In four hours time, Mike Davenport will play his first show in the UK for a decade. That might rattle some, and there will be more than a few nervous faces onstage in the Monster Energy tent over the course of this year’s Slam Dunk South, but the bassist and joint band leader for The Ataris is feeling optimistic. “It's my first tour over here since I was with my other band, Versus The World in nine years because of COVID and all that good stuff, and then my first time back with The Ataris in Europe since the Versus The World tour with the Ataris in 2012, I want to say. I would jump up and play ‘San Dimas’ every night and that was instrumental in Kris [Roe, vocalist for The Ataris] and I getting back together for the first time since about 2006. Europe was instrumental in that and so we've been together ever since, Kris and I, but this is the first time the original lineup of me, Kris Roe, Kid [Chris Knapp] and John Collura will have played in Europe since 2003. So this is our first show since then. We've been doing what we call ‘So Long Astoria’ shows in America, but this is our first time bringing it back over to Europe.”

He makes it sound easy, but the decision to re-join The Ataris and present their 2004 hit album ‘So Long Astoria’ to the world again came from the kind of soul-searching that a lot of us found ourselves doing over the pandemic years. “What happened was we all kind of broke up in about 2005, 2006, and then Kris continued on with other members of the band.” Davenport would leave to found Versus The World, and Knapp quit music altogether. “And then COVID hit in 2019 and Kris was kind of not knowing what to do, couldn’t play music. So I moved him close to me again, which is in North Hollywood, California, and we started to come up with a plan to start the band again, kick it out and do it right. This is accumulation of that. This is about six years of that work coming to that. And we’ve slowly been bringing in the other guys about two, two and a half years ago. We did our first two ‘So Long Astoria’ 20th anniversary shows in LA.”

Since then, The Ataris have played their retrospective shows across the USA, which has given Davenport faith in his decision to bring the band out of hiatus. “They sell out, they’re massive venues like for us about 2,500 people at each show. And they were much more successful than anyone had predicted they would be. They both sold out and the crowd loved it, so we just decided to continue that and try to bring that over here for Slam Dunk. But it was a surprise. We didn’t announce it like we just announced this show in Boston, our first East Coast show of the ‘So Long Astoria’ 20th anniversary.”

At their peak, The Ataris were on the original Warped Tour with a gold record under their belt, and they still command a million plays a month on Spotify. Is it their original fans have stuck with with them for the last two decades, or have they quietly been reaching out to new listeners? Davenport answers quickly and definitely. “It’s both. It’s both. It’s the resurgence. I can’t say enough about how punk rock, pop punk is back. It’s a beautiful thing. There was a time when what people call emo or screamo, that kind of thing, kind of took over from I would say maybe 2008 to 2015. And things were a lot tougher for pop punk bands, especially in America. So I do believe that there is a resurgence, especially in America and here in Europe as well. Because of bands like Green Day and The Offspring and Blink 182, everybody has come back. All of us, other bands that are the next level below, like Alkaline Trio and The Ataris and bands like that… Less Than Jake… we’ve all seen a resurgence as well. So it’s timing, right? I try to equate it to when we came up in the late 90s. It’s the same timing is happening then as now. I have a 14 year old and my 14 year old is hardcore into punk rock, and I get to see his perspective of me. He loves Green Day. He loves Pierce the Veil. That’s his jam: Sleeping with Sirens, that kind of thing. And his dad just happens to be in The Ataris. So it works out well. He does like those bands more than The Ataris, I’ll tell you that. But he can appreciate us as well.” 

In the two decades since ‘So Long Astoria’, The Ataris’ major label debut, Davenport’s feelings about the album have become more complex. It’d be easy to venerate the album, or become tired of that period of time, but nothing is ever that simple, as Davenport explains. “I’ll tell you what’s changed. What’s changed is my appreciation for our career. When it came out, I felt the same about the record as I do now, which is I really think it’s one of the greatest records in our genre ever. Top 100 for sure, right?” He grins, focusing for a second. “And I’m not just saying that I’m a fan of that record, as well as a person that played on, right? So I’m a fan of it. I think it stands for the test of time. I think it’s still relevant. I don’t think it sounds dated at all, like some records do. And I do believe that I feel the same about it. I feel different about who I am. I appreciate it more. Back then, we were all caught up in a blur of being successful and we were younger, obviously. And so we took it for granted. And now I don’t take it for granted every more. Every show, I try to take a moment to be present, right? And to take it all in and say, this is a gift.” 

‘So Long Astoria’ contains The Ataris’ cover of Don Henley’s ‘Boys Of Summer’, which is arguably what they’re best known for. That song was everywhere in the summer it was released, played through everyone’s headphones and through every car stereo. How does a band move beyond being known for a single cover song? Davenport thinks for a second.  “Well, it is that, right? There’s two levels of people knowing us. And that has changed, for sure, because for a long time, ‘Boys of Summer’ was hard on us because we had this great indie career with ‘Blue Skies’ and ‘End Is Forever’ and ‘San Dimas’ and all these songs that were very popular in the punk rock scene. But when the average person hears about [us], they know it from ‘Boys of Summer.’ We know that. And for a long time, that bugged us a lot. But not anymore. As we got older, we embraced that, right? We think it’s great. And so even so much so that on our new record, we have embraced another cover song, which is [Bryan Adams’] ‘Summer of 69’, which we’re going to put out because we always got people confusing ‘Boys of Summer’ with ‘Summer of 69’. So we thought, why don’t we give the people what they want? And it sounds great. We think it’s great. But just like ‘Astoria’, which started with ’In This Diary’ as our first single, which was very successful, this new album starts with ‘Car Song’, our newest single. And it’s doing really well in America, very well. It’s just starting to climb the charts. It’s our first song [to play] on the radio since ‘The Saddest Song’ way back in 2004. So we feel very lucky.”

The video for ‘Car Song’ has already had over fifty thousand hits on YouTube and a hundred thousand plus listens. For a band who’ve been quiet for a long time, this is doubly impressive. It came out of this period of thought and restructuring post-pandemic, though its roots are deeper than that. “Kris had been playing with it for about six or seven years. And we finally got, once we got settled with him moving to North Hollywood and us really focusing on what we’re going to do with the band, then that’s when the recordings process started. We record everything in Tempe, Arizona. So he goes out to the desert and ‘Car Song’ just really evolved into the song. It is out there with our producer Bob Hoag.” Roe has called the song ‘the start of a new era for The Ataris’, and Davenport agrees. “Well, the new era is, I think, obviously older / wiser. Let’s call it that. Let’s call it that. When The Ataris have been successful, it was always me and Kris together. It was back then and it is again now. We’re a great partnership. I handle a lot of the business stuff. Kris does the art and that’s what’s always made it great. When Kris is tasked with both the art and the business, he can’t focus so much on the art. And that’s where there’s been no new music. That’s where all that stuff comes from. So since I’ve come back, I’ve really been able to help him really focus on his art and I think the new era is older / wiser, like I said. I hate to say that, but more mature. We like to think of ‘Car Song’ as ‘In This Diary’s older brother so yeah, the same storytelling vibe, a little more rock and roll than maybe our earlier punk pop punk stuff. We like bands like The Gaslight Anthem and stuff like that and so we’re kind of going for that.”

The Ataris have faced controversy over the years, and Roe’s choice to release a limited edition vinyl of ‘Car Song’ containing some of his late father’s ashes has been called ‘morbid’ by some. Davenport is quick to defend Roe’s decision. “It’s easy for me. I knew Kris’s dad well. He was the number one fan of the band, he was always there. He nurtured Kris’s love of music [and] gave him his first guitar at two years old. If you knew Kris’s dad, you would know this is the ultimate tribute to him. Now, I can see people who just look at it from the outside and don’t know those kind of things [would think it’s strange],  but it’s more common than you think.” He has a point. In 2017, Joe Talbot of IDLES released a version of ‘Brutalism’ containing his late mother’s ashes, and UK company And Vinyly offer this as a service to the families of music lovers who want a unique way to remember their loved ones. “The first person I saw [think about how their ashes would be used] was Lemmy from Motorhead. He actually had his ashes all put in little bullets and gave them out to all his friends. I have a good buddy who runs the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas, Lemmy gave him an ashes bullet that’s now in the Punk Rock Museum, so you know it’s one of those things where you kind of want to live forever, right? This is our way of letting Kris’ dad Bill live forever.”

Judging by the reception to ‘Car Song’, The Ataris’ next plans are looking bright. “Be looking out for the second seven inch,” Davenport advises, “which will be the another brand new song as well as a B-side, which will probably be ‘All Souls Day’, a song that we released on Tony Hawk Pro Skater many years ago but never got a proper release, and then the full album will come out beginning of next year.” As yet the album doesn’t have a name, but that feels like a very on-brand move. The name is less important than making music and staying true to a DIY ethic which has sustained them since the nineties. With a friendly smile and a handshake, Davenport unfolds himself from the sofa backstage and gets himself ready for a set which will pack the second stage at Slam Dunk to capacity. As he called it, the time is right for The Ataris to return, a sentiment shared with the thousands who loved every second of their older, wiser, and ultimately still awesome festival show.

KATE ALLVEY

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‘Car Song’ is out now via Regime Music Group on all streaming platforms.