Darien Lake Performing Arts Center

The rock band Falling in Reverse headlined a night on Tuesday, supported by Jeris Johnson, Tech N9ne, Dance Gavin Dance, and Black Veil Brides.

Photos by Philip Casper

Jason Aldean performed Thursday evening at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, starting out with one of his smash hits, "Burning It Down," and continuing with more of his hits throughout the evening.

All the performances were amazing, including openers Austin Snell, Chase Mathew, and Lauren Alaina, who all put on great shows. Each one played their top songs at a sold-out show enjoyed by all ages who attended.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers hit the stage hot at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on a steamy Saturday night with an instrumental jam that featured Flea's funky slap baselines, Chad Smith's pounding beat, and John Frusciante's sizzling fretwork.

Then Anthony Kiedis took the stage and kicked things up a notch.

The LA-based punk/funk band ran through 18 songs on the night, both hits and deep tracks, pulling material from most of their 13 studio albums released since 1984, including Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Californication, Stadium Arcadium, and their two most recent releases, Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen.

"Eddie" is Frusciante's tribute to one of his guitar heroes, Eddie Van Halen, and it is a standout track on Dream Canteen. From the same album, they also played "Carry Me Home." From Unlimited Love, they featured the opening track "Black Summer" and Kliedis's name-dropping ode to the LA music scene of his youth, "Aquatic Mouth Dance," which opens with one of Flea's greatest bass riffs.

Reliable fan favorites in the set included "Suck My Kiss" and "Californication."

The Peppers also included two covers of the Ramones: "I Remember You" and "Havana Affair."

The biggest hits, "Under the Bridge" and "Give It Away," were saved for the encore.

The opener on Friday was LA-based psychedelic rock band Wand, which is currently on tour supporting its fifth studio album, Vertigo. 

Singer and lead guitarist Cory Hanson, with a David Byrne-like wiryness, is an impressive musician and strong presence on stage. Unfortunately, the set was marred by a poor mix.  The bass guitar and kick drum dominated and overwhelmed everything else coming from the stage, making the mix muddled and suppressing most sense of melody from the songs. That's a shame because a check of a couple of the band's releases indicates they strike the right tone to potentially win over Chili Pepper fans.

Country music superstar Chris Stapelton's All-American Road Show passed through Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on Thursday. Also on the bill, Marcus King and Nikki Lane.

Third Eye Blind played the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, with support acts Arizona and Yellow Card.

The band is taking its Summer of Gods Tour through the U.S. in June, July, and August.

To view more photos, click here.

By Dave Gil de Rubio

At a time when wellness has become a more talked-about topic in the public sphere, Marcus King has made his own musical statement via the release of “Mood Swings,” his third solo outing.

The Rick Rubin-produced effort is full of songs drawing from a particularly dark time in King’s life where he faced certain mental health challenges stoked by anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Originally started back in 2019, this 11-song outing was interrupted by the pandemic and a particularly toxic relationship King was emerging from before meeting his current wife Briley Hussey. When the world started to open up again, King came out of the other end of it with 2022’s “Young Blood.” 

Despite the success he enjoyed with that particular effort, the South Carolina native was in no shape to continue the deep emotional dive the still-unrealized “Mood Swings” would require of him.

“This album really started before “Young Blood,” and when everything opened back up, it felt like there was some pressure to get back out and get to work,” King recalled in a late-April interview. “‘Mood Swings’ was definitely not anywhere close to being done. The album is a journey and an experience for me and I hadn’t completed it. During that whole process of doing ‘Young Blood,’ I was really coming through a lot of substance abuse [issues]. I wasn’t entirely present when I was doing that record. When I look at that record retrospectively, I feel really detached from it. ‘Mood Swings’ is very much the truest representation of me being as honest as possible [as an artist].”

