Like athletes right before a big game, Tiny Moving Parts don’t like to eat much before a show. It just bogs them down. Fries—those they do eat. And frequently.

“I bet we eat fries like, 80% of days, at least once,” Billy Chevalier, drummer of the family band says, gazing at the menu in front of him. The trio, comprised of brothers Billy (drums) and Matt Chevalier (bass) and their cousin Dylan Mattheisen (vocals and guitar), have just finished sound check for their Philadelphia show and have wandered down the street to Fishtown’s Johnny Brenda’s. Mattheisen looks comfortable in a tee and basketball shorts, though his most prominent accessory is a gaping smile—silent sometimes, full of laughter others. His cousins both don jeans and mustaches. Billy, the most talkative of the three, looks the part of a rockstar (or a dad from the ‘90s) with his yellow tinted sunglasses. Matt is more reserved, though his favorite french fry joint is Applebees.

The band’s latest full length, Celebrate, is taking them on a North American headlining tour, bringing nostalgic-leaning math rock to stages across the country. The melodies are familiar, like something you’d swore you’d heard in your adolescence, those songs that now evoke memories, then were the soundtrack to which they were created. “Saying the words ‘I’ll see you around’ / Resonates a pleasant sound / Saying the words ‘I’ll see you around’ / Left an awful taste in my mouth” Mattheisen sings on “Minnesota,” a track about goodbyes. 

“It's fun to be personal because [you get] deeper connections with people,” he says. “I don’t like to be super specific about things. I like it when people can paint the picture themselves and make it relatable to them in some ways. I am writing about specific things but I don’t like being selfish: it’s all about me, my life, because it’s not. It’s about everybody.”

Some would call it emo, but they don’t worry about categorization. The record’s anthemic riffs and exuberant vocals are offset with the insecurities of being a twenty-something who still lives in a town of 3,000 in Minnesota despite getting the opportunity to travel around the world. Which they do.

Regardless of all the traveling and angst, they’ve never had the fries at Johnny Brenda’s before, so they’re going to give them a shot.

“I’ll have the fish and chips,” Billy says. “Does chips mean fries?”

The bar quickly fills. A public art performance is set to begin in moments on the street not far from the outdoor seating area where the band currently sits. There’s a lot of hustle and bustle that’s typical for the northeast, but atypical for the guys who grew up in the small Minnesota town of Benson. In between working shifts at their family’s grocery store and playing video games, the guys would play music to keep themselves busy as kids. Eventually they began playing gigs at Benson’s two bars, sometimes playing their parents’ high school reunions.

“We had to play Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty covers the whole time,” Mattheisen says. “It was funny as heck back then but I remember being like, ‘This is stupid, we’re not playing punk rock, we’re playing this old stuff we don’t like!’” 

They quickly outgrew Benson and began performing frequently in the nearby college town of Fargo and eventually Minneapolis where they began to gain traction. Their debut, This Couch is Long & Full of Friendship dropped in 2013 and it’s follow-up Pleasant Living arrived the year after. Wrought with relatable confessions, Tiny Moving Parts fell in line with the likes of The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball.

Heading into Celebrate, the threesome continued Pleasant Living writing sessions with Mattheisen driving all of seven minutes to the Chevalier’s house to play music in the basement.

Although life in Benson is hardly the pinnacle of excitement—they do like to play golf in their spare time there—it’s life on the road that’s the true adventure: new cities, new people, lots of memes.

“When you sit in a van all day, you’ve got nothing else to do but look at memes,” Matt says slyly.

They’re big fans of Dat Boi, Suh Dude and frequent ironic utilization of “lit,” though they’re afraid it might actually fall into their vernacular. The fries, though, are lit. But it’s getting a little too close to show time and the meal must come to a close if, like athletes, they want to perform to the best of their ability. Because, after all, this is their job—and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I went to school for graphic design so if we broke up I’d do that,” Matt begins. “I don't’ want to do that, I’d much rather do this.”