Dashboard Confessional Leads an Emo Sing-Along at the Ryman

A thought struck me like a punch to the chest upon walking into the Ryman to see Dashboard Confessional on Friday. It’s an obvious one in retrospect: The former emo teens who flocked to Dashboard frontman Chris Carrabba’s sad songs at the band’s peak are old now. Well, middle-aged, let’s say. It’s been more than 20 years since the band’s founding and almost that long since they were first selling out rooms across the country. Even if there are some youths discovering the band now, they’re bound to see it the same way we saw classic rock as youngsters. Whether it’s cool or passé, it’s something from another time, something belonging to others and maybe a little bit mysterious. 

That’s not to say there wasn’t a lively energy in the Mother Church. After all, the headliners were selling T-shirts declaring “Emo Is Dead, Long Live Emo.” And I’m happy to report Carrabba’s still got it — that knack for turning the pangs of pining into an anthemic lament.

But first came Armon Jay, who performs as a solo artist in addition to his gig as guitar player for Dashboard. He played a few gentle songs on acoustic guitar, the first of which he followed up by asking the crowd, “Are you sad yet?”

Up next was Against Me! leader and folk-punk singer-songwriter Laura Jane Grace, who strode onto the Ryman stage and greeted the crowd with the first of many wisecracks: “I’m Johnny Cash.” It will never get old watching artists’ excitement about playing the Ryman, their reverence for the room and the voices that have echoed through it before. Grace’s cracking set and vocals were punctuated with hilarious banter and more than a few comments about the hallowed musical ground on which she stood. 

“I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m pretty fucking nervous,” she said at one point.

Those nerves weren’t evident as she ripped through her set, which included selections from her solo catalog, like a loathe letter to her adopted hometown of a decade, “I Hate Chicago,” as well as a new song she said was inspired by a smash hit single from the K-Pop band BTS. There were also a couple Against Me! favorites. Before playing one of them, the titular tune from 2002’s Reinventing Axl Rose, she hinted at a certain irony of the song and the setting, saying she had to play this song here — consider the line “Our arenas are basements and bookstores across an underground America.” Back then, Against Me! was playing spots just a hair more polished than a basement, like scrappy Nashville punk hangout The Muse, which closed in 2012.

Another highlight of the set was her performance of the anthemic “True Trans Soul Rebel” from Against Me!’s 2014 release Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Informed that she had just three minutes left to play, Grace raced to tune her guitar for one last song. 

“They say tuning is a European luxury, but we’re at the fucking Ryman,” she quipped to the crowd. The ovation that followed her set made it clear she was right where she belonged. 

Like many of us, Dashboard Confessional had their plans altered and derailed multiple times by the COVID-19 pandemic. First, a planned 20th anniversary tour was cut short in 2020. More recently, an unplugged tour — envisioned as a reimagining of Carrabba’s pivotal MTV Unplugged performance in 2002 — was canceled except for a few dates, including Friday’s show in Nashville, where the singer took up residence a few years back. 

Introducing a new song (whose title went unannounced) at the beginning of his encore, Carrabba jokingly warned the crowd he was going to play something unfamiliar before getting to “the one you came for.” But it turns out it’s not really that easy to pin down what that was for most of the audience. If there was a song in the entire set — with the exception of two new tunes — that didn’t include Carrabba stepping back from the mic so the crowd could take over, I don’t remember it. 

He started things off with a series of songs from the band’s first two albums. They were crowd-pleasers, but then so was everything else. He played with a backing band doing mellower arrangements of some already fairly mellow songs. Joining on vocals was Abby Kelly, who would take the stage again days later as a member of her brother Ruston Kelly’s band. 

In the middle of the set, before a different new song called “Here’s to Moving On,” Carrabba stopped to say that almost everyone important in his life was in the room that night, including his wife, his children, his best friend and a few doctors and nurses without whom he might not have made it to the stage. He was hospitalized after a motorcycle accident in the summer of 2020, after which doctors initially feared he’d broken his neck. 

A few songs later, he led the crowd in the ultimate emo sing-along, moving through some of his biggest hits and crowd favorites: “Screaming Infidelities,” “Again I Go Unnoticed,” “Stolen,” and “Vindicated.” He noted that he wished “Vindicated” had been written in time for the 2002 MTV performance. 

At the very end of the night, Carrabba closed out with one more fan favorite, a song describing what he called “the best day I ever had” — “Hands Down.” Then, he walked to the front of the stage holding his guitar aloft, and everyone I could see was beaming in a collective moment of joy. 

Dashboard Confessional Set List

1. The Best Deceptions

2. The Sharp Hint of New Tears

3. The Good Fight

4. The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most

5. So Long, So Long

6. Age Six Racer

7. Living in Your Letters

8. Turpentine Chaser

9. Here’s to Moving On

10. Don’t Wait

11. The Swiss Army Romance

12. Screaming Infidelities

13. Again I Go Unnoticed

14. Stolen

15. Vindicated

Encore:

16. [title unannounced]

17. Hands Down

SLIDESHOW HERE