Rumors have been circulating around Richmond, Virginia, lately. Some locals have heard rumblings that the members of AVAIL, the hometown punk heroes who have not played together in over a decade, have been working up to a reunion. Most have dismissed it, though, for two reasons. For one, rumors like these seem to crop up every six months or so and nothing ever comes of them. And two, the members have said repeatedly and emphatically over the years that they will never, ever get back together. But, like every band that says they’ll never reunite, AVAIL is reuniting.

You’ve always said no to offers for the band to get back together. Why now? Well, first and foremost, that is an exact quote and you can quote me right back when I say I reserve the right to change my fucking opinion at any point in my life. [Laughs_] Truthfully, and I can only speak for myself, the internet notified me that last year was the 20th anniversary of the AVAIL record called _ Over the James . I don’t listen to my own music. I don’t listen to much rock ‘n’ roll or punk rock music, at all. Shit, I pretty much only listen to classical music at this point [since] my ears are so fucked up from live music over the years. But on that 20th anniversary, my daughters and I were living in this sort of not great neighborhood, in this apartment, and we put it on. They were like, “This is your crazy band, daddy.” And I was like, “Yeah, it’s crazy.” But I started listening and I was like, “This is fucking good.” So we put it on again, and I noticed that my children were singing some of the lyrics, just on the second listen. It stood the test of time somehow. It was at that moment that I said, “Oh man, this would be fun to do again.”

“I hope you humiliate us in this, I think it’d be hilarious,” AVAIL frontman Tim Barry tells me by phone, knowing full well how cliché it is for a band to come out of retirement after they’d sworn they wouldn’t. But, lest anyone accuse AVAIL of cashing in for a big Coachella check, the band is doing their reunion in the most AVAIL way possible: One show at The National in Richmond on July 19. The 1,500-person venue is larger than the small clubs and dives the band used to play when they were active in the late 90s and early 2000s, but they want to do it once and do it right. Barry won’t say if there are other shows in the works but he doesn’t completely rule it out either.

Months later, I was talking to Beau [Butler], my oldest friend from kindergarten and former bandmate in AVAIL, and we were shooting the shit on the phone. I said, “I’d play a show if all I had to do was write the setlist and sing.” What he understood in that was that I wasn’t going to be the manager, which is what I was in AVAIL. He mentioned it to everybody and we sat down and talked and said, “Well, if we were gonna do something, what would we do?” So we said, let’s play Richmond.

But we didn’t know if we could play music anymore. The band Iron Reagan quietly lent us their practice space. The band, minus me and Beau, got together and practiced a few times and didn’t want everyone to come in and stand there with their arms crossed, staring at middle-aged men trying to remember songs they haven’t played in 12 or 13 years. So Erik [Larson], the drummer, called me and said, “Come on in whenever you’re ready.” So I went to Iron Reagan’s practice spot with no rehearsal—I didn’t warm up, I didn’t review the songs, I didn’t know which songs they were gonna play—and I plugged in my microphone. There was not even much talking. They just started. It was a fucking whirlwind. They sounded fucking fantastic. I don’t know how a brain can retain so many stupid fucking lyrics, but I was able to make it through all of the songs, pretty much.

AVAIL shows were always famously energetic. Do you worry about the physical effort it will take to pull off a show now that you’re in your forties?

Yeah, that’s an absolutely legitimate question, and one that I don’t have an answer for because I try not to worry. I think that everyone’s pretty comfortable in their skin. I don’t think anyone in AVAIL feels they need to act 90s punk or replicate what we did in our 20s. In fact, I generally think that’s an embarrassment. I can’t speak for everyone, but AVAIL played very small venues, so the energy was collaborative between the crowd and people on stage, almost because it was forced to be that way. If a person from New York can imagine AVAIL at CBGBs or a person from Chicago can imagine AVAIL at the Fireside Bowl or a person from the Bay Area can imagine AVAIL at Gilman St, the energy was contagious. But AVAIL is gonna be playing a venue that fits over a thousand people. But I don’t want to be the guy who jumps in the air on the first song and sprains his ankle and limps around the stage for the rest of the show, which sounds funny but it’s the type of thing that people do.

AVAIL has a quite a good standing in the history of punk. Do you worry about how reuniting might affect the legacy of the band?

Absolutely. AVAIL stopped playing—I can never remember when—let’s say 12 or 13 years ago. So that’s right at the cusp of the technology that’s been offered to us in the last ten years. So much of what I think is interesting about AVAIL is that a lot of it is folklore. It’s stories that get passed down instead of actual, quotable interviews on YouTube or endless cell phone videos hashtagged #availrichmond. There’s a lot of risk in ruining people’s memories by presenting a contemporary version of a band they enjoyed growing up. To add to that, the embarrassment of the sort of nostalgia culture and reunion culture of bands is sort of unprecedented and nothing that I expected when I was younger. So it’s safe to lump AVAIL into all of that because we’re no different. We’re sharing in the same nostalgia culture and reunion fetishes that people have these days. It’s very possible we could ruin your memories of seeing AVAIL in the 90s and early 2000s by reuniting, but I think… it’s gonna be fun as hell. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it if it didn't feel right, and it does. And then people can leave us the fuck alone.

You’ve had a solo career that’s been going on for more than a decade, and you’ve told me that some of your fans don’t even know about AVAIL. Is that right?

I would actually phrase it that many of my fans don’t know about AVAIL. Only the people who share the road with me see that firsthand, like the merch people who help me along the way, hear people apologize and say, “I’ve never heard Tim’s old band” or “I listened to Tim’s old band. I don’t like it.” It’s a completely different group of people.