To celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album, "All the Stars and Boulevards" (2005), Augustana decided to do a special anniversary tour. The lead singer Dan Layus said that Phantom Planet had been a big inspiration to them as they were starting up, especially since both bands were formed in Southern California. With Phantom Planet being formed in Los Angeles, and Augustana being formed in San Diego. They had been wanting to tour with Phantom Planet for years and were finally able too. Both bands had top selling hits in the early 2000's. Phantom Planet's being "California (OC Theme Song), and Augustana's being "Boston."
I hadn't seen Phantom Planet since Summerfest so when they announced this tour I knew I needed to check out the Madison date, and possibly the Chicago date. Amazingly those dates both occurred on a weekend so I wouldn't have to take off work, and be able to rest more. It also gave me the opportunity to book a hotel in Madison on a Friday night and then explore more of Madison the next day before heading back home. With the Madison concert being on a Friday night, and Chicago being on a Sunday it was definitely nice to have Saturday as a buffer day between. Two nights of concerts is doable, but sounds extra exhausting, especially getting there early. As an amazing coincidence I'll be seeing Phantom Planet perform at a dream venue at Red Rocks amphitheater in less than two weeks. It just so happened that the date of my vacation with my parents to Colorado would line up with the concert. They'll play first and have a shorter set than usual, but it will still be incredible seeing them perform there. They are opening for Gavin Degraw, and OAR. I was able to find a way cheaper ticket, thanks to a fellow fan. Usually Red Rock tickets are $200+ due to the venue itself being in the mountains. I'll probably be closer to the back for this show, but I am just ecstatic to see a show there, and to have my current favorite band performing just adds to that excitement even more. I am blown away by the generosity of fellow Phantom Planet fans. One for selling me the ticket to Red Rock for such a bargain price, and one for giving me a free ticket to the show in Chicago when I was still deciding if I was going to go or not. I am also always blown away by the generosity, and intentionality of Phantom Planet themselves. You can tell that they care so much about their fans, and it shows. I love the little community that was created through Patreon. (Now onto the actual Madison show itself, since that's the main topic of this post. :P)
I bought a VIP ticket for the Madison show, and that meant being able to enter the venue early. The perks were beating the line for merch, early access to the show, an acoustic set put on by Augustana and Phantom Planet as they took requests from the audience, and a meet n' greet with Phantom Planet and Dan from Augustana. Due to the earlier check in time I decided to leave work after my 1pm client left for the day. I was planning on stopping home quickly to grab my stuff and say goodbye to my dog before driving around 2 hours to the show. I would check into my hotel an hour before VIP, and be able to not rush, and maybe straighten my hair. That is unfortunately not what happened.
I left for Madison about 2:30. Everything was fine until Google Maps lead me to a major road that was closed to all traffic. No one told Google Maps about the closure. I turned around and had Google Maps hopefully put me on a different route. The route it redirected me to took me to a rural neighborhood. As I made my way through the neighborhood I came upon a lady telling everyone to turn around because apart of that road was also closed. At first I thought she was telling me to pull around the truck in front of me that was backing up, but rolled down my window to ask. It turns out the truck was also trying to turn around. Google Maps then lead me back to the closed major road at which point I pulled off to the side of the road. Google Maps had originally showed me 3 different routes I could have taken, but this one was supposed to be the fastest. I was hoping to find one of the other routes, but for some reason couldn't find another way. I think Google Maps had lead quite a few people astray, because there were quite a few cars that also pulled off to the side of the road. By that point it was 4:30 and I still had an hour of my drive left. VIP would take place at 6:15. I would definitely not be able to rest quick before it started. I have the Life 360 app on my phone where people who you've added can see your exact location. My mom and I can both see each other's location on the app whenever. (I originally downloaded it for when I was traveling semi-solo in Europe just in case.) It's actually pretty helpful though for when you do get lost as I found out. For some reason though while talking with my mom on the phone, my phone reception kept going in and out. At one point I questioned if there was even a way to make it to Madison from where I was. I started heading in the direction my mom suggested I should go during one of the many phone calls I had to make with the bad reception before my phone cut out completely. No bars, and my wifi stopped working. I thought maybe that wherever I was, was just really remote with terrible signal, and just kept driving in the same direction for 15 minutes. I decided to try and see if turning my phone off and then back on again would work, and thankfully it did. All the sudden I had full bars again? I called my mom to get an update on my location. I ended up turning Google Maps on again after a few minutes, and it actually took me to the freeway, and thankfully the freeway was open ha ha. I got to my hotel around 5:35 and checked in quickly and dropped off my stuff and did my makeup before rushing out and making the 20 minute drive into town. I made it to the parking lot at 6:05, and had 10 minutes to spare. My 2 hour drive took 3 hours instead and I was very stressed.
