WATCH/READ: Blood Brothers SoCal 2024 - Pomona, Santa Ana, 2 Nights in Los Angeles

During my formative years, I went to see Cursive. Who at the time, had one of their most amazing albums released “The Ugly Organ.” I was super excited to see them live for the first time. We decided to get down to the show early to check out the other bands. Eastern Youth, who was a duo from Japan and had made a split EP with Cursive. And then… The Blood Brothers. I had no clue who The Blood Brothers were and had not heard of them. Neither my friends. They walk out on stage and these scrawny, sort of clumsy looking dudes roll up on stage. Then Johnny Whitney quietly says in to the microphone, “Hey were the Blood Brothers from Seattle, Washington” and proceeds in to “USA Nails.” HO-LEE SHIT. It was an assault of heavy guitar strums and absolutely SCREAMING lyrics. Did I understand a single word said? Absolutely not. But I was immediately hooked from the beginning. At 15 years old, I had never heard music like this before. It changed the way I looked at music and because I couldn’t decipher the lyrics. I dove in to the records listening while reading the liner notes. Burn Piano Island, Burn is a top 10 album of all time for me. I bought a shirt that day and I think I wore it almost every day for the rest of the school year. I only brought one cassette to tape Cursive that night and to this day, it’s a huge regret I didn’t tape that Blood Brothers set. I saw them a few more times around Detroit over the next few years. The last time being when they opened for Coheed and Cambria in 2005. For one reason or another, I missed the remaining shows they played around Detroit until they broke up after 2007. Gutted, but their music still lived on. They reunited for a small amount of shows in 2014, but I felt like that didn’t count. It never happened in my eyes. I never thought we’d see them again.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2024 and a tour was announced! I couldn’t believe it. The 20th anniversary of Crimes. They were going out again. At the time of these shows, I’d be in SoCal and of course I can’t just go to to one. I need to go to all of them. That is the huge advantage of Southern California, is that all of these cities are within 30-40 minutes of each other. I got tickets to all 4 shows in Pomona, Santa Ana and two nights at the Belasco downtown LA. The anticipation of these shows brewing for 8 months was overwhelming. But when it finally happened, my wife penned it “Blood Brothers Week.” - I was lucky that I could still help put our newborn down for bed and then jet out quick to these shows. I went in to Pomona without knowing the setlist. I grabbed a bootleg tour edition of Crimes at the merch booth in Pomona and some stickers and luckily was able to take them back out to my car before the show. Overall just blown away by the show. The band sounded super tight like they never broke up/disbanded. They played everything that I had ever wanted to hear coming back. I got harassed by a security guard during the Pomona show about filming on the digital camera and they wanted me to delete the footage in front of them. It was incredibly frustrating because the iPhone would produce better footage if we are talking technical. But it was near the end of the show. So it is what it is.

The rest of the week went without a hitch. I bought VIP balcony tickets for the LA shows, literally an hour after they were announced and a got dead center spot. I was able to bring in a clamp and small tripod for the first night so I could run two cams. It was incredible. But, I had seen a lot of people taking photos/video the previous nights. I just didn’t know how to get in contact with the band. As I knew they allowed recordings in the past. I asked around to a few people I saw filming from other shows and they gave me their management’s email address. Not thinking anything of it, the next morning I got a reply and asked if I wanted a photo pass for the last LA show. I couldn’t believe it! I got to bring in extra cameras, place them on stage (wish I would have brought some rubber pads to suppress the vibrations of that camera). My effin’ boy Ralph rode down from Bakersfield for the show. We grabbed a few brews and I got to openly film for them. They posted the opening track from the show to their Instagram, which was pretty effing cool. It was like coming full circle and I am glad I got to record/film them one last time. Who knows if they will do another tour with the 20th anniversary of Young Machetes coming up. But I’ll take this if this was the last time I see them live. All 4 shows are below for consumption.