(Live at The Huntington, Long Island Paramount 2024-05-26)
Earlier this month saw the release of Frank Turner’s 10th studio album with Undefeated. Of course Turner has plans to tour the album extensively during the course of the rest of 2024. The North American leg of the Undefeated Tour kicked off last week in Harrisburg, PA. In classic Frank Turner fashion, he and The Sleeping Souls have hit the ground running. Over the course of Memorial Day Weekend, there was a Friday afternoon show in Philadelphia, a Friday into Saturday midnight show in Boston, a Saturday afternoon show at the Boston Calling Festival and finally the weekend’s culmination with Sunday evening’s set at The Paramount in Huntington, LI. (They miraculously took Monday off). As the rabid FTHC (Frank Turner Hard Core) fan base are well aware, Turner is a touring maniac. Just before this American tour commenced, he set out to break a Guinness World Record by playing 15 different shows in 15 cities all within 24 hours. The previous record had been 10. Then in 2022, after having been cooped up for the longest period of his life due to the pandemic, he set out to tour the United States with his 50 in 50 Tour. He successfully played all 50 States within 50 days. The show in Huntington was Turner’s 2885th show since he started touring as a solo artist back in 2004. Not surprisingly, he already has plans for his 3000th show to be played in London in February 2025.
This Undefeated Tour has Frank & The Sleeping Souls being joined by the likes of Amigo The Devil, Bridge City Sinners and Micah Schnabel & Vanessa Jean Speckman who I unfortunately missed due to my poor planning which got me stuck in never ending holiday Long Island traffic. I guarantee however, that I will make a much better effort not to miss the 3 when I catch the last show of the tour in Philadelphia at the end of June.
Turner and his Sleeping Souls bandmates took the stage promptly at 9:15 and immediately kicked into “No Thank You For The Music” and “Girl From The Record Shop” from the new Undefeated album before offering up a handful of older songs. This would prove to be a pattern that would be followed for much of the evening, a pattern which happened to work perfectly I might add. I’ll say this now, oftentimes when an artist is on the road touring a new album, their show’s intensity lags when they delve into the new material. This was not the case at all on Sunday evening with the Undefeated material. Judging from the singing along by the crowd of 1500 or so at the Paramount, one would have thought that the new songs were anything but new. It was like they were tried and true old faithfuls.
Nonetheless, as one who has seen Turner countless times over the years, the pace of Sunday’s set was off the charts fast. Frank is known for his entertaining stage banter and don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of that on Sunday but it seemed to me like he and the band were making a conscious decision to pack as much music into a finite amount of time as was physically possible. This breakneck pace of songs and sequencing made for an incredibly high energy show which would eventually zap the collective energy out of everyone in attendance, be they in the balcony, standing at the side bars, in the pit or even on the stage. It was the kind of show that left everyone panting for air, yearning for a throat lozenge and dripping with sweat.
To put it quite bluntly, Turner pretty much put on a masterclass on how to kick the shit out of a couple of thousand fans in the most perfect of ways. There were highs and lows, ebbs and flows which allowed for frenetic dancing (i.e. moshing and crowd surfing) and singing (i.e. shouting) and of course soft and tender moments which allowed for more dancing and singing, this time mixed in with at least a moist eye or thousand in the crowd. As long as I’m talking about soft and tender, of particular note on Sunday was a (relatively) rare solo acoustic version of “Long Live The Queen” (which for those who know, is always a gut wrenching moment for me and my family), an extremely rare performance of “Cleopatra Of Brooklyn”, a B-side from the “Mittens” single off of 2015’s Positive Songs For Negative People and the new “Somewhere Inbetween” a song which Turner explains is his coming to grips with the person he once was, the person he has become and the acceptance of one by the other.
When all was said and done, Sunday’s show in Long Island was indeed one for the ages. I’m not going to say it was the best Turner show I’ve ever seen but I do know that some people who’s opinion I highly respect came away feeling exactly that. I will however say that it was certainly one of the best I’ve seen. The combination of high energy and thoughtful tenderness, the mixing of older “hits” with the newly recently released “future hits” along with a crowd of appreciative, knowledgeable, courteous fans, friends and family made for what turned out to be a near perfect evening.
Oddly, there is no actual New York City date on this tour. But Turner did hint at his one-off show at Garwood, New Jersey’s Crossroads show that we can expect either a New Jersey and/or New York show in either late summer or sometime in the Fall. Until that is officially announced, I at the very least still have the show at Philadelphia’s Fillmore and of course Lost Evenings VII in Toronto to look forward to.
Setlist
- No Thank You for the Music
- Girl From the Record Shop
- Get Better
- If Ever I Stray
- Try This at Home
- The Next Storm
- Letters
- Haven’t Been Doing So Well
- Polaroid Picture
- Ceasefire
- Cleopatra in Brooklyn
(Acoustic) - Long Live the Queen
(Acoustic) - Be More Kind (Acoustic)
- The Ballad of Me and My Friends
(Acoustic) - Somewhere Inbetween
- Punches
- 1933
- Non Serviam
- Do One
- Nevermind the Back Problems
- Photosynthesis
- Encore:
- Undefeated
(Acoustic) - Recovery
- I Still Believe
- Four Simple Words
Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls Slideshow
W.S. Walcott Medicine Show 
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