Songs like the title cut, “Bipolar Love” and “Save Me,” find King delving deep into his psyche and past mental health wounds and Rubin played a key role in helping King navigate and complete the album. The storied producer, who has been meditating since he was 14 and is heavily in metaphysics, provided the environment to achieve this in summer 2023 while working with King at his Malibu-based Shangri-La studio and his spread in Tuscany, Italy. The 28-year-old guitarist/singer-songwriter was grateful to go through the experience.

“A big part of the record was trying to sample ourselves in a way,” King said. “Once we had all the basic tracks done, me and Rick could sit down with them. We went through everything and tried to strip it down to its truest, most vulnerable and most honest depictions of the songs. With this subject matter, [Rick is] the only guy I could imagine handling it. He really pushed me to go deeper and deeper and to access places, traumas and memories that I didn’t even know were troublesome to me. Sometimes you have to heal before you can really talk about something, and I feel like we did that with this record. The journey within was a really fascinating one because he’s all about putting yourself first and the audience second and I didn’t really understand that concept until now.”

With all the recording under his belt, King is on tour with his eight-piece band. Among the early gigs he’s played was a guest spot on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” and a recent slot performing at the Grand Ole Opry. The latter was a particularly special show given that Rubin reached out to King back in 2019 after seeing a clip of the latter
performing on that hallowed stage.

“The Grand Ole Opry is like going to see your grandparents pretty much,” King said with a laugh. “I try to go by there as much as possible and they’re always really sweet and really welcoming as possible. You don’t go there and smoke reefer in the dressing room. You’re on your best behavior and go out and play your best songs. It’s always cool to go back there. That stage just carries a lot of weight for me. You go there and you’re surrounded by people like Vince Gill and the Marty Stuarts of the world. Vince Gill, to me, is the closest thing I can get to George Jones, who is my hero and his hero. He sang at George’s funeral that was held at the Grand Ole Opry. They’ve got the circle there and in it they have an original piece of the stage from when it was still over at the Ryman Auditorium. You get up there, stand in the circle and perform. It was a blessing. We had my dad come and play with us. There is always something new and special to take away when you go and play the Opry.”

King intends to carry that vibe with him as he embarks on a jam-packed tour slate that will carry him throughout the rest of the year and will include a pair of dates in his home state of South Carolina on August 24 and August 25 that’s been dubbed the Marcus King Family Band reunion. That bill will also include The Avett Brothers, Band of Horses, Sierra Ferrell, Richy Mitch & the Coal Miners, and Nikki Lane with $1 from every ticket sold going towards Curfew Foundation – Marcus King’s charity that provides and assists those struggling with sobriety, addiction and also helps fund music education.

“The tour is going to be a reinterpretation of all these songs from the ‘Mood Swings’ album. It’s going to be reinterpreted in the sense that we like to give the listeners and the audience something fresh and a new experience to go home with,” King explained. “We want everybody to come and reach that same level and opportunity to leave everything at the door, check it all, and be part of something together. It’s going to be one great night of music and hopefully a big night of letting it all go and giving yourselves to the music. This year is dedicated to family, fellowship, love, looking within and just growing more mindfully every day.”

Marcus King will be performing at Darien Lake Amphitheater on Thursday, July 11.

By L. Kent Wolgamottt

Nikki Lane knows exactly where she wants her music to be – right between rock ‘n’ roll and country.

And that’s exactly where it winds up on “Denim & Diamonds,” the album she released last September, and in her, at times, raucous shows. 

“That’s the spot for me throughout my career,” she said in a recent phone interview. “I’ve finally gotten there on this record. I listened to rock ‘n’ roll. When I talk, it sounds country. I tell stories in my songs, so that’s it (country) too. But I want to have an edge to it.” 

Told that when she’s hitting the sweet spot between rock ‘n’ roll and country, she’s in the same place as Elvis Presley, when he tore up the South with his mid ‘50s rockabilly, Lane was flattered by the comparison.

“I don’t deserve it, but to hear my name in any sentence that has Elvis in it is an honor,” she said. “That’s kind of like Homme.” 

Homme would be Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, who produced “Denim & Diamonds,” Lane’s fourth album. So how did she get Homme, who collaborated with Iggy Pop a few years back, to work on her record?

