It was back in May of 2017 when Frank Turner put on his first Lost Evenings Festival at the Roundhouse in London. Four days and nights of a rolling cast of characters performing with Turner himself (and of course his fellow bandmates, The Sleeping Souls) a different set each evening. Not all that surprising, it was a rounding success. The following year, Turner returned to The Roundhouse for Lost Evenings II and a tradition was born. 2019 would bring Lost Evenings to the U.S., at House of Blues in Boston. This would prove to be my first LE and it was such an amazing weekend. Frank would plan to bring Lost Evenings to Berlin in 2020 but a little thing called a worldwide pandemic kind of ruined those plans. 2021 brought Lost Evenings back to the UK and in 2022 Frank and his entourage were finally able to present the festival in Berlin. Bringing me to 2023 and Lost Evenings VI and a return to the States, this time on the Pacific coast in Anaheim, CA, once again at The House of Blues.
The House of Blues proves to be an ideal location for LE as the main ballroom is pretty much identical in each of the cities to which it operates and the presence of smaller rooms throughout allow for the smaller Nick Alexander Stage as well as separate rooms for the afternoon panel discussions which take place each day and bar areas for the open mike sessions each afternoon.
Before I go much further, I would like to say that having mentioned The Nick Alexander Stage, let me shed a bit of light on this. This stage is a smaller stage and room to which Turner showcases smaller, more “up and coming acts”. The stage itself is named in honor of Nick Alexander, a friend and business associate of Frank’s who was amongst the victims of the Bataclan attack which took place in Paris in 2015. Nick was managing the merch sales that fateful evening for the band Queens of Death Metal.
LEVI Day #1
The weekend’s festivities commenced on Thursday evening with my friend Micah Schnabel opening things up on the main stage. Micah and his partner Vanessa Jean Speckman would also organize, run and MC the Cowboy Chords open mic all weekend. Watching Micah play in front of the packed main ballroom was such a pleasure to see. I’ve known Micah for more years than I can remember via his band Two Cow Garage and he is no doubt a rock and roll grinder. For him to get some of the recognition which he has worked so hard for and which he more than deserves is just one of the magical things about Lost Evenings. Anyway, Micah with help from Vanessa Jean on two numbers started things off for the weekend with an emotional and inspiring set of acoustic rock.
The music schedule each night would alternate acts between the large stage and the Nick Alexander stage with very little overlap between sets making it relatively easy (crowd size permitting) to jump from stage to stage. With that being said, I attempted to see as many of the bands as humanly possible. Looking back now, I think I managed to accomplish this pretty well. Anyway, following Schnabel’s set on the main stage was Water Tower over on the Nick Alexander stage. Water Tower, a local band out of Los Angeles presented a rollicking set of punk infused bluegrass music which the fans in the room absolutely ate right up.
Following Water Tower was KT Tunstall over on the main stage. Getting to see KT in an 1800 person room was quite the treat being as she normally plays much larger venues (as a headliner). KT actually has not been playing many live shows at all of late largely due to health issues pertaining to hearing loss in both of her ears. Needless to say, she was super psyched to be playing Lost Evenings being as she was originally scheduled for the 2020 Berlin shows which were canceled due to Covid. Jumping back to the Nick stage, it was (as always) to get a chance to see Kayleigh Goldsworthy. I’ve been a huge fan of Kayleigh’s ever since I first got to see her on Chuck Regan’s Revival Tour back in 2012(?). Kayleigh aptly opened up her heartfelt set with her song “West Coast” which was not only appropriate for the location of the festival but also (as she would soon announce) since she had recently moved back to Los Angeles from Philadelphia. I must admit that this news was not met by myself with any kind of enthusiasm being as it has always been a pleasure (and privilege) to get to see Kayleigh playing with friends in either Philly, Brooklyn or New Jersey over the years.
