When Did I Grow Up?

A 90's skate punk reflects on aging alongside his rock star heroes and their music.

“Hey, listen to the lyrics of this one.”

We’re driving back up to San Francisco from San Diego, and Tracy is sharing a new playlist he made with me, called “When Did I Grow Up?”.

It’s a compilation of acoustic music, made by artists in skate punk bands he’s loved from his teen years onward, all of whom are now in their forties and fifties. We’re listening to “Broken Record”, and my ear catches Lagwagon’s Joey Cape singing the ending line:

“All my friends are weekend warriors but I’ll be back Monday night”.

I look over at Tracy and say “Holy crap, that’s kind of devastating.”

(What are you waiting for? Press play on each one of these as you get to it and keep reading!)

We discuss its powerful simplicity in describing the feeling of being the outlier artist among friends living more conventional lives. There’s a sadness, there’s a ruefulness, all at once - it calls to mind feeling stuck in place as the world keeps moving around you.

And as we listen to the rest of these songs, some of them acoustic covers of their original punk tracks, some more modern originals, it becomes clear that this playlist is capturing not only these artists growing up, but my husband as well.

Tracy stumbled across this part of Joey Cape’s solo catalogue first, while listening to NOFX and Strung Out, in the “You May Also Like” area of Apple Music.

He already knew him from Lagwagon, so when he saw it pop up, he asked himself,
"I wonder what this guy’s up to these days.”

The answer seemed to be lots of collaboration with other punkers, and acoustic-focused, contemplative reimaginings of his original tracks with Lagwagon. Those collaborations led Tracy to Tony Sly of No Use for a Name, then Alkaline Trio’s Dan Andriano’s solo projects. Next, John Snodgrass of Armchair Martian, Scorpios, and Drag the River popped up in collaborations with Joey Cape, and with Tim McIlrath of Rise Against. Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker became Jets to Brazil.

All of it seemed to be falling into what one might now call folk-punk. It was still driving, but now, the story had its turn to take center stage, dethroning the original exploding energy. As he listened, there was a closeness to the acoustic medium that meant Tracy was appreciating the lyrics of some of his older favorites in a whole new way, a la “Broken Record”.

He sensed a theme building - without thinking too much about it, he started the playlist and called it “When Did I Grow Up?”. It’s become a staple of our camping trips, road trips, anytime the right feeling strikes, and there’s always a great conversation started about it all.

These conversations usually end with “I really should write something about this.”

So, armed with a Google Doc and an Old Fashioned each, on the eve of him leaving on a motorcycle camping trip with some of his best buddies, last night we put it on and dug in.

As Tracy reflected on why these musicians’ evolutions were so powerful to him, he realized - it was because his favorite artists were growing up alongside him.

Gone is the furious, aggressive, worked-up, throwing-elbows pace of their older skate-punk era, just as it’s mellowed in him over the years. While Tracy notes that those original versions still help you get things done “the old punk way, when you need to throw your fist in the air, and just charge”, these artists have now made renditions of these songs he can “sit around with his folky wife and a glass of whiskey, in the garage or the living room, and appreciate the lyrics”.

He reflected that “as my life was slowing down, getting simpler, so was theirs, and so was the music.”

A great example of what he describes is Joey Cape’s acoustic version of “Angry Days”, originally released during his time in Lagwagon.

First, here’s the original Lagwagon version -

Now, Joey Cape’s version.

Tracy muses that - “Sped up, it’s fun, you’re thrashing, throwing elbows.

“These songs were written out of anger, and rage, but when you sing them acoustic, 10 years later, “Do you still live in angry days?” starts to mean so much more. You’re thinking about the effects of therapy, and starting to really check in with your people. Are you OK? How’s your family?”

“These bands are no longer touring while sloppy drunk, fist fighting. They’re exactly like me. They need to sit in chairs to tie their shoes. They’re drinking pilsners, not IPA’s. They’re going out one night a week rather than seven.”

“You’re now looking at the folks you’ve been idolizing your whole life with a humanistic point of view.”

“The reality is that rock stars are no different than regular humans, they’re always a reflection of you. So you know you’ve picked the right ones to idolize when they age with you.”

He took a beat to think.

