Tom Lynch

Metro offers a bouquet of armor-piercing bullets this week for the Flower 15 anniversary celebration, with shows scheduled with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, the Smoking Popes, The Promise Ring and Chicago royalty Tortoise. It's an onslaught of pop rock that covers nearly every approach to melody, from Ted Leo's danceable punk to Jimmy Eat World's emo-spill, the Popes' cigar-smoking lounge rock to Tortoise's instrumental mayhem. While the Promise Ring's reunion comes as only a slight surprise--Davy von Bohlen plays an earlier show with Maritime, opening for Jimmy Eat World and the American Analog Set--the biggest shocker to come out from the city's dark subways is the Smoking Popes who, only a brief time ago, seemed destined to be thumb-tacked into the mid-nineties Chicago pop-punk scene, a kingdom in which the band served as head counsel.

It's been seven years since the band officially called it a decade, leader Josh Caterer citing newfound dependence on the Christian faith and a different calling, a turnaround from the easily-identifiable Sinatra-meets-power chords ode to love, or, in most cases as it were, lack thereof. Afterward, Caterer started Duvall with his brother--who was also a founding Pope--and while Caterer claims that band will continue, it has not made as serious an impact on the Chicago scene let alone the "let's-get-on-the-`Clueless'-soundtrack" music scene. Now, with the return of the Smoking Popes, Caterer could be setting himself up for exactly what he escaped years ago--pop-punk superstardom. The news of the Popes' reunion sparked enough energy from a loyal Chicago fan base to sell out the band's slot at the Flower 15 showcase in less than forty minutes.

"I feel a certain emotional attachment to the songs, but I don't feel that I'm as in the middle of it as I did back then," says Caterer of returning to the Popes' material. "The songs take me back to a place I used to be, which is a lot easier emotionally than having to keep churning through a place that you're actually at. To go back to some of those songs, to play them...it felt a little funny at first. After the initial novelty of, like, `man, we haven't played this in several years,' we reacquainted ourselves with the material. There's so much fun we have with these songs."

Caterer declares plans for an entire Popes tour next year, after a possible re-release of older material, and doesn't rule out the possibility of a new record in the near future. "You could argue that this isn't a `reunion' anymore, but it's actually the band getting back together," he says. "We're trying to reignite the thing we had going. We've been trying to take it one step at a time ever since we started talking about it. I think we were all open to the idea of continuing after this show. We wanted to see first, once we started playing, if it was gonna be just as fun or just weird. Secondly, what sort of response are we gonna get? It seems like there's a lot of excitement about the whole thing."

But if the band didn't work before because of Caterer's religious lifestyle, why would it work now? "The main difference is that we're a little older," he says. "We're communicating better than we did back then. We've worked through a lot of personal issues we had, issues that made it difficult to enjoy the band as much as we were supposed to. Now that that stuff is straightened out, we're able to come at this thing in a healthy way, with a much more healthier set of expectations."

After the band dismembered, Caterer ditched the city altogether, got married, had two children and infamously tossed out all of his rock records, all the Sabbath, all the Zeppelin. The family life, he admits, makes him "much more grounded than I used to be." He now lives in Elburn, enjoying what he describes as a "white-picket type lifestyle."

Make no mistake, the Smoking Popes influence can be found in most Chicago acts, including golden child Fall Out Boy, whose bassist Pete Wentz says the band "is one of the reasons Fall Out Boy even exists." "It's very flattering," says Caterer of the adoration. "You know, one has to watch oneself and make sure that these things don't go to your head. I just try to remind myself that music is not something that originated in me. Even musical ability is not something that I invented, it's something God gave me, so I can't really take credit for it, going around pretending that I'm all that. I guess that's all I want to say about that."

Smoking Popes play November 11 at Metro.

(2005-11-08)

Also by Tom Lynch

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Tip of the Week
The Swedish indie-pop quintet released its debut, "Howl Howl Gaff Gaff" some months ago and followed it up with consistent touring in support of other bands, but now it finally comes through Chicago with the set-length it deserves
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Canada's Broken Social Scene adds more than three new members to its roster on its latest, self-titled record, the band's third and most ambitious on Arts & Crafts
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Worth the Weight
(2005-10-11)

Tip of the Week
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