The Rooftop at Pier 17 – 12 AUG 2022
The weather; the artists; it was just like heaven
Andrew McMahon and The Wilderness and Dashboard Confessional brought their Hello Gone Days tour to Manhattan for a lovely Friday evening on the Rooftop at Pier 17. I can not imagine there is a more perfect venue for this, the softer side of our scene. With the Brooklyn Bridge serving as the backdrop on a perfect, lightly breezed, 70 degree evening, the scene was set for a relaxing and nostalgic evening.
The show opened up with NJ’s Armor For Sleep, who are well on their way to a triumphant return with the upcoming The Rain Museum. 30 minutes never seemed so short as AFS played a blistering set that felt far too short. This wasn’t an opening band looking to make their mark. This was an opening band who had left an impression years ago and chose to use their time to deepen that imprint on our collective psyche.
The band skipped 2007’s Smile For Them, forgoing those tracks for the crowd service of fan favorites like “The Truth About Heaven,” “My Town,” new single “How Far Apart,” “Dream to Make Believe” and “Car Underwater.” The crowd ebbed and flowed as they sung along to every one of their favorites from one of the scene’s most underrated returns.
After Armor For Sleep cleared the stage, the sticker-covered piano was brought to the fore and it was time for the prolific Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness to take the stage for the first of the tour’s co-headlining sets. Regardless of the incarnation, from Something Corporate to Jack’s Mannequin to the current existence “in the Wilderness”, Andrew McMahon has been one of my favorites and is still among the best at live setting, commanding the crowd in a way few can.
My buddy Rob, a well-traveled musician himself, may have summed it up best; “He’s got that really rare thing where all the songs, but especially the ones you don’t connect with, are elevated when he plays live.” McMahon’s charisma and sincere stage presence creates relationships with each member of the audience. This isn’t an artist singing to his fans, this an artist who is a fan of his audience and engages the crowd on deeply personal levels.
A piano would make one expect the energy to be pretty stationary but McMahon isn’t your average piano man. Throughout the set, McMahon was all over the venue including standing atop the piano, surfing an inflatable llama over the crowd and strolling to the back of the “pit” (if a pit were to exist to his sound). The set included all of McMahon’s best from each of his personas. Jack’s Mannequin’s “Bruised,” “The Mixed Tape” and “Holiday From Real” were sprinkled between Something Corporate’s “Woke Up in a Car,” “Watch the Sky” and “Hurricane.” Of course, it would have been silly to skip some AMITW tracks like “High Dive” and “Love and Great Buildings.”
The highlight not only of the evening, but of all of the shows I’ve been to this year thus far, occurred as McMahon brought out his daughter, Cecilia, for a duet of “Cecilia and the Satellite.” Perhaps it is because I’ve got daughters of my own or perhaps it was the visible pride etched in every line of his face but I’d be hard pressed to find many whose eyes didn’t well up the way mine did to get to share that personal, family moment with the McMahons. That adorable and heartwarming moment was followed by personal favorite McMahon track “Punk Rock Princess” and the rarely played, epic “Konstantine.” The rest of the set was a blur as McMahon built his connection with the crowd (and my vision was still clouded by the tears of an overdramatic dad), but the crowd was on McMahon’s side all along and the man and his fans fed one another platitudes and love as the set came to a close.
Next up was Dashboard Confessional. I wasn’t too into the idea of watching the full set. I’ve always found Chris Carraba an anomaly that I never felt any connection to. I’ve always felt Dashboard’s music was the insincere, melodramatic poetry of a never-been-kissed middle schooler. He’s still all those things and still not my cup of tea but he gets the most out of his fans.
Opening with a well-worn acoustic, Dashboard opened with “The Brilliant Dance” and didn’t take long to let everyone know this wasn’t going to be a set loaded with the new album. Following a couple tracks including “Turpentine Chaser” and “Saints and Sailors,” one of the two highlights of Dashboard’s performance included a second vocalist, most importantly, the surprise appearance of Adam Duritz (Counting Crows) to help perform “So Long, So Long.” While I never cared for Carraba, I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to have seen Adam Duritz live (and let me be clear when I tell you his voice was everything I could have hoped it would be 30 years into his career).
The sun had long since set and the lighting atop Pier 17’s rooftop set a mood for the mellow and calm vibes from the DC set. After performing his classics “The Best Deceptions,” “The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most” and “Screaming Infidelities” Andrew McMahon returned to the stage as the pair performed an absolutely haunting and perfect cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.”
Dashboard closed the night out with “Vindicated,” the song of Spiderman had an additional level of gravitas when a look over our left shoulders showed some of the buildings everyone’s favorite webslinger traversed and climbed in the films. After a brief moment off stage, Carraba returned with his biggest hit, “Hands Down.” I can’t say that the performance won me over, but I would be lying if I didn’t feel the love of the fans as they sang along.
When so many tours come through to promote the bands, it was a delight to watch artists elevate the fans instead.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
