When the Music That Saved You Comes Back to Life

Last Sunday night, I found myself amid a sea of forty-somethings standing shoulder to shoulder, awaiting the magic that was sure to come. The lights dimmed, and everyone began to scream. The moment we were all waiting for was at hand. The band took the stage, and from the opening bars of their iconic album Through Being Cool, I knew I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

I’ve reached the age where all of my favorite bands are now touring on anniversaries of their breakout albums. This concert, in particular, marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Saves the Day’s second album, mentioned above. That album established them in the zeitgeist of the musical genre they helped pioneer: emo. Emo music has its roots in both the hardcore and punk rock scenes. The main distinction—at least early on—was that emo bands sang more than they screamed. The lyrics were typically more emotional and heartfelt, and thus the moniker “emo” was born.

I won’t bore you with the etiology of this subculture other than to say it’s taken many forms over the years. Bands like Saves the Day, The Get Up Kids, and Dashboard Confessional are what I consider to be some of the greatest of the genre. They’re all in their late forties now. The pandemic seemed to give emo music a resurgence, and platforms like Instagram and TikTok brought an entirely new generation to shows. It’s a beautiful thing.

As I shuffled foot to foot to ease the pain in my knees and feet from the standing-room-only venue, I couldn’t help but smile. I belted out seventy-five percent of the songs from their set. These songs transported me back to a simpler time. This band is tied to so many milestones for me. They are high school, college, war, and homecoming. I once traveled almost 7,000 miles to see them play. It’s true!

I planned my mid-tour leave from Iraq around seeing them at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I’m sure my family and friends—whom I neglected during that short respite from war—weren’t as thrilled with my obsession, but I needed to feel normal again. Going to shows always made me feel free. Music has always been a safe space for me. Over the last twenty-five years, I’ve only seen this band a handful of times, but each time, I sing loud and off-key and smile bigger than Christmas morning.

The first time I heard this band was possibly by accident. I grabbed a cassette tape that Equal Vision Records gave away at a local hardcore show—a split between Bane and Saves the Day. Each side of the tape had two songs from each band. “Rocks Tonic Juice Magic” was the first Saves the Day song I ever heard, and I was hooked. The lyrics are both insightful and extremely dumb at times—in the best of ways. They’re serious and also make you not take life so seriously at the same time. They epitomize the angst of your late teens and early twenties, lost love, and Chris Conley’s ability to weave the most absurd creative writing into his lyrics.

What I loved most about seeing one of my favorite bands again was how happy everyone around me seemed. The energy was palpable. The band was energetic and stoked to be playing these old songs. We all knew this was something special. For a relatively obscure band—in the grand scheme of music—to still be touring and selling out venues after a quarter century is something to smile about. We knew we were in rarefied air, and no one took the moment for granted. A few times while singing, I had to swallow a lump in my throat because I was just so damn happy to be seeing these guys again.

Say what you will, but music is powerful. And now that I’m firmly in middle age, I’m never going to grow out of the music from my youth. I may be the old guy at shows, but I’ve been part of this thing since its inception, and I’m proud to be the old dude singing off-key. I hope you find moments in your life that you know are special—and seek them out as often as you can.

To quote the band, “…I’ll see the way the world begins to need color everywhere, and I’ll realize how small I really am ‘cause I’m through being cool…”

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Stan Lake is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker from Bethania, North Carolina. His work has been published in Reptiles Magazine, Dirtbag Magazine, Lethal Minds Journal, Backcountry Journal, Wildlife in North Carolina, SOFLETE, The Tarheel Guardsman, Wildsound Writing Festival, and others. His poetry collection “A Toad in a Glass Jar” is scheduled for publication in late fall 2024 by Dead Reckoning Collective. He has written three Children’s books and one Christian Devotional book. He filmed and directed a documentary about his deployment in Iraq with the Army called “Hammer Down.” He spends most of his free time wrangling toads.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.