In a Field of Rejects: American Ruin, American Grace
The story of a night that was supposed to be a “Dirty Little Secret” that got out, went wrong- and showed what happens when everything can go right in a crisis.
If you’re a former ‘emo’ kid in your 30’s who lives in the Midwest, you likely fall into one of two camps on a chilly May Saturday night. You’re either still raging to the same songs from your playlists from high school in dive bars, or you’re snuggled up watching serial killer documentaries while your own kids blow out your car speakers in karmic symmetry.
I still hear the siren song of a bar crawl every once in a warm October evening, but last night, I was firmly in the mood for a cozy one in when I got the text that only the 17 year old version of me could have been tempted by:
“The All American Rejects are doing a pop up show in Ames. Are you in?”
Instant chaos: a flurry of calls and Google, Reddit searches. Is this legit? It has to be - the band reposted on their official TikTok. There was a popup last night in Minnesota. In a bowling alley?
Ok - it's real. 5$ cover. BYOB.
At a place called Blue Door Barn? Have you heard of it?
No, but there’s an address on the post.
Good enough for me.
When our Uber pulls up to the T intersection on a gravel road a half mile from our destination - which, by now, we’ve ascertained MUST be a farm house, and not a place in Ames like we thought- we are greeted by a stretch of already parked cars along the east side of the property line, easily a mile long. Security wearing a familiar yellow road flare vest and tired expression flags our uber and directs us to get out at the end of the gravel.
The farmhouse at the end of the road looms like an angry father, disappointed you’re coming home late again. With this crowd no less, looking like that. Lanky males in skinny jeans and zip up hoodies, callbacks to your freshman year crushes are off in the distance, clamoring to climb on top of a 250,000 dollar Komatsu.
The mood in the air is light, but tinged with the edge of doubt as we all converge in polite group-file on the county road; with hand held coolers and smuggled THC vapes; Friday night gossip and one woman (my new personal hero) who I witnessed getting a Panda Express door dash delivery - roadside.
But the anxious murmur running throughout all the groups is: I don’t think they expected this many people to show up.
“Do you think they just aren't going to let everyone stay?”
The unspoken part lingering in the air with the nicotine smoke: What’s the plan if they didn't?
We got here early, but it still takes us almost 40 minutes to even get eyes on the Barn - actually a farm shop - MUSIC scrawled above the Blue door in either spray paint or tape. The new summer sun slung low in the sky, the opener, Kibble, playing in the distant background against the crowd.
As we wait in line for our wristbands, the time is 7:40, and the opener is finishing out. The line behind us stretches back at least a thousand people deep.
We look back at the Barn. Realization seeps in at the edges, spilled like a shot of liquor on a tablecloth at a party.
“We’re not all gonna fit in there.” We scan - there’s nearly 500 people standing outside in front of the barn, phones pointed inside.
“I think everyone is just - watching from in front?” She’s right. They’ve thrown open the main doors to shop and The Barn has become the Stage - if you can get close enough to see it.
We hand our 20$ to a girl who looks like she’s been through war, and she slaps wrist bands on us without even looking at our faces. We have IDs. We have money. That’s enough.
We make our way to what we’ve designated “the back” - a spot where two buses have parked nose to tail to create a kind of wall between the Barn and the farmhouse - and park next to a trash can. We assess that we have no idea where the booze is, the merch (if any) and that there is one available porta potty.
Sarah looks at me, her friend with the bladder of a field mouse, an unquenchable thirst for strawberita, and a notorious case of the giggles when drunk, with the seriousness she only musters for her children before horse field competition day.
“If you have to pee tonight - no you don’t.”
We agree - we are staying together, staying in “the back”, and will forgo our usual attempts of getting as close to the stage as possible. With this many people, if they decide to rush the stage and things went wrong, havoc could ensue.
There’s a 20-30 min break where security is desperately trying to get people through. The lull in the music makes the crowd bored, but not antsy. The mood is still jovial, electric, alive - grown up teenagers in a cornfield party we paid 5.00 to get into, that we saw advertised on Reddit and secret Instagram pages.
Eventually, at 8 o’clock, when the show was supposed to start, the pressure of the moment breaks: a flood of people come rushing in from the east, too insistent, chaotic and excited to keep out, each of them wearing the same smile on their faces: I am a part of something special tonight. I can feel it.
I recognized it from my own face, Sarah’s face. But as I saw them all flooding in, the quiet voice of anxiety (and maybe, old age) whispered: Please, don't let anything go wrong.
People are climbing on top of buses, small cars, their personal coolers, and anything else they could stand on to get better vantage points of the stage from where they could manage to land in the throngs of people. The crowd was buzzing like cicadas waiting for the headliner.
Before the sun gets too low, around 8:30, we see the band members walk out across the top of the silos in the west - half the phones in the crowd come out for photos, screams and cheers, whoops and yells - the band above taking in the size of the crowd, that showed up out of nowhere, just for them on a random Saturday for the price of nostalgia and a medium coffee, and wave back to face the music.
Someone, I can't make out who, is either praying, or putting his head in his hands at one point (pictured). It occurs to me, always too often, that these artists worry for us too.
When they take the stage, Tyson Ritter makes a request of the crowd:
“Please don’t tear this shit up, man - tonight, we said this is safe, this is in a place where the man isn’t gonna shut us down - so we’re gonna play a full fuckin set.
