Cover Story: This Edible World

Jimmy Eat World has always cultivated a certain amount of chaos. The band (guitarists/vocalists Jim Adkins and Tom Linton, drummer Zach Lind, original bassist Mitch Porter) first worked together as a Metallica cover band in junior high school in Mesa, Ariz. Officially forming in 1994 as Jimmy Eat World, the band released two singles and their eponymous full-length debut on indie Wooden Blue, leading to their Capitol contract for 1996’s Static Prevails (where Rick Burch replaced Porter).

An eponymous ’98 indie EP followed, and then it was Capitol’s Clarity in ’99. Throughout all this, the Jimmys did split singles with several like-minded indie bands and placed “Lucky Denver Mint” on the Never Been Kissed soundtrack.

Realizing they were low priority, the Jimmys sought and obtained their release from Capitol in 1999. The band was almost ridiculously lucky in their negotiations with the label. So many before them have been muddled for years in labyrinthine legal entanglements that resulted in a huge gap in their recording careers.

“Our previous manager was our liaison for the label,” says bassist Rick Burch. “He went in and said, ‘Hey, one of your bands, Jimmy Eat World, wants off the label.’ And they were like, ‘Who?’

They didn’t really even know we were on the label. It was at a time when they were changing presidents, and a lot of departments were getting new personnel. It was surprisingly easy for us to get out of it. We wouldn’t have what we have today if we were still with Capitol. We probably wouldn’t even be finished making the record.”

Rather than take the route of laying low to consider their course, the Jimmys booked a five-week European tour, where they had never been and their albums were unavailable. The band circumvented the problem by buying their own albums from Capitol, shipping them to band friends with record stores in Europe and distributing them overseas themselves.

“We always wanted to go to Europe,” says Burch. “We’d toured the States extensively. Nobody thought it was a good idea. We’d just gotten off the label, we fired our old manager, so we thought, ‘Let’s go on vacation and have a tour in Europe.’ ”

By the fall of 2000, the band had bankrolled enough cash and stockpiled enough tentative material to begin the Bleed American sessions themselves.

“Jim’s always writing, so there were skeletons of songs coming up every once in a while,” says Burch. “But we weren’t totally actively writing until a year after we got back. We kind of just stepped back and dissociated ourselves from the previous experiences and got centered up as a band, because we were just a band, no management, no label. We just let everything cool down, and then we started thinking about how we wanted to do it.”

Although the Jimmys retained their hook-laden, pop/punk fury, they had to make some concessions to the recording process.

“For Clarity, we did pre-production, but we weren’t afraid to keep adding to the song as we went along,” says Burch. “This time we spent a lot of time making the blueprint for each song, and they were totally finalized. When we got to the studio, we hit ‘record’ and we knew what needed to be done and where we wanted to go. We tried to keep it concise and to the point. We had to keep the studio time down to a minimum because we were paying for it ourselves.”

With no label interference, the Jimmys were open going into the sessions.

“We weren’t trying to please anyone, or get in anyone’s face,” says Burch. “We just wanted the album to be more direct. We wanted more clear and to-the-point songs.”

The band succeeded on a grand scale. A rough mix of the finished album was added to the playlists of several major U.S. radio stations before the Jimmys had even signed a record deal.

“I don’t know how it happened … it was really strange,” laughs Burch. “Someone leaked a copy of the CD, and the stations put it on their Pick of the Day or whatever. It was pretty crazy.”

Once the record was finished, the Jimmys were so delighted with the level of work had they achieved that they dismissed the idea of self-releasing the album, an idea they had toyed with at the beginning of the sessions. After weighing several offers, the band decided to cast their lot with DreamWorks, admittedly a gamble, given the Jimmys generally unfavorable major label experience. In the positive column, the band learned a great deal from their previous dealings and brought that knowledge to the negotiations.

“We met with many, many labels, and we did everything totally different from before,” says Burch. “We met with everyone, from the president to the marketing people to the promotion people; everyone that would be working the record. We wanted to get to know them and see that they were our type of people. It came down to who we felt the most comfortable with, and DreamWorks are just awesome people. They’re very artist-oriented and all about developing the career.”

In the weeks leading up to the release of what was now known as Bleed American, the band’s third full-length studio album, the Jimmys did what they’ve always done best: They hit the road and played for the people. Tours of Australia and Japan and a handful of sold-out opening gigs for Weezer in London went a long way toward establishing the band’s return, and limited but well-received engagements after that in Europe and the Warped Tour and a brief headlining club tour in the United States indicated that the public was more than ready for the reemergence of Jimmy Eat World.

That readiness was better than proven when Bleed American was released last July to almost universal praise and healthy sales. As Jimmy Eat World lined up their summer and fall touring opportunities, it seemed nothing could derail the band’s momentum. Nothing short of the worst terrorist attack on domestic soil in the country’s history.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, it became apparent to the band that the title of their album, Bleed American, with its cover shot of a row of sports trophies, was less ironic than originally intended. Before the month was over, they made the decision to change the name of the “Bleed American” single to “Bleed,” and to retitle the album eponymously, the third self-titled release in the band’s history.

Ultimately, the resolve of the band was equal to the resolve of the country in the post-Sept. 11 atmosphere, and their momentum continued unabated. On the strength of the next single from the album, “The Middle,” Jimmy Eat World began moving unprecedented units and earned the band a gold record in a matter of weeks. Their almost relentless touring schedule since last fall has assured that their name has remained highly visible; Jimmy Eat World’s opening slot was widely considered the best thing about the recent Green Day/blink-182 co-headlining Pop Disaster tour.

Burch sees the timing of the return of Jimmy Eat World and the response to their album as nearly perfect.

“With the state of popular music right now, I think people are ready for something a little different,” he says. “They’re getting tired of being yelled at by Fred Durst. I know I am.”

This article appears in May 22-28, 2002.