“My previous manager had the idea, he was kind of a music fan first…I was kind of like ‘Bulls***t’ If you think you can get that guy on the phone, fine,’” Lane said. “I felt really lucky to get him during a time when we had so much time off and so little time. I got to have an edgier push to my music.”

That desire to be edgier emerged months before she teamed up with Homme. 

After recovering from a too-long stint on the road that was ended by COVID-19, the “Highway Queen” (“After touring so long, I realized that wasn’t just my most popular sign, it was me.’) Lane started writing new songs, among them, the pulsing, hook-filled, Stones-riff driven, Springsteen name-dropping rocker “First High.” 

But she said Homme inspired her to take closer to the rock n’ roll edge. 

“You’ve just got to lean into it more and more,” Lane said. “That’s fun to be able to find inspiration in someone’s art as a muse for the new project. It was really fun to work with a bunch of artists I didn’t know – ‘will they like me? I like me.’ I’ve been really lucky with my producers Dan (Auerbach), Dave Cobb and Josh, they pick the right people and the key is to go for it.”

Many of the “Denim & Diamonds” songs rock even harder live than they do on record – songs, like the country-tinged “Born Tough,” the Stones-ish “Black Widow” and the swaggering title cut, an “I can by my own damn denim and diamonds” song of independence. 

But there’s some quieter, more country-ish material, like the gently rocking, inspirational “Try a Little Harder” and “Good Enough,” a sweet song based on her grandparents’ lifelong relationship – “I decided I should write at least two love songs in my career,” she quipped.

That song is, obviously, taken from Lane’s life. So are many of the rest of her compositions, even though they don’t immediately sound autobiographical. 

“The thing I’ve seen is a lot of songs start from my standpoint, then shift to the people who are going through it, what they’re doing,” Lane said. “It’s like the movie ‘Big Fish,’ which is one of my favorites, telling a big story through real stuff. 

“In my family that’s kind of what our life has been, a little over the top,” she said. “Nikki Lane is the character that came from being a real girl who couldn’t control all these little things but found a way through. I use it to my advantage.”

Lane’s been called the Queen of Outlaw Country and is an annual hit at the Americana Music Awards and Festival. But, she says she only uses the words, “outlaw” and “Americana” to help people get a bead on where her music is coming from. 

“My dad’s friends listen to the radio,” she said. “They haven’t even made it to Sirius XM…When I go to Montana and the fishing guides are listening to Cody Jinks and (Chris) Stapleton, which they’ve heard on the radio, it gives you a bridge to them, that I’m similar. What I know is I’m not pop country. Outlaw or Americana helps tell people that.”

Lane was in the middle of a few days off at her Nashville home, resting up and trying to get over the allergies that hit her in the previous few weeks – “If we were out, I’d have had to cancel the show tonight,’ she said during the interview. “My voice is shot.”

Then she was to head off on a tour that will take her through the end of the year.  

As she often does, Lane was planning to drive herself, separate from her band, so she can roll into a city and “buy up all your antiques.” And, she said, the band likes it because “it’s the first time we’ve been to sound check on time in years, which is probably true.”

Some of those purchases will end up in High Class Hillbilly, the Nashville shop she’s run for a decade that handles vintage clothing and Americana, including items she’s picked up on tour.

Lane has kept HCH going, even though she’s spending less and less time in Music City. 

“I really like being able to put my heart into something good,” she said. “I know the store’s good. The music career, I felt a lot of uncertainty. I kept the store just in case. Now I keep it just because.”

Other purchases can end up on stage as Lane dresses in eye-catching vintage outfits during her shows.

“I got to do some modeling early on because I’m tall and I try to find things that look cool,” she said. “It’s fun to play dress up. Now it’s part of Nikki Lane, I lean into it and into the character.”

Nikki Lane will be performing at Darien Lake Amphitheater on Thursday, July 11.

