Y’all Out Boy

It’s the summer of 2017. I’ve been living in Austin for a few years. I am missing my old band from Chicago, and I’m itching to join a new one — I’ve been playing in bands since I was 14 years old. So I hopped on Craigslist, because oddly enough, Craigslist is one of the best places for musicians to connect. And I saw an ad that said it was starting a pop punk cover band. Now, this is perfect for me, because pop punk is my favorite genre of music, and the first band I was in when I was 14 was a pop punk cover band. So it felt like life coming full circle.

I submitted a video of me playing bass to the guy who posted the ad, David Kemmerer. Dave is a lead guitarist. Another guy who responded to the ad is Wylie Sanchez, a drummer. So between the three of us, we had lead guitar, bass, and drums, but we were missing our fourth member. We needed a rhythm guitarist and a lead singer, because even though Dave, Wylie, and I can each sing, none of us had the really high range you need to hit those super high notes that’s very common in pop punk music. So I created a second Craigslist ad, and we spent several frustrating months auditioning people. We were really struggling to find someone, until I got an email from Alex McCracken. We brought him out to audition. We jammed on “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” by Fall Out Boy, and Alex nailed it. He had the exact voice we were looking for. I’m ecstatic, because we had found our fourth member. So there we were: four strangers who met on Craigslist with the goal of becoming Austin’s pop punk cover band.

At the time, there were no other pop punk cover bands in Austin — or anywhere in Texas, for that matter. We didn’t want the band to become a full-time thing, because we each had other careers, but we wanted to be a tight, high-energy band that really crushed it live. We started learning songs to build out our set list. We spent a long time trying to think of a good name. I was coming up with a lot of name ideas that I was keeping track of in my notes app. Some of the band names we came up with were Blink-512, My Chemical Bromance, Stacy’s Dads. But none of those felt right, until I came up with the name Y’all Out Boy, which takes the band name Fall Out Boy and gives it an Austin vibe. And then we designed a logo where we incorporated ATX into the name, and we were all set.

So after we learned enough songs, we wanted to play our first show. But how do we get our first show? We didn’t have an agent. None of us had any connections in the Austin music scene. So I sent cold emails to about 20 venues and got only one response, from the Blind Pig Pub on Dirty Sixth Street. We put the show for July of 2018 and invited all of our friends. We’re stoked. But that show got off to a very rough start. First, when we arrived, there was already another band there setting up. It turns out the venue had made a mistake — they had double booked. I’m really nervous, because I’m worried we’re going to lose the show I had worked so hard to book and invited all of our friends to. So I plead with the owner, and he agrees to let us play. Second, we had to provide our own sound system for this show, but the sound engineer that we hired couldn’t figure out how to get it to work, so the show got started late. Third, once we did figure out the sound system and we got a few songs in, Dave’s guitar amp starts making a really high-pitched whining sound, and it gets so bad that we have to stop the show. I’m so embarrassed, I literally turn my back to the crowd. I can’t even face them. By a miracle, Dave gets that whining sound to stop, and we continue.

And it ends up being a really incredible show. People are screaming, they’re dancing, mosh pits break out. Blind Pig actually hits capacity at 400 people, so they shut the doors — they stop letting people in. But we’re playing on the rooftop, and we look over the balcony and we see there’s a crowd of people just hanging out on Sixth Street, watching us, listening to us. And we realize that there’s a real demand for this kind of music.

So for the next year and a half, we have fun playing free shows and growing our reputation. And then in January of 2020, we start to play larger venues, where we actually have to sell tickets for the first time. And we don’t know how many people are willing to buy a ticket to come see us. I remember we’re playing at Empire Garage, and we walk out on stage and we heard this roar from the crowd. After the show, I was stunned to learn we had somehow sold 900 tickets to that show. So at this point, we’re really starting to gain some momentum — but then all of a sudden, it comes to a very abrupt halt. COVID hits two months later. All live concerts are canceled. I’m really worried, because I don’t know if or when we’re going to be able to play shows again, or if the music venues that we play at will even still be in business post-COVID. So we do what we can during this time. We live streamed a couple shows. We played some outdoor, socially distanced shows where people had to be seated at tables spaced far apart. Having to sit at tables for a pop punk concert is very awkward.

But eventually the world opened back up again, and in May of 2021, we returned to Empire Garage to play our first show with a normal audience. This becomes one of my favorite shows that we play, because I’m just so relieved to be playing for a normal crowd, a normal show again. And ever since that show, every time before we take the stage now, we tell ourselves to play like it’s our last, because we never know when it might be.

Since then, we’ve continued to push ourselves as a band and try to put on the best live show possible. We’re always learning new songs — we’ve learned over 120 at this point. We’ve branched out from just playing in Austin, and we play in the other major Texas cities. We even went on a short mini tour on the East Coast, just for fun. One tradition that we started is every July we play an anniversary show to celebrate our first show at the Blind Pig. It is a beach-themed show, it’s our biggest one of the year, and we play it at a different venue every year. So we’ve gotten to play some iconic venues here in Austin, such as Emo’s and Stubb’s, and it’s been a very cool experience for me to get to play on the same stage that I’ve seen a lot of my favorite bands play.

One of the best parts about this band for me is the people I’ve met through it. Some of my closest friends in Austin now are folks who came out to a show — I talked to them afterwards, they seemed cool, and so we started hanging out. I even met my wife at a show. If you remember that first post-COVID show I said was one of my favorites — well, at that show there was a beautiful woman in the front row wearing a very brightly colored dress that stood out in the sea of black clothing. We made eye contact a few times during the show, so as soon as it was over, I went into the crowd, found her, and asked her out. A friend she was with at the time was a little bit drunk and insisted on taking our photo, and that’s how I had that photo. And now we have a three-month-old son.

People often ask me, “What is my favorite song that we play?” And my answer is “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. Not because it’s my favorite song, but because everyone knows it, and for three minutes I get to watch everyone just lose their minds to this song and have the best time. It feels really good to be able to create that experience for people. I am very grateful for everyone who has showed up to one of our shows. And so I always tell folks: as long as you keep coming out to Y’all Out Boy shows, we’re going to keep playing them, because it’s just too much fun for us to stop. Thank you.