Even Better Asks: The Opener

We asked some buds to tell us about an opening act who made an instant impression.

Juliette Lewis in Strange Days. Not really an opener, maybe an opening act for the NYE set piece….cool scene nonetheless.

You’re reading the first-ever installment of Even Better Asks, a recurring series where the head honchos at Even Better come up with an open-ended question for our extended web of pals to answer in blurb form. We didn’t invent this concept, of course — old AV Club’s AVQ&A survey series being the main inspiration here, along with the occasional vintage Deadspin or Jezebel staff roundup posts in this style. Ultimately, Eric Alper gets it: people love answering questions, almost as much as we love asking them. (You’ll know he has the keys to the blog if we’ve asked “What album can we all agree is a classic?” for the fifth time.)

If you’re seeing this post so far and thinking, “damn this would be fun and I could totally do it and I would like to do it sometime,” don’t be a stranger! (That goes for pro writers and non-pro writers alike.) Reach out to either one of us, or respond to this email, and we’ll get you more info on how all this works.

But without further ado, here’s our inaugural prompt:

Tell us about a time when you instantly became a huge fan of an artist or band, solely from seeing them open for another artist.

To answer myself here, a friend asked me to see the band Ought back in 2018, as their hype was winding down, already splintering off into solo projects — and eventually with two of them forming the band Cola. But the D.C.-based trio Flasher was ramping up to announce their debut album (and eventual personal favorite) Constant Image in a matter of weeks. Familiar only in the loosest sense with them at this point, I couldn’t believe that their cadre of direct, nervy, ideologically rigorous punk had melodies and hooks quite like this in it. The best bands can feel almost telepathically bonded onstage and they certainly did, passing off the vocal parts on “Pressure” and locking into the stray harmony with ease. Sometimes that brief window of possibility right before the crest can be just as exhilarating as the peak itself, when you’re not quite sure how high it might go. — Shawn

Brendan Menapace

The band I "discovered" from seeing them open was Alvvays opening for Yuck in 2014. But that’s not much of a story beyond “good band was good live,” and the rest is history. The more interesting story is when Big Thief got a mid-day slot when Project Pabst was in Philly, and had to play for a crowd waiting for The Menzingers, Nothing, Action Bronson, etc., mostly stuck inside due to rain. Truthfully, I was there for the Menzingers and Diarrhea Planet, too. Eventually some asshole up front got impatient with not being able to throw his weight around and started being disruptive. In addition to Big Thief being very good, I was struck by how well Adrianne Lenker handled the situation, and I was very much on Team Lenker in the moment. I don’t listen to them as much as Alvvays, but I think about that show whenever I do.

Emily Schweich 

In March 2019, I saw Faye Webster open for Stella Donnelly at the now-defunct U Street Music Hall in Washington, D.C. Her meditative, R&B-tinged indie folk could have felt sleepy coming from anyone else, but she brought coolness and charm to the tiny stage. Wearing a Braves jersey and wide-brimmed visor, she peppered her set with jokes about learning to yo-yo and showed off a few tricks. I loved her album Atlanta Millionaires Club when it came out two months later, and when Webster shot to fame in 2021 with I Know I’m Funny haha, I felt proud to say I saw her when.

Elliott Duea 

The temptation is there to say Kanye, who I saw in 5th grade open for U2 in the Late Registration era — but I'll go a lot more recent/a lot less problematic. I went to see Hatchie at my favorite Seattle venue (Neumos in Cap Hill) a couple years ago and made it just in time for opener Caroline Loveglow. (Is there a better name for a dream pop artist?) The club wasn't even half full when Caroline & guitarist took the stage; always a bummer for the artist, but it made things more intimate, like a movie scene where characters walk into a bar and a great band is playing but there's only a few people there. Those that arrived early were treated with spellbinding songs that married shoegaze and electronica (maybe even chillwave?) textures with Loveglow's lovely voice. Between Loveglow and Hatchie's sets, it was a night of dream pop nirvana. Both sets ruled; Loveglow's is the one I remember. 

Nick Adams

This is a tough prompt for me because I’m forced to admit that I skip the opener 95% of the time, especially if it’s an artist I don’t know. (I’d certainly be cooler to my Gen Z sister if I hadn’t missed Phoebe Bridgers opening for Julien Baker in 2016.) So I have to go back to May 2015, when I was more adventurous and my body was stronger, for my answer: a striking Girlpool set at a Waxahatchee-headlining show in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was a few weeks ahead of Before the World Was Big, when their setup was just the two of them — no drums — boldly projecting into the dark room over simple guitar and bass parts. Early Girlpool songs were all about their voices: loud, naked, brash. It was an approach that cut through the tipsy chatter of an unexpecting audience and commanded my attention.

Matt T

This might be cheating a bit, but I wanted to shout out Foxing who was responsible for me getting into three different bands from two different shows. The first time seeing Foxing, Ratboys opened and the second time, Home is Where and Greet Death were the openers. I was vaguely aware of the bands before the shows but was blown away by all three’s live shows. If you ever get the chance to see Foxing, you better show for the opener because they’re gonna rip.

