We set out to see Joywave at the Magic Stick in Detroit.
Good news: I think I’ve gotten to where going to normal concerts at normal venues (aka with seating, etc.) is within my comfort zone now. Go me!
But for smaller venues, where it’s just general admission and everyone is crowding around each other, it’s definitely outside my comfort zone. This is what the Magic Stick is, so I was a bit anxious.
I don’t remember how I first heard about Joywave. It was probably one of their popular videos (both NSFW), either Tongues:
or their video with Big Data:
We strategically parked closer so we wouldn’t have to wear a jacket on the walk from the parking lot to the venue, because we’d probably get too hot in the throng of people inside.
The tickets said 7pm so we got there at like 6:40pm. The guy at the door checked our IDs and put on wristbands. He made me get rid of my water bottle, but at least he was apologetic about it.
We went pee and checked out the bowling alley there which looked cool. I miss bowling. It was one of the few things to do in the Central Valley.
I wanted to buy a water and a drink for Kels and I. I had to wait a while for the mediocre bartender to finish bantering and getting girls drinks. And then instead of asking “Who’s next?” he asked the guy who hadn’t been waiting as long what he wanted. The guy answered and they started bantering. Then while the bartender was getting his drinks, the guy said “OH, SORRY! WERE YOU NEXT? YOU WERE NEXT RIGHT??” I said it was fine and he kept saying sorry, but I notice he waited until after he had placed his drink order to have this sudden realization. I don’t think they’d have this problem in England where there’s a polite queue culture, but who knows. (To be clear, this isn’t always a problem in America. Many people are good at going “Were you next?”)
I hate bar etiquette where it’s not clear who is waiting for a drink and I have to jockey for position. This worrying about position and space would become a theme for the night. I ask the bartender for a bottle of water and a gin and tonic. He says he has no bottles of water. I see many people with bottles of water and wonder what I’ve done to deserve this. He gives me the gin and tonic and a cup of water. The people have already begun moving upstairs during this whole process and I’m mildly annoyed I’m not doing the same.
We get upstairs and it’s a big, dark room. It’s nice to take in the space when there are not so many people in it, and it was more lit up than it is when the show starts. It was very chill up there and there were at least two bars with very un-busy bartenders. I wish I would have known this before, as I could have avoided the whole previous debacle. There were a few seats that we decided not to take because people would definitely stand in front of them and then you couldn’t see anything.
It was really nice getting there early and scoping out the whole lay of the land and getting comfortable.
That said, I thought they were going to be playing a little after 7pm. Last I checked, they had no opener and the start time was 7pm. I felt bad because there weren’t too many people for them to play for, but I was happy to not be crowded.
Well, after waiting a long-ass time, I re-looked it up and realized they had updated it to “doors at 7pm”. God damn it! I could be waiting two hours?!
I was trying not to be too forlorn but I wished they had communicated the situation earlier.
Finally, at 8pm, the lights turned low and the band came out. “Joywave looks a lot different than I remember!” Kelsey said. They started playing songs we had never heard but were good nonetheless.
“We’re Almost Monday,” said the lead singer for Almost Monday and not Joywave.
I wasn’t upset because the opener was good, but I wish I had known they were going to have an opener beforehand. I get it might have been hard to know in advance, but still. Now, I know to check on the day of the concert for any updates.
“I’m Dawson,” the lead singer said. I wonder how it was having the name Dawson. I would have been one of those people in high school who would have dickishly referenced Dawson’s Creek every five minutes *bully link* (but with love). Dawson Daugherty is a pretty cool name alliteration-wise, though. He had kind of a Blake from Workaholics looking going on with the hair and a blue and yellow striped shirt.
The bassist, Luke Fabry, reminded me of my old college buddy Kris Keyston, especially with the way he wore a baseball cap. Dawson would sing or hug on Luke, which was cute. Seeing that kind of band chemistry is nice. “THAT BASSIST IS WAILING!!” one excited guy in the crowd said. I didn’t notice a particularly wailing moment, but good for him. Do comments like these make the others jelly?
