Q&A: Jimmy Eat World drummer Zach Lind, whose dad coached for the Pirates, back in town for Four Chord festival

Zach Lind will be at at Pittsburgh area ballpark on Saturday, but it’s not quite one he remembers from his youth.

The Jimmy Eat World drummer will play Four Chord Music Fest 11 at EQT Park in Washington with his band and a host of others, including Blink-182, Hot Mulligan and Bowling For Soup.

Lind’s father is Jack Lind, who played in the majors before embarking on a coaching career that ran more than 10 years in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, including serving as the team’s third base coach from 1997-2000. (Incidentally, there’s no relation to second baseman Jose Lind, who played for the Pirates from 1987-92.)

“My dad worked for the Pirates for a long time — he was a field coordinator in spring training, he was a roving instructor, he did a lot of different things for the organization, so just being a kid and supporting your dad and rooting for the Pirates was definitely a part of that,” Lind said. “When he became the third base coach under (manager) Gene Lamont, then that obviously ramped up a little bit.”

Zach Lind grew up in Mesa, Arizona — where Jimmy Eat World was founded in 1993 — so he didn’t get to Pittsburgh much when his father was coaching here, as the band was taking off. But he spent plenty of time in minor-league parks over the summer when he was younger.

“Especially when school got out. The next day we were in a car driving to wherever my dad was working as a manager. His pro coaching career was pretty much he was just a minor league manager starting in A-ball, going to AA with the Vermont Reds, and then he worked his way up to AAA with the Reds,” he said. “And then from there, went over to work for the Pirates. So a lot of summers where I’m shagging fly balls at (batting practice) if the team was in town. If the team was home, then I would be there all the time. And then I would occasionally go with my dad on road trips, depending on what the circumstances were.

“It was really interesting. I got to see a lot of the different areas of the country and also just being around guys just grinding, trying to get to the major leagues was an interesting environment.”

Now Lind gets to hit the road quite frequently with Jimmy Eat World, the pop-punk/emo band known for songs like “The Middle,” “Sweetness” and “Pain.”

In a call from Seattle, Lind spoke with TribLive about lessons learned from baseball, festival shows, new music and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.

You’re not still a fan (of the Pirates) now, are you?

Not really, no. Why would I put myself through that?

Unfortunately, this whole city has to deal with that misfortune, so…

Yeah. It was interesting when my dad started coaching, I think the first year he coached was the first year Gene Lamont was the manager right after Jim Leyland left. I want to say that the owner (Kevin McClatchy) was, I think fairly new at that point. And the total team payroll was I think below $10 million. I want to say that there were times where they would be facing starting pitchers who would be making more just on their own for that year than the entire (Pirates) team. So you’re not really going to win a lot of games.

Yeah, that’s not a recipe for success, as we’re still finding out 30 years later. Did you get to live in Pittsburgh at all, or were you just visiting your dad?

Never lived there. I actually spent very little time there. I want to say I was probably out of high school. I was busy with the band. I was probably touring a lot. And just Pittsburgh being so far removed from Mesa where I grew up and was living at the time, I didn’t really hang out there a lot in Pittsburgh unfortunately. I really like Pittsburgh, the city. It’s a great place, even just been touring there over the last three decades. I really like it there but didn’t get to spend enough time there.

Some of the same things that you might learn through baseball, like the touring, the minor leaguers grinding it out, that applies to a lot of what happens in music, too.

100%. Even as a kid, I would be able to walk into a clubhouse and be like, oh, man, this is a (dump). I can’t believe these guys have to actually be a team and try to get by in this space. That was very similar to touring when you’re starting out as a band: you’re playing (crappy) clubs, and there’s a lot of parallels to it. I think that helped me a lot.

I may not have realized this in the moment, but I think just being around that environment where these guys are pursuing a dream, it’s very competitive, they feel all this pressure. And they’re in these environments that aren’t friendly. They’re not getting paid a lot. So just that sort of perseverance of just putting one foot in front of the other, and not thinking too much about how bad it sucks, was something that I think I was surrounded by as a kid. It certainly helped me as an adult going through playing in a band and being in very similar situations, but just on the music side.

