AJR's Ryan and Jack Met discuss arena shows, getting vulnerable and much more ahead of Pittsburgh show

In the course of just six years, the indie pop band AJR has gone from playing the Club at Stage AE to headlining PPG Paints Arena on their Pittsburgh stops.

And that’s always been the band’s ultimate ambition.

“It’s been really incredible. It’s been really the goal of the band is, how can we get to arenas? And I think putting on these shows has been the surprising best part of our whole career,” Ryan Met said last week. “I think that we didn’t really expect to love it this much, but at a certain point, we decided, oh, let’s try to put stuff on stage that has never been done before.

“So we’re really big fans of Broadway and magic and puppetry, and we have a lot of nerdy interests. And so these shows have been a chance to combine everything. So we’ve sort of turned each tour into this narrative Broadway show-kind of thing where there’s a lot in addition to the songs that make you wanna go out and see the songs in a new way.”

AJR — comprised of brothers Adam, Ryan and Jack Met, with all three handling multiple instruments and vocals — will bring their outsized arena show on their The Maybe Man tour on June 25 to PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh. They’ll be joined by singer-songwriter/YouTuber mxmtoon and California indie pop band Almost Monday.

The high-energy band, which last year released their fifth studio album, “The Maybe Man,” has grown in popularity with songs like “World’s Smallest Violin,” “Burn the House Down” and “Weak.”

Ahead of their Pittsburgh stop, Ryan and Jack Met joined TribLive for a Zoom call from New York.

(Asked if Adam Met gets out of promotional interviews since he’s the eldest brother, Ryan and Jack Met both laughed. “He’s just always busy running a non-profit at the same time,” Ryan Met said, “so he’s always somewhere.” Adam Met, who has his doctorate in international human rights law, is the executive director of Planet Reimagined, which focuses on climate change systems.)

In their chat, Ryan and Jack Met discussed their arena productions, thoughts on “The Maybe Man” album seven months after its release, exposing their vulnerabilities in their songs and much more:

On whether they still have brotherly fights:

Jack: Yeah, once in a while. (We grew up) in a tiny bedroom in New York, so we had to learn to be close. We didn’t really have an option, we couldn’t go sleep in the bathroom that night, we had to hang out. So we learned how to get along and it kind of transferred over to the job as well. It’s kind of why we’ve been able to do this for so long.

On going even bigger in future tours:

Jack: We already have ideas of what to do next time. I think it’s like our brains kind of so quickly move on to the next thing and what could be better and what could be — even when we’re writing music, we do that too — so we already have some cool ideas for even bigger venues if we end up getting that.

On the crowd’s favorable reception to current shows:

Jack: Yes, it has. And there’s no way to tell that before, honestly. It’s like the same with writing. It’s like Ryan and I come up with the stuff and we’ll tell a few people about it. But at the end of the day, until it’s literally in front of you and you’ve seen it and you can kind of think about it, you don’t know if people are gonna like it or not. And it has happened on past tours of like, we have a setlist and we put it on, and then there’s one part that we thought would be incredible that people didn’t really like. So we had to kind of switch it up. But for this tour, we hadn’t had to do that, we didn’t have to do that at all, which is unusual. So the set we came up with and the guys that came up with are the ones that have worked. And people have said it’s their favorite so far, which is amazing.

On delving into the crowd during shows and whether anything unusual has happened yet:

Jack: Nothing crazy, but I think that was a perfect example of like you don’t know which part is gonna go over the best, and that I think has by far gone over the best and then I think we were realized, like a lot of fans were like ‘I’ve never seen this been done’ and the fans that had to pay the lowest price for the highest seats thought they’d never even get that close, it worked out a lot better than we thought it would.

Ryan: We’ve wanted to do that stunt for a really long time, and I think it just worked out at this point especially for who our fans are. I think our fans sort of toe the line of they’re really excited when we get out there, but they’re not so crazy that they’re gonna rip off Jack’s clothing or whatever because they’re also really respectful, so I think we just found the perfect sweet spot of being able to pull that off.

