"Not the Program, the Band: Neighborhood Watch"
by Alexander Cain in Scrapped Magazine (July 2024 Issue)
One of the first things you learn about the music business, big or small, is that there is a lot of waiting. It takes quite a bit of time to set up the stage, and it also takes quite a bit of time to get through a soundcheck with four separate bands.
So, as the bands wait around, they kill the time with simple, sometimes mundane activities like socializing with other bands, staff, and fans, fiddling with instruments, and drinking.
But it’s too early to drink seriously, and the stage is still being rigged for soundcheck, so the bands that have arrived for tonight's concert have convened in the theater to wait for the sound engineer, Daphne, to announce that they can start the soundcheck. They’ve shared some small talk amongst themselves already, and now that everyone seems acquainted, the groups have spread out around the venue.
And how about the venue? Tonight’s venue is a movie theater at The Lyric, since it is still too early in the spring to host a show at their outdoor venue. And through either coincidence or deliberate reconstruction, there is a dance floor at the front of the theater, with all the crimson theater seats behind a railing that overlooks the whole scene, making it more equipped to handle this sort of show. The stage is set up in front of the projector screen, and standing erect on it are three microphone stands, multiple amps, a drumset, some guitar stands, a vampiric orgy of cables and wires, and finally, multiple large speakers stacked atop each other like bundles of hay. The sound set up near the railing is a confusing charcuterie board of dials, switches, and blinking lights, along with a laptop set up for the projector screen which Daphne runs over to once in a while before rushing back to the stage.
What an atmosphere! And later when the place is darker, the dance floor will be trembling with the vibrations of an entire room of people one-stepping, two-stepping, jiving, boogying, and grooving to seriously rad, seriously loud music. The pound of the drums (boom, boom, boom), the whine of the guitars (wah, wah, wah), the throb of the bass (thrum, thrum, thrum), and tying it all together will be the singers, their inflections being broadcast at somewhere around one hundred decibels, the sounds rolling over the crowd the way thunder rolls over a grassy valley. Oh, what a show it will be! But for now…we wait.
Two of the bands playing tonight are from Fort Collins, those being Neighborhood Watch and The Athletics, who have played together before at The Aggie and seem well-acquainted with one another. The other two bands, Tiny Tomboy and Rally, are from out of town, the former from Denver, the latter from Utah.
The band members, I notice, introduce themselves first by name, then instrument, then band. Duncan Mckay, the bassist for Rally, is talking to a staff member about where to put their merchandise as Alec Whitaker, guitar and singer for Rally, exchanges a handshake with Sam Seymour, the drummer for Tiny Tomboy. See what I mean? Of course they’re regular people, outside of all the music stuff, but it’s still important you identify your band and instrument, especially since to some musicians, instruments are like shoes: they reveal a lot about a person.
The Athletics haven’t arrived yet, which isn’t an issue since soundcheck is running late, and they weren’t scheduled to do it until a few hours from now. But it will begin soon for Neighborhood Watch. So where is the headliner band?
Walk over to the back of the dancefloor under the railing, and you’ll find Toby Yoder, drummer, and Sage Franks, guitarist, slinked in the corner, talking quietly amongst the two of them. The rest of the band is scattered about the outside of the venue, likely doing something of great importance as Sage and Toby anxiously eye the stage as they wait for soundcheck. After a few minutes, it’s looking like the stage is very close to being--
“The stage is ready for soundcheck,” Daphne announces.
Sage runs off to get the rest of the band, and the people stand around nervously, some of them finding a seat behind the railing, some of them flopping down on the leather couches by the walls. The show is starting. Not the show, but a show nonetheless.
CJ Herbert, guitarist, is the farthest to the left. He holds his guitar stiffly, like a soldier with a rifle, although the blonde hair that falls down to his shoulders would never fly in the army. Ian McMurry, bassist, is leaning against some of the large speakers, thumbing through his phone. Sage, the other guitarist, is standing with his arms at his sides as his guitar dangles loosely by the strap around his neck. Toby is at the back of the stage, seated at the drum set, sticks folded in his lap. And of course there is Logan Baker, the lead singer, the frontman, standing at the very front, hands tucked into his pockets as he taps his foot impatiently.
…How spectacular! There is a certain thrill in the room now that is different from the thrill of a concert. There is something slightly more artificial about a concert, no matter how hard you don’t want it to be. It’s a performance, after all. It’s not intimate, the way this soundcheck is. There’s a very heavy concentration of talent in this room, and being in the center of it all could make the right kind of music freak drunk off twenty minutes with the right band.
And Neighborhood Watch seems to be the right band for quite a few people. Their posters are up around town, on two occasions I’ve seen their stickers slapped on the bumper of a Toyota, and their music has an impressive amount of streams. But mostly, you’ll hear about them when you ask someone in Fort Collins--someone who knows the scene--what kind of local band you should listen to. “Oh man,” they say. “You gotta look up Neighborhood Watch.”
And as far as the music, it’s very college-sounding. Something that must be understood about the music scene in Fort Collins is that a lot of it comes out of Colorado State University, both the bands and the audience. Most of the music around town from young people is unpolished, raw, sometimes even grimy, allowing it to fall into the broad category of indie rock, which originated from colleges in the 80s, and still seems to be the trend for bands like Neighborhood Watch. But calling their music standard wouldn’t be correct. In songs like “Tucson,” you can hear influences from early punk, and in one of their new songs that hasn’t yet been recorded, “Strange Things,” you can hear elements of psychedelic rock, with sinister guitars and darker vocals.
They tell me they never really decided on a specific sound when they first started, although they agreed on the album When We Were Friends by The Backseat Lovers being a major influence in how they played and structured their songs. The first song the band created, before Logan had even joined, was “Boulder.” It’s not on their Spotify, but has been their consistent closer for a long time.
However, the first song that they worked on after Logan joined, “Stuck on You,” has both a catchy sound and poignant lyrics, which I asked about due to my interest in knowing if the song was about anyone. Sage, who sits across from me, hesitates and clasps his hands together. He explains that he wrote the song about his ex-girlfriend. They were still dating at the time, but it was rocky. Soon, they broke up, and the song came to fruition.
Sage has taken off his overshirt, and his tank top reveals a rash of tattoos that cover his arms and chest. The dark lines of ink take the shapes of foaming waters and boomboxes. Scattered along his ankle are around fifteen or so stick-and-poke tattoos as a result of excessive alcohol-use. Logan proudly points out a Pac-Man ghost he stabbed into Sage’s leg one night, and the band has a laugh over another tattoo that Sage says he got from “some random dude.” The tattoo reads “FADD” with two “Ds” in blocky letters, and Sage explains, “It’s supposed to say ‘FADED’ but he forgot the ‘E.’”
The whole situation makes me think of the song's first lyric: “The tattoos you get when you’re just a little drunk.” It made me wonder how many of those tattoos on his body had been received with the same girlfriend that the song was about. So I ask him: do you need to be depressed to write a sad song, or in love to write a love song? “Is it better if the song happens?”
Sage nods his head. “Yeah,” he says. “You know if it’s like…real, I would say it’s better. Like, you know, if you’re really sad, and you write lyrics, they’re probably gonna be sad.”
“And that’s what people connect with, y’know?” Logan chimes in. “That authentic thing, y’know? And it’s hard to fake on stage, it’s hard to fake recording it. Like it’s gotta be there or it’s not.”
While the other bands are in soundcheck, Neighborhood Watch is seated around a crammed booth as I face them with a digital recorder on the table and an open notepad in my lap. A few times throughout the hour-long interview, someone will stop by the table and share a brief conversation with the band. Something else that must be understood about the music scene in Fort Collins is that it’s not a hostile, or even marginally competitive game. One example is this: after all the soundchecks there was no criticism or negativity from the bands towards each other. One of the drummers for a band kept telling everyone, “I love your guys’ vibe!” after each check.
“Vibe” is a word you’ll hear a lot around here. Good ones, bad ones (which are rarer). Groovy, bluesy, folksy. It describes the music, but it also describes the total culmination of the band…the appearance, the stage presence, even the type of instruments. When you can’t fully articulate the band’s essence properly or quickly, you refer to their vibe, because if you’re hip to it all, if you have the eyes and ears for these things, then you’ll know what someone means when they tell you they really like your vibe.
Anyway, let’s return to the headliner, more specifically, their humble beginnings. They recall their first show fondly, which was on Logan’s back patio at his house, following a massive snowstorm. They had to shovel out a patch of grass in the backyard for an audience of twenty, and had a thin cloth tent overhead the shanty stage, intended to shield them from flurries of snow, but instead dripping water down on them the entire time, creating hazardous conditions.
“I was getting electrocuted,” Logan laughed. “The mic was like shocking me.”
And so, Neighborhood Watch was finally out there. And they also had a semi-weather-proof venue that they could host shows at whenever! So, soon, the band planned their second show in Logan’s backyard. However, the neighbors were not going to let the noise slide this time, and called the cops sometime around 7 p.m. that evening.
The Fort Collins Police Department called Logan’s cell phone, and it went to voicemail. The woman on dispatch left him a message saying, “Hi this message is for Logan. This is [inaudible] Fort Collins Police Dispatch. We got a noise complaint from your party at [Logan’s address]. You have fifteen minutes to shut it down. And I am calling it 7:15 p.m., thank you.”
Once they heard the voicemail, they realized they didn’t have much time before the cops would arrive. So they played one final song. And when it was over, no one had shown up…no flashing red and blue, no knock on the front door or back gate. So the band played about seven more finales before finally the concert came to its natural end. The cops didn’t show up until after the party had cleared out.
Apparently, for a short time, the band was at playful odds with the police department, as they kept playing regular shows in Logan’s backyard, and each time the police would show up to shut it down. Toby says that the police “respected what we were doing, but were still like ‘shut up.’” And so, the cops became a staple of the shows.
Another staple was beer. “You can’t get away with shotgunning a beer mid-set at a venue,” Sage sighs. He has just finished telling stories from an old concert in which he pounded a beer can on the side of his head to open it before shotgunning it. But, they clarify, there is a certain level to how drunk you can be at a show.
Toby explains that once he had six or seven shots before a set and could not drum for shit the entire time. And the Ian story! How can anyone forget? The band laughs before explaining to me that Ian once vomited during a song, bending over and spilling his guts, managing not to stop the bassline for even a second. “I felt better after,” Ian adds.
Logan says the backyard shows were the most fun, when they were just playing at a party for their friends. They explain that they got pretty burned out a while back after playing too many shows, and now they only do one a month. Those of the band still in college are graduating, and the future is uncertain. Will the band be their destiny, or will it be an office job?
There’s a lot that is probably on the minds of these young musicians, about where this music thing might go. They tell me their passion for music only grows with the band, and even though things have slowed down, they have future projects on the way, such as the new songs they’ll play later tonight. They seem hopeful for the future, and it rubs off on me.
Once the interview is over, I return to the theater, where the show is getting ready to begin. It’s been long enough since the doors opened that the dancefloor is filling up…and that’s not including the people still lingering in the lobby. Someone with blue hair is selling tickets for $15 at a booth near the entrance, and slapping wristbands on everyone that forks over the cash.
Neighborhood Watch won’t be playing for over two hours, but believe me when I tell you the rest of these bands tonight aren’t too bad. When the lights dim and the first band, The Athletics, play, the front man has a very charismatic and energetic presence. His name is Brohgan Foster, and he wouldn’t look old enough to drink if it wasn’t for the thin strip of brown hair above his upper lip.
You don’t expect someone who looks so young to be able to get on stage and hold the crowd’s attention the way Brohgan does, or perform the way he does. Rally, up after, is a great band as well. Who knew a bunch of kids from Utah could rock so hard? And Eliza Neiman-Golden, the Tiny Tomboy herself, has a piercing, haunting voice that I can still hear perfectly, even a week later. And Sam Seymour’s drumming! God! How articulate, how steady.
When Neighborhood Watch takes the stage around 10:30 p.m., Logan is clutching a can of beer, and several of the band members set down their own marble-colored drinks in plastic cups on the amps. After a little crowd work, the band slips into their set like a warm bath, first playing the song “Ashtray,” one of their biggest hits. Sage bounces along to Toby’s drumline as Toby himself stiffly nods his head in total concentration, bringing the sticks up and down and up and down: boom, buh, dum, boom.
As Logan sings, he twists and jerks his body in a restricted fashion, keeping his head level with the microphone and trying not to spill his drink. The colorful stage lights cast his shadow on the wall perfectly, making it appear like some sort of moving hieroglyphic, shifting and transforming with the magic of the music. The song climaxes at CJ’s guitar solo. The fingers on his left hand glide up and down the neck of his electric guitar as his right hand effortlessly weaves his pick through the strings.
During the solo, Logan prances around the stage, and as he steps back to the microphone, he tilts his head back and finishes his beer in a few silent gulps. At the back of the stage, Ian plays the bass in a way that is both reserved and loose. His feet stay planted firmly where they are, but the rest of his body twists and turns as his right hand delicately plucks the steel strings, an action as natural to it as holding a pencil or using a lighter.
Before the next song, “Stuck on You,” Logan cracks open another beer, the sound playing crisply through the speakers. After that song, he has a slight sway to his stance. The music seems to get better and better with each song. The guitars are incendiary, and the bass is relentlessly groovy. Toby’s drumming is tight, and Logan maintains his signature, hypomanic vocals through the entire show. The band does a Peach Pit cover, as well as an unreleased song called “Growing Pains,” which has a similar essence--a similar vibe--to “Ashtray.”
They play somewhere around nine or ten songs before the music stops and Logan announces, “That’s it no more music.” The crowd ahhhs and suddenly, without delay, the band launches into “Boulder,” the song that the audience has been shouting for all night. When they play this song, you can tell it means quite a bit to them, the way that Logan cozies up to the microphone and the players seem to move a little more.
Finally, the song comes to an end, and Logan shouts. “We are are Neighbohood Watch and you’ve all been fucking great!” As the crowd cheers and swells toward the stage, Toby rattles off a final drum solo, and the band all play their instruments frantically and quickly to create a final, loud, almost violent ending. A wall of sound, a combination of every instrument, shrieking and crying, comes crashing down on the audience, and like that, the night is over.
So how about it? Is a Neighborhood Watch show worth $15 and a few hours of your time? I never ended up paying the $15, but I think it is. And it won’t be long before those tickets start doubling, then tripling, in price when the band starts playing more in Denver, perhaps even other states. So how long will it be before that happens, when will Neighborhood Watch make it big?
Only time will tell, but I’m certain it won’t be more than a few years, given they play their cards right.
So, as the bands wait around, they kill the time with simple, sometimes mundane activities like socializing with other bands, staff, and fans, fiddling with instruments, and drinking.
But it’s too early to drink seriously, and the stage is still being rigged for soundcheck, so the bands that have arrived for tonight's concert have convened in the theater to wait for the sound engineer, Daphne, to announce that they can start the soundcheck. They’ve shared some small talk amongst themselves already, and now that everyone seems acquainted, the groups have spread out around the venue.
And how about the venue? Tonight’s venue is a movie theater at The Lyric, since it is still too early in the spring to host a show at their outdoor venue. And through either coincidence or deliberate reconstruction, there is a dance floor at the front of the theater, with all the crimson theater seats behind a railing that overlooks the whole scene, making it more equipped to handle this sort of show. The stage is set up in front of the projector screen, and standing erect on it are three microphone stands, multiple amps, a drumset, some guitar stands, a vampiric orgy of cables and wires, and finally, multiple large speakers stacked atop each other like bundles of hay. The sound set up near the railing is a confusing charcuterie board of dials, switches, and blinking lights, along with a laptop set up for the projector screen which Daphne runs over to once in a while before rushing back to the stage.
What an atmosphere! And later when the place is darker, the dance floor will be trembling with the vibrations of an entire room of people one-stepping, two-stepping, jiving, boogying, and grooving to seriously rad, seriously loud music. The pound of the drums (boom, boom, boom), the whine of the guitars (wah, wah, wah), the throb of the bass (thrum, thrum, thrum), and tying it all together will be the singers, their inflections being broadcast at somewhere around one hundred decibels, the sounds rolling over the crowd the way thunder rolls over a grassy valley. Oh, what a show it will be! But for now…we wait.
Two of the bands playing tonight are from Fort Collins, those being Neighborhood Watch and The Athletics, who have played together before at The Aggie and seem well-acquainted with one another. The other two bands, Tiny Tomboy and Rally, are from out of town, the former from Denver, the latter from Utah.
The band members, I notice, introduce themselves first by name, then instrument, then band. Duncan Mckay, the bassist for Rally, is talking to a staff member about where to put their merchandise as Alec Whitaker, guitar and singer for Rally, exchanges a handshake with Sam Seymour, the drummer for Tiny Tomboy. See what I mean? Of course they’re regular people, outside of all the music stuff, but it’s still important you identify your band and instrument, especially since to some musicians, instruments are like shoes: they reveal a lot about a person.
The Athletics haven’t arrived yet, which isn’t an issue since soundcheck is running late, and they weren’t scheduled to do it until a few hours from now. But it will begin soon for Neighborhood Watch. So where is the headliner band?
Walk over to the back of the dancefloor under the railing, and you’ll find Toby Yoder, drummer, and Sage Franks, guitarist, slinked in the corner, talking quietly amongst the two of them. The rest of the band is scattered about the outside of the venue, likely doing something of great importance as Sage and Toby anxiously eye the stage as they wait for soundcheck. After a few minutes, it’s looking like the stage is very close to being--
“The stage is ready for soundcheck,” Daphne announces.
Sage runs off to get the rest of the band, and the people stand around nervously, some of them finding a seat behind the railing, some of them flopping down on the leather couches by the walls. The show is starting. Not the show, but a show nonetheless.
CJ Herbert, guitarist, is the farthest to the left. He holds his guitar stiffly, like a soldier with a rifle, although the blonde hair that falls down to his shoulders would never fly in the army. Ian McMurry, bassist, is leaning against some of the large speakers, thumbing through his phone. Sage, the other guitarist, is standing with his arms at his sides as his guitar dangles loosely by the strap around his neck. Toby is at the back of the stage, seated at the drum set, sticks folded in his lap. And of course there is Logan Baker, the lead singer, the frontman, standing at the very front, hands tucked into his pockets as he taps his foot impatiently.
…How spectacular! There is a certain thrill in the room now that is different from the thrill of a concert. There is something slightly more artificial about a concert, no matter how hard you don’t want it to be. It’s a performance, after all. It’s not intimate, the way this soundcheck is. There’s a very heavy concentration of talent in this room, and being in the center of it all could make the right kind of music freak drunk off twenty minutes with the right band.
And Neighborhood Watch seems to be the right band for quite a few people. Their posters are up around town, on two occasions I’ve seen their stickers slapped on the bumper of a Toyota, and their music has an impressive amount of streams. But mostly, you’ll hear about them when you ask someone in Fort Collins--someone who knows the scene--what kind of local band you should listen to. “Oh man,” they say. “You gotta look up Neighborhood Watch.”
And as far as the music, it’s very college-sounding. Something that must be understood about the music scene in Fort Collins is that a lot of it comes out of Colorado State University, both the bands and the audience. Most of the music around town from young people is unpolished, raw, sometimes even grimy, allowing it to fall into the broad category of indie rock, which originated from colleges in the 80s, and still seems to be the trend for bands like Neighborhood Watch. But calling their music standard wouldn’t be correct. In songs like “Tucson,” you can hear influences from early punk, and in one of their new songs that hasn’t yet been recorded, “Strange Things,” you can hear elements of psychedelic rock, with sinister guitars and darker vocals.
They tell me they never really decided on a specific sound when they first started, although they agreed on the album When We Were Friends by The Backseat Lovers being a major influence in how they played and structured their songs. The first song the band created, before Logan had even joined, was “Boulder.” It’s not on their Spotify, but has been their consistent closer for a long time.
However, the first song that they worked on after Logan joined, “Stuck on You,” has both a catchy sound and poignant lyrics, which I asked about due to my interest in knowing if the song was about anyone. Sage, who sits across from me, hesitates and clasps his hands together. He explains that he wrote the song about his ex-girlfriend. They were still dating at the time, but it was rocky. Soon, they broke up, and the song came to fruition.
Sage has taken off his overshirt, and his tank top reveals a rash of tattoos that cover his arms and chest. The dark lines of ink take the shapes of foaming waters and boomboxes. Scattered along his ankle are around fifteen or so stick-and-poke tattoos as a result of excessive alcohol-use. Logan proudly points out a Pac-Man ghost he stabbed into Sage’s leg one night, and the band has a laugh over another tattoo that Sage says he got from “some random dude.” The tattoo reads “FADD” with two “Ds” in blocky letters, and Sage explains, “It’s supposed to say ‘FADED’ but he forgot the ‘E.’”
The whole situation makes me think of the song's first lyric: “The tattoos you get when you’re just a little drunk.” It made me wonder how many of those tattoos on his body had been received with the same girlfriend that the song was about. So I ask him: do you need to be depressed to write a sad song, or in love to write a love song? “Is it better if the song happens?”
Sage nods his head. “Yeah,” he says. “You know if it’s like…real, I would say it’s better. Like, you know, if you’re really sad, and you write lyrics, they’re probably gonna be sad.”
“And that’s what people connect with, y’know?” Logan chimes in. “That authentic thing, y’know? And it’s hard to fake on stage, it’s hard to fake recording it. Like it’s gotta be there or it’s not.”
While the other bands are in soundcheck, Neighborhood Watch is seated around a crammed booth as I face them with a digital recorder on the table and an open notepad in my lap. A few times throughout the hour-long interview, someone will stop by the table and share a brief conversation with the band. Something else that must be understood about the music scene in Fort Collins is that it’s not a hostile, or even marginally competitive game. One example is this: after all the soundchecks there was no criticism or negativity from the bands towards each other. One of the drummers for a band kept telling everyone, “I love your guys’ vibe!” after each check.
“Vibe” is a word you’ll hear a lot around here. Good ones, bad ones (which are rarer). Groovy, bluesy, folksy. It describes the music, but it also describes the total culmination of the band…the appearance, the stage presence, even the type of instruments. When you can’t fully articulate the band’s essence properly or quickly, you refer to their vibe, because if you’re hip to it all, if you have the eyes and ears for these things, then you’ll know what someone means when they tell you they really like your vibe.
Anyway, let’s return to the headliner, more specifically, their humble beginnings. They recall their first show fondly, which was on Logan’s back patio at his house, following a massive snowstorm. They had to shovel out a patch of grass in the backyard for an audience of twenty, and had a thin cloth tent overhead the shanty stage, intended to shield them from flurries of snow, but instead dripping water down on them the entire time, creating hazardous conditions.
“I was getting electrocuted,” Logan laughed. “The mic was like shocking me.”
And so, Neighborhood Watch was finally out there. And they also had a semi-weather-proof venue that they could host shows at whenever! So, soon, the band planned their second show in Logan’s backyard. However, the neighbors were not going to let the noise slide this time, and called the cops sometime around 7 p.m. that evening.
The Fort Collins Police Department called Logan’s cell phone, and it went to voicemail. The woman on dispatch left him a message saying, “Hi this message is for Logan. This is [inaudible] Fort Collins Police Dispatch. We got a noise complaint from your party at [Logan’s address]. You have fifteen minutes to shut it down. And I am calling it 7:15 p.m., thank you.”
Once they heard the voicemail, they realized they didn’t have much time before the cops would arrive. So they played one final song. And when it was over, no one had shown up…no flashing red and blue, no knock on the front door or back gate. So the band played about seven more finales before finally the concert came to its natural end. The cops didn’t show up until after the party had cleared out.
Apparently, for a short time, the band was at playful odds with the police department, as they kept playing regular shows in Logan’s backyard, and each time the police would show up to shut it down. Toby says that the police “respected what we were doing, but were still like ‘shut up.’” And so, the cops became a staple of the shows.
Another staple was beer. “You can’t get away with shotgunning a beer mid-set at a venue,” Sage sighs. He has just finished telling stories from an old concert in which he pounded a beer can on the side of his head to open it before shotgunning it. But, they clarify, there is a certain level to how drunk you can be at a show.
Toby explains that once he had six or seven shots before a set and could not drum for shit the entire time. And the Ian story! How can anyone forget? The band laughs before explaining to me that Ian once vomited during a song, bending over and spilling his guts, managing not to stop the bassline for even a second. “I felt better after,” Ian adds.
Logan says the backyard shows were the most fun, when they were just playing at a party for their friends. They explain that they got pretty burned out a while back after playing too many shows, and now they only do one a month. Those of the band still in college are graduating, and the future is uncertain. Will the band be their destiny, or will it be an office job?
There’s a lot that is probably on the minds of these young musicians, about where this music thing might go. They tell me their passion for music only grows with the band, and even though things have slowed down, they have future projects on the way, such as the new songs they’ll play later tonight. They seem hopeful for the future, and it rubs off on me.
Once the interview is over, I return to the theater, where the show is getting ready to begin. It’s been long enough since the doors opened that the dancefloor is filling up…and that’s not including the people still lingering in the lobby. Someone with blue hair is selling tickets for $15 at a booth near the entrance, and slapping wristbands on everyone that forks over the cash.
Neighborhood Watch won’t be playing for over two hours, but believe me when I tell you the rest of these bands tonight aren’t too bad. When the lights dim and the first band, The Athletics, play, the front man has a very charismatic and energetic presence. His name is Brohgan Foster, and he wouldn’t look old enough to drink if it wasn’t for the thin strip of brown hair above his upper lip.
You don’t expect someone who looks so young to be able to get on stage and hold the crowd’s attention the way Brohgan does, or perform the way he does. Rally, up after, is a great band as well. Who knew a bunch of kids from Utah could rock so hard? And Eliza Neiman-Golden, the Tiny Tomboy herself, has a piercing, haunting voice that I can still hear perfectly, even a week later. And Sam Seymour’s drumming! God! How articulate, how steady.
When Neighborhood Watch takes the stage around 10:30 p.m., Logan is clutching a can of beer, and several of the band members set down their own marble-colored drinks in plastic cups on the amps. After a little crowd work, the band slips into their set like a warm bath, first playing the song “Ashtray,” one of their biggest hits. Sage bounces along to Toby’s drumline as Toby himself stiffly nods his head in total concentration, bringing the sticks up and down and up and down: boom, buh, dum, boom.
As Logan sings, he twists and jerks his body in a restricted fashion, keeping his head level with the microphone and trying not to spill his drink. The colorful stage lights cast his shadow on the wall perfectly, making it appear like some sort of moving hieroglyphic, shifting and transforming with the magic of the music. The song climaxes at CJ’s guitar solo. The fingers on his left hand glide up and down the neck of his electric guitar as his right hand effortlessly weaves his pick through the strings.
During the solo, Logan prances around the stage, and as he steps back to the microphone, he tilts his head back and finishes his beer in a few silent gulps. At the back of the stage, Ian plays the bass in a way that is both reserved and loose. His feet stay planted firmly where they are, but the rest of his body twists and turns as his right hand delicately plucks the steel strings, an action as natural to it as holding a pencil or using a lighter.
Before the next song, “Stuck on You,” Logan cracks open another beer, the sound playing crisply through the speakers. After that song, he has a slight sway to his stance. The music seems to get better and better with each song. The guitars are incendiary, and the bass is relentlessly groovy. Toby’s drumming is tight, and Logan maintains his signature, hypomanic vocals through the entire show. The band does a Peach Pit cover, as well as an unreleased song called “Growing Pains,” which has a similar essence--a similar vibe--to “Ashtray.”
They play somewhere around nine or ten songs before the music stops and Logan announces, “That’s it no more music.” The crowd ahhhs and suddenly, without delay, the band launches into “Boulder,” the song that the audience has been shouting for all night. When they play this song, you can tell it means quite a bit to them, the way that Logan cozies up to the microphone and the players seem to move a little more.
Finally, the song comes to an end, and Logan shouts. “We are are Neighbohood Watch and you’ve all been fucking great!” As the crowd cheers and swells toward the stage, Toby rattles off a final drum solo, and the band all play their instruments frantically and quickly to create a final, loud, almost violent ending. A wall of sound, a combination of every instrument, shrieking and crying, comes crashing down on the audience, and like that, the night is over.
So how about it? Is a Neighborhood Watch show worth $15 and a few hours of your time? I never ended up paying the $15, but I think it is. And it won’t be long before those tickets start doubling, then tripling, in price when the band starts playing more in Denver, perhaps even other states. So how long will it be before that happens, when will Neighborhood Watch make it big?
Only time will tell, but I’m certain it won’t be more than a few years, given they play their cards right.