The following individuals were charged at the Kenny Chesney concert at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on June 27:

• Joseph A Stephany, 18, of Le Roy, charged with possession of alcohol under 21.
• Joseph A. Dirisio, 18, of Batavia, charged with possession of alcohol under 21.
• Emily J. Schlabach, 19, of Clarence, charged with trespass after allegedly reentering the concert venue after being ejected.
• Marissa T. Peters, 22, of North Tonawanda, charged with harassment 2nd after allegedly striking another person while inside the venue.

All four individuals were issued appearance tickets.

Twenty-seven years ago, Third Eye Blind blasted onto the music scene with a self-titled album that went six times platinum and included the enduring alternative rock hits “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Graduate,” “How’s It Going To Be” and “Jumper.” A double-platinum second album, “Blue,” followed two years later.

Then the radio hits stopped coming, with 2000’s “Never Let You Go” marking the last top 10 single for the band. So it might seem surprising for Third Eye Blind to still be headlining amphitheaters this summer.

But Third Eye Blind’s popularity endures. And Stephen Jenkins, Third Eye Blind’s founding member, songwriter, and singer, noted that turnout for his band’s concerts is actually bigger than ever. 

So how does it feel to live in this kind of welcome reality 27 years after the blockbuster self-titled debut album was released?

“Implausible would be the word probably,” Jenkins said in an early May phone interview. “Really, it just feels like I'm just on this ride, and more than anything else it just reminds me about the basics. It reminds me of the things that I value, which is being musical, being authentic, being in a genuine exchange with the audience. All of those things are the things that remain the most important to me.”

The barrage of top-10 radio hits that launched the band’s career may have dried up after “Never Let You Go” (from “Blue”), but in other ways Third Eye Blind has actually been a resurgent band over the past decade. 

That span has seen Jenkins and drummer Brad Hargreaves -- the remaining members of the early Third Eye Blind lineup -- enjoying a period of stability, with guitarist Kryz Reid, bassist Alex LeCavalier each now in their second decade with the band and keyboardist/guitarist Colin Crev (a member since 2019) rounding out the current lineup. 

With this unit, the personalities and the priorities of the band members have aligned in a way that didn’t always happen with the original band.

“This band, just we love each other,” Jenkins said. “We like to be together and we're like a bunch of puppies. I think what makes this band jam is our sense of empathy, really, more than anything else with each other. We like to make space for each other on stage and that's what makes it jam.”

The current band members not only have the right chemistry, with Jenkins leading the way as songwriter, they’ve been quite prolific. After releasing only two albums over the 15 years that followed the release of “Blue” in 1999, Third Eye Blind has been releasing music at a steady clip, with three full-length studio albums -- 2015’s “Dopamine,” 2019’s “Screamer” and 2021’s “Our Band Aparte” -- and two EPs (2016’s
“We Are Drugs” and 2018’s “Thanks For Everything”), plus “Unplugged,” a 2022 album that featured acoustic versions of song from across the group’s catalog, joining the band’s catalog.

Jenkins feels that along the way, his attitude toward songwriting and recording loosened up, and that accounts for the increased musical output of Third Eye Blind. 

“I think it's really just a lack of judgment,” he said. “I think I was always being hard on myself in the past and I probably still am, but something has improved there. Something has gotten better in some ways and I'm less critical of myself and more able to just get into it, to make music. So I think that's the reason.”

Exactly what songs Third Eye Blind will play on tour this summer is an open question, as Jenkins said the band has plenty of options. 

“We have a lot of music and there's a lot of different stuff that fans want to hear. If you go on Reddit and ask what do you want to hear this summer, if you get 50 different responses, you'll get 50 different songs,” he said. “So we try to do things like almost like being DJs and we kind of try to mix ourselves as a live band and weave in different things back and forth is kind of the idea. So that's how I'm looking at making this set. There's also going to be an acoustic section where we get rid of all the amps and stuff and we play everything with acoustic guitars and (lighter) drums and reimage the songs like that.”

