Photo Credit: Allen Halas
Yellowcard
Yellowcard’s seminal album, Ocean Avenue, was released on July 22, 2003. While that may be a hard fact for some fans to read, the band is celebrating the album with a 33-date tour across the country, and kicked it off with one of their first shows since taking a hiatus in 2016, before reuniting at Riot Fest in Chicago in September 2022. The anticipation was high on Saturday night at Summerfest, with a packed Uline Warehouse ready to celebrate two decades of one of the albums that shaped many in the crowd’s formative years, and Yellowcard brought exactly that.
The band hit the stage calmly, before jumping into “Way Away,” the band’s first single from that record that also happens to have a buildup that will send any crowd to their full potential in a moment’s notice. They announced that they would be playing the celebrated album straight through, which elicited a roar from the crowd. All the feeling of bringing something special to Summerfest was there in the earlygoing, with the band sounding tight considering the fact that their could be some rust to shake off.
The only real downside of the show, though, is that Yellowcard brought only that album on what they considered the first night of their tour, which they later revealed would feature 20 songs instead of Ocean Avenue’s 13, and while their Summerfest set had no extraneous production, the rest of the tour would feature a full stage setup, as well as several opening bands, none of which were on Saturday’s Uline Warehouse lineup. In fact, the band would go on to plug the Chicago date of the tour, which hits Huntington Bank Pavilion on July 16. The final unintended slight was thanking the crew for flying in to Milwaukee with no rehearsal before the festival. The more they mentioned what could have been, the more it depreciated what Saturday night’s set ultimately was; a dry run for the tour that came with a paycheck.
Ocean Avenue is a record that should be celebrated. It was important at the height of pop punk’s mainstream takeover, and the record that launched Yellowcard onto MTV and Fuse when those channels were still relevant to music fans. It’s also a record that happens to have the band’s biggest hits front-loaded of what was mainly a CD release initially. That posed a problem early on for the band, who have closed shows with the title track for the majority of their tenure as a band. Playing the album all the way through means that “Ocean Avenue” comes third, and frontman Ryan Key informed fans of the dilemma, and to treat the third song like the last of the night. It also could have cleared out the Uline Warehouse bleachers early, but an audience of dedicated fans meant that the stage only thinned out slightly after the band’s biggest hit.
The next test was “Only One,” the last big single from the record, and the sixth song of 13. Again, a massive singalong broke out, and only minimal clearance in the bleachers. With the rest of the album devoid of commercial singles, the band worked straight through the record, with the occasional nod to the reality that the band, as well as their fans, might have to come to terms with not being teenagers anymore. Key would go on to joke about breaking out T-Mobile Sidekicks and acting like it was 2004 again before “Inside Out,” which kicked off their first headlining tour. He would also change the final chorus of “Twentythree” to “Forty three,” and it was just a bit of a gut punch to the fans who were clinging on to their nostalgia, even if only for a night.
While the crowd stayed throughout the back half of the album, there was a bit of uncertainty as to what would actually close the show. The band have hits beyond Ocean Avenue, most notably 2006’s “Lights And Sounds,” and that could have filled the role of “Ocean Avenue” if need be. However, the night closed on “Back Home,” a somewhat low-key song that finishes out the album. Add in the first flub of the night from Key on the lyrics, and it felt like a stumble across the finish line. Right on an hour, the band were done, with no encore, and the only remaining blast of nostalgia was Katy Perry’s “Peacock” over the house PA at the Uline Warehouse. The band wanted to celebrate Ocean Avenue, and did just that.
While the show was technically solid, there was always the thought of more on the way that put a damper on Yellowcard’s set Saturday night. If you were left longing for more, per the band, tickets are still available for Chicago.
