin Bieber. We were on tour down in the West Coast, and had the shirts on our merch table. People were saying, “Oh, I know about you guys!” They’d never heard our band, but they knew our shirts.
Sara: There were bands that wore the shirts though. Like Best Coast and Wavves. And Damian from Fucked Up.
Josiah: And there was some press release where this goofy guy was wearing the shirt in the band’s photo. It really did take on a life of its own. I think if we didn’t get that cease and desist from SST we still could be selling them. Well, maybe not now since Justin Bieber’s falling off. Some girl did a Lady Gaga one and accused us of stealing her idea. But we were like, “No! We stole Raymond Pettibon’s idea!”

You guys once covered Blink-182’s Dude Ranch. Why?
Josiah: Keaton, our most recent bass player, used to throw these covers shows at Tubby Dog, and we did Dude Ranch the first year. Everyone did a full band cover set, although we only did five songs. It was a huge success, and all the sketchy hardcore kids who are normally too cool for us went crazy singing along. And then the next year we did [Green Day’s] Dookie. We tried to do Dude Ranch again, with B-Lines, Nu Sensae and White Lung, but it didn’t work nearly as well. Especially with those cool bands.
Sara: That was so bad!
Josiah: But they were super fun. Dude Ranch means a lot to me. I actually just submitted my 33 1/3 pitch for a Dude Ranch book last month. So it’s a big deal.

Any final thoughts?
Josiah: Everyone’s been real cool to us. It’s been really awesome and it’s weird to stop doing it.
Sara: It’s sad. I feel really nostalgic.
Josiah: No disrespect to bands that stick together forever, but sometimes you’ve just got to let it go. We’d rather pull the Band-Aid off soon then keep playing to half-empty halls. But everyone’s been so cool to us. Usually they think I’m a huge asshole and then we become friends. I’m gonna try not to do this with our next band, but I used to deal with stage fright by being a huge dick at every show, saying the worst things on stage and making fun of the venues and the other bands. It was supposed to be a persona, even though I meant half the things I said. But yeah, I’m going to try and tone that down. If anyone’s reading this and I hurt their feelings, I’m sorry.

Cam Lindsay loves talk shows almsot as much as he loves music. He is on Twitter @yasdnilmac

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