Yellowcard in Grand Rapids, MI. (photos by Victoria Walenga)
It’s been 10 years since Yellowcard’s fourth studio album was released. Ocean Avenue sold 11,000 copies in its first week in the U.S, debuting at #61 in the billboards and was declared Yellowcard’s most successful album. November 2013 the band released the news to take Ocean Avenue back on tour acoustically, this time followed by an electric set of some of their other songs. The band had enlisted What’s Eating Gilbert (Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory) as a supporting act.
On January 29th in Grand Rapids, Michigan Yellowcard fans piled into the Intersection only to anxiously await the trip back to 2003 when the album was released. I overheard people saying “This was my favorite album in high school!” “I listened to it so many times my copy of it broke so I had to buy a new one!”
The first act was What’s Eating Gilbert, Chad Gilbert’s (New Found Glory) side project. The crowd went crazy for them. They played many songs from their 2010 EP “Thinking ‘Bout Her” and their 2012 EP “Cheap Shots.”
After a few songs Gilbert stops to thank everyone for coming out and he explains that What’s Eating Gilbert started out as an experiment and he didn’t expect it to explode the way it did in the last few years. They started recording various songs and posting them on Tumblr and once the public got ahold of it everyone went wild and started demanding more.
During sets The Intersection played older songs by Blink-182, Sum 41, and Green Day. Everyone was singing along and getting hyped for Yellowcard. I could feel the excitement in the air as the lights when down and the band walked across the stage grabbing their instruments. Many fans held up signs that said “Happy 10 year anniversary!” and “We love you!”
The band started out with a little speech:
“Thank you everyone for coming out tonight, we are Yellowcard and it’s been 10 years since we released Ocean Avenue. Thank you so much for the constant support, we orgionally recorded Ocean Avenue acoustically but then decided we like the electric better, so tonight we are going to show you both.”
Keeping their promise they went through the whole album song by song acoustically then they added a few other songs like Awakening, Surface of the Sun, and With You Around all from the album “Southern Air” that was released in 2012.
The third song they played was Ocean Avenue, everyone went crazy. Even though the set was acoustic that didn’t stop anyone from crowd surfing and sitting on each other’s shoulders waving their lighters around.
Out of all the shows I’ve been to I think this was one of my favorites just because of the energy that was produced during the set. After ten years everyone still knows all the words, and compared to videos I’ve seen of Yellowcard playing in 2003 they’re reacting the exact same. It shows me that music can never be out dated, it doesn’t matter if an album came out 20 years or a month ago it can still produce the same reaction.
Congratulations Yellowcard on 10+ years of success!
Pick up the album here!
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