How did you make the decision to focus on music over baseball?

It was my senior year in high school, and the band was really starting to kind of gel and I was really getting excited about what the band was doing. I also hated my high school baseball coach, and I don’t think he liked me very much either. That relationship was souring to the point where I was just like, this isn’t fun anymore and I just wanted to do something that I’m more excited about. He pulled me aside for a meeting, we talked and then I just said, ‘Well, I’m out.’

So I grabbed my bag and walked off the field and I think I went straight to a Jimmy Eat World band practice. My dad set me up with a guy who coached my brother at Scottsdale Community College. I went and worked out with them, so I was working out with the community college team to round out my spring as a senior and just got the sense that I was getting pulled more towards music. I just said, this isn’t going to be worth it, all the grinding and I can’t do this in both areas. I gotta pick one, so I just decided to go with music.

You’re getting to play some baseball stadiums occasionally with Jimmy Eat World, so that’s got to be a pretty neat thing, too.

Yeah, I still love baseball. My youngest son is a really good baseball player, and I get to enjoy the game through him. That’s really fun too. But just being a fan, I try to get to baseball games whenever I’m on the road. If there’s a game going on, I’ll check it out. I still really enjoy the game. I probably wouldn’t have gone past maybe a few years in junior college, that probably would have been the end of the road for me.

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With this being a festival show, how do you approach a show like that vs. a normal show?

I think with festivals, from our standpoint, you’ll definitely have some of your own fans there, but a lot of people there might know you a little bit, but they may be casual fans. So I think for us, when we do festivals, we like to play songs that more than likely people will know, so we’ll probably play less deep cuts and more songs that have gotten some radio play or maybe some of the more popular songs, so we kind of stick to that.

Especially with a band like Blink(-182) headlining, that probably will help us decide certain songs, because a lot of people will be there to see Blink, and so we want to set them up to enjoy our set as well. That’s kind of how we factor it in. If it’s our own show and we know its our fans, that sort of opens the options for other songs or deep cuts or slower stuff. We have a lot of mid-tempo, just slow songs that we like to play, but at a festival, they’re not the greatest. You can’t play a lot of those.

What are the best things about playing festivals?

The best thing about playing festivals is just being able to see other bands. A lot of times when we’re touring, we won’t get to go to a lot of concerts, just for enjoyment. When I’m home and not touring, it takes a lot for me to go out and see an artist that I like. So just already being there and just being able to (watch), I’m really looking forward to seeing Blink play. So it’s just an opportunity to maybe see friends of other bands that you intersect with occasionally or get to see other bands that you’ve maybe not been able to see yet. So, to me, it’s just the ability to see all the other bands play and enjoy the music.

As a drummer, what’s been your favorite song to play on these shows?

One of my favorite songs to play is a recent song that we put out — not super recent, but like one of the most recent songs we put out — called “Something Loud.” It’s a song that I really love to play. It’s a fun drum song. There’s a song called “Just Tonight” from “Futures” that we’ve been playing a lot, and I love playing that one as well. Those are the two that come to mind.

This year has also had a lot of touring, with The Offspring and other festivals, so where does that leave the possibility of new music down the line?

I think our goal is to make a new album sometime soon. It’s just a matter of getting our ducks in a row and making sure we have the right songs or grouping of songs. So we know we want to do that, and we’re slowly working our way to even just finding the time to do it. We’ve just been touring so much, it’s hard for us. We haven’t had any long breaks from touring. But that’s something that we’re looking forward to doing soon.

Jimmy Eat World has been together for more than 30 years, so what do you credit for the band’s longevity?

I think that we just focused on making sure it’s fun. And we just are all focusing on making sure that as we move forward, just looking for ways we can gradually continue to challenge ourselves and be a little better. I think that pursuit is always really gratifying. I think just approaching it that way, it helps to keep your interest and helps keeping you active. We all grew up together and respect each other and want to make sure that you recognize the value each person brings. That’s just a basic recipe for success. The longevity is kind of protecting that and making sure that we’re having fun, that we’re enjoying ourselves and that we’re not making decisions that are going to put us in a position to hate life or whatever.