And at this point it was time to return to the main room for Frank Turner for his first set of the weekend. Turner makes it a point to present a different show each night of the festival and the opening night has become a tradition as the acoustic night. This is also from a setlist perspective also usually my favorite night of the weekend. Joined on stage by Matt Nasir from The Sleeping Souls, Frank opened the set up with the tried and true “Be More Kind” followed by a handful of other crowd favorites before digging a bit deeper into his catalog, first with “Journey Of The Magi” followed by “To Take Me Home” from Love Ire & Song. Alternating between the well known and the not so well known, the crowd reacted in delight when the opening chords to “Thatcher Fucked The Kids” became recognizable. “Thatcher” was a song which had been shelved for the better part of 10 years before Turner started bringing it back into the fold last year. Before the evening was over we would also be treated to a new song which I believe is called “On My Way”, a love song to his wife Jess.
Day one was in the books and I can honestly say that I don;t think there was a single person as they were making their way out of the House Of Blues to the sounds of The Mamas and Papas singing “California Dreaming” who wasn’t thoroughly pleased with what they had just experienced.
LEVI DAY #2
Friday started out with the intention of catching the 1 PM panel discussion with Frank & The Sleeping Souls, labeled as “The Real Damage”. Unfortunately arriving one hour early for the panel wasn’t early enough to gain a spot in the limited seating Foundation Room. Oh well, it was all good since this allowed us to catch a little bit of the Cowboy Chords open mike (and grab an early adult beverage). This turned out to be quite enjoyable, particularly the fellow from Columbus sporting the Two Cow Garage t-shirt that managed to get Micah and Vanessa to join him for a version of “Blame It On Geography” from Micah’s I’m Dead, Seriously album.
From the open mic we then went to the afternoon’s second panel which was on the subject of Music And Activism. With Vanessa Jean Speckman, Isaiah (Black Guy Fawkes) and Linh Le (Bad Cop, Bad Cop) this proved to be a fascinating and informative back and forth discussion about the methods, pitfalls and triumphs of musicians attempting to have positive impacts on society.
After a late afternoon swim and bite to eat (and drink) back at the air B&B, we returned to House of Blues for the evening’s festivities. Over on the Nick Alexander stage we were treated to a trio of performers (sadly only 2 of which I was able to catch) in Bad Guy Fawkes, Jen Razavi and Tommy & June (who’s set I missed). Black Guy Fawkes (aka Ian Robinson) offered up an enjoyable set of folk punk tunes inspired by (not surprisingly) Frank Turner but also Bob Dylan as well as Brian Fallon (of the Gaslight Anthem) who he played homage to with his closing cover of “59 Sound”. Also on the Nick Alexander stage was Jen Razavi who I initially thought I was not familiar with until I realized that Jen was in fact Jen from The Bombpops. Needless to say, she ended up putting on a rocking one woman set of high energy acoustic rock and roll which proved to be the perfect warm-up for my jaunt over to the main stage for Bad Cop, Bad Cop.
Over on the main stage, the evening had kicked off with the duo The Codefendents. Hailing from Berkeley, CA, Codefendents with their mashup of skate punk and hip hop started the evening off with quite a bang that had the crowd in the room jumping up and down like they were grooving to House Of Pain’s “Jump Around”.
Following The Codefendents on the mainstage was the aforementioned Bad Cop, Bad Cop who just might have given me my favorite (non Frank Turner) set of the weekend. This was Bad Cop’s first show since lead singer and guitarist, Stacey Dee was forced to cancel their fall tour due to health reasons. Fortunately for us, being as Lost Evenings was a local show for the band, they were able to still play this one. In any event right from the get go, it was obvious that Stacey and the rest of the band were beyond stoked to be back on stage again. Opening up with “Retrograde” off of 2017’s Warriors LP, it was obvious that the band had come to ROCK. Closing out the 12 or so song set with another classic from Warriors, “Womanarchist” their set absolutely KICKED ASS.