I immediately saw faces I recognized as I approached the venue. Two women from the online Patreon group. (They had also gone to the first stop of the tour in Minneapolis the night before.) I had never met them before in person, but recognized them instantly from interacting with them online. It definitely didn't feel like we were meeting for the first time. We chatted outside as we waited before being checked into VIP. Another woman from the Patreon showed up as well with her nephew who I had actually interacted with at the Summerfest show the prior summer. (She had also been at the same show as me when Phantom Planet played the Chicago House of Blues in the fall of 2024.) Most of the fans are around the bands age so an early to mid 40s majority.
During the acoustic show Phantom Planet and Dan would alternate doing songs. VIP that night ended up being all Phantom Planet fans so I felt bad for Dan because of that, but of course everyone was still excited to see him play songs as well. Phantom Planet took requests for songs and ended up playing "Drive On II", "ROTK", "Through the Trees", and a non-released joke song called "Covet Away". I feel like I'm definitely missing a song, maybe two. Dan played a song called "Coffee and Cigarettes", but I don't remember what else. (Really wish my memory were better with these things.) There was a discussion on older guitars, and how with some you had to tie the guitar strap on. Before the meet n' greet Alex flashed his phone screen at us for 1 second, and said it was the album cover. All I could see was a blue screen and a tiny symbol. During the meet n' greet we took a group pic with all of us that were there from the Patreon with Phantom Planet and Dan. I was surprised at how many people from Patreon came to the Madison show of all places. In most of the meet n' greet photos Alex (the frontman of Phantom Planet), is holding up the blue phone-screen. We took individual pictures with the band after that, and then got situated by the stage before waiting for Augustana to perform. I chatted with Emma and Caren from Patreon again before the show. Standing for over 5 hours straight in flat shoes ended up being pretty brutal, but I got to be right up against the stage. (I love that in smaller venues you get to be that close, but also that seems a little dangerous for the musicians.) During our chat we exchanged cat pics with the exception that I definitely have a dog and not a cat. A dog that got his name suggested by Alex of Phantom Planet. He had suggested a few names, but I can only recall Astro and Onyx.
I didn't really know any of the Augustana songs, but didn't want to seem uninterested especially with being in the front row. So I made sure to move along to all of the songs. I was pretty much stood in front of Dan during Augustana's performance. During their set a centipede kept randomly running across the front of the stage. Only us fans in the front row seemed to notice though. It never got close enough to be squashed so I guess it gets to live on somewhere in the venue. At the venue there were random pieces of confetti on the ceiling that would fall down at really random times of the set, so I wonder what that was all about, ha ha. They weren't supposed to have confetti fall during their set so I think the vibrations of the music maybe caused it. I will definitely be checking out their music. They write really catchy songs, and Dan is super sweet. The band is also super talented as a whole, so I would definitely love to discover more about them. Dan would frequently have the biggest smile on his face while performing. He also was very intentional during the meet n' greet with introducing himself and just being really friendly, even to us fans who weren't specifically there to see his band. I just looked it up and it said that Dan is actually the sole member of Augustana currently, and the rest of the band is touring musicians, which makes sense as to why he was the only one who was there during the VIP portion of the show. Dan was also super intrigued to get to know Phantom Planet better, you could tell that he was also a fan of them. He really loved getting to know Phantom Planet's newer songs, and hear about the upcoming album Phantom Planet is putting out later this year.
There was about a half hour between sets as Phantom Planet set up their gear for their portion of the concert. When Phantom Planet did come on stage Alex made a joke about how Phantom Planet had just played and how they're Augustana, followed by a joke about being dyslexic, and jokingly saying he would beat up anyone who laughed at the joke up after class, with it being a legit diagnosis. (Alex was definitely more unhinged during the Madison show then at any other shows of theirs I have been to.) It made the whole experience way more unique though and felt more like one of the livestreams they would do on Patreon where there was little structure. During the set they forgot to perform "Lonely Day" and started playing "Geronimo" instead. After Geronimo was over someone pointed out that they had skipped "Lonely Day", to which Alex replied that he was mad we could see the setlist and he couldn't without his glasses, and would also beat them up after class. Alex talked about how at one show they had played "Lonely Day" 3x in a row (purposely). A fan joked about how they should play "Geronimo" again after they finished "Lonely Day" because that was what was next on the setlist. He asked the audience if they wanted him to do "Geronimo" again or play another song that started with "g" that was a rarity. Most of the audience wanted the rarity, so they played "Galleria". A song about a mall in Los Angeles where "Valley Girl", and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" was filmed that was supposed to get torn down. It turns out that they never actually tore it down but rebranded it into a different mall after Alex wrote a whole song about it. During the show Alex talked about how they were currently finishing up the new album, but about how he keeps tweaking it due to his OCD which is also a very real diagnosis. Between songs Alex threw in a couple Epstein jokes, for instance before they played "Galleria" he announced it as being called Epstein Episode 3: The Galleria. At one point despite trying to move into the next song Alex would not stop talking so Darren (the guitarist) gave up and sat on a speaker on stage while waiting for him to finish. At one point Alex came up to the edge of the stage while playing guitar directly in front of the couple stood at my left. We made eye contact, and he said "hi" before going further back on stage. I wonder what my face was saying during that moment, it felt weirdly intense.
