August 30th, 2002
Maggie's
Concord, Michigan

Bands: Once a Hero, Chiodos Bros, Hope for August, Jarring Impact



After getting out of work a little late on Friday, August 30th, Doug rushed out to Adam's house to meet up with the band to finish loading the rest of the gear. We then drove in a caravan to the venue, Maggie's, situated halfway between the towns of Spring Arbor and Concord, just southwest of Jackson. All this, in Friday-afternoon-Labor-Day-Weekend-rush-hour traffic. Whew. Luckily, we arrived in plenty of time to load in the gear and relax a bit. Maggie's is a great place to catch some live music while enjoying a pop/soda/coke and some good ole American food. Even though Maggie's seemed to be somewhat isolated, plenty of people came out to see the show.



The guys in the picture right above are from the Chiodos Brothers, who were first to perform that night. If the name happens to ring a bell, it's because we've played with them a couple times before at The Local 432 in Flint. It's always fun to hang with those guys, and they've taken their music to new heights since we've last seen them.



Next up was Hope for August, a local indie/emo band. They kinda reminded us a little of us. It's sure nice to be playing with bands who are in our genre. Remember the good ole days when it was Once a Hero (or even Stand to Reason) playing with 4 screamcore bands? Yeh, those were the days. Ok. Getting back on track.



After Hope for August, it was our turn to take the stage. The songs we played at this show might include the exact same songs, perhaps even in the same order, as the songs you see in the picture below.



If you actually bothered to twist your neck around so you could read the list, and if you're familiar with our songs, you might have noticed the third song "Lifelines and Dialtones" and thought to yourself how you've never heard of that one before. This is a new one that we just wrote upon returning from our summer travels/jobs, so look for it at our next show, if you haven't heard it already. We practiced really hard to get it right- even in the parking lot of Maggie's before the show. The rest of our set went on as planned. Doug didn't even break a string. That's two shows in a row, now!



After we had finished, Jarring Impact, a local pop punk act, took the stage. They have quite a following at Maggie's, and apparently it was their last show for a while because one of their instrumentalists is going off to college, so their fans were especially enthusiastic. They were singing along, requesting encores, the whole nine yards. After the show, we packed everything up, and made the 50 mile trek home through the dense patchy fog so we could catch some sleep before our first show at Sigma Phi of the fall the next day...

-Once a Hero