Closing things out on the main stage was of course Frank Turner, tonight joined by The Sleeping Souls to showcase Frank’s first four full length LPs, Love, Ire & Song, Poetry Of The Deed, Sleep Is For The Week and England Keep My Bones. Needless to say, with a stockpile of songs culled from these four albums, not to mention non LP tracks from The First Three Years, this set proved to be a monster. With a set rife with classic hits such as “Peggy Sue Got Married”, “Prufrock” and “Long Live The Queen” we were also treated to a slew of songs which Turner and the band had not played at all this year during their Never Ending Tour Of Everywhere (“Sons of Liberty”, “Reasons Not To Be An Idiot”, “Once We Were Anarchists”, “Nashville TN”, “Jet Lag”, and “Father’s Day”). And once again, with night 2 in the books, it was quite evident (at least to the diehards in attendance) that Frank Turner is not only one of the hardest working rock and rollers out there today but without a doubt he is one of the most enjoyable as well. So it came as no surprise to me that when the walk out music of Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer” started blaring from the house PA system, virtually everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) sang right along. Complete strangers arm in arm screaming along “OH OHHHH, Living on a prayer” as if we were all life long best friends
LEVI Day #3
Having learned our lesson from Day 2, we knew we would have to arrive at HOB a little earlier if we wanted to get into the early panel discussion which would be Frank and the band discussing the making of Tape Deck Heart. So we arrived at 11:45 AM to find a rather sizable line already formed. We were however within the range of people who got in. What transpired was a rather entertaining and insightful Q&A about the album. What made the panel was the dry witted humor back and forth between Frank and Matt throughout the Q&A. Those two sure do have a bond which more often than not translates into hilarity.
Following the panel there were special sets scheduled for the Cowboy Chords stage with sets from Jess Guise, Beans on Toast and a little later an acoustic set from Pet Needs (which I unfortunately was unable to get into due to overcrowding). Nonetheless, both Jess’s and Beans’s up close and personal sets were fantastic. With each artist putting on a roughly 6 or 7 song set, they both had the bar/restaurant captivated. Of particular enjoyment was Beans’s story of how he’d been black balled from playing HOB some years ago when it was still located on the grounds of Disneyland. He went on to say how upset he was to find out that LEVI would be held at HOB being as he was persona non grata, only to find out from Frank early on that the HOB’s location had changed and it was no longer on Disneyland property so he was free and clear to play the festival.
I got to catch the second panel of the afternoon, The Music Industry before heading back to the house for some food, drinks and swimming to refresh for the evening’s festivities.
I had decided ahead of Saturday night that I would be sticking to the main stage area so I did not get to enjoy any of the acts which played on The Nick Anderson stage on night 3. My apologies to Beans On Toast, Beyond The Lamplight, and Divided Heaven. Chuck Ragan opened things up on the main stage and despite my disappointment that he wasn’t being joined on stage by his trusty sidekick Todd Beane on pedal steel, Chuck (as always) was terrific. Playing a set composed mostly of “hits” Ragan had much of the crowd singing right along to such classics as “Meet Me In The Middle” and “Nothing Left To Prove”.
Pedro The Lion was next up on the main stage and as I found myself describing to people who were unfamiliar, David Bazan is what you call a musician’s musician. You can ask virtually any artist in the Americana/Folk-punk/Alt-whatever community and they will sing praises to Bazan. But like so many artists who fit this mold, unfortunately Pedro The Lion is not very well known to the general public. I was curious how Pedro would fit in with the raucous nature of what LE can be since his music is most often slow, introspective and generally speaking beautiful. He ended up fitting in perfectly. Between Bazan’s personable stage banter and Pedro’s fantastic songs, the Lost Evening crowd was totally won over.