On whether thoughts about “The Maybe Man” album have changed in the last six months as they’ve grown with it:

Ryan: This album was different than past albums we’ve made because I think often we write, we’ve written our past albums in retrospect, right? So I went through a breakup and then I wrote about it two years later in past albums. But “The Maybe Man” was very much things are happening to us right now. Our dad got sick, and the next day we wrote our song “God is Really Real.” And so when you’re in the eye of the tornado and you’re right inside of those feelings, it’s really hard to write, but it yields different results. I think you write sometimes more immature, less wise songs, but very visceral, raw songs. And so I think we really think of this album as a snapshot of this was our year last year. And so it’s been interesting playing it the following year and going, oh wow, we’re putting ourselves back to exactly what we were feeling a year ago.

On whether it gets easier being vulnerable with their songs:

Ryan: I think it’s the thing that we’ve become sort of most addicted to. It’s a really unique feeling to admit something about yourself, like we have a song on our last album called “Joe,” and it’s about a kid I went to high school with that I really admired, and I called him out by name. And that’s a really scary thing to do because it’s so embarrassing to admit. But then when an audience of people go, yeah, we have a Joe also, it’s like a drug. I just wanna feel that forever. I wanna feel that sense of community and companionship with the fans. So it has led us to just get more and more vulnerable and to chase the scary feeling of like, should we be this honest? Yeah, let’s go.

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On those songs being personal, but also relatable:

Ryan: Yeah, that’s been our whole thing. I think we have, all the lyrics we’ve thrown out have been really personal, and then we deem, oh, only we’re going through this; this is not a universal feeling. But when you stumble upon something that has never been written before, is totally true to you and you get the feeling like, oh, everybody has this but nobody’s talked about it, it’s extremely satisfying.

On hearing from the real-life Joe from the song “Joe”:

Ryan: He reached out and we got drinks. And at the end of the hour, I found out that he had never even heard the song and he wasn’t paying attention to what was going on with the band. And we just left.

On whether they’ve got to the point that they think the songs are too personal:

Jack: No, I don’t think we’ve ever got to that point. I don’t think that we’re always - I know Ryan said like we’re addicted to it - but I think like a few years ago when we really started to go for it and share our most personal thoughts, it wasn’t as easy and it was definitely a lot harder than it is now. But I think ever since we heard that, like we’ve heard some just really crazy stories from fans about how, we have a song called “Karma.” That was a song on a couple albums ago. It was just about my experiences in therapy and all the thoughts that go through my head of why am I not better yet? And here are my thoughts and literally like a therapy session. That was a really scary thing to share because kind of before that we were like a little bit less personal. People knew us as sort of like a surface-level, fun party band. And then after that came out, fans would come up and be like, ‘It’s because of that song that I started seeing a therapist. I wanted to become a therapist because of that song.’ And then it became like really, really easy. And it was just like there’s truly nothing too deep that we can share because at the end of the day, it’s the deeper you go, the more you’ll help this person that’s looking for that connection.

On what they learned about themselves making this album:

Ryan: This was very much a concept album for us. We came up with this idea of The Maybe Man, which is this sort of big, sad superhero that doesn’t know who he is. And I think that really relates to a common theme between me and Jack, which is we feel as though we’re one person with you and then totally change personalities with her. And we both sort of have that curse a little bit. And we just had a lot of deep discussions about … What’s actually inside of me if I’m a different person with everybody and so that’s where The Maybe Man came from. Over the course of the album we sort of learn a lesson, and by the end, by 2085, there’s this lesson learned of like, oh, it is a curse, but I’ll suffer through it for you so that you don’t need to try being all these other people. It works more poetically in song form than me explaining it — (both brothers laugh) — but that was like one of those rare moments where we taught ourselves a weird lesson through writing 12 songs.

On staying true to themselves when they’re being pulled in so many directions:

Ryan: It’s harder because you’re living your life for everybody else, and then you’re left wondering, oh, what do I actually like or want, but I think that’s a lot of why we became artists and songwriters, so we can go through these trials and tribulations for the fans.

On whether having their brothers around helps them stay grounded:

Ryan: Probably, yeah, I think neither of us could imagine being a solo artist at any point.