New York City
February 20
LUNCHTIME
The stomach of Tom Oakes, guitarist for Vegas-based next big things The Higher, isn't happy. It's not nerves. In a tour bus for a month and a half alongside fellow Las Vegans and labelmates Escape the Fate on the 2007 Epitaph Records tour, The Higher rolled across the Hudson from South Hackensack, New Jersey, in the wee hours of the morning. Oakes awoke around 3 p.m. in front of tonight's venue, the Bowery Ballroom. It's not travel sickness, either. He's hungry. Bassist Jason Centeno and drummer Pat Harter soon join Oakes on a six-block ramble to landmark eatery Katz's Delicatessen. Singer Seth Trotter and guitarist Reggie Ragan stay behind.
Harter opts for the Philly cheesesteak, while Oakes and Centeno tackle giant, pleasantly greasy piles of pastrami bookended by small slices of rye bread. Loud chatter booms from every other table; they remain deep in their own thoughts. As they leave, the day's unseasonable sunburst has given way to clouds. The pastrami suddenly weighing heavily in his gut, Oakes finds himself in dire need of a restroom.
The gastrointestinal discomfort, however, is a small price for the band's current career high.
After jelling in 2002, The Higher's high-schoolers toured for 18 solid months in support of their 2003 Fiddler Records EP Star Is Dead. 2005 brought with it the addition of Ragan, the release of the full-length Histrionics and opening slots for the likes of Taking Back Sunday, Less Than Jake and Unwritten Law.
This Epitaph jaunt also marks a transportation high watermark. "This is our first tour on a bus, so it's pretty amazing," Ragan says. "We're so spoiled right now." "We're trying not to get used to it, though, because we're going right back in the van for our next tour," a West Coast trek with Halifax, Trotter adds. He dubs the current go-'round the "'Happy Sandwich Tour'; us and The Matches are the bread; Escape the Fate and I Am Ghost are the meat." Assuming the latter two groups aren't pastrami, tonight's show should make for one hell of a musical combo.
SOUNDCHECK
Doors won't open for 90 minutes, but around 30 black-clad, eyelinered teens already shiver next to the blackened, melting snow piled on the gritty downtown sidewalks outside the Bowery. Instrument cases lie scattered across the scuffed wooden floor inside the 1920s-era theater and lounge, which boasts mahogany booths, vaulted ceiling and thick brass railings. The five Las Vegans run through their bouncing set opener, "Rock My Body." Feedback echoes, and Trotter's sandy-blond mane whips as dramatically as if the 498-capacity venue were packed.
The frontman bounds offstage after performing the new dance-floor anthem "Insurance?," the opening track from the band's impending sophomore effort, On Fire. "How did we sound?" he asks, his voice noticeably raspy. "You can't tell I'm hoarse, can you? I'm not used to singing every night. But I'm getting there."
PRESHOW
Ragan and Trotter lounge in the front of the black behemoth The Higher share with The Matches. Aside from the take-out boxes and giant canister of vitamin C tablets overcrowding the kitchen area's counter, the temporary home away from home for nine robust young musicians, their crew and additional handlers remains surprisingly uncluttered.
"Hey, does this jacket smell like chocolate and throw-up?" Oakes asks, entering and thrusting a black velvet button-up in his bandmates' faces. "Do we have any Febreze?"
He settles on the padded bench and talks about running into Entourage's Jeremy Piven in Los Angeles. "I was talking to him about how I liked the show and stuff, and he was really nice about it, and then I started telling him, you know, 'I'm in this band ...' He, like, grabs me by my coat and gets right in my ear, and he goes, 'I do not give a f--k about your band!'"
Harter, chowing down on Domino's bacon pizza and a leftover chunk of cheesesteak, beats the story with one of his own:
"Me and Reggie got a cab last night, and the dude wasn't driving an actual cab; he's driving like a Chrysler 300. ... We get in the cab and right when we turned to go, we run this yellow-red light, and we got pulled over ...
"We're like, 'All right, well, it's a good thing we don't have anything on us.' When we got pulled over, he turned around and looked at us. He was like, 'If the cops ask you if I'm a cab driver, just tell them I'm a close personal friend.' We're like, 'What?!' 'Yeah, just tell them I'm a close personal friend, and that I'm taking you back to the venue.' That's what we told the cop, but it was weird."
Talk turns to missing Vegas—families, friends, the Beauty Bar and proximal gambling. "The Frontier, baby!" "Red Rock!" "These guys don't know what they're talking about. It's all about the El Cortez." Someone grabs the three dice from the table, everyone hauls out handfuls of cash, and they ease their preshow jitters with an impromptu game of Cee-lo.
