You know the drill: Chris Estey's wrote about the Sunny Day Real Estate reunion in this week's Stranger. But a lot of material had to be left out of that article, so Line Out has been publishing some outtakes in the run-up to tonight's show at the Paramount. Wednesday covered religion, the media, and the band's break-up; yesterday explored the band's musical influences and hardcore roots; today: getting the band back together, playing the old songs, and writing new ones.

Jeremy, what was it like playing “Seven” live on the Jimmy Fallon show? He was sure excited to have you guys on there.

Enigk: Jimmy Fallon was a lot fun, but a bit nerve racking. I just didn't want to screw up the song on live TV. It's crazy though. There are hours of preparation for a four minute song!

Nate said it took a while for some of SDRE to get into the idea of doing this reunion after he asked all of you, what with the solo projects (your solo OK, Bear, for example) still going on, etc. Were you very worried about things not going well between you all?

Enigk: I wasn't worried about the personal relationships at all. Contrary to the myths, we actually got along quite well despite a few hiccups, which were the most interesting things (for the press) to write about. I was definitely into doing the band again when Nate approached me, but had a long term plan laid out including recording and touring OK, Bear It just wasn't the right time. I think having that time to process the reality of getting back together was essential in preparing me for it mentally.

Nate, how did this all come together?

Mendel: I had a moment free from doing Foo Fighters (we’re taking a break this year and everyone’s scrambled during their own projects right now), and I thought of doing a Fire Theft show, just for fun. This was a band that Jeremy and William, and I did a few years ago. We’d done a few tours and I thought it would be fun to do a couple of one off shows (with the Fire Theft). That was the germ of the idea to do Sunny Day. It was eventually like, “Oh, if we’re going to do one band that’s no longer in existence, why not do the other one? It might be more fun.”

So I called those guys about it and they were both kind of reluctant initially, because they were worried it would cut into their current projects. And so we kind of got a false start there. I left it alone for a year, and I thought I’d give it another try. I had some friends kind of egging me on, “Come on, you’ve got to do a Sunny Day reunion, come on!”

So I call them up and I’m like, “Hey guys, here I am again, what do you think?” And they were like, “Yeah, sounds good. We’ll have to figure out where Dan is ... and go from there.”

Much more after the jump.

Sunny Day Real Estate play the Paramount Theater tonight, 8pm, $25, all-ages, with the Jealous Sound.

So how did it go when you were starting to play again?

Mendel: We’d kind of had a dress rehearsal with the Fire Theft thing. It had been a few years, and William and I had had a difficult time when he was in the Foo Fighters for a year and a half, a couple of years. When he left that created a lot of issues for my band, and for him regarding the drums in general.

We healed a lot of that doing the Fire Theft record. It was a lot of fun, and it was not just that we and Sunny Day had a special chemistry, or that we happened upon some great songs, but that we also — there was really good chemistry with me and William playing together. He’s a great drummer number one, so there’s that. A bass player is going to want to play with a great drummer number one, because it gives you a lot more opportunities to play cool things. But I just always know where he’s at. Wherever he plays makes sense to me intuitively. And so we lock in together really easily. And I’ve got a weird way of playing, I’m not a super conventional bass player, and it kind of works with some of the things William does on the drums, he’s kind of an unconventional drummer. He’ll raise and he’ll lower, not the tempo, but the dynamic in the middle of a verse. Things like that, that people don’t really do. He’ll turn drum fills into whole parts, and I think that kind of stuff is cool and it makes sense to me.

We found a way too when we’re writing, and I kind of confirmed this because we wrote another song — I’ll do something really subtle while we’re working out a song, and he’ll pick out something and start playing around it, and then he’ll do something subtle and I’ll pick up on it and start playing around that, and without even talking we’ve written a part where it’s really cool and interesting and intricate. Without having it sit down and put it down. That’s pretty cool, it’s not super common to have the kind of musical language with somebody.

Jeremy, you've already written one song together now as the reformed band — any titles coming to your or Dan's mind now? How did that happen?

Enigk: After one of our rehearsals I went home one night completely inspired and wrote the basic structure of the song in fifteen minutes. The next day I started playing it during practice to which the guys instantly wanted to work out their parts. About fifteen minutes later we had a new song. We didn't intend to write any new music when rehearsing. It just happened. We still haven't come up with a title yet.

SDRE is described as you pouring out the passion, and Dan filling in the lyrical details. Is that accurate? And when did/do you two bring what you had/have to Nate and William?

Enigk: There are many different ways we go about writing lyrics, but that statement is more or less accurate. Usually Dan will fill in the blanks when I am stumped. The lyrics are always the last thing we do when creating a song. It's at that point that Will and Nate hear the final draft for the first time.

Nate, how do you feel about the way things are going in terms of what it means in the history of the band?

Mendel: It is odd to be doing something that is essentially kind of a nostalgia trip. And I’m trying to figure out how to wrap my head around it. Because you’re used to going out and playing songs off of the new record, and that being a springboard for coming home from the tour and writing a new record. You know what I mean? And hopefully going back and playing your new songs for people. So it’s weird to jump out of that cycle, and do something like, “OK, these records have existed for a long time, we’re playing songs that have existed for a long time.” What does that mean, you know?

I feel like we’re picking up right where we left off, years and years later, and we’re not kids anymore, not even close, and yet when we turned on those amps and picked up the guitars and sat in a room together, it was like, yesterday. Somebody starts playing a little bit of a riff and suddenly we all come in and everybody’s place is just where it’s supposed to be, it’s like, “Oh, we could write a song in an instant.” That brings up the issue of “Now what?” You know?

Was the tour intended to focus the brunt of its material on the two albums being reissued by Sub Pop, their original label?

Mendel: We did want to do songs from our first two records but we definitely wanted to do things from our third and fourth too (How It Feels To Be Something On, 1998, and The Rising Tide, 2000). But they switched tunings on those records. We were a whole step down on the first two records, and they went into standard ‘E’ tunings on the next two later ones, and it was harder for Jeremy to sing. So we started off the tour, nearly canceling a couple of shows because he was blowing his voice out. So it’s tough for him to sing those songs, so we only do one of them now (“Guitars & Video Games”).

We were planning on bringing them in and incorporating them as we went along, but it’s just been put on hold because of the way that Jeremy’s voice is. People have been coming to shows and having a very good reaction to “Guitars & Video Games,” — people seem to really like that song. And we hear a lot of requests off the third and fourth, as well. Hopefully we’ll end up doing them.

Is there anything new and exciting about playing with SDRE at this point you didn't expect? For example, has the Fire Theft contributed to the aesthetics of how the original line-up is playing — any changes, in your opinion?

Enigk: One thing that completely excited me was that when the four of us got together for the first time in years, the same instant musical chemistry was there, as if if it never left and was just waiting for us to come back.

Mendel: It’s very good, I like it. And I appreciate the fact that people still care about our band after all of these years. I mean, we haven’t put out a record in ten years, and now we’re playing to the same amount of people when they stopped. That’s pretty amazing, you know? That’s not an easy thing to do. It’s very rewarding.