SWMRS at Rough Trade NYC
So I’ve never been to Rough Trade before. It’s a record store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. So when I heard my Bay Area boys SWMRS would be playing at Rough Trade before signing their new record, I just kinda assumed it would be like an acoustic set ~in~ the record store. (Ya know, kinda like how The Used played an acoustic set at Amoeba.) I was wrong.
There’s a whole venue in the back of the store??? Like… ??? I was incredibly unprepared. I had my backpack with me, and was wearing too many layers to even think about getting in the pit. I was just a mess. So I watched from the back, which obviously is not ideal for me, but it is what it is.
There were mosh pits and stagediving and EVERYTHING. I just laughed at myself in the back for my goof while holding all my shit. Big whoops.
They even had a wall of death going for “D’You Have a Car?”
THIS IS A RECORD STORE, FOLKS.
They covered Billie Eilish’s “My Boy.”
And played a bunch of songs off their new album, Berkeley’s on Fire.
As well as some oldies but goodies from Drive North.
Can we all take a minute to appreciate Cole Becker’s dance moves? Lmao love it.
It was a fairly short set, though. They only played for about half an hour, and talked about how they’d be playing a much longer set with many more chances for stagediving at Brooklyn Steel in April. Unfortunately I’ll be in Italy then. Again, whoops.
Then we finally DID move to the record store part of Rough Trade and got in line to meet the boys. I felt a bit old hearing the girl behind me about have a panic attack because she loves them so much. Here I am like, yup, I was you with Joey Armstrong’s dad a decade and a half ago. I think of SWMRS as kids I watched grow up. I’m proud as hell of them even though they don’t know me personally. But I gave her the same advice I give ’em all: They’re just people. If you think of them as people, it’s easy to talk to them.
I told them I just moved to NYC from Oakland and used to see them a bunch there. They were super nice. Somehow we got on the topic of my home state of Florida as well. Apparently Max and Cole’s mom is also from Tampa??? Small friggin world, man.