And when it was time for Frank Turner to take the stage, one of the first things he had to say was what an absolute pleasure and honor it was to have Pedro The Lion on the same stage for Lost Evenings. He’d go on to say that it was humbling to think that someone who had meant so much to his (Frank’s) songwriting career would actually be HIS opener…in a perfect world it would totally be the other way around. Frank and The Sleeping Souls were however the headliners and Saturday night was Tape Deck Heart night. Recorded and released some 10 years ago mostly in Los Angeles, it was a major factor in having LEVI take place in Southern California’s Anaheim. Turner would explain that Tape Deck was an album which he’d written an abundance of songs for, way more than he could possibly use on a single LP. Fortunately, in this day and age of reissues and deluxe editions, we have been lucky enough to have gotten access to most if not all of the Tape Deck Heart era songs. Even more fortunate was the fact that Saturday’s show included not only the songs from the original release but also most if not all of the B sides, covers and studio out-takes from the deluxe edition. Some of the highlights of the evening’s set were “Good & Gone” a song which had pretty much slipped out of regular rotation since the original tour supporting the album. Another which was a gut wrencher was “Modern Leper”. As most Turner fans are already aware, Scott Huchison was a close and dear friend of Frank’s. Scott performed at LE-I and Frank has been covering Frightened Rabbit’s “Modern Leper” since before Scott left us. On night 3 of LEVI, performing the song seemed to hit harder than in the recent past. Frank seemed to be visibly shaken as he sang the song and as such there weren’t too many dry eyes in the crowd.
As one would have expected, the show itself was a bit on the mellow side, being as Tape Deck is that kind of album. All of that changed for the last three songs when Turner proclaimed to the crowd that he was going to pick things up a bit. It took all of maybe 2 measures of “The Way I Tend To Be” for the evening’s first circle pit to erupt and it kept getting bigger and stronger as “The Way I Tend To Be” segued into “Plain Sailing Weather” and finally the ultimate circle pit song “Four Simple Words”.
Saturday’s walk out tune was The Eagles’s “Hotel California” which didn’t quite garner the raucous singalong that we’d gotten the night before, but it nonetheless was still something to behold.
LEVI Day #4
Before we even knew it, Sunday had rolled around and the last day of Lost Evenings was upon us. The goal of the early afternoon was to attend the first panel of the day with Frank Turner and “Ask Me Anything”. We got to HOB around 11:45, the same as the previous day and that worked again in terms of our getting in. The Q&A itself was quite fun, at times informative, at times quite amusing and at other times quite emotional. All in all well worth the wait to get in.
The plans for the rest of the afternoon were kind of open ended. Pretty much chilling poolside with drinks and food. Arriving at HOB just before Koo Koo took the stage on the main stage. Koo Koo (FKA Koo Koo Kangaroo) are a musical/comical duo who served as main stage MC’s throughout the weekend, staging such antics as singing contests, pool float crowd surfing contests, and a Sleeping Souls fashion show to name just a few. Their actual set on day 4 was equal parts slapstick comedy mixed with what could best be described as 1980’s style aerobic exercise video music.
I jumped over to the Nick Alexander stage shortly after Koo Koo to catch some of Massachusetts’ favorite punk rockers Rebuilders who were putting on a furious and animated set over there in the Parish Room where the Alexander Stage was situated. Rebuilders (along with a small handful of others) were holdovers from LE3 and rightfully so. These boys sure do rock .
Following Rebuilders, I rushed back to the main stage to catch Destroy Boys. I will admit that besides listening to a handful of songs just before the weekend, I was not all that familiar with Destroy Boys, a band out of Sacramento by way of Oakland. Oftentimes categorized as a Riot Grrrl kind of band (a moniker which the band itself appreciates but one which they also eschew so as not to be pigeonholed into one specific genre). So let me say this right off of the bat, these kids can rock. Coming out with all cylinders blazing, Destroy Boys threw out a punk rock set for the age. With a constant thrashing of guitars, pounding of drums and rolling bass lines to keep it all in check, both Alexia Roditis and Violet Mayugba jumped, writhed and pretty much never stopped moving throughout their entire white hot set. Destroy Boys who come out of the Oakland, CA punk rock mecca known as Gillman Street are a band that ought to be on your punk as fuck radar.
