If all had gone as planned, Jawbreaker would have been on the road two years ago to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their seminal — and polarizing — fourth studio album Dear You. But the trio is confident that as the Covid-delayed tour finally hits the road on Friday (March 18th) in Seattle, it will still be a celebration.
“If I think 25 years, I get dizzy. I’m honestly surprised I’ve been doing anything that long,” singer-guitarist Blake Schwarzenbach tells Consequence. He adds that since the group reunited during the summer of 2017 — to play at Riot Fest in Chicago, among other gigs — Dear You “kind of came alive. It seems to have some buoyancy.”
And time has treated it well since 1995, when purist fans slammed Jawbreaker for signing with a major label (DGC) and working with producer Rob Cavallo, who the previous year had a multi-platinum smash with Green Day’s Dookie.
“My relationship to [Dear You] hasn’t changed that much,” says Schwarzenbach, who had undergone polypectomy vocal cord surgery prior to recording the album in early 1995 at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, Calif. “I guess I don’t have to apologize for it quite as much. We loved the record when we put it out, but we took some hits. To us, it’s just our fourth record. It’s part of our chronology.
“My experience is records take a couple years to find their audience, unless you’re that kind of fluke that has a hit right out of the gate. I’m happy with where it’s at now. I think a lot of younger musicians found it after the fact and cite it as an influence. So I think it did find its place.”
