Joyce Manor at Stubb's Waller Creek Amphitheater

On March 11, Joyce Manor returned to Austin, transforming Stubb's into more of a pop punk dance club than a typical concert venue.

Written by Bridget Cole

Photo by Dan Monick

As the sun set over Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater in Austin, Texas, shadows of crowd surfers and cheers from mosh pits filled the air as a lineup of Combat, Teen Mortgage, and Militarie Gun soundtracked the evening. As the opening sets came to a close, Stubb’s only got more packed with eager fans ready for the headliner. Around 9:45 p.m., the pop-punk group Joyce Manor finally took the stage, utilizing the spooky sounds of the Goosebumps theme song as their walk-up song. 

Formed in 2008, the partially emo and partially pop punk Joyce Manor is Barry Johnson (lead vocals, guitar), Chase Knobb (guitar), and Matt Ebert (Bass, Backup Vocals), and notably takes influence from Blink-182, The Smiths, and Guided By Voices. This current tour is dedicated to their new album, I Used to Go to This Bar, which is a short 20 minutes long, with songs averaging about two minutes in length, but just as impactful as a full-length album. Despite the short duration, the work is still full of quintessential emo messages and hooks that will never get out of your head. 

The band kicked the night off with a song from their new album titled “I Know Where Mark Chen Lives,” colorful lights illuminating the band's name in bold behind them. They then proceeded with some older hits, including “Falling in Love Again,” “Beach Community,” and “Heart Tattoo,” with the crowd singing along to the familiar favorites. Joyce Manor took a moment to address the audience, introducing themselves and claiming how much they love Austin. The rockers continued with my personal favorite off of their new album, “Grey Guitar,” followed by the title track and more songs from the album. “The Last You Heard of Me” relaxed the crowd, but they only returned to their rambunctious selves with “NBTSA,” while touring drummer Jared Shavelson kept up the energy with the track's booming drum beat.

As the night went on, the crowd only got rowdier, with more mosh pits and crowd surfing, and practically never slowing down. Some people remained up in the air to no music due to the short run time of the songs, with Johnson jokingly singing “He’s crowd surfing and we ain’t playing a song.” Halfway through the set, Johnson prefaced the next few songs as “punk-abilly” tracks, claiming Austin is a good place to play such tracks, with cheers of agreement from the crowd. The songs in question were “The Opossum” and “Don’t It Seem Like You’ve Been Here Before.” With Knobb shredding on the harmonica towards the end in proper punkabilly fashion. They wrapped up their main set with more hits such as “Constant Headache” and “Catalina Fight Song,” which had people rushing up to the front to join the once again growing mosh pit.

After a short break, while the crowd continued to buzz with excitement, the band returned, and the crowd was treated to a story from Johnson. While creating their 2018 album Million Dollars to Kill Me, Johnson collaborated with Austin-based member of The Impossibles and the Artificial Heart, Rory Philips, via email. He spoke of the creative struggles of communicating in this way, but the two overcame this bump and wrote some “pretty cool songs.” Johnson then took this moment to introduce Rory Philips, who joined the band on stage to sing “Wildflower,” a fitting song for Texas, as the wildflower season had just begun. As if this performance wasn’t special enough, this was the first time this song had been played since 2019, and it will be the only time they play it on this tour, according to Johnson. Philips left the stage, and Joyce Manor continued the rest of the encore set with “Well, Whatever It Was,” “Orange Julius”, and “Five Beer Plan.” The audience cheered as the band exited the stage, rowdy from start to finish, the energy still electric as people exited the venue.

Overall, this high-energy set was one to remember with solid performances from every member. Whether a new listener or an original fan, Joyce Manor’s current tour is one for the books. The North American runs through August 21, so if you have a chance to catch it, now is your chance.