There may also be new tunes available to play, as Jenkins has been busy finishing lyrics and vocals for what could be an EP or album, depending on how things play out and whether Jenkins writes more songs for the project.

“For me it (inspiration) comes when it comes and I don't know how to do it differently than that,” Jenkins said. “I wish I did. But I do have a new album (happening). I’m about done. And so there’s pressure here at the end. It’s going to definitely help me finish it.”

Third Eye Blind will be performing at Darien Lake Amphitheater on Wednesday, July 3.

James Taylor, the maker of such hits as Fire and Rain, You've Got a Friend, and Sweet Baby James, performed on Tuesday at the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center.

Photos by Howard Owens.

Photos by Philip Casper.

It’s been a decade since the arrival of “Take Me To Church,” the crossover hit single that made Hozier a worldwide star and established the native of Wicklow County in Ireland as a new artist to watch on the music scene.

The video for the song was posted on You Tube on Sept. 25, 2013 and almost immediately went viral.

This response got the attention of bigger worldwide labels, and Hozier was signed by Columbia Records in America, which released Hozier’s self-titled debut album in September 2014.

“Take Me To Church,” naturally enough, became the album’s lead single and reached No. 2 on “Billboard” magazine’s all-genre Hot 100 singles chart in December 2014. By the time touring behind the debut album wrapped up in late 2016, the self-titled album had gone double platinum and Hozier was a bona fide star.

Sometimes, though, signature songs like “Take Me To Church” can come with unwelcome side effects. Artists can get judged by the success of a monster hit and mocked if they don’t reach those heights again. Or, the song can wear on artists as they feel required to perform the song at every concert, year after year, from that point forward.

Hozier has no such afflictions when it comes to “Take Me To Church.”

“I was sort of operating from quite an indie or alternative space, and then that song catapulted me into very, very popular spheres in the way it charted. It absolutely changed my life,” Hozier said reflecting on the song in a recent video interview. “And I was pretty proud of it when I wrote it, and what its sort of mission statement was and what I hoped to communicate. In ways, I’m very happy and grateful for that. But if any of my songs can have the sort of reach that that song achieved, I’m very glad that it was ‘Take Me To Church.’”

Despite the song’s impact, the man born 34 years ago as Andrew Hozier-Byrne appears to have evaded being known as the “Take Me To Church guy.” For one thing, he’s had more hit singles – including “From Eden” and “Someone New” from the self-titled album and “Almost (Sweet Music)” from his gold-certified second album, 2019’s “Wasteland, Baby!” And just last month, “Too Sweet,” the single from his newly released EP, “Unheard,” which includes four songs from the same sessions that produced his current full-length album, “Unreal Unearth,” became his first song to top “Billboard” magazine’s all-genre Hot 100 singles chart.

He’s also showing considerable artistic growth. “Unreal Unearth” figures to firmly solidify the notion that he has the talent and creativity to fuel a career that lasts not just years, but decades.

From the start of the project, Hozier wanted to take his sound to new heights, and he worked with a number of songwriters/producers to achieve this objective, with Jeff “Gitty” Gitelman, Daniel Tannenbaum and Jennifer Decilveo being primary contributors,

“I knew I wanted it to be broad. I knew I did want to expand into some sort of soundscapes to play with,” Hozier said, noting he wanted to blend vintage synthesizers and other synthetic sounds with strings and other organic instruments. “I kind of didn’t want to limit anything. I just wanted to explore and make sense of it afterwards, let each song be what it needed to be and explore the spaces they needed to explore. In that way, it became kind of expansive and it became varied. I played around with a lot of sonic textures.”

Thematically, “Unreal Unearth” is plenty rich as well. The 16 songs offer a journey from darkness into light that reflects the pandemic experience and also alludes to “Dante’s Inferno” and Dante’s walk through the nine circles of hell. Hozier uses these as a backdrop for lyrics that he said relate to a range of uncertainty and upheaval he experienced himself or witnessed with people he knew, spanning loss and love, feelings of disillusionment and a resolve to recalibrate daily lives to better align with personal goals for work, social lives, family lives and relationships.

“Like any album, if you’re writing from a personal place, you’re processing and sort of exorcising and examining personal experiences over a period of time, or (making) personal observations or whatever of the world around you,” Hozier said. “But these all took place in a very, a lot of these experiences took place in a very, very particular, unique and prescient time for the world, in a pandemic. I wanted to acknowledge and to gesture and sort of credit those conditions of coming into something – the pandemic – and coming out the other side without necessarily writing songs or writing an album that focused specifically on the experience of the lockdown, the experience of the pandemic.”

To translate the kaleidoscopic sound of “Unreal Unearth” (as well as a healthy selection of songs from his first two albums) to the live stage, Hozier has put together a large touring band with plenty of instrumental and vocal versatility.

“There’s nine of us,” he said. “There are two string players. There’s a violin player who also plays guitar, there’s a cello player who also plays guitar, there’s an organ and synth player who is also a Latin percussionist. Yeah, there’s nine of us and everybody is a multi-instrumentalist in some way, shape or form, and everybody is a singer. So we have nine voices on stage and nine multi-instrumentalists.”

Hozier will be playing at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on Wednesday.

Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. officials today said they will be honoring former director Batavian Richard Siebert for his many years of service to Batavia Downs and Batavia Downs Gaming.

WROTB President/Chief Executive Officer Henry Wojtaszek, at today’s board meeting at the Park Road facility, said that Siebert will be recognized at a noon reception on March 28 with a plaque in the newly remodeled Genesee banquet room on the second floor of Batavia Downs Gaming.

Siebert (photo at right) served on the board for 29 years until resigning in early May after it was announced by Gov. Kathy Hochul that the governing body would be dismantled and restructured.

Wojtaszek said that he’s contacted Siebert about the recognition.

“Dick said he’s going to try to bring his family,” he said. “He was very touched, and he definitely wants to be here.”

Wojtaszek also raved over changes that are being made to what had been known as the Grandstands banquet room.

“Our staff did a great job,” he said. “We’re expanding our catering services … and the room looks fantastic. It’s not done yet, but we’re pretty close to it.”

In other developments from the meeting:

-- Chief Financial Officer Jacquelyne Leach reported five-year earnings and surcharge distribution figures totaling $28,387,714.

“With Western OTB, if we have losses in a year, we cannot offset future earnings with those losses. So, for really a four-year period (not including 2020 when there were no earnings), we've distributed $28.4 million, which I feel for a small venue is extremely impressive,” she said.

WROTB distributed $5.8 million in surcharge and earnings to its 17 member municipalities in 2021, a year after having only 722,740 in surcharge distributions, due to the pandemic.

The number jumped to $8.4 million in 2022 and $9.7 million last year, including fourth-quarter earnings distributions of just shy of $1.9 million.

Genesee County received $208,114 in surcharge and earnings distributions in 2023, up from $179,105 in 2022.

Looking forward, she said the corporation is aiming for a net win (money left in the video lottery terminals after payouts) in 2024 of $89 million.

“If that’s the case, it could very well (exceed $9.7 million),” she said.

Leach pointed out that “back in the day, when our pari-mutuel (horse race wagering) was, like 1990 when it was $200 million, our surcharge distributions were close to $4 million.”

“That’s not the case anymore, but our earnings distribution – $9.1 million for 2023 – was the highest in the corporation’s history,” she noted.

-- Board Chair Dennis Bassett (City of Rochester) said that the company’s internal investigation into a lawsuit by three former bartenders at Batavia Downs Gaming is ongoing.

“We talked about it in executive session and our investigation continues, but I have nothing new to report,” he said, adding that he hasn’t heard anything more from attorneys representing Tara Sweet of Elba, Corrine Armison of Batavia and Brooklynn Cline of Belmont.

The trio is suing the corporation, claiming wage theft by supervisors who kept a share of pooled tips. Also, Sweet is alleging sexual harassment against Chief Operating Officer Scott Kiedrowski and Director of Security Daniel Wood.

