Before tonight, I didn’t really understand the genre “Midwest emo”. No hate to Ohio, but I didn’t truly understand what made Midwest emo distinct from regular emo. And yes, I have heard of Hawthorne Heights. At the risk of sounding stupid, I turned to the guy standing next to me at Doolittle’s house party and asked. He said, “Midwest emo is emo from the Midwest. If you make emo music and you are from the Midwest, you are Midwest emo”. I’m… not completely sold on his definition, but I am completely sold on Doolittle.
The walk to Peace Cafe took me right past the Woodhull Hospital Mental Health Center, which feels maybe a little too on the nose for hosting an emo concert. I was so in love with that venue though; a tiny winding staircase opened up to a massive church hall, featuring a wraparound balcony decked out in fluorescent string lights. It was rickety and rockety and ready to roll.
In the current economic downturn, where venue rent is rising, so ticket prices are rising and drink prices are rising, so no one is going out anymore—Doolittle advertised their show as a free BYOB “party invite” on Instagram. Fucking genius.
Milling about the crowd I found people coming into this random church in Brooklyn from the suburbs, from New Jersey, and even as far as Boston. How did a little band with about a thousand listeners on Spotify end up with such a magnetic pull? They harnessed the power of dark magic. Every concertgoer I asked sounded like a marketing managers’ wet dream. “How did you hear about this gig?” Instagram. Instagram. TikTok. Instagram. In the current economic downturn, where venue rent is rising, so ticket prices are rising and drink prices are rising, so no one is going out anymore—Doolittle advertised their show as a free BYOB “party invite” on Instagram. Fucking genius.
For a first exposure to emo music, Doolittle hits the nail on the head… a brassy Nashville flavor added to a classic emo sound
By the way, I’m not throwing any shade at “the youth” for being chronically online. This is an observation, not a judgement. I am arguably still a youth, and I was also a youth back in the first emo wave. While Tumblr was more in-fashion back in 2012, I was just as chronically online. I think part of the social isolation of being an emo kid results in searching for belonging in online spaces. This was such a green show, and not just because the crowd was 95% Gen Z. For many in the crowd, this was their first exposure to a live show, and some of them weren’t even that interested in Midwest emo music before. I was a veteran in an industry where I’m normally green myself. I got to teach a few chickadees how to navigate a crowd to get into the pit when you’re stuck in the back, and what the coolest venues are in New York.
For a first exposure to emo music, Doolittle hits the nail on the head. Their frontman had that boyish charm that Patrick Stump had back in the day, with the swoopy hair and soulful almost whiny vocal performance that makes you want to give him a hug. To the left of Gemma the Too Cool Bassist, two groupies just absolutely jammed out on stage. I didn't clock that they were part of the band until one of them pulled out a saxophone. While the sound balancing was not in their favor, Doolittle has a brassy Nashville flavor added to a classic emo sound. All the jumping and dancing had the church floor feeling more like a trampoline, the old wood bending and flexing with the beat.
This no-name band pulled in over a hundred people from across state lines to an abandoned church next to a mental hospital in Brooklyn for their show. Doolittle definitively proves that if you stop playing the blame game and start leveraging what you have, you can defy expectations.
Beyond the music, I really want you to think about this for a second. This is not the way they’re supposed to do this. They’re supposed to be booking tiny gigs at mediocre venues where the drinks cost $20 a pop, then working their way up from that. Everyone and their mother in the live music industry won’t shut the fuck up about how “no one is going to shows anymore”, not even the free ones. We’re passing the blame around for who’s fault this is—the venue, the artists, the landlords, the listeners. This no-name band pulled in over a hundred people from across state lines to an abandoned church next to a mental hospital in Brooklyn for their show. Doolittle definitively proves that if you stop playing the blame game and start leveraging what you have, you can defy expectations. Whether or not this translates to a solid and consistent local fanbase remains to be seen, but one way or another, Doolittle is ripping up the playbook.