It’s hard to keep a touring band in operation for more than 25 years.

It’s all the more challenging when your name is Anti-Flag and your mission goes well beyond entertainment.

In “Beyond Barricades: The Story of Anti-Flag,” a Jon Nix documentary about the Pittsburgh punk band premiering Saturday, founder and frontman Justin Geever (aka Justin Sane) explains, “I wanted to name the band Anti-Flag because every time corrupt politicians start a war, they pull out the flag, and with the flag they bring this corrupted patriotism.”

Sane was 19 at the time with little concern for how divisive that name was or how it would age with the band as it became more established.

In the months after 9/11, for example, when flags were flying from cars and Americans were circling the wagons, Anti-Flag quietly went through an existential crisis. Their records were pulled from store shelves and Hot Topic returned all their merch. (Coincidentally, guitarist Chris Head’s father was outside the World Trade Center when the planes hit.)

“In those next couple weeks, it became a discussion about whether we’re still a band,” bassist Chris Barker, aka #2, says. 

Anti-Flag chose to press on, becoming early crusaders against the Iraq War: “We knew the response would be violence to violence and we knew there had to be an opposing voice to that,” says Pat Thetic, the band’s drummer and spokesman for Punk Rock Voters during the Bush-Gore campaign.

The aftermath of 9/11 is one of several threats to Anti-Flag’s existence documented in the 83-minute film. The first goes back to the early departure of bassist Andy Wright, aka Andy Flag, who left because he and Sane were “too strong-headed” to co-exist in the same band.

It left Sane and Thetic in a frustrating search for a bassist that ended up bringing Head in as a second guitarist. They would settle on #2, a brash young fan who came into the band, a la Sid Vicious, with more punk attitude than musical know-how.

“He couldn't pay like four notes. He was terrible. It was amazing how bad he was,” says Sane, who nonetheless saw something in him.

To Thetic, he just seemed “like a nutjob.”

Not only would he be a quick study on bass, #2 became a hot spark: Anti-Flag’s second singer and a fiery hypeman to preside over the insane circle pits shown in the film, mostly when the band is overseas.

Turning up to sing their praises and speak to their own punk ambitions are Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Billy Bragg, Tim McIlrath (Rise Against), Brian Baker (Bad Religion), Chris Cresswell (The Flatliners, Hot Water Music), and Tom May and Greg Barnett (The Menzingers).

Morello recalls seeing Anti-Flag at the Key Club in Los Angeles. “I was just blown away by the unapologetic policial ferocity of the show.”

Anti-Flag would go on to open for Rage on the Battle of Los Angeles Tour in 2000 and, in turn, Morello would open for Anti-Flag as a fledgling acoustic act when Rage split several years later.

“Beyond Barricades” follows Anti-Flag’s arc through the tragedy of Barker’s sister’s murder, the flooding of its warehouse due to Hurricane Ivan, and its “sellout” to RCA for 2008’s “The Bright Lights of America.” 

Each of those events thrust Anti-Flag into crisis mode.

In the case of RCA, where the staff that signed the band had departed, Barker says, “We saw the writing on the wall. We knew we were done with RCA the day the album came out.”

“We made a deal with the devil and took his gold,” Thetic says.

Rather than be the band that broke up after its disappointing major-label fling, Anti-Flag took that gold, built its own studio and label and went in, just the four of them, to record one of its most aggressive albums, “The People or the Gun,” in 2009.

It also “unlocked the world” for Anti-Flag, who have toured consistently six or seven months out of the year, playing some of the biggest festivals on the planet.

On the flipside, the lifestyle, as all the punk musicians in the film attest, takes its toll on their personal relationships — romantic and otherwise. Among the rewards, though, besides the thrill of getting on stage and sending out the message, is the long-term impact on fans.

The “Beyond Barricades” credits roll with testimonials from fans all over the world who became social workers, social scientists, lawyers, activists, etc., tracing their inspiration back to Anti-Flag and the political punk movement.

“Things don’t change from above,” Morello says. “They change from below.”

“Beyond Barricades” premieres at 5 p.m.Friday at antiflag.veeps.com/

First Published: September 29, 2020, 2:43 p.m.