Kiedrowski and Wood are named as defendants, along with WROTB and Batavia Downs Gaming, in the suit that was filed in Supreme Court in Genesee County. Both Kiedrowski and Wood are working while the lawsuit unfolds.

-- The board voted to amend a pair of resolutions authorizing the purchase of concert tickets and parking passes for all shows at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center in 2024 and for Buffalo Bills’ licensing fees, tickets and a suite through 2026.

The Darien Lake cost went up from $30,000 to $35,000 while the cost for the Bills’ games has been set at $157,202.90 in 2024, $163,413.05 in 2025 and $165,733.70 in 2026.

When asked about the value received for these expenses, Bassett firmly defended the need to continue this practice.

“I will stand up in front of anybody. We’re an organization that is competing against the municipalities around us, competing against other people for their time and we have to treat our special customers special,” he said.

“We have a benefit of having a winning football team in our presence. And I've been on the board 14 years, and it hasn't been a winning football team all the time. As a matter of fact, when I first came on the board, we couldn't give the Buffalo Bills tickets away.”

Bassett acknowledged that WROTB has gotten “slammed for entertainment,” but added that directors have put processes in place to identify who is attending.

“We provide host, and the host entertains our customers. And as far as I know, it's a good investment for us to entertain our what I consider our special customers. And were going to continue that.”

File photo by Joanne Beck.

The following arrests were announced by the Sheriff's Office on Wednesday in connection with the Odesza Concert on Sept. 1 at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center. 

Kaylee N. Laird, 24, of Chapel Street, Canandaigua, is charged with criminal trespass 3rd after allegedly reentering the venue area after being told she could not enter.

Peter M. J. Karrkos, 24, of Seneca Drive, Canandaigua, is charged with criminal trespass 3rd after allegedly reentering the venue area after being told he could not enter.

Nicholas T. Ortiz, 18, of Hamlin Parma Townline Road, Hilton, is charged with criminal trespass 3rd and disorderly conduct after allegedly reentering the concert venue after being ejected and told not to return and then knocking over a section of fencing while leaving.

The following arrest was made by the Sheriff's Office in conjunction with the Lumineers concert at the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on Tuesday.

Nicholas J. McKee, 27, of King Avenue, New Castle, Ontario Canada is charged with criminal Trespass 3rd after allegedly jumping over a fence into a restricted area of the concert venue.

The Lumineers played Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on Tuesday. Also on the bill, James Bay (bottom three photos).

Photos by Philip Casper

The following were arrested by the Sheriff's Office at the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center during the Nickelback/Brantley Gilbert Concert on Aug. 16.

William J. Oatman, 23, of Liberty Street, Adams, is charged with harassment 2nd after allegedly hitting a Live Nation security guard.

James R. Rogers, 24, of County Road 189, Adams, is charged with harassment 2nd after allegedly hitting a Live Nation security guard.

Matthew J. Morano, 28, of Harrison Street, Blasdell, is charged with trespass after allegedly refusing the leave the concert area after being told numerous times to do so.

Mitchell H. Simon, 22, of Lillyridge Drive, East Amherst, is charged with harassment 2nd after allegedly pushing another person.

Harry K. Elliott, IV, 23, of HSY 2 Troy, is charged with criminal trespass 2nd and harassment 2nd after allegedly climbing over a fence to enter the concert venue and hitting a Live Nation security guard in the chin.

By Dave Gil de Rubio

Whatever you do, don’t call “Brightside,” the Lumineers’ fourth and latest studio effort, a COVID-19 album, even though the band started tracking its nine songs in March 2021. 

While founding member Wesley Schultz acknowledges the pair of two-and-a-half week sessions occurred during the pandemic time frame as the 40-year-old New Jersey native was hunkering down with his family in Denver, he feels this latest outing is its own thing.

