You are not going to like what I’m about to say. I don’t like what I’m about to say. On Wednesday at A&R Music Bar, as I belted out lyrics to songs written by Laura Jane Grace, I looked down at the setlist on the stage in front of me and thought “this is her Eras Tour.”
Now that this awful confession is out there in the open, it’s time to unpack. Anytime Laura Jane Grace is within a couple hours of me, I will make the trip to see her play. It’s become an annual rite of passage to go see an artist who’s been performing and touring for nearly 30 years.
Each time I see her play, I think, and usually say, the same thing “if this was labeled as an Against Me! show, they would need a much bigger venue.” Despite being the lone surviving member of Against Me!, the punk band from the aughts that rose to big label “prominence,” and kept going despite the crash of a music industry and the weight of expectations. They went from an anarchist punk band to a band hated by anarchists for the mortal sin of selling out.
If you have not read Tranny, the autobiography by Grace and Dan Ozzi, all of these things are addressed. From anarchists protesting her shows, the rotating cast of band members, including a famous beneficiary of nepotism turned former Slipknot drummer who loves having the lights shining directly on himself, and battling record labels and Fat Mike, Grace has not gone through what you would call a normal music career. Whatever that means in 2025.
However, if you go to see Grace in this year of 2025, you will hear a chunk of that career, a setlist pushing 30 tracks from 23 years of releases. Wednesday though, at A&R Music Bar, the show felt different. It was not only a wide array of eras of a prolific songwriter’s life through trial, transition and daily struggles. It felt like an honest to goodness punk rock show.
The openers for the night, Caught Dead, were a big reason. For those handful of shows I’ve seen Grace live, after the world reopened from the COVID-19 lockdown years, it has been a lot of indie rock bands in support. There is nothing wrong with it. Through Grace, I have heard bands like Cleveland’s own House of Wills, Thelma and the Sleaze and I’m eternally grateful that she picked up Weakened Friends for a series of shows.
Caught Dead is the next in line of these unforgettable openers. Out of Dayton, Ohio, Caught Dead is hardcore punk. End of sentence. Fast playing, yelling, politically fueled lyrics and moshing. Standing at maybe five-foot tall is Caught Dead’s lead singer Sütchi. The energy of this band flows through Sütchi, to the point that a mosh pit only happened when she jumped into the crowd and started one single-handedly. After getting kicked in the face, and not missing a beat, Sütchi got back into the action on stage.
Before that, Sütchi knelt on stage and read a prepared statement about genocide against Palestinians. Music is inherently political, despite what you may have heard. Punk has not, and should not, shy away from this and Caught Dead did not.
The four-piece band charged through roughly nine to 10 emotionally charged tracks. On bass was Gwen Downing-Groth, who is not only a musician a steward of the genre through Blind Rage, a record shop in Dayton fondly labeled “The third best record store in Dayton.” Normally, I research the opening bands before a show but life got in the way of this one, so I had no clue that Downing-Groth was playing or even in a band. So, I felt like I broke the cardinal sin of concerts of wearing the band’s shirt at their show when I wore a Blind Rage “These colors don’t run” trans rights shirt complete with an eagle wielding a trans flag and a rifle.
Now, I have been assured that this is no longer a rule. “Rule” is also a loose word here because I do not care what other people wear at a concert and don’t judge. It’s more of a personal guideline that means I am old.
Up next was Rodeo Boys. They are a punk rock band too, but I will let their record label describe them because it is better than anything I can muster.
“Rodeo Boys is what happens when the Miller High Life gets legs and starts walking around on its own. A rippin’ 4-piece from Lansing, MI is for queers and steers alike. Rodeo Boys shows up at your town, rolls up their sleeves, and gets to work to deliver their blue-collar alt sound straight to your ears.”
All of that.
Rodeo Boys is as fun as you can get with punk rock music. Their songs align completely with the description above. Real life songs about every day. As they played through their set, Rodeo Boys played off one another, shoulder wrestled each other and looked like they were having the time of their lives, and I believed them.
Grace, her wife Paris Campbell-Grace on backing vocals, and Mikey Erg on drums came out to close out the night. Each time I have seen Grace, the band has looked different and it matches the releases. From self-named releases to Laura Jane Grace and the Mississippi Medicals to Laura Jane Grace and the Trauma Tropes, they are all specific groups who put together specific sounds.
Each era of Grace’s songwriting was represented as she played a setlist of 25 songs across 10 different albums and four different naming conventions.
The four-person group, with a new bassist, began charging through some of the newer tracks of the last five years. It began with “The Swimming Pool Song” from the 2020 solo release Stay Alive and right into “Hole In My Head” and “I’m Not a Cop” from Hole In My Head from 2024.
Wednesday night’s show swung into tracks from the upcoming Adventure Club LP coming out July 18, a second full-length album in two years. This one from the Trauma Tropes, aka Grace, her wife Campbell-Grace and two local musicians from Greece when the pair went to Europe after securing a grant to write and record an album.
Grace and company then played a pair of tracks from the 2024 EP release from Laura Jane Grace and the Mississippi Medicals, a group that consisted of Grace, Campbell-Grace, Erg and Drive-By Truckers own Matt Patton.
There was not a clear separation between the groups or albums, since Grace wrote them mostly anyway. The headliner of the new tracks was the new classic “Your God (God’s Dick)” that Grace played in front of a Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally. That performance turned into, for the news cycle, a way for far right moneymakers to get people angry for a few days.
Half the set consisted of Against Me! songs, all written by Grace. So, “Pints of Guiness Make You Strong,” “Don’t Lose Touch,” and “Miami” are all in the setlist, and more.
Photo by Neon Demon Photography
In addition, three tracks from Transgender Dysphoria Blues, the classic album about Grace’s own transition. There is no way that I can relate to what people in the trans community are going through right now, full disclaimer. I will tell you that it did not matter during Grace’s set. Everyone yelled, everyone screamed. It was a sanctuary free from outside vitriol and hate.
During “True Trans Soul Rebel,” I caught someone weeping near the front of the stage. Regardless if Grace wants it or not, she has become more than a punk rock hero, but a hero full stop to people in the community. The show looked like the outlet for that pain and singing along with songs that are hitting a new era of fans who did not come up with Against Me!, like I did when I heard “Sink, Florida, Sink” on a Rock Against Bush compilation.
If Grace played shows under Against Me!, they would headline the new diet Warped Tour money grab. They would play in front of thousands of people trying to relive back when they were a teen, instead of the quaint and sterilized A&R Music Bar. While I again cannot relate, I can say that a show by Grace in 2025, playing the songs she’s written and performed for entire lifetimes, meant more to the people in that room than it would to anyone 30/40-something filling an arena for nostalgia.
Featured image by Neon Demon Photography
