October 21, 2024

Dashboard Confessional made their much-anticipated return to Utah last week with a stop at The Complex in Salt Lake City.  Emo music fans marked their calendars earlier this year when Chris Carrabba made the tour announcement and had been anxiously counting down the days since. 

When Carrabba took the stage and opened the show in a black collared button up and an acoustic guitar to play “The Best Deceptions” it immediately transported me back to 2002 and watching their MTV Unplugged set.  Carrabba’s lyrics still resonate just as much today as they did back then and seeing everyone sing along to this song including a new generation of younger fans made the moment special.  Carrabba took notice of the younger fans as well remarking how much of the audience were too young to remember their MTV performance or have downloaded their music on LimeWire.

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The night’s setlist included their recent collaboration “Watch the Fire” with Boys Like Girls, who joined them on stage for the performance of the song to everyone’s delight and became one of the highlights of the night.  “Watch the Fire” is a product of Carrabba and Boys Like Girls vocalist, Martin Johnson, bonding over shared experiences of recovering after serious accidents such as Carrabba’s near fatal motorcycle crash.    

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Of course, no Dashboard Confessional show would be complete without the songs which catapulted them to the forefront of the Emo scene.  The band knew this and tailored the setlist to include mostly fan favorites and their biggest hits.  Fans sang along to hits like “Vindicated,” “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most,” and the song that started it all, “Screaming Infidelities.”  These songs with their raw emotional lyrics were easy to connect with and are what made Dashboard Confessional a household name in the early 2000’s and hearing them live while singing along transported us right back to that era. 

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Adding to the night’s experience were the opening performances from Taylor Acorn and Boys Like Girls.  Both acts openly credited Dashboard Confessional as a major influence on their own musical journeys.  Martin Johnson of Boys Like Girls spoke about how he destroyed his family’s computer by downloading Dashboard songs from LimeWire, while Taylor Acorn told fans about how she was ready to give up on music and move on when she happened to post two cover songs to a silly app, she was using called TikTok.  The two songs went viral on the app with one a cover of a Dashboard Confessional song and the other a cover of a song from a band called Boys Like Girls.  Acorn’s excitement at sharing the stage with these two bands was on clear display as she shared this with us all. 

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For fans of the Emo music genre the night was a perfect mix of nostalgia and a look at the future.  Dashboard Confessional and Boys Like Girls representing the bands that helped kickstart the genre while Taylor Acorn represented the next generation of artists ready to carry the genre forward.  It was a night to remember, filled with the songs we all loved, and letting us reconnect with the artists whose music has been a refuge to so many throughout the years. 

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The Fall Tour has a handful of remaining dates on the schedule which are listed below.

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Tue Oct 22 — Phoenix, AZ — Arizona Financial Theatre

Wed Oct 23 — Albuquerque, NM — Revel Entertainment Center

Fri Oct 25 — Houston, TX — Bayou Music Center

Sat Oct 26 — Austin, TX — Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater

Sun Oct 27 — Irving, TX — The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory