The Ataris: A Punk Rock Fairytale

The story of the The Ataris reads like a punk rock fairytale. At least this is how the band’s bio from their official website used to start off for years. But what happens after the ‘happily ever after’? The truth is, that fairytale ended for The Ataris around the spring of 2004 after a run of shows at Los Angeles area colleges and a final concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl opening for 311, where the normally 4-piece guitar band was expanded to 7 members for a day, adding a third guitar, keyboard, and cello. For most people familiar with the band’s lineup and sound, this would seem to make no sense within the context of their pop punk roots. However, for frontman Kris Roe it was all part of a bigger plan.

The fairytale aspect in the story of The Ataris goes back to the small suburb of Anderson, Indiana in the mid 1990s, where a teenage Roe caught the attention of Vandals’ bassist, and owner of Kung Fu Records, Joe Escalante, by nothing more than handing him a four-track-recorded demo tape at an Indiana Vandals concert. By 1997 Escalante had flown Roe out to Santa Barbara, California where he filled out the first lineup of The Ataris with which they would record their debut album, Anywhere But Here. After recording the record and touring briefly with that lineup, the members of it essentially went their separate ways, a period during which Roe began writing songs further removed from his Jawbreaker influences, and closer to the more polished punkish pop rock of many bands of the Fat Wreck Chords label, with whom a reformed Ataris would put out an EP in early 1999.

With a relatively stable lineup in place (a bassist and drummer who would stay with him for the next 6 years) Roe and The Ataris put out their second album, Blue Skies, Broken Hearts… Next 12 Exits, whose earnestly anxious lyrics would propel the band to a level of respect within the pop punk underground rivaling that of other DIY acts such as NOFX. After following that up with a third album in 2001 which was also relatively well received, the band was in a unique position. The recent success of acts like Blink 182 and New Found Glory was beginning to cause major record labels to snatch up cheap pop punk bands left and right, and The Ataris, having put out two independent releases which had sold in excess of 100,000 copies, were primed to move up to the big leagues. Predictably, many of the band’s long time fans derided their decision to abandon the credo of a song of theirs played in an early Ipod commercial, “The Radio Still Sucks”, and embrace the mainsteam media, but for a period the radio would in fact be very kind to them. However, it was a short-lived infatuation.

After signing to Columbia Records, the band released their major label debut So Long, Astoria in 2003, and scored a minor radio and MTV hit with lead single "In This Diary". However, right around the time they started doing the radio festival circuit in support of their relative success, planning to release the song "My Reply" as a second single, the LA-based trendsetting alternative radio station KROQ started playing the The Ataris' cover of Eagle Don Henley’s "The Boys of Summer". Initially balking at associating themselves with someone else’s music, the band refused to play the song at those shows, which prompted KROQ to give them a simple ultimatum: play the song live, release it as the second single, or be permanently blacklisted from alternative radio.

In an ironic twist, releasing the cover as a single brought the band more notoriety than they had ever hoped for, sending their record close to platinum status and even playing on the infield as part of the pregame celebrations of the 2003 MLB All Star Game. That summer they headlined the Warped Tour and in the fall completed a very successful headlining tour capped by a performance at the Hollywood Palladium. This brings us back to the spring of 2004.

Towards the end of the band’s run, constant touring and newfound success took its toll: drugs, affairs, lawsuits, enough to fill a typical episode of Behind the Music. So when The Ataris played their final show in Santa Barbara, Kris Roe was already testing out ideas for the next incarnation of the band. After that last gig, once again, everyone went their separate ways. Roe suffered a divorce and began dealing with issues of anxiety during the time off, which was the impetus for writing the songs which would comprise the band’s next album, as by mid 2005 he had reunited with his previous lead guitarist, and the two filled out the 7-piece band with two old friends of theirs and three members of a New York indie rock outfit on third guitar, bass, and drums.

The sound of this album, fitted with the brooding title of Welcome the Night, was an incredible departure from the band’s pop punk history; a dark hybrid of indie rock and shoegazer. However, after a slew of label issues, and a couple of additional recording sessions where songs where added and subtracted from a supposed concept album, the record fell completely flat, not even selling as well as the band’s older, independent releases. After touring the country for about a year with a truncated version of the Welcome the Night lineup (minus the cello and keyboards) the band, for a third time, went their separate ways, with Roe heading back home to Indiana to restart his life where it began.

Most of the old fans of The Ataris have likely written the band off as a pleasant memory of a bygone era of underground pop punk. But Kris Roe has yet to throw in the towel, having reformed the band yet again -- constituting its fourth incarnation -- by drafting three members of the Indiana-based hardcore band The Window Jenkins to fill out the lineup’s return to its four-piece roots. After spending a large part of the past year playing solo acoustic shows and writing on the road, Roe took those songs, and the rest of the band, to Flying Blanket Recording in Tempe, Arizona, where most of the principle recording was completed in January.

As for their sound, Roe describes that “I am definitely still a big fan of indie music indeed, but have had a lot of fun writing a good rock album again,” trumpeting a return-to-form album from the band who went erstwhile into an indie rock no man’s land. He likens the songs to the ranks of “The Crush, Replacements, Weakerthans, Jimmy Eat World, Springsteen... a bit of the more rockin' side of Death Cab, so yeah, it's definitely not a ‘Pop Punk’ album,” warning that while the upcoming record may be a return to rock, it isn’t necessarily any attempt to reclaim pop punk from the Paramores and Fall Out Boys of that scene. Either way, he promises that, despite the proclivities of the new wave of Warped Tour bands with whom he will soon be sharing the stage, “No flat irons and eye makeup here anytime soon.”

Any way you look at it, The Ataris’ story has been an interesting one, beginning as a purely DIY motivated band, rising rank by rank to become one of the more respected bands in a bursting scene just preceding blowing up and sunning themselves in front of the mainstream crowd, before ultimately fading away into the night. Whatever the next fork in the road is, one can be sure it’s going to provide a new story for Kris Roe to sing about.

Kris Roe w/ The Ataris in 2007 or 2008