The guitarist, Cole Clisby, reminded me of Wes Anderson. I don’t know if he was nervous but he was very stiff and seemed a little uncomfortable.
Their Wikipedia says they’re a “pop trio” and their website doesn’t mention the drummer. Looking him up, I see he’s “Rafa the Drummer”, who is a studio drummer just touring with them. I wonder how it feels touring but not being a part of the band. Like, you’re getting the rockstar experience but not the same level of credit? As opposed to: you’re the touring band for Elton John or whoever, and you know people are there for the main person. But with such a small group, it feels different.
When introducing the band members, Dawson also thanked their roadie. It’s always a good look to remember the “little people”.
I wonder how much the band can see the faces in the crowd. It reminds me of when I used to watch my ex-girlfriend perform in plays and I wondered if she could see me in the audience or not.
Dawson talked about how he wasn’t great at talking between songs and that Daniel from Joywave was trying to teach him crowd banter. He said Daniel was very funny on-stage.
You could see him wanting to jump around and dance more but he pointed out how tight it was up there.
Dawson seemed very stoked to be there and it was really nice to see.
He would say he was playing a song and a girl would scream and he was excited someone knew it. The same thing happened later and he said something like “Woah, that’s wild! This isn’t even released yet!” I think the girl just liked yelling as opposed to her knowing their unreleased song.
He informed the crowd that they had two or three songs left. I like when people tell you how many songs they have left.
Overall, his personality was very likable and it was cute to see a band be really happy about where they’ve made it. Their songs were very catchy and their live performance was good, even though it could have been better with more space for them and especially Dawson to jump and dance around.
Overall, they get a B-. Room for improvement might be having more space for Dawson to jump around (probably not their fault, though) and Cole feeling a little more confident on stage. That said, I wish them all the best and am excited to see where they go!
The lights came back on and people shuffled around a bit.
There’s a problem when you’re at a venue like this where, in between sets, it’s chiller and people mill about, go to the bathroom, get drinks, etc. The problem is that during this time, people are standing where everyone has a little room apart. But if you want to actually hold your good viewing position, you have to stand uncomfortably close to other people. Otherwise, other people will squeeze in between at the last second before the next band comes on.
So you can stand a comfortable distance from other people and accept that someone will probably jump in front of you, or you can eat the social cost of being really close to other groups (or be the fun extrovert that meta-communicates the situation with them and shares your love of the band and drugs, etc.) If you’re in a larger group, it’s easier because you can have more people covering. I saw people standing wider to cover a space when their friend went to the bathroom or to grab drinks.
Height is an issue too. Some girls wore obnoxiously large platform shoes, which I thought was a purely fashionable choice, but I realized the incentive: you can get a much better view. The tall dude with the short girlfriend presents a problem because the short girl wants to be upfront but the boyfriend blocks everyone.
My tall friends have talked about trying to be accommodating at concerts, but it can be a struggle. Let’s say they show up early to a show. Should someone who is shorter get to go in front of them if they showed up an hour later? How much should the tall person sacrifice in proximity so others can see? No easy answer, but it’s mostly academic given that the crowd isn’t coordinating like that. It’s like the old-school picture process with taller people in the back and shorter people in the front.
This guy and his girlfriend stood in front of us and this pissed me off. There wasn’t a lot of space, and we had left what space there was in order to not super crowd the people in front of us.
After the guy took many pictures of his girlfriend in front of the crowd, they eventually squeezed into a further position up front. We and another pair immediately moved closer to fill in the gap. The girl in the other couple and I nodded at each other in acknowledgment. Joywave came on at 9:02pm. In the jostling, we were slightly behind a big guy, but the other couple was completely behind him. I felt bad but there wasn’t much we could do even if I wanted to give up some of my space. I realized, in these sorts of situations, that besides the overall ambiance and listening to the live music in a crowd, you could end up essentially paying for a 6 inch x 6 inch window in which you occasionally see the band members. Like that’s the amount of space you have between people’s heads to view the stage. So with this small boxed view, you’re paying for that and I guess being able to be close to people.