I cant hear you mother fuckers in the back so I don’t trust you as much as these guys in the front - Can I hear you say I dig that man?”
“I DIG THAT MAN!” Bellowed from the back of the throng.
Now fully ensconced in the circle of trust, the band launches into the live set list with “Dirty Little Secret” - the crowd drunk on irony, being part of one of the worst kept secrets in recent memory.
The collective exhale of pressure begins, everyone is singing along to the songs. The poor speakers were absolutely no match for the venue or the crowd size.
I tell Sarah, drunk on half a can of Rita’s “I guess I was worried for nothing!” and my arm is immediately slapped - “Don't say that!”
I know the rules of concert jinxes, and do a faux sign of the cross.
One of my favorite things about summer concerts and outdoor concerts will always be the shoulder hoppers. The (mostly) girls who climb up on their boyfriend or loyal friend’s back, camera phone in hand, ready to get the best view and shot of the event possible.
But she always does something - usually throws her hands up, waves, holds up a sign- to show the band - I love you! I’m putting in all this effort for a reason!
“I haven't played this low since I was in my grandpa’s basement” Tyson jokes.
The crowd laughs - their Pan safe from the man, as long as we all behave and keep the noise down.
The sky had settled into that indigo blue of twilight as they wove through the songs, and the shoulder wavers and crowd surfers (more than one!) joined in the time honored traditions of their ancestors, whether it be a gravel road or a stadium concert: they embraced joy.
Move along, move along like I know you do…
Imagine someone feeling that kind of passion for your art, decades after you made it?
Imagine someone feeling that kind of passion for your art, decades after she first discovered it?
Imagine 5000+ someone’s feeling so passionate, that they showed up with less than 24 hours notice, on a random Saturday night, on a farm in rural Iowa?
Suddenly, silence cut off the music in the darkness that had fallen - when did that happen?- a voice called out over the microphone:
“Does anyone have Narcan?”
The energy that had been there second before drains from the crowd. Not fear. Not frenzy. Just attention. A hush. There's a second call for Narcan. A third. A security person in a yellow hazard vest is running through the crowd shouting for help.
During the early 2000s, when “emo” music first came onto the scene in the post 9/11 landscape, especially in middle America, in a state like Iowa where the white population was over 90%, there were less brown and queer kids to target with displaced rage, the only “other” a lot of the “normal” kids saw was the kid who wore all black in skinny jeans, who smoked weird cigarettes and wore eyeliner - especially in small towns. The socially rejected kids banded together over their shared interest in music, the internet, and pop culture.
The meme blew up into bouffant hair, Myspace selfies, and “attention cutters” on Tumblr. Labeling someone an “emo” kid was the new way to call them effeminate without calling them gay. Asking someone if they were going to cry about it was the new way of cutting them off at the knees before they could say - actually, that was really mean.
The kids, especially boys, who congregated together and listened to bands with off putting names (All American Rejects? Boys Like Girls? Fall Out Boy?) were especially threatening in small towns in Iowa, where stoicism and masculinity were the last thread between you and the control you had over your sense of self. Listening to this music was to admit that yes, this shit hurts - and I’m not pretending it doesn’t.
In the crowd, the concert goers are suddenly snapped out of their reinvigorated teenage revelry. A dad in glasses wearing a beer cooler backpack like an empathy belly, has dropped his beer can and put his dad voice on, and is directing everyone to move back towards the buses and be quiet.
“Move back, give them some room! Move back!”
Almost as if he anticipated it, the voice from the stage asks the crowd to be still, be quiet, while they try and help the girl at the front of the crowd.
People move back towards the buses in unison. There is no swarm of panic. A sea of strangers, united in empathy, parting in the corn in the dark for the flashing red and blue lights barreling toward us in the distance. In a place that moments ago filled the sky with the sounds of “Move Along” - now, only the chorus of whispers of concern, moving gravel underfoot as we stood to watch, and the final announcement over the mic:
“You guys have been a great crowd, and because you’ve been a great crowd, I think you’ll understand... Safety always comes before rock and roll- so the show has to end here.”
A few people started to walk towards their cars, but again - adult voices broke through.
“We have to wait for the ambulances to get through! Wait for the ambulances before you go back to your cars!”
When a song about survival - an anthem that had been scratching in the back of their brains since their teenage-hoods - was practically daring them to cut loose and break, the group of Rejects stood still, and didn't run away. They waited for the police cars to come, watched as they all got out, took in the looks like they always did while they stood aside for the ambulance to get there, rooster tails of dust billowing up behind it in the black distance.
Because of the actions of the people in the crowd - the girl who needed help got it.
I didn’t see how it ended. But I saw the moment it could’ve broken open — and didn’t.
I saw what mattered.
In a situation where everything could have gone wrong, everything that could have gone right, did:
Someone in the crowd had Narcan
Someone in the crowd was a trained healthcare professional
Most importantly: everyone stayed calm in a situation where the “venue” was way over capacity, and was more concerned about the person in trouble, than they were about themselves.
I will never stop being proud of calling a place like this home, and the people like that I can call my kin - through my blood, the land, our friendship, or the music we share.
They are the kind of people who come with you to the Blue Door Barn, and make sure you make it home safe after dark.