The Get Up Kids will be playing their first show in three months with their appearance Sunday at the Four Chord Music Festival in Pittsburgh, but guitarist Jim Suptic wasn’t worried about any rust.

“It’ll be fine,” he said with a laugh. “Some of these songs we’ve played literally tens of thousands of times, so I think we’ll be all right.”

Formed in 1995, The Get Up Kids will be launching their tour marking the 25th anniversary of “Something to Write Home About,” considered among emo’s seminal albums. They’ll play the album in full at Four Chord, which celebrates punk rock and pop punk music with both national and local bands. This year’s fest, which moved to Carrie Furnace in Rankin, has A Day To Remember and The Story So Far headlining Saturday, while The All-American Rejects, Something Corporate and The Get Up Kids will be the top acts on the main stage Sunday.

Suptic, in a call last week from Overland Park, Kansas, said the band will fly in late Saturday night. Despite the late arrival, he plans to take in performances like last year’s tourmates Motion City Soundtrack and The All-American Rejects. Getting focused when it’s their set time won’t be a problem.

“We’re not that professional,” he said with a laugh. “I’m always checking out bands. It’s fun, you know? You play for like 30 minutes. It’s not like reality.”

The festival experience is “a different beast” compared to playing a normal show, according to Suptic.

“You gotta think half the people watching you don’t know who you are or don’t care, but we just gotta have fun with it,” he said. “It’s like playing in front of 15,000 people as opposed to 1,500 people, it’s a little bit different of a mindset.”

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Normally, a festival appearance would include a setlist curated with their biggest hits, but The Get Up Kids will be playing “Something to Write Home About” in its entirety as the official launch of their tour. So what is it about that album that still resonates?

“I think it was just the right album at the right time, if that makes sense,” Suptic said. “There was a lot in that scene, a lot of good records were coming out right then. I think Jimmy Eat World’s ‘Clarity’ came out the same year, Promise Ring put out a good record that year. Just bands of our ilk, basically the scene was kind of about to explode.

“I think, when you’re young, things kind of get imprinted on you, albums become important.”

Playing songs written 25 years ago, however, can require some mental gymnastics.

“Sometimes you got to get your head in the game because you’ve played these songs so many times,” he said. “Some of those songs I was 19 years old when we wrote. Ryan (Pope), our drummer, was still in high school. So of course you gotta kind of put your head back in that place. Obviously we’ve evolved emotionally.”

Suptic added that he and the band have matured “just a little bit” since those days.

“It’s a little more subtle with our emotions,” he said. “When you’re young like that, it’s like every breakup’s the worst breakup, every fight’s the worst fight. Heightened emotions.”

Those emotions are the foundation for emo music, which is just a shortened version of emotional hardcore music. What emo actually means has changed drastically over the years, and Suptic shrugs off the label now.

“It is what it is. I think the problem with the label emo is, like to the average person now, if someone said ‘The Get Up Kids, what do they sound like?’ ‘Oh, they’re an emo band.’ People would think we wear guy-liner and dress all black, almost like goth. It’s just kind of changed what it is,” he said. “Where to us it was always kind of more indie rock, rock ‘n’ roll, but there was definitely a scene. We came out of the hardcore scene, and it’s just the word’s evolved.

“So it’s hard, to someone who’s outside of it, when you say it, it kind of has like these weird connotations that aren’t really who we are, I guess. But it’s all connected somehow, the rock ‘n’ roll spider web.”

The ever-evolving meaning of emo today might not give a true picture of one of the genre’s early pioneers.

”I just think when I’m at a bar having a beer and someone sits down next to me, we start talking like, ‘What do you do?’ ‘Oh, I’m in a band.’ ‘What kind of music do you play?’ I said, ‘Oh, it’s like an emo band.’ I feel like it just gives a false interpretation to someone who has no idea who we are or what they think our band is. The average person doesn’t know what The Promise Ring are or even Sunny Day Real Estate, for that matter. But they know who My Chemical Romance is or Fall Out Boy, right? “

For a band that’s been around for almost 30 years, Suptic doesn’t think the early days of the emo scene overshadow what’s happening now.

“The good old days are right now,” he said with a laugh. “It’s always the good old days; you just don’t realize it until they’re over. And it was what it was. It’s kind of crazy looking back now, the scene and what, even if it’s a footnote in music history, I guess I’m proud to be at least a footnote.”

When he’s not playing music, Suptic serves as the director of operations for a nonprofit, the Steps of Faith Foundation, in Kansas City. The group helps amputees who don’t have insurance or are underinsured. Their big annual fundraiser, Thundergong!, is hosted by actor Jason Sudeikis and raised more than $900,000 last year. Actor Will Forte is a constant presence, and “Ted Lasso” actress Hannah Waddingham and Sudeikis went viral last year with their duet of “Shallow.”

“(The foundation) was kind of co-started with a buddy of mine, Billy Brimblecom, who was a drummer in my band Blackpool Lights, who lost his leg to cancer,” Suptic said. “He’s our CEO and it started as a part-time thing. Now it’s a full-time job. I’m very lucky because I can tour and work from the road and we don’t usually tour a ton, so it works out.”

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