Friendsgiving with TDE
These past few months seemed to have flown by so I’d like to slow it down a bit and take us back to just before Thanksgiving. Some (insane) people love spending Thanksgiving surrounded by family. I prefer my chosen family. Ugh, that sounds corny, but due to scheduling problems, my yearly Friendsgiving had to be pushed off. To make up for it, I was at another concert.
On November 24th, less than a week after seeing Jeremy Zucker, I was back at Terminal 5 to see The Driver Era. Once again, I had showed up about four hours early. Alas, this time the line had already formed. Zipping up my jacket and breaking out my earbuds, I settled in for the wait. After hours of cycling through Tiktok, Snapchat, and Instagram and probably making a couple of unintentional cameos in the group of girls behind me’s tiktoks, it was finally time to get inside. After Terminal 5’s ridiculous system for getting into the venue (word of advice: don’t treasure your spot in line because you will be dislocated when they split the line in 3 for security), I was greeted with a blast of warmth from inside.
The first opener of the night was Moontower. Originally coming onstage a bit earlier than their set time, the band played it off well. This pop trio is insanely fun to watch. Their stage presence is incredible. They did a great job of engaging the crowd, teaching the hooks to their songs, telling some stories, and even tossing out a disposable camera designated for a crowd member to photograph them. The trio is incredibly energetic, managing to jump around for the entirety of their set. I’m sure the back of the crowd had no problem seeing them. At one point in their set, frontman Jacob Culver made his way from the stage up to the balcony. Leaning out over the crowd, Culver took the phrase “use the entire stage” to a new level. That move definitely captured a lot of attention.
After the lively Moontower, The Wrecks took the stage. A bit more rock than the previous opener, The Wrecks made some noise. More of the crowd knew The Wrecks music so there was a bit more singing along, especially for their more popular songs “Favorite Liar” and “Infinitely Ordinary”. After a high energy opening of a few songs, they switched up the energy for their song “Four”, leaving just the frontman Nick and guitarist Spencer onstage for the slower tune. After that, the whole band came back on to finish up the set. The band did a great job of connecting with the audience, both through talking and getting down into the crowd.
Finally, time for the main event. The Driver Era. They were incredible. The set list was pretty long and the band jumped from one song right to the next. All songs were from their last album Girlfriend, but we also got the iconic “Sex on Fire” cover that is just *chefs kiss*. What can I say? I’m a Ross Lynch fan. When the band walked off the stage after the last song, the crowd knew it’s not really over. After a few minutes of calling for an encore, we got our final two songs, “Afterglow” and “A Kiss”. Unfortunately after that, the show really was over.
Was the cold I got from being outside in just a jacket for four hours worth it? Absolutely. Was making my friends jealous an extra little treat? Most definitely. There’s a certain delight in waving pictures of band members in front of your bestie’s face because she refused to go with you. The lesson here is: always get tickets to see TDE.
If you could only pick one TDE song to hear live, which would it be? Let me know in the comments.
You can listen to Moontower here, The Wrecks here, and TDE here. See photos from the show here.