The alt-rockers will mark two decades performing together with three shows on Aug. 4-6 at the Floridian Social Club. The band's six-city, three-night-residency comes less than a week after the release of the band's new EP, Silverline, its first collection of new music in eight years. The tour also serves as a precursor to a couple of the most nostalgia-inducing music festivals since the pandemic began.
Though the band goes back two decades, the format of this tour is unique. While other bands in its cohort were riding the resurgence of the early 2000s alt-rock with two-hour-long "A Night With" style shows, Anberlin wanted to honor the fans and their most beloved Anberlin albums.
"We were trying to get creative. We stuck to the same model for so many years where we would put out an album, do a certain amount of touring, pick up these supporting bands and we would have to do everything a specific kind of way. So for us it's kind of just like, if we can go back and change the way we thought, what would we do," said drummer Nate Young (pictured above, center). "We wanted to do something unique and celebrate the 20 years, so we thought of doing albums on specific nights, and doing smaller venues so it's a more personal connection."
Young, who is also a husband and father, as well as the co-owner of King State coffee bar and The Brutalist brewery, said he and his bandmates didn't particularly want to hit the road full-time again. From the age of 16, Young was on the road nearly 10 months a year for about 12 years straight and for the entire band, the time for nonstop touring has long passed. Now 35, Young is a self-described homebody, so the format makes more sense for him and his bandmates.
"All of us have kids and families," said Young. "So the way we're doing these shows, the longest any of us will have to be gone is four or five days. It's a big difference from how it used to be where you'd be gone for four to five weeks"
During each three-night-stint, Anberlin will perform its albums Never Take Friendship Personal, Cities, and New Surrender in full along with fan favorites and B-sides. For the band, Young says they really weighed what music would resonate with their long-time fans.
"Cities, New Surrender, and Never Take Friendship Personal are always the albums we hear about the most from fans," said Young. "Cities especially was a point where we were two albums in and really wanted to establish our sound for the long run."
Nostalgia played its own role, too, preparing the band to revive old hits as it prepares for October's "When We Were Young" festival in Las Vegas, where elder emos will reunite with their favorite bands.
In May, the 20th anniversary tour dates were released with residency shows in Cleveland, Brooklyn, Asbury Park, and Denver. The following month, a show was announced at the resurgent Floridian Social Club in St. Petersburg, along with additional shows in Atlanta and Orlando. The show will be Anberlin's first concert at 687 Central since the State Theatre became the Floridian Social Club.
In 2018, following months of fire code violations and renovations, downtown St. Petersburg's State Theatre closed and was later sold to Kevin Chadwick for $2.1 million. Chadwick, Owner and Operating Principal of Keller Williams franchises across the Tampa Bay area, vowed at the time to continue hosting shows at the venue.
"Priority events is our concerts. So, if one of our promoters has a band, an event, it could be a Monday night, even a night where we're closed—any night of the week," Chadwick told CL in 2020. "Our concert schedule takes precedence over everything." Nearly two years later, the 8,604 square-foot building was christened as The Floridian Social Club and in the fall of 2021 welcomed Myles Kennedy as its first act.
"We haven't had Anberlin at that venue since I believe 2013," Kristin Stigaard, Regional Marketing Manager of Live Nation. "So it's a sweet and exciting feeling. We're so excited to be promoting Anberlin's 20th Anniversary."
The three-night-stand at the Floridian Social Club comes less than a month after the release of the band's newest single "Circles," off its recently-released EP—a project Anberlin never really planned.
"We broke up in 2014, and none of us has done anything musically with the band since then, so to be honest I don't even think new music was always the plan. Instead, the goal when we came back in 2019 was to tour, do the whole reunion thing, and maybe chill for a little bit," Young said.
Anberlin's last studio album was 2014's Lowborn, which debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 chart. For the band's latest release, its enlisted the help of local resources, including Feral Sound Studios in Tampa, where the band self-produced the EP alongside Tim McTague of Underoath (Young's partner at King State and The Brutalist) and producers Chad Carouthers and JJ Revell."...we just started writing for fun and we all agreed that if it sounded like we were trying too hard or not sounding like us, we should just not do it."
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"The pandemic kind of forced us to throw around ideas of what Anberlin would sound like in 2020. So much has evolved within our musical visions since 2014, so really we just started writing for fun and we all agreed that if it sounded like we were trying too hard or not sounding like us, we should just not do it. But it worked and we were all really happy with the way it came together."