“We kept saying it was like the post-COVID-19 record,” Schultz explained in a recent phone interview. “To me, it was not consciously trying to float above that while still observing that. In a lot of ways, we were trying to make a record that we’d want to hear in 10 years and it would still make sense…Part of the goal of the record, at least subconsciously, is to try to write an album that describes the pain without getting so caught in the weeds in using the words quarantine or pandemic. It was bigger than that.”

Like many-a-music act, when touring was paused in March 2020, the Lumineers’ time on the road came to an abrupt halt. Schultz went through what he felt like was a quasi-grieving process.

“You go through your confusion, anger and then acceptance,” he said. “I felt pretty stifled and down. I was out of my element for a while there. I think the writing helped dig me out of the hole and find a purpose again and maybe channel some of the stuff I was really feeling in a healthier way versus drinking every day or doing something that was going to distract me.”

And adding a baby girl to a brood that already included his toddler son helped give him perspective during this unprecedented time. “The way touring goes, you say yes to a hell of a lot more things than you say no, so I was forced to be grounded and to see my son and spend real time with him,” Schultz said. 

“You’re like a workaholic in some ways because you’re hustling for so many years that it was a gift to be told that you have to stay still for a little while. Even though that was painful, I felt like what do I do with myself now? I felt useless. You crawl out of that and get a lot of beautiful time out of it. I feel way, way closer to my son than I probably would have had we been on the road.”

For the past decade, the duo of Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites have been the constants in The Lumineers (cellist/vocalist Neyla Pekarek was in the band from 2010-18), carving out a niche as one of the premier folk-rock/Americana acts through what is now the group’s fourth album. 

The band’s breakthrough single was the 2012 Top 5 hit “Ho Hey.” Its simplicity taps into an organic vibe that has come to define much of the Lumineers’ work that Schultz has found to be lacking in a lot of pop music.

That straightforward simplicity comes across in spades on “Brightside,” whether it’s the opening title track that uses a cadence reminiscent of Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” while Schultz implores that, “I’ll be your brightside, baby, tonight” or providing reassurances during uncertain times amid bare-bones piano accompaniment and just a hint of strings amid the optimistic vibe of “Where We Are.” Both songs have provided a degree of comfort to the band’s fan base, who have shared their feelings on social media.

“Ironically, a lot of parents, whether it’s people I don’t know that are posting it or parents that I know personally, so many have sent me images of their kids singing ‘Where We Are’ or ‘Brightside,’” Schultz shared. “But particularly ‘Where We Are’ and they’re singing, ‘Where we are/I don’t know where we are’ and it’s these little kids, most of whom don’t even know words yet and they’re mouthing these words. That for me is very exciting to see. It’s like tapping into some kind of universal power.”

Suffice it to say that the creative restlessness that defined so much of how “Brightside” came out will be a driving force of what the Lumineers will bring to the stage on this summer’s tour.

“We have four albums out and we have to cut songs now and that’s a good feeling,” Schultz said. “We can actually put on a show that has no fat. As a band, we’re most excited to play. Not pulling a rabbit out of our hat, but having, from start to finish, moments [fans] won’t want to leave, grab a beer or take a leak. You want to just be there. I got to see Tom Petty during his “Wildflowers” tour and I forgot how many songs he wrote. I would never compare us to him, but in that feeling, I want people to leave hopefully saying, ‘I forgot how many songs they wrote,’ even just four albums in.”

Lumineers will be playing at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on Tuesday.

It might seem surprising, but Dexter Holland, singer/guitarist of the Offspring, considers this summer’s tour the biggest outing of his band’s career and a sign that the Offspring might be bigger than ever as a band.

“It feels like it’s getting better for us. We’ve talked about why that might be, is it a post-COVID thing, and people are excited to be back, or just the fact that now we’ve had 30 years of people being used to our songs?” Holland said in a late-July phone interview. “We’ve got people that are a little older, we’ve got kids that are just discovering us, and they’ve created this bigger audience of more than one generation, I guess, let’s say. But for whatever reason, man, it just feels really good right now.”

That’s quite a welcome reality for a band that has already had some periods