Fans dressed in all black packed The Rooftop at Pier 17 for the sold out Dashboard Confessional show on Sept. 12. The alternative rock band drew a crowd of millennials, excited to be brought back to 2006. The Brooklyn Bridge was the perfect backdrop to sing sad rock songs from the 2000s.
The “Dashboard Confessional Fall Tour 2024” is a celebration of the early 2000s emo scene.
“Bridging multiple generations of emo, alternative and indie fans, this power lineup of artists not only shows the versatile staying power of Dashboard Confessional, but the lineage of artists it has inspired,” the band stated in a press release.
The opening band, Boys Like Girls, gave the audience a chance to record the beginning of their top song on Spotify, “The Great Escape” before stopping to tell everyone to put their phones away. Enjoying a song in the moment, without phones was a nostalgic feeling for many and showed me what attending a concert in 2006 must have been like.
In true emo fashion the crowd became a community to make the best of a show without lights.
Dashboard Confessional played hits off of their early albums, “The Swiss Army Romance” and “Dusk and Summer,” reminding fans of their teenage years. The crowd laughed as the lead singer, Christopher Carrabba, joked about how that night was a big night for babysitters, bringing fans back to reality.
The stage lights unexpectedly went out during their performance of “Turpentine Chaser,” but Dashboard Confessional didn’t miss a beat. The band could not stop to fix the lights if they wanted to finish their set before New York City’s 10 p.m. noise curfew. Fans responded by turning on their phone flashlights and waving them in the air, creating a sea of light for the band.
Carrabba’s friend Adam Duritz, the lead singer of Counting Crows, who was watching the show from the side of the stage, quickly grabbed a flashlight and shined it on Carrabba’s guitar.
In true emo fashion the crowd became a community to make the best of a show without lights.
Fans were making friends with other fans. I even met a group of friends that were kind enough to let me take their spot at the barricade. That type of thing is rare these days.
The band took to Instagram a few days later with a post thanking the fans for a great show and wrote, “Yes the show must go on … this show went OFF!”
The lights going out may have been an accident, but it made the performance of “Carry This Picture” — which was featured in the new film “It Ends With Us” — a more intimate experience. The song is about holding onto memories from a past relationship. Carrabba was on stage alone with his guitar, singing to the crowd in the dark, it felt like listening to the song alone in your room.
By the end of the song the lights came back on, taking the crowd out of their bedrooms and back to the rooftop.
Martin Johnson, the lead singer for Boys Like Girls, joined Dashboard Confessional on stage to perform their then unreleased song “Watch the Fire.” This is the first time the two lead singers collaborated on a song and performed it together, which must have been a teenage dream for “longtime emos” in the crowd.
Before ending the show with their most popular song, “Hands Down,” Carrabba told the audience to picture themselves listening to this song with their friends back in their college dorm room. I may not be able to relate to what being a teenager during the height of the emo subculture was like, but that night gave me a glimpse into it.
The 28-city “Dashboard Confessional Fall Tour 2024” will make its way across the U.S. now through Oct. 27.