Josh Terry

You spend enough time going to shows in one city and eventually, you start going to gigs just for the opener. There are so many bands that have become personal alltimers for this very reason: PUP, Greg Freeman, The Districts, Finom, Erin Rae, and so many more. The most recent time this happened, where you instantly realize you're seeing something special in an opening set, was last summer when Hannah Frances supported Finom's Sima Cunningham at Hungry Brain. It's a small local venue that's basically just an intimate jazz bar but Hannah brought a full seven (or eight)-piece band to play songs that would end up on her new BNM-getting LP Keeper of the Shepherd. It was unbelievable. Her songs had drama, emotional stakes, and the most inventive full-band arrangements with pedal steel, horns, strings, and more. After each track, I'd look at my friends to vibe check and validate that, "Holy moly this is really happening." They were just as floored. Her record release show at Hungry Brain's sister venue Constellation was somehow better.

Patrick Haynes

This might be going against the intent of these blurbs a bit, as I was already fairly familiar with this band, but there are only a handful of shows where I remember the set by the opener of a three-band bill more than the other two. In July 2013, I saw a Bob Dylan headliner in Chicago, IL, the greatest city on planet Earth. The direct support was Wilco, a great band and a great band from Chicago. It would have been a sick show even if it were just those two bands, and I bought my ticket for those two bands but My Morning Jacket was the opener. I love Bob and I love Wilco. I wouldn't say either Rock or Shred. You know who does both? My fucking Morning Jacket. They might not be my favorite band of the three but they're still very good and my lasting memories of that show were from Jim James playing guitar. Hell yeah I love remembering some guys and dudes who rock.

Grace Robins-Somerville

I had never heard of Cryogeyser when I saw them open for Wednesday last May. This was my first time seeing Wednesday live and they would soon become one of the loudest live bands I’d ever seen. (ALWAYS wear earplugs to gigs, hearing loss is no joke!) To get to the absolute trash fire freakout that is Wednesday closing with “Bull Believer” you’ve gotta start somewhere. And we started with Cryogeyser, whose sound was spacey and atmospheric and so goddamn pretty. I doubt either of these bands will continue playing 350-cap rooms but that night Denver’s Larimer Lounge lent Cryogeyser’s shimmering dreampop an extra air of intimacy. It was the perfect introduction to the homespun magic of this wonderfully cinematic LA group.

Aidan O’Neill

In 2018, I went to New Orleans Jazz Fest mostly as a reason to check out the city and its famous music scene. Despite the festival's name, headliners ranged from Sting, Khalid, Jack Johnson, Common, to Aretha Franklin (RIP). All that for about $150 over three days, and I was pretty excited by the big names. As anyone who's ever been to Nola could've guessed though, it was the brass bands throughout the afternoons that defined the weekend way more than the primetime acts. The music seemed to reflect the city that surrounded the festival grounds: big, loud, effusive, more collective than individual, at once both glamorous and gritty. Its energy was contagious, spilling off the stage into the crowd and pulling in people walking by. There are many genres that are 10+ times better live than recorded and brass bands are one of them. But that weekend prompted two more trips for “the fest,” including one next month. And the Hot 8 Brass Band’s version of Sexual Healing is undefeated in putting me in a good mood.

Eli Enis

The one that immediately comes to mind is a band I saw last week, Worm. I had an unfounded prejudice against the death-doom band for their pedigree among hipster-metal types, but I was curious enough to arrive early to see if they would stack up against black-metal laureates Hulder, who were headlining the show. Worm's vampiric theatricality (drinking blood out of a skull, donning capes and corpse paint, putting so much reverb on the vocals that they sounded like the yodeling voice in the Magic School Bus episode where they go to the haunted house) absolutely pile-drove my expectations. I was an instant fan, and they won the night by a landslide. The lesson? Sometimes dudes who love Blood Incantation but have never moshed once in their lives are right.

Ethan Beck

Agreed upon by Obama, my parents, and Pitchfork, Jason Isbell’s gift as a songwriter is a given at this point. I’ve seen him live twice, the last time in 2019 in Columbia, MD, so I was looking forward to the tour for his great, aching, grower-of-a-new-album, Weathervanes. Opening was Aimee Mann, who I had heard in passing before: “How Am I Different” closed an episode of Girls, “Deathly” was on a great Jeremy Larson playlist that soundtracked my 2021 summer, and I watched Magnolia back in high school. Mann’s set was moving and kinetic, especially with the opening spread of songs from 2017’s Mental Illness. The precise gloominess of “You Never Loved Me” and “Rollercoasters” surely caught my attention, but I sat forward in my seat when the chorus of “The King of the Jailhouse” hit. With a descending chord progression and triumphant bummer of chorus, the line “Baby, there’s something wrong with me” gets transformed into an anthemic sentiment. I’ve been listening to it all month.

Devon Chodzin

When Mary Lattimore announced that her tour supporting Goodbye Hotel Arkada would be stopping at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, that was an easy buy for me. Her harp-based compositions have been something of a balm for me over the past few years; listening to her pile on layer after layer of plinking flourish just does not get old. Goodbye Hotel Arkada felt like yet another feather in her cap; I had not been able to let go of “Music for Shimmering Eye Shadow,” which I listened to repeatedly on a flight just after the album’s release. What I wasn’t adequately prepared for was how much I’d love GROWING’s opening set. The drone duo, made up of Joe Denardo and Kevin Doria, is about 25 years into an illustrious career making immersive, loud ambient music, and I do mean loud. On stage, each member has a guitar and they multiply their sound with modular synthesis and oscillators, all plugged into huge amplifiers — hence the tag big amp ambient — and even as they sat on the same tones for minutes upon minutes, I couldn’t look away. It might’ve been the special chocolate I ate beforehand, but seriously: GROWING is still the real deal. I find myself listening to Diptych now more than Goodbye Hotel Arkada, so thanks Mary!