Story of the Year celebrated their 20 years of Page Avenue at The Observatory North Park with support from Youth Fountain and Four Year Strong! I first saw Story of the Year at Musink Festival in 2017. I had never heard of them or seen them before that, but I loved their performance. There’s that saying, “You may not remember what someone said, but you remember how they made you feel.” I remember I felt good when I walked away from their set in 2017 and wanted to see them again. When I saw they were playing close to home celebrating an anniversary I had to go!
I was a bit surprised when I walked in, that the place was pretty packed and the energy was high for the opening bands. I caught the last couple of songs of Youth Fountain from Vancouver. They just released their new album, Together in Lonesome, on November 3rd. Check out their new video for “Clarity” from the new album here lnk.to/youthfountain.
Four Year Strong definitely came out strong, performing with incredible intensity. The band formed in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2001 with high school friends. Dan O'Connor and Alan Day on guitar and vocals, drummer Jake Massucco, and Joe Weiss on bass (replacing the original bassist in 2005). They are an easy-core band, which is a combo of hardcore and pop punk. The genre name doesn’t seem to fit their insane energy. I loved watching Dan and Alan alternating guitar and vocals, that is not an easy thing to do. Even though I didn’t know a single song, except their cover of “Brain Stew” by Green Day. I was captivated by their performance the entire time.
Story of the Year is celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Page Avenue, their debut album. The fans were loud, dancing, and some crowd surfing. It happened to be lead vocalist Dan Marsala’s level-up day. A fan handed him a Hershey bar and tried to get the crowd to sing Happy Birthday. I love story time during shows. I want to know a quick two-minute story of how a song was named, for instance, that one time Adam Russell broke his foot, and the guitar tech Bob was filling in, and then blew out his Achilles. They played Page Avenue in its entirety. You could tell most of the fans were old-school fans because they knew all those songs from 2003. Dan Introduced “Afterglow” and said he wrote that song about being away from his kids on tour. It is his favorite song on their new album, Tear Me to Pieces. Even though I went to the show, not knowing many of the songs, I loved it and had a blast. The bands were fun and the fans were great!
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