When Pro Teens’ lead singer and guitarist Andy Phipps posed in a red jersey for his little league photo at age 12, he held up his bat and sighed.
“I was really upset because I wanted to do a certain pose in the picture and they weren’t letting me do it,” Phipps said. “So I just looked at the camera apathetically.”
Today, the photo emblazons the cover of Pro Teens’ first full-length eponymous album, which Phipps said targets the perpetual angst of post-teen adulthood.
“A lot of it has to do with my immaturity,” Phipps said. “My dad actually called me a professional teenager once when he was chewing me out for something. I wanted to satirize that (with Pro Teens), but also embrace it.”
However, Phipps’ immersion into music started long before his teenage years.
“I picked up a guitar when I was in fifth grade,” Phipps said. “My brother gave me this little Johnson guitar — like a starter guitar — and he taught me Weezer’s ‘Sweater Song.’ That was the first song I knew.”
While maintaining a B-average at school, Phipps said playing the guitar would often dominate his attention.
“The music stuck with me,” Phipps said. “It would be in my head too often. I would be in class, and I would stop paying attention because something would start playing in my head.”
So, when Phipps decided to create his first band, Vague, he said he and his friends at Mountain Sky Middle School would pull influence from early-‘90s alternative bands.
“My brothers were both off in college and I was still in eighth grade, but they left Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ and an album by Modest Mouse,” Phipps said. “That changed my life. I got so into that.”
However, Phipps’ presence in Arizona’s local music scene catapulted at age 18 when his second band, St. Ranger, began opening for major alternative bands such as STRFKR.
“We would get asked to play a lot of touring band shows,” Phipps said. “I don’t think Pro Teens really plays those kinds of shows.”
Pro Teens, which began in February 2014, instead possesses what Phipps said is “a surf-y Michael Jackson sound.”
Isaac Parker, the band’s synthesizer and guitarist, said the six-person band takes whatever Phipps brings to practice and builds upon it while ensuring to hold true to his vision.
“With a lot of songs, he’ll just come at us with a skeleton,” Parker said. “He’ll have a bridge and a chorus or a verse and bridge and then he’ll just let us all hash it out.”
Parker said working with Phipps is an artistically stimulating experience.
“He’s one of the best people I’ve ever worked with,” Parker said. “He’s insanely creative, high-output and he’s just a really excellent, open-minded collaborator. He has the perfect amount of possession of his own art.”
Kiki Hackett, who saw Pro Teens perform several of its new songs at a concert in Flagstaff on Oct. 2, said the band leads a strong stage presence.
“I think that they have a really accessible sound and that they do what they do well,” Hackett said. “I don’t think that kind of surf-y music is as prominent in Arizona, which might have some play into why they stand out.”
However, Phipps’ interest in becoming a professional teenager still stands.
“I want to be a sex icon,” Phipps said, laughing. “I want to be like Madonna. I want to be a part of the club scene and have our name in diamonds. I want to be obnoxious.”
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