Daniel Armbruster appeared with his trademark glasses and mustache.
Joey Morinelli, one of the guitarists, reminded me a lot of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They could bring Zelenskyy on and do one of those play-offs the way Chad Smith and Will Ferrell did.
They had a little setup of a fake car wash with spinning brushes and the back of a car with a Michigan license plate.
The most common problem I have at concerts (besides the other fans) is the vocals are all over the place, either occasionally off-key or just quiet in parts or lacking oomph. Some of this could be a mixing problem but I think the singer is the biggest part of it.
Kelsey, who knows much more about singing than I do, described it as the lead singer’s falsetto being quieter than his regular voice. Since they’re not changing the volume on his microphone during the concert, it’s harder to hear certain notes.
Joywave discussed not having toured in a long time so the ring rust could have contributed. But I doubt it because so many bands I’ve seen have this problem.
The show starting after so long was having an effect. I got real tired of standing. I would never last in the military standing around and carrying heavy packs.
Daniel did light crowd work in between the songs. He wasn’t George Carlin but he’d do fine in a smaller venue for standup.
He talked about Covid of course and asked the crowd if they had been to virtual concerts. Some people raised their hands. Then he said they had been asked to do them but thought virtual concerts were stupid. I was like “Sorry people who raised your hands!” haha.
Daniel would occasionally ask the crowd to do something and oftentimes they were sort of lackluster. It’s interesting, sometimes you have to really own it, with full enthusiastic energy, asking the crowd to do something to get them to do it. But when you’re asking the crowd to do something, you’re being vulnerable and it can be hard, like the more you put into it the more likely they are to do it, but if it flops, it flops hard.
Daniel said they famously never played their most popular song on Spotify. But he said the pandemic, and the fact that it was played on a SpaceX flight, changed all that.
I’m against this hipster bullshit. I get you may get tired of something, or you think you have a bunch of better songs the way Van Morrison feels about Brown Eyed Girl, or how Kurt Cobain didn’t like Smells Like Teen Spirit and preferred a song like Drain You (although he admitted he may not have liked Drain You as much if it would have been as popular as Teen Spirit).
Paul McCartney talked about how he could be like Bob Dylan and perform whatever he feels like, but when he was a boy and saw a concert, he wanted his money’s worth, so he wants people to get their money’s worth:
Well, I’m always reminded of when I was a kid and I used to go to shows. This was pre-pre-pre-Beatles. I was just a little kid in Liverpool with no money, and I’d be saving up forever. It’d be really good if the show satisfied me – and it really pissed me off if it didn’t. So I have this thing, which is that these people have paid money. They’re not necessarily all going be that flush, so let’s give them a good night out. Let’s have a party. Let’s make it a fiesta kind of thing, so everyone goes home and thinks, “Yeah, I didn’t mind spending that money.” That’s the philosophy behind a lot of what I do.
It’s also one of those events that is super common for one party but is life-changing for another. Think about a birth. A midwife, labor and delivery nurse, or OBGYN see many births in just one day. It’s their job. But for the parent, it’s a huge life-changing thing, so it’s important to remember it from their perspective and take that into account. For the performer, they could have played their hit song for the ten-thousandth time and be tired of it, but a fan could have saved up just to hear that song and have it take them back to a special moment in their life.
Yes, they can do the Bob Dylan thing and play whatever. I saw Bob despite knowing he wouldn’t play any hits. But I guarantee you every person in the audience would have preferred that he play some hits.
And with Joywave, their setlist stats show they play their #2 and #3 songs, so why be a hipster only about their #1?
Anyways, they played their biggest and best songs at the end and Daniel sang with the oomph that he needed. So it shows he can do it! He just hadn’t been. These last songs were really nice.
If he would have sang every song like he did the last three, it would have been an A concert. But overall, it was a C+.
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