“On the other side of that, we have (Motörhead’s) Lemmy. I idolized Lemmy. But Lemmy could never age with me like this - he was living such a different lifestyle. Then you have Matt Skiba, also of Alkaline Trio, who went on to what we’d think of as more ‘pop’ stardom with Blink-182 - his music doesn’t speak to me now the way his bandmate Dan Andriano’s does.”

“And I think it’s because in the beginning, you’re doing scandalous shit, with these bands as your soundtrack.”

“I was listening and writing graffiti, painting trains. You imagine being a punker, defying law and authority your whole life… ‘til you get in trouble. Then you realize you need to grow up and back off, to comply, comply.”

“And as you begin to fall back, you realize some of these bands have also been falling back as they learn the same lessons. Our bodies were learning the same lessons. Rather than being a 60-year-old hardcore, with our shirts off at every show pumping fists, we realize, hey, button ups can hide my belly. Playing acoustic is better for our tinnitus. And a desk job pays better than a silkscreening factory.”

“Joey Cape’s newer music is telling me that he’s my buddy I can share a beer with and we’ll feel the indigestion together. We’re not talking about being brokenhearted anymore, we’ve all been married for x amount of years.”

“It’s now about the existential pains of growing up.”

To put it perfectly, one of the comments by username @xDPx-zh7vr reads, on that “It’s Gonna Rain All Day” video -

“The only thing that makes getting older better is your favorite musicians are doing it right there with you.”

He’s touching a bit on the aspirational nature of why we idolize musicians - our favorites, in a way, speak for us.

They’re connecting to something identity-based we see expressed through their existence and their art.

The pressure of this can sometimes be debilitating for the artists themselves, and for the fan, the distance between that aspiration and our own lived reality can sometimes be painful when it’s wide, or aimed at a live-fast, die-young lifestyle that inherently can’t age well. For an aside, I think Lemmy may literally be the exception, to bring him up again as another rock giant in Tracy’s world - but then again, he was a singular kind of guy, who arguably didn’t even age, he just weathered, like solidly built outdoor furniture… I digress.

Skate punk also was uniquely accessible to young folks like Tracy. When you think of the Top 40 at the time, or how even some of these punks of the day evolved into more mainstream success, to bring back the Matt Skiba example, it’s almost too far removed to still be that reflection for the listener. It’s enjoyable, but it’s external. This is around the time Tracy and I hit our Green Day fork in the road - as an early 2000’s alternative kid, I came in to loving them around American Idiot, and that album was his signal to drop off (to which I still say he is wrong, as it is a masterpiece, but I am digressing again).

Essentially, I think more underground, scrappy, less polished genres can reach their listeners in a really tactile, close to the chest way.

So what a validating and meaning-making gift it is to our own lives when our favorite artists can remain a close mirror.

At the beginning, in those “Angry Days”, the kids were alright (for the most part). They had community, even if they were a little rough around the edges, and they had a voice they could yell along with that spoke for their slice of place and generation.

And now, from my view, the men are doing great (though of course, Tracy’s musings touched on beer bellies and indigestion more than the positive that I see). They’re unashamedly still close to each other - we see them playing at each other’s backyard BBQ birthday parties and weddings, just like Tracy’s now off on that camping trip. These musicians are making wise art that says something, both written in this chapter of life and by translating their older art that was always saying something into a medium that lets those messages really speak.

It’s an authentic evolution that feels rare, and like the epitome of positive masculinity in a corner of music that has always felt very aggressive/overwhelming to my more sensitive-Steph self, even when women were fronting. As I can only ever be an observer to this part of Tracy’s life thanks to our generational gap, digging into this music and how its spirit and evolution mirrors his own have helped me understand him in a profound way.

I think there’s something uniquely special and incredibly sweet about this 80’s/90’s “rage against the man” skate-punk energy aging into its wise, folk-punk era. And I think that self-aware, earnest evolution may just be why I love him and his peers who also grew from this scene so much.

(Dang, I didn’t expect this post to go there. But here we are.)

After all, to love someone is to love them as they grow, while growing together.

So holy heck, how great are these punks at showing us how to love, to age, and to live?

Tracy and bff Steve in the olden days in Chicago.

To bring us on home, because Substack only likes to embed Spotify, I’ve transcribed “When Did I Grow Up” to a Spotify playlist so you all can join in on the feels. (Yes, we’re on Apple Music, sorry.)

Listen above or follow - "When Did I Grow Up?" to Tracy’s Apple Music.