Which brings me to the weekend’s finale. Billed as a “greatest hits” set, it was somewhat of a question mark what might be in store for the final set from Frank and the boys. After all, Frank had been saying (and year’s past were true to this credo) that he would try not to repeat too many songs over the course of the weekend. But for the most part, he and the band had already delved pretty deep into his “hits” in each of the previous 3 nights, so what were we going to get for an actual greatest hits set on Sunday night. Before I go any further, let me explain that this apparent conundrum was by no means a matter of concern but merely curiosity. We all knew that this was going to be a killer of a set no matter where Frank took us.
Wasting no time whatsoever getting the crowd going, we were immediately assaulted with the bouncy rocker “Punches” off of last year’s FTHC. And just like that, unlike Saturday night’s set the pit erupted into a frenzy right from the get go. From here the band went right into what I think is one of the best songs off of Be More Kind, “1933”. Sadly, this song was spot on accurate in describing what was the world political situation when it first came out in 2018. As hard as it might be to believe, it’s just as prescient today (if not more so) today as it was 5 years ago…why can’t we as a society just get our shit together? Next up was “Get Better” from Positive Songs For Negative People with its anthemic “Not Dead Yet” call and response. Three songs in and it was already quite obvious that there was going to be very little if any opportunities during this set to sit back and catch one’s breath. The rockers and bangers were coming fast and furious with song number 4 offering up the first repeat of the evening with “Recovery”. Yeah we’d all heard it on Saturday night but c’mon, do you really think there was a single person in the crowd that thought, “Oh THIS again?” Ha ha, not a chance. Fuck, what was happening thus far at House of Blues was Turner’sown version of non synthetic, holistic, R&R serotonin boosters. No rest for the weary, Turner kept spitting out one burner after another and it was absolutely glorious. The pit area which had grown exponentially throughout the set was a puddle of sweat and euphoria as we all danced, slammed, sang, hugged and most importantly helped one another if and when anyone took a tumble. Organized mayhem at its finest. We got a bit of a respite when The Sleeping Souls left the stage to Turner for a couple of solo acoustic tunes starting with “There She Is” to which Frank posed the question, “is it about Jess or my cat, you make the call?” This little bit of calm would not last for long as once the band returned they jumped right into “Non Serviam”, Frank’s paean to his hard core days. Complete and absolute bedlam on the floor.
The encore would commence with “A Wave Across A Bay”, Frank’s tribute to his friend Scott Huchison. I will admit that I have mixed feelings about this song. Yeah it’s a beautiful homage to a lost friend but I have issues with the serene and bucolic imagery Frank paints pertaining to the act which Scott took. On this particular evening however, the song hit a spot for me. I got it that Frank knew much more of what Scott was experiencing as he got to the point when he just couldn’t do it any longer. While the acts which Scott ultimately took had to have been horrible and painful for all, it was also in this instance all he could do to alleviate the pain which he’d been suffering through forever. While I sometimes criticized the song as a glorification of the act, on night 4 of LEVI, i heard it for what I have to imagine what Frank intended it to be all along, a tribute to a friend as he moved on from pain and torture which had become unbearable to live with to (hopefully) a better place.
Of course the evening would not end on such a somber note with such stalwart songs as “Photosynthesis”, “I Still Believe” and “Four Simple Words” would close out Lost Evenings VI with each and everyone of us in attendance singing, dancing and hugging one last time. Let me just say that that is exactly what makes Lost Evenings such an amazing weekend. People making a pilgrimage from all parts to spend one glorious weekend with (former) strangers to celebrate music which in some cases is the only common thread. Over the course of 4 nights, myself and the group I was with pretty much situated ourselves in the same spot each evening as did many of the people around us. We got to meet and hang and have an absolute blast with people (and now friends) from the UK, Canada, CA, OH, MA, and NZ just to name a few. And when Frank announced that next year Lost Evenings would be in Toronto, it was high fives all around because each and everyone of us knew that we would all be there to do it all over again. Who’d have thought that after all that something as simple rock and roll could save us all.
W.S. Walcott Medicine Show 
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