Alex made a joke about how a licensed therapist fan towards the front was secretly diagnosing him, and writing in her notebook. He emphasized how he always tries to make the audience and the other guys in the band laugh during their set, and about the importance of living in the now. How one of their new songs called "Yesterday's Dead" was written about a breakup, but it is also about the importance of living in the moment. Towards the end of the set a fan brought up four cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer for the guys. (Those LA boys needed to have some Wisconsin beer). During their last songs Alex joked that there was only 28 more songs to go, which would have actually been fine for us fans. :PPP The comment was mostly made due to the fact they were getting through their set much slower than usual due to Alex's talking between songs. They played their top hit "California" when a comment about cats was made in the audience afterwards. Alex asked, "Did you just say you want to sing like a cat, if so get up here." (That was definitely not the comment that was made, but someone in the audience then started meowing the melody of "California".) They performed their last song before going offstage. The audience cheered for them to go back on stage, but instead Alex appeared in the audience with an acoustic guitar and began playing as a circle formed around him. He played the song "Anthem" acoustically. My back and feet were in bad shape at this point so 3 other fans and I decided to sit on the edge of the stage and watch. In the middle of the song however the other members came back on stage to add more to the background music of the song. Alex went back on stage after that with the rest of the band and played two more songs. We had gotten off the stage by then.
Before playing "Local Black and Red" Alex told the audience how Jason Schwartzman had wrote the song. Alex and Jason Schwartzman went to the same high school in Los Angeles, and Jason was the original drummer of Phantom Planet before pursuing acting in 2003. Alex told an anecdote about how he had gotten a vintage guitar from a thrift store, and thought he would be able to figure out how to use a soldering iron to fix it. He was at Jason's house at age 16 with the soldering iron before it then got connected to his skin and wouldn't come out, and ripped pieces of his skin away. He didn't give the details of if he then had to go to the hospital or not. He said about 2 weeks later he was in his Spanish class when he knocked the scab off and pure red blood started spurting everywhere. Details we definitely did not need to know. He told us how the Spanish teacher had usually believed in him a little too much, but that day asked him to leave. Apparently he was Russian but spoke really good Spanish. The fact that he was Russian came after he namedropped his Spanish teacher using Mr. as the suffix. An audience member shouted senor, and Alex replied, "Not in this case...no." :P (The story has nothing to do with the actual song, but all those events happened around the same time.)
Phantom Planet's set ended around 11pm, and they stayed around talking with fans until they were told to start finishing up around midnight. I chatted with the other fans from Patreon until that time. I wanted to let other fans be able to interact with the band, as we get to interact with them so much already due to the Patreon. It turns out Marissa from the Patreon had also come to the show with her boyfriend. I had met Marissa the prior year at Summerfest. Her and her boyfriend had also struggled with the same closed highway on their way to the show. While we were walking towards the exit the tour manager told us that he thought it had stopped drizzling outside. It technically had stopped drizzling and was actually now downpouring. Thankfully the parking lot was right across the street. The guys loaded their stuff onto the van as I was leaving the parking lot. I had gone without food since lunch time that day, so I was pretty hungry. (Besides a cookie the hotel gave me when I checked in? The venue didn't have any food, and I didn't want to give up my spot in the front row anyways.) I quickly ran through Taco Bell before returning to the hotel.
The following day I got to explore a little bit of Madison before heading home. I first checked out a vintage toy store called Meep Meepington's. The store contained a lot of amazing vintage toys from most decades including the most valuable toy in his collection of an alien from the movie "Aliens". He said the toy got discontinued because "Aliens" was rated R, and the toy was actually scary. There were so many things to look at. I visited some other shops in that area while walking down the street. A lot of the stores were selling art from local artists. I didn't end up buying anything from any of the stores, but it was neat to get to look around. I got an iced vanilla latte from a local coffee shop called "Lazy Janes" and sat enjoying my coffee while reminiscing about the show the night before. Across the street from the coffee shop was a St. Vinnies which I browsed through before heading back home. (The hotel had a complimentary breakfast buffet so I was all set with that.) It was a very warm sunshiny day.
If you read this very long detailed post then thank you. I know it probably has way more details than needed but I wrote it mostly for me to have in the future to look back on. I do hope you enjoyed reading though if you made it this far. :) It took me much longer than I thought to type this all up. I'll do the same for the Chicago show when I get the chance so look out for that if you're interested.
