It is safe to say Bowling For Soup are one of the biggest pop punk bands around and have been for years. I have been lucky enough to see them a few times now at various festivals and headline shows and they are easily some of the most fun shows I’ve attended. This tour was a particularly special one as last year was the 20 year anniversary of their iconic ‘A Hangover You Don’t Deserve’ album, and they played the entire album front to back to celebrate. Unfortunately they were a man down due to the recent retirement of guitarist Chris Burney, and Bowling For Soup shows will never be the same without him, but that didn’t stop them from putting on one hell of a show! This tour was their biggest yet with incredible production, bigger venues and even more fans singing along to every single song!
Support came from Magnolia Park and Wheatus on this tour to complete the incredible lineup. Unfortunately due to travel delays out of my control I only managed to catch the back end of Wheatus’ set. I have seen Magnolia Park before back in 2022 and was so excited to be seeing them again, but I will without a doubt be seeing them as soon as they next play shows over here! I have never seen Wheatus before and in all honesty had only ever listened to ‘Teenage Dirtbag’,but I was excited to hear some more from them! We managed to hear them play ‘Lemonade’ and ‘Valentine’, the latter of which felt very appropriate given it was Valentine’s Day. They then closed out the set with the absolute classic that is ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ and there wasn’t a single person in the room who didn’t know that song. The atmosphere during that song was amazing! I thoroughly enjoyed their set and they are the perfect support for a Bowling For Soup show in my opinion! I am already looking forward to seeing them properly at Wembley in December!
Between sets we had DJ sets from Jon Mahon to keep the crowd warmed up and moving ready for Bowling For Soup to take to the stage! He did a great job of this, playing plenty of pop punk and emo classics such as My Chemical Romance and Blink-182 that had everybody singing and dancing along! He also played his debut single ‘You Got This’, teaching the crowd part of it and encouraging everybody to sing along to it!
Finally Bowling For Soup took to the stage, of course opening with the BFS theme being played as they made their entrance! The band all looked great wearing personalized Bowling For Soup jerseys which were also available for fans to buy. Then they didn’t waste any time going straight into the start of ‘A Hangover You Don’t Deserve’ with the opening track ‘Almost’. The crowd was so loud right from the start. After the first two tracks, Jaret
addressed the crowd, welcoming them to the tour and telling everyone “We are playing the album in full and in order because Rob said to and this is the earliest you will ever hear this next song ever again” before playing one of their biggest hits ‘1985’. The production on this tour was somehow even better than the last time round, and confetti was let off into the crowd at the start of the song which everybody loved. It felt wrong hearing this song so early on into the night, as it is usually one of the last songs played, but no matter when it gets played and no matter how many times I hear this song, it will forever remain a highlight of the set! It would appear Jaret agreed as he yelled “Holy crap what a wonderful night we’re having!” right after the end of the song, before giving a shout out to the supports.
Despite the jam packed 21 song set, there was still plenty of time throughout for Jaret’s many anecdotes and jokes. The band really are just three best friends having the time of their life laughing and joking around whilst playing some songs and it makes their shows even better to watch!
‘Ohio’ was easily another highlight. Gary‘s drumming always stands out to me in this song, really driving the track and you can’t help but dance! Throughout the set there was a camera filming the band for the screens either side of the stage, and the band were also constantly interacting with the cameras which was also a lot of fun to watch! One of my personal favourite tracks is ‘Last Call Casualty’ which very rarely makes the setlist of other tours, so hearing that played live on this tour was really exciting, even if the crowd was slightly quieter for this one, I definitely wasn’t! Jaret did actually mention that he was aware that people probably wouldn’t know every song on this setlist “I know there’s a lot of people here who only know the hits or are most excited about the hits. I get it, I’m a hit enjoyer too, that’s why I make so many of them!”.
They took a break from going through the album in order to choose a fan to spin a wheel that would decide the next song! The wheel ended up landing on the option for the fan to pick, and they picked ‘My Wena’ which went down really well! They then continued with the last few songs of AHYDD, including ‘Down For The Count’ and ‘Two-Seater’ before talking about the absence of Chris. Jaret talked about how they are never going to replace him and that spot will never be filled. They then played ‘Friends O Mine’, the final song of the album whilst the screens showed various photos on the screens of the band and their crew, it was a really sweet moment to end the set on.
After playing the album front to back we got an encore of ‘High School Never Ends’, ‘Today is Gonna be a Great Day’ and ‘Girl All the Bad Guys Want’ to really close out the night on a
massive high, or “leave you tonight with the best song ever” as Jaret said. Bowling For Soup shows have always been some of the most enjoyable shows to watch, but this tour truly was on a whole other level and I am already excited to see how they plan to outdo this for their Wembley show in December!
