The Posies’ 30th anniversary tour makes a stop at ONCE Ballroom on Friday, June 15. Pictured L to R: Mike Musburger, Ken Stringfellow, Jon Auer, and Dave Fox. — Photo by Alan Lawrence

By Blake Maddux

Having been in a band since he was “technically not allowed to enter the venues” that he performed in, Ken Stringfellow says that business and pleasure “have been intertwined for so long, I wouldn’t really understand how to unravel them.”

Stringfellow and Jon Auer were teenagers when they formed The Posies in Bellingham, Washington. Both were yet to turn 20 when their debut album, Failure, came out in 1988.

Failure was anything but that, and the band released Dear 23, Frosting on the Beater, and Amazing Disgrace on the Geffen Records imprint DSG between 1990 and 1996. In 1992, Ringo Starr covered the Dear 23 track Golden Blunders on his album Time Takes Time. The following year, the Posies recorded the song Going, Going, Gone for the Reality Bites soundtrack, which sold more than two million copies.

In addition to being in The Posies until their initial break up in 1998, Stringfellow and Auer were members of the reunited 1970s cult band Big Star with original members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens from 1993 until Chilton’s death in 2010.

Since 2005, Stringfellow and Auer have released three more Posies albums: Every Kind of Light, Blood/Candy, and Solid States. Stringfellow has also toured and recorded with – among others – R.E.M., and has several solo albums to his credit, while Auer has released several EPs and one LP.

In commemoration of the band’s 30th anniversary this year, deluxe reissues of the aforementioned Posies albums from the nineties are scheduled for release between June and October. Each will be available as a double CD and LP in what Stringfellow calls “exhaustive versions.”

The band is raising the money for licensing fees with the help of a PledgeMusic drive.

The Posies’ 30th anniversary tour – which includes the Frosting on the Beater rhythm section of Dave Fox (bass) and Mike Musburger (drums) – stops at ONCE on Friday, June 15. Stringfellow spoke to The Somerville Times by phone while waiting for his flight to Europe out of Logan Airport.

The Somerville Times: Your indicated in your email that you were in Canton, MA. What brought you there?

Ken Stringfellow: I am producing an album for the artist Richie Parsons. He was in Unnatural Axe and was there in the first wave of real punk bands from Boston. We did a record already together a couple of years ago. He’s got a rock ‘n’ roll spirit, for sure, that’s the centerpiece for a lot of his music, but he allows me to take him in more directions, and it’s fun for him to see what directions we can get out of his songs. We just tracked 12 songs with, for example, Malcolm Travis, who was the drummer in Sugar and played in Human Sexual Response as well.

TST: What do the forthcoming Posies reissues include?

KS: For each album, it’s a double CD. The album program takes up a portion of one CD, and we’ve filled up that disc with bonus material, and then the entire second disc is bonus material. I would say about 85% of the bonus material has never been released in any form. We kept finding more and more stuff, alternate versions and a lot of full-on songs. We put out this four-disc box set [At Least, At Last] in 2000, and even that didn’t cover everything that’s out there.

TST: The Posies’ album sales never won recognition from the RIAA, but did you at least get a platinum disc for contributing to the Reality Bites soundtrack?

KS: Oh yeah, yeah. That actually was very useful at that time, because that was not part of our deal with our label. They gave us a pass on that one – that came out on RCA. I made significant five-figure amounts of royalties for years just from that album. From the one song.

TST: How did you and Jon become members of the reunited Big Star with Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens?

KS: The idea of Alex playing Big Star music had been bandied about and tried many times by many people, but Alex was never into it. And Jody was getting kind of comfortable with the fact that he could just, you know, pass the question on to Alex, get the “No,” and then politely decline the offer. He had gotten used to that fact. Then one day Alex said, “Yeah, sure. Why not? I’ve got nothing better to do.”

[Big Star guitarist] Chris Bell had long been dead and [Big Star bassist] Andy Hummel wasn’t interested, so then they’re like, Well, who could do it? All the known significant Big Star fans, like [Paul] Westerberg, Mike Mills from R.E.M., Matthew Sweet, they were talking to all these people about trying to do it and they all declined for various reasons. R.E.M. in 1993 had too much shit going on, and Westerberg and Matthew Sweet both were like, I’m not gonna be the guy that gets up on stage and fucks up my favorite band. And they asked Chris Stamey [of The dB’s] to do it, and for some reason he didn’t do it either. I’ve never really understood why.

Meanwhile, underneath all of this, there’s Jon and I lobbying heavily – you know, just begging – to be included in this. And Jody, actually, from the get-go suggested, “You know, these guys in The Posies, they did this single and it sounds just like Big Star. I think they should do it.” And we weren’t popular enough. We hadn’t released Frosting on the Beater yet. They wanted marquee-value names to help make this a big news item.

In the end, as other people said no, I just kept on it. I found that guy from the radio station in Missouri who was one of the two hosts of the show. I basically tackled him at South by Southwest, and said like, “I will do this. You have no option but me. I will be doing this. I will make your life miserable until I am this guy.” With Jody’s already pushing for it and my persistence, they relented and we got the gig. [“That guy” was Jeff Breeze, a University of Missouri student who worked at the campus radio station, KCOU. He is now the host of Pipeline! on WMBR. “The show” was the University of Missouri’s annual SpringFest, at which Big Star performed its first reunion show.]

TST: What was the first record that you ever given or bought with your own money?

KS: The first record I ever bought with my own money was ELO’s album Discovery. 1979 or whatever. My mom had given me the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. That was kind of my record. Star Wars, when it came out in 1977, my parents gave me that. They kind of gave me stuff, but the ELO one is significant because I chose it. And my mom wasn’t happy. She was like, “Why are you spending your money on records?”

TST: Did the album have a permanent musical impact on you?

KS: It’s a very melodic band, so yeah. It’s hard for me to make music that doesn’t have a high-melodic content. It’s possible. I can force myself to do it, but my love of a great melody is just hard for me to suppress.

The Posies with Scarlet Sails. Friday, June 15 (doors at 8, show at 9). ONCE Ballroom, 156 Highland Ave.