All it took was one question to turn Kim Warnick's tone from friendly and matter-of-fact into terse, almost rude. I'd tiptoed around questions about the band's history of drummers and permanent drummer Mike Musberger, their split with SubPop Records, even about how the band got its name. But this subject went over the line. Although the question seemed perfectly innocent, the Fastbacks' bassist and lead vocalist wasn't about to let me off the hook. A lifetime of frustration was about to blow, and there would be no stopping her now. Things were about to get ugly, and I, who had opened Pandora's Box, had no choice but to accept the consequences.

"I don't think I'd do an interview if it was a magazine about rock and roll and football," said Warnick, whose sweet, albeit sometimes bumpy, vocal style has become the band's signature. "That sucks. It's probably because I don't understand anything about it, but I don't like the shape of the people that are playing it or the shape of the people that go see it. "Don't get me started about football," she continued. "Now baseball -- see how mellow that was?"

She says she has a greater affinity for playing the game than for watching it. "I never really watched it," she said. "I probably know more about it now than I ever have, because how can you not, living in the same city as Ken Griffey Jr.? I'm more aware of it, but I just hate sports so much.

"Not that I hate 'em; I just don't care. It's so funny. I don't understand how people can't be freaked out about a certain bridge in a song or guitar solo or a band, but it's just like that with sports. I think, "God, why are they there?" But they would probably think the same about how I am about music. It's interesting to me. Forever, I just thought "That's stupid." I'm finally starting to understand that maybe they're passionate about it like I am."

I had no idea that a lifetime of resentment could be sparked by an innocent question about sports. But it's probably unlikely as the thought of The Fastbacks still being together and putting out records 20 years after they formed -- and completing possibly their best ever, The Day That Didn't Exist (spinART Records).

"You think of bands like The Who and the Rolling Stones, and you hear of all the ups and downs, the crazy changes and stuff," said lead guitarist, songwriter and producer Kurt Bloch with a laugh. "And then you think of a band like ours -- kind of paralleling a lot of bands like that, with one-billionth the success.

"We all like playing music, I guess. I'm a little bit afraid of losing the fun of just playing music by putting too much pressure on music to do anything like pay our rent or anything like that," he added. "Don't get me wrong. We would be overjoyed to be superpopular, but every passing year I see how that urge to be successful kills so many good bands. And that doesn't mean the people in those bands are bad or unrealistic or stupid or anything. But the more goals you set for yourself, if they're not met, the more you're going to be depressed." Based on that thinking, it's easy to see why it's 2000, and The Fastbacks are still here, even if based on Bloch's lyrics, they've already died 1,000 deaths.

"People probably look at a band like ours and think we're either really successful or really happy hobbyists," he said. "The band isn’t a job for us. It isn't our job, and it's not our hobby, really either. It's somewhere in between or somewhere on a different plane than job or hobby. It's what I like to do the best."

What they do best is what they've done best for the past two decades. It's a sound that somehow stealthed its way through the "Seattle Scene," yet has outlived it and the accompanying "Seattle Sound." "I think we were only helped by the Seattle Scene and the Seattle Sound," said Bloch. "Even though we weren't directly a part of the Seattle Scene or the Seattle Sound, we got some of the benefit of it. And since we were not totally lumped in with that, I don't think we suffered any of the consequences of the Seattle Sound burnout that probably happened."

Not only haven't The Fastbacks burned out, they've managed to stay true to their formula. Consistency of sound has been as much a trademark of the band as the roaring guitars, sweet melodies, challenging (or challenged, depending on who you ask) harmonies and lyrics that would drive Polyanna to drink. "It's funny," stated Warnick, "I was listening to The Question Is No CD the other day, and I thought about some old, old stuff. I can still listen to it, which is good. Some of it is a little questionable singing, but it's, what, 20 years old? We were starting out, and really it's not that much different. I mean, the singing and playing is a lot better, the songwriting has gotten better, but it's kind of the same. That's kind of cool. It makes me happy that we haven't changed too much."

What did change on The Day That Didn't Exist was the band's work ethic. For a band that Warnick admits, "doesn't seem to work very much," The Fastbacks sweated the details in advance and came into the studio prepared and at the top of their game. This session would be all or nothing. "I think a lot of rock music benefits from being stripped down to what it really sounds like," Bloch said. "On The Day That Didn't Exist, pretty much everything was recorded as it was. We went into a nice studio, for a short amount of time, after practicing a bunch, and just set up like we were doing a show, and recorded the songs, then tried as hard as we could to not add a bunch more stuff to it. I wanted it to be like a gig. We just happened to be in a big room with nice equipment in it."

Sweating the details made a difference. Sonicnet.com reviewed The Day That Didn't Exist as, "this year's most hopeless record, suffused with the idea that any effort is useless, and continually drifting back to the idea of escaping from the planet, or disconnecting from time itself." That review gets a chuckle from Warnick, but not an argument. "I think we need to pull that review and put it in our press kit," she said. "If we ever make one." Bloch, too, sounds satisfied with the result. "I think this last record is kind of a milestone. A milestone that looks very much like the last milestone, which looks very much like the last milestone, and they're spread out pretty far. Yet each milestone is definitely a milestone in its own way."

The 20-year milestone is certainly special, and the band's responsibilities have shifted and are starting to fit into the category of "real life." The band will soon add a new member to the family -- no, it's not a new drummer -- as guitarist and co-vocalist Lulu Gargiulo is expecting a child. "I think everybody's just growing up more and starting to not take things for granted. To be a band for 20 years and still love it and still like the people you're in the band with is a pretty spectacular thing, and it doesn't happen very often," said Warnick. "And if it does, the band pretty much is horrible by then. They've already made their really great record, and they're just limping along. I think we're still making okay records, and I'm still pretty happy about it all.

"Kurt even said once joking, "You can't even quit this band," she continued. "It's gone past the point of quitting now. What would be the point? It's not like we're working so hard that we're burned out. We don't do enough to get burned out. I still have so much fun playing. I still can't wait to hear what songs he has. I still can't wait to make the next record, so that's at least another year right there." "The way I look at it, we're not under any pressure to do anything in particular," concluded Bloch. "We're not popular enough that anybody else is making their living because of our existence, so there's not a lot of outside pressure to keep doing stuff. We don't have a management team and a road crew pressuring us to do anything. So we can just do things as we get things to do. As long as we can keep doing that, it seems like there's no reason we can't last forever."

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