- Jun 10, 2022

THRICE and BAYSIDE (A Parent's Perspective) Show Review

Back in March of this year, west coast alternative indie rockers THRICE announced their co-headlining tour featuring fellow alt. indie rockers from the east coast BAYSIDE with the support of an up-and-coming band ANXIOUS, who just dropped their debut album "Little Green House" this year. The co-headlining duo dropped a slew of tour dates that trickle all over the east coast ending in Texas at the end of June.

Friday, June 3rd, 2022. The indie emo rockers rolled into the city of Pittsburgh, PA which was also the first day of the tour. In my nearly 25 years of going to concerts, this was my first show that a band kicked off their tour in my city so I was excited to see what that would be like. The tour would kick off at the fairly new Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks PA, just outside of Pittsburgh. The Roxian is one of my new favorite venues in "The Burgh", having only been there once for a show right before the pandemic hit, it was definitely nice to be back.

At around 7:00 PM The Roxian's doors opened. The weather had been bright, sunny, and clear all day and ready fans piled into the nearly 1,500-capacity venue where opening supporting act ANXIOUS took the stage. Anxious ripped through a killer set of songs from their aforementioned 2022 album Little Green House, with my first impression of them being a reminiscent mixture of old The Story So Far mixed with Tiny Moving Parts with a splash of each of the co-headliners in the mix. It's obvious why this band was on the tour, their energy is contagious and a benchmark for what was to come in the night. Anxious is easily one of my new favorite bands with the tracks "Call From You" and "Your One Way Street" getting stuck in my head on almost a daily basis now.

After a brief intermission, and a ton of Ramones on the PA system, the one, the only BAYSIDE hit the stage. Lead singer Anthony Raneri took the stage first by himself with the rest of the band following as he played the opening riff to their title track The Walking Wounded from their 2008 album. A very quick and seamless transition into Already Gone from 2011's Killing Time and then back to The Walking Wounded record with They're Not Horses, They're Unicorns and Bayside was already half a six-pack deep in songs. After a bit of crowd banter with Anthony and guitarist Jack joking how they're dressed to play the other one's guitar, with Jack being more entirely fitted for the Les Paul and vice versa for Anthony with the Gibson Explorer, the band jumped into 2019's Prayers from their Interrobang album, the latest studio album from the band.

One of the loudest crowd pops from the night came from Anthony asking the crowd if they heard the latest Bayside track Strangest Faces where he announced that "this show will be our live debut of this song." Title track Interrobang followed suit followed by an onslaught of old school fan favorites including "I've Been Dead All Day" to which bassist Nick Ghanbarian said "It's been quite a while since we've played that one live", and the "sickest song" of the night, pun intended, "Sick, Sick Sick." Bayside took it all the way back to 2005's self-titled album with "Tortures of the Damned", "Montuak", and "Blame It On Bad Luck" before closing out the night with fan favorite "Devotion and Desire."

At intermission, Ramones, Sex Pistols, and other founding-father punk rock bands blasted over the PA system to a sweaty and eager Pittsburgh audience. As I looked around, I realized the generational gap in the audience. Grandparents were with their sons and grandkids, middle-aged couples sat up top in the balcony sipping IPAs while the 20-something crowd tried like hell all night to insight a moshpit with actually some success as the "over 30 crowd" hung back in the pit or near the merch booth and bar. It was pretty fucking awesome to see such a diverse crowd which really goes to show the level of musicianship and catchiness by both headlining, and early 2000s punk rock alumni.

At approximately 10 pm THRICE hit the stage, and as the lights faded to black with a roaring audience, my brain raced for some reason to all of the shows that I've ever been to in the past and I suddenly felt embarrassment on the inside, because I realized that in all my years of attending concerts, this was my very first time seeing Thrice live despite being a fan for years. My embarrassment grew to excitement as the band walked out to the eerie intro to 2007's "Firebreather" and then wasted no time jumping into "Black Honey", from 2016's "To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere" (TBEITBN).

It was great to hear lead singer Dustin Kensrue throw love to Pittsburgh saying "there's no better place to start a tour than here tonight" before heading into "Scavengers" from last year's Horizons/East studio album. It was weird hearing Scavengers live and with a full band since the acoustic version has been on damn near every playlist I've made this year since it dropped. The loudest crowd pop of the night definitely had to go to the unexpected silence followed by Thrice kicking into their 2003 smash hit "The Artist In The Ambulance" followed by "Stare At The Sun" from the same record. The band had a "slow" pallet cleanser with the slow and industrial "Like Moths to Flames" from 2005's "Vheissu" album. The opening track to (TBEITBN) "Hurricane" was up next, another fan favorite followed by an unexpected cover of The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" before diving into and closing out the night with the insanely dynamic "The Earth Will Shake" which is one of the most emotional songs I've ever heard live from a band.

I gained a newfound love for opening band ANXIOUS as well as hit with an overwhelming amount of nostalgia with the co-headlining duo of Thrice and Bayside, giving me the reminiscent high school memories of drunkenly singing The Artist in the Ambulance at house parties with friends and trying to learn how to play the harmonized guitar parts with my brother to Bayside's "Devotion and Desire". As expected, my first THRICE show didn't disappoint. All three bands were so polished and tight even on the first night of the tour that it was like listening to their studio albums with crowd chants and screams dubbed in.