Jimmy eats up success, relishes anonymity

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Jimmy Eat World, from left, Zach Lind, Tom Linton, Jim Adkins and Rick Burch, still prefer you to call their melodic punk pop anything but "emo." In the year since its last Honolulu visit, the band has enjoyed some of the biggest success of its nine-year music career. Christopher McCann Jimmy Eat World with Haunted Pines 7 p.m. today Pipeline Café $20 589-1999, 526-4400

"We're never recognized," said lead guitarist/vocalist Tom Linton, laughing. "Seriously, man. The last five times I've seen people with our shirt on, I've said, 'Hey, that's a cool shirt!' And they look at me like I'm a total sleaze. It happened at the airport. It happened at a gym I went to with my brother to play racquetball.

"The girl actually moved from one treadmill to the one in the back of the room."

Linton had his own simple theory for the near-complete anonymity Jimmy Eat World still enjoys.

"We're pretty normal-looking, y'know?" he explained, again cracking himself up.

Maintaining your collective cover in a state whose biggest contributions to rock 'n' roll history are still Alice Cooper and the Gin Blossoms may not seem like much of an accomplishment. But for the time being at least, it's enough for the still close-knit group of friends who met and formed a band in high school, were signed by Capitol Records within a year, found themselves dropped from that label after being virtually ignored through four years and two albums, and finally hit the semi-big time with a self-financed CD recorded, basically, with tour money.

Though oh-so-sweet, success hardly seems to have spoiled the members of Jimmy Eat World — in addition to Linton, lead vocalist/guitarist Jim Adkins, drummer Zach Lind and bassist Rick Burch. At heart (or at least, in interviews) they're polite, soft-spoken, self-effacing musicians who seem content just selling a few CDs, playing for anyone who wants to hear them, and then returning to their families in Phoenix and Gilbert to rehearse, time permitting, at least a couple of times a week.

"We've been on the road for almost two years," said Linton, a bit mournfully. "I mean, we go out for, like, a month, then we'll come home for a few days, and then we'll leave again. But it's just enough time to pretty much wash our clothes and pack our bags again. If we're able to (record the next CD) at home, that would be one of our goals."

When The Advertiser first caught up with Jimmy Eat World before its first Hawai'i concert last March, the band's self-titled third album (its first for new home Dreamworks Records) had just passed 200,000 in sales. "The Middle," its relentlessly catchy, punk-poppy lead anthem, had only recently cracked the Top 10 of Billboard's modern-rock chart. And all Adkins seemed to want more than anything else was to have the band's happiness and angst be documented under anything — anything! — but emo.

Emo, of course, is the frustratingly vague indie-music movement — generally combining sonic instrumental wallops with urgent, sensitive and introspective lyrics — that even its most obvious purveyors take pains to disassociate themselves from when cornered by journalists.

A year later, "Jimmy Eat World" the album is now comfortably past 1 million in sales. Much of that thanks to "The Middle," which eventually managed a Billboard Hot 100 singles peak of No. 5 and enough late-summer radio airplay to make it a just-this-side-of-annoying mainstay of daily morning and afternoon commutes. The e-word hasn't quite disappeared from the band's press, but it's getting there. And Jimmy Eat World is looking forward to one final Hawai'i show supporting the album — after a multiweek swing through New Zealand and Australia — before heading back to Arizona to record its follow-up.

"We were just surprised with how good the show was," said Linton, explaining why the band decided another Honolulu gig was in order after less than a year away. "We had never played there before so ... (we weren't) really expecting lots of people to show up. But, yeah, we were all kind of freaking out at how many people were there. And it was just a really good crowd. We were so stoked."

And, yeah, the band also figured Hawai'i would be as good a place as any for, like, five days of down time.

"We have about a month off ... so I think (Hawai'i) is going to be our last break," said Linton. "I think as soon as we get back ... we'll start practicing. We have some decent demos laid down, but I think we're definitely ready to go and make another record."

With most of the songs already written, Linton hinted at a fall release for the band's still-untitled fourth CD.

Asked for still more down low on how success might've changed the band, Linton explained, simply, "I don't think (we've changed) personally, as people."

He then paused, perhaps searching for the perfect tidbit that would illuminate the changed world the band was currently residing in, and prove interesting enough to shut up his inquisitor.

"Actually, before, we'd have to go out on tour and come back and call up a temporary service and start working the next day," said Linton. "It was kind of odd going out on tour and then working in a plastic factory the day after you came back."

Good enough for me, Tom.