August 4th at 7pm
At its best, Weezer has always been a communal undertaking,” Cuomo declares, remembering how the band honed its craft in the clubs of L.A. circa 1992. “We were there with our audience--it wasn’t a large audience, just a few people at first, but it grew to a few hundred. As a band becomes successful, it’s easy to get separated from that community.” In recent years, the band has deliberately reconnected with its fans. “It started with the Weezer Cruise,” Cuomo says, “but we’ve also been meeting with fans after every show, getting to know them. It feels like we’re all in this together again.” That bond is reflected in Weezer’s music, he says: “Naturally, we want to write and play the songs that express what the community wants --the songs that make us happy.”
With a fervent fanbase that has established the band as a social media powerhouse, Panic! At The Disco has stayed relevant through the past decade’s ever-shifting music industry. The internationally acclaimed rock band has accumulated huge accolades over the past ten years, including going double-platinum on 2005’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out and debuting at No. 2 on Billboard with both 2008’s Pretty. Odd. and 2013’s Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die!. The band’s single “Hallelujah” has accumulated over nine million streams on Spotify and nearly seven million plays on YouTube. It’s been Panic!’s rabid, loyal fans who have helped cement the group as an essential one and allowed them to build and sustain this successful career. So much so that Urie credits the fans with much of the inspiration and sound for Death of a Bachelor.
“I’m at where I’m at because people are still into what I’m doing,” Urie acknowledges. “That is the most validating feeling – having people willingly take this journey with me. And I’m writing this music because I want to share it with people who care about it as much as I do.”