The band's manager appears, fresh from dealing with fallout from the Virgin/Capitol Records merger. Though the upheaval is of interest, it won't immediately affect The Higher, whose more pressing concerns include retaining a permanent booking agent and weighing options in regard to May's East Coast Bamboozle festival and summer touring plans. "[Founder] Kevin Lyman wants to get you at least a chunk of Warped Tour," they're promised. It's an informal chat, one meant to get the band thinking about what they want the rest of their year to look like, and what they want it to yield. "We want to go platinum the first week!" Oakes jokes. "We want to go diamond by week four!" Ragan adds.
With On Fire's near-release, not to mention a slew of well-connected industry types on-hand tonight, this show serves as an East Coast introduction of sorts, and though they're keeping things light and jokey, the members realize they're at a critical juncture. A lot rides on what they're about to deliver.
SHOWTIME
"They're just the best!" enthuses a curly-haired fan named Ryan, who flew from Vegas to the Big Apple today just to catch the show. "I had the day off, I've never been to New York, and I just really wanted to be here."
At 7:29 p.m., the quintet emerges to the melodious strains of Warren G's "Regulate." "Rock My Body"'s opening riff rings out into the half-full Bowery Ballroom. "Go, you move we go, now don't go," Trotter sings, having overcome his laryngitis. The crowd follows suit, its ranks instantly swelling from the downstairs bar with fist-pumping, pogoing latecomers. "Weapons Wired" comes next, and Trotter offers an ecstatic welcome: "We're The Higher! We're from Las Vegas, Nevada, and we are f--king psyched to be here!"
Histrionics' blip-trippy title track, since reworked and appearing midway through On Fire, makes the setlist, as does the new "31 Floors" and "Movement," an earnest, what-could-have-been meditation that first appeared on December's Pace Yourself digital EP. "Kalimist" prompts a crowd clap-along, after which The Matches guitarist Jon Devoto rushes the stage to provide backing harmonies for "Insurance?"
Seven songs, a half-hour, buckets of sweat and teenage hormones. The crush of bodies obscures the floor; the second level resembles one long, heaving Mardi Gras balcony.
The band sticks around for the rest of the show. Centeno takes in I Am Ghost's set from the rear bar, Ragan mingles downstairs with fans, Trotter proffers hugs and poses for photos with an ever-growing swarm of girls around the merch table, while Oakes—"I haven't drank for awhile, and I'm in New York, so I'm gonna get drunk tonight!"—grabs a beer. Before Escape the Fate take the stage, he grabs a microphone and fulfills some tour-sponsorship duties. "Hey, who wants a free Vestal watch?" he asks the crowd. "All you have to do is be the first one at the Atticus booth who knows Sting's real name and you get a free watch." The stampede rushes past Trotter and a growing group of girls hugging and posing to the bar's left.
Nearing the end of their set, The Matches dedicate "Sunburn Versus the Rhinovirus" to The Higher. Oakes, riding high on one beer and two gin-and-tonics, joins his busmates on closing fan fave "What Katie Said." His call-and-answer participation is fleeting, but he delivers his lines with a huge grin. "Of a face full of words, you'd think a few would be right," frontman Shawn Harris sings. "Right!" Oakes echoes. "And with a few tips of courage, you'd think my lips less tight." "Right!"
"I love that song," Oakes says offstage. "I said to them at the beginning of the tour, that if they need someone to sing that part, I'm their man. Now it's this whole running joke, where I'll be like lying in bed, and we'll go 'Right?' 'Right!' back and forth."
He heads off to find a friend, his new vocal calling-card fading in his wake: "Right? Right! Right! Right!"
POSTSHOW
The show concludes at 11 p.m., and another slow hour ticks by as the equipment gets packed. Fans sate their hugging and posing appetites and drift out into the rainy night. Friends and industry well-wishers flood the black bus. Performance excitement ebbed, the bandmates, for all their ambitious 21-year-old talk, appear more ready for bed than for taking advantage of New York City's 4 a.m. last call. A few folks hoof it to a bar that no one really knows the name of. "Panorama? Panama Jack's?" Oakes guesses, having ordered a beer and only drinking half. "I figured I shouldn't get so wasted out of my mind and get sick."
He's feeling pretty good about the evening's performance, particularly in comparison to the last time The Higher was in town, about a year ago at the smaller, less-punk Knitting Factory. "It was raining a lot more last time, and [tonight] there was more kids there, and the crowd response was better. We got bigger, and now we've got a whole new CD to play from."
Hackensack awaits, and the 3 a.m. bus call comes quickly.
On the phone a few days later, Oakes reports that he's picked up the second season of Entourage on DVD. Trotter, having decided he needs to "bring sexy back," picked up some new wardrobe items. And though they're three weeks away from a welcome return to Vegas, The Higher couldn't be flying higher.
"It was awesome," Oakes concludes of the band's New York experience. "The show went really well for us, and there were a lot of people there to check us out. I think we did what we needed to do, and we made things happen. When we get in those situations we try not to buckle. And we did very well. We had a dirty, wet, muddy, slushy good time."