Stuck in a Moment

The city of Warrensburg — if you can call a college town during summer break a city — is 42 miles, three strip clubs, one Jehovah’s Witness temple and a complete spin of the new Weezer disc away from anything that can be remotely considered part of Kansas City.

Strange, then, that a band like Stuck on Broadway would choose this place for its debut show.

Not that the Setlist, with its whitewashed brick walls and perfunctory Superdrag pregame soundtrack, isn’t a good natural habitat for a local act. The venue doesn’t fail to cough up an equal smattering of teens and townies, most of whom seem at least relatively interested in what’s happening onstage.

It’s just that the band seems a little, well, suburban, for a place where shouts of “Git ‘er done” and “Where my hoes at?” compete for between-band banter with a garrulous, fortyish, self-appointed groupie dancing in front of the stage and repeatedly asking the other bar patrons for rolling papers.

For the band, the Setlist isn’t uncharted territory. Two of the three guys onstage have played here together before, and it’s why they’re back tonight.

Stuck on Broadway reunites former Thulium guitarist Steve Nick with bassist and childhood friend Drew Scofield, who morphed Thulium into the painfully catchy Anything But Joey in 2003, after Nick’s departure. Newcomer Micah Lee joins the friends on drums.

For those unfamiliar with Anything But Joey’s résumé, consider the following: KRBZ 96.5 played the band’s pop-punk anthem “Girl Roommate” more than 650 times in 2003 alone, at which point the Kansas City population began liberal use of one of two phrases: “Oh, my God! Stacie, I soooo love that song” or “Dude, turn that shit off now.”

But as the newly formed trio takes the stage for the first time in its career, a few dozen old-school ABJ fans push their way to the front of the room. Obviously, they weren’t afraid to make the journey from the ‘burbs to the boonies to see if the former maestros of mall rock are too grown up for their past.

Apparently, they’re not.

“Anybody here from Lenexa?” Nick asks at the top of the set. Some members of the crowd scream their Johnson County allegiance. “Good. I’m going to need a ride home.”

And then they play — and how. For three guys who’ve never played publicly as a single unit, they sound like they’ve been doing this for months, if not years. It’s not perfect or polished, and there are more than a few looks of confusion as they try to synchronize three sounds into one cohesive mix. But what’s plain on their faces, right from the start, is exactly how much fun each of them is having up there.

And when two of Scofield’s former bandmates — guitarist Bryan Chesen and drummer Jeff Polaschek — join him for a few old Anything But Joey favorites, the crowd learns one important fact about Stuck on Broadway: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A few days later, the band is back among the countless strip malls and soccer-mom haunts of their Lenexa home. The three bandmates — along with roadie Justin Rew, who befriended the guys during their venue-packing ABJ days and hasn’t left their side since — sit in Stars-and-Stripes-patterned lawn chairs on the front steps of Nick’s white, ranch-style house.

They sip Rolling Rock while children scream and play at an elementary school two blocks away, the same school where Nick and Scofield met when they were five years old.

Nick ponders whether there’s a difference, musically speaking, between where his band is now and where ABJ was when it broke up six months ago.

“We grew up listening to Green Day and Blink 182,” he says. “We play the kind of music we like to listen to.”

“Yeah. We’re not really going after the 40-year-olds,” Lee adds, referring to the fact that Anything but Joey’s radio-friendly hits had a habit of attracting a younger, predominantly female demographic. “We’ll leave that to Yanni.”

Though the band is quick to point out that SOB and ABJ are cut from the same naughty-acronym cloth, there are still some distinct differences. Besides the rather obvious lack of a fourth member (the guys hope to add a permanent keyboardist and possibly another guitarist soon), Scofield shares the songwriting responsibilities with his bandmates — something he never did in Anything But Joey.

“We all have creative input,” Scofield says. “I still do most of the actual songwriting, but we all compose and arrange together.”

This collaboration has caused a few subtle differences to emerge, all of them evident on their newly recorded four-song demo. A little extra high-hat here, a little stretched guitar there, and suddenly you’ve got a band that’s moving on from its past. Actually, maybe “moving on” is a little strong. “Paying homage but looking forward” may be a better way of putting it.

But can a couple of guys who have dedicated the past several years of their careers to catchy pop-punk anthems and 16-year-old fans really ever move beyond the suburban lifestyle that they’ve come to embrace?

“It’s a lot more technical,” Scofield says.

“A little more,” Nick corrects.

SOB’s sound may be “a little more emo,” as the group also insists, but Scofield knows that the debut in Warrensburg was no fluke — the old ABJ fans will always find them.

“I can tell you right now that our crowds are going to be very similar,” Scofield says.

In addition to a lineup of summer shows, the band has a handful of songs and a demo, about which Scofield says, “This is what we sound like for $300.” Nothing fancy but a lot of bang for the buck — and definitely a start.

But there’s something very happily domesticated, very Rolling-Rock-and-white-ranch-style house, very suburban about a group that’s picking up where the spirit of Anything But Joey left off. And no name or roster change can destroy that feeling.

“Besides,” Nick says with a smirk, “you can’t sell out unless you’re making money.”