Taking Back Sunday hits Las Vegas on 20th anniversary tour

From the basements of Long Island, New York, they came with hearts, and instruments, in hand.

It was the most inauspicious of beginnings for a band that would help drive the emo boom of the early aughts, five dudes with girl troubles — at least in song — who didn’t even dare to dream a dream that eventually came true.

That was two decades ago, when Taking Back Sunday was born.

“I swear you’re as subtle as a brick in the small of my back,” they sang on “There’s No ‘I’ in Team,” from the band’s 2002 debut, “Tell All Your Friends.” While that line was directed at a running buddy, it could just as well be used to describe frontman Adam Lazzara’s lyrical directness, his words as raw as his overtaxed vocal chords.

This was a central part of the band’s appeal: Lazzara’s impassioned, plainspoken emoting, his breathless whelp doubling as the voice of countless coming-of-age 20-somethings, just like himself.

Lazzara and his bandmates made their angst anthemic, a loud, sweaty concerto of plucked heartstrings, with scream-along hooks and surging guitars cresting into choruses that erupted like geysers of pent-up feelings, frothy and fierce.

It was the soundtrack of millennial ennui for certain members of that generation struggling to find themselves.

This is why it resonated with so many: Because that’s exactly what this bunch was doing at the time as well.

From regular Joes to emo heroes

“Before the band, I was kind of moving at a snail’s pace. I didn’t really know what to do with my life,” bassist Shaun Cooper acknowledges from a tour stop in Vancouver, British Columbia. “I knew that I wanted to play bass, but I was kind of going to school for computers and really not doing much else. Then, with Taking Back Sunday, we started touring before we got signed, but for all intents and purposes, I was in my bedroom.

“I wasn’t doing much except for drinking 40s with Mark (O’Connell, TBS drummer). All our friends went off to college and were doing real things. We were so lonely, losers in my backyard, like, ‘OK, when is something going to happen?’ And then it did.”

Selling a modest 2,500 copies its first week out, “Friends” would steadily gain momentum as the band toured constantly, eventually going gold and selling close to a million copies.

It was released in the spring of 2002, and by that fall, Taking Back Sunday was playing its first Las Vegas gig on Thanksgiving eve at the old Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel, opening for Boxcar Racer, the side project of Blink-182 singer-guitarist Tom DeLonge and drummer Travis Barker.

“We couldn’t believe we were playing a show that big. It was really, really crazy,” Cooper recalls. “I remember being in the casino afterward and seeing Travis around and gambling and stuff, and I’m like, ‘This is unreal.’ I was a 21-year-old kid. That was something else.”

All of a sudden, the pace of Cooper’s life accelerated as if fired from a cannon.

It caught up with him and guitarist-singer John Nolan soon enough, as both departed the band in 2003 to try to catch their breath.

“I just had to take a step back,” Cooper says. “It’s like, ‘Hey, this is not what I imagined. All my dreams are coming true, but this is way too crazy for me to understand. I need to take a minute and refocus.’ That’s why I left. Life went from a snail’s pace to lightning quick, and I could not handle it.”

‘What moves us?’

Taking Back Sunday’s career would continue to take off in the pair’s absence, with the next two albums, 2004’s “Where You Want to Be” and 2006’s “Louder Now,” debuting in the top five and going gold as well.

These anti-stars were now stars.

It would all help establish Taking Back Sunday as one of the tentpole emo-oriented acts of its day, a loose coterie of bands that would come to include groups such as Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and The Used.

Cooper and Nolan returned to the group in 2010, and though they didn’t play on “Want” or “Louder,” they’re helping celebrate those two albums, along with “Friends,” on the current 20th anniversary tour.

Timed with the release of a greatest-hits album, “Twenty,” the outing sees the band doing two-night stands in several cities during which they will play “Friends” in its entirety each night as well as either “Want” or “Louder” depending on the day.

What ultimately made those albums so successful?

That the musicians behind them were so much like the people buying them.

“It always came from a very honest place,” Cooper says. “We never did anything where we thought, ‘Oh, this will make a lot of money’ or ‘If we write a lyric like this, then we’re going to get on the radio.’ It was always just, ‘What moves us?’

“I think people can see that,” he continues. “I think they know that we’re not trying to get the girl, we’re not trying to get the money, we’re just trying to write good songs, and hopefully people will respond in kind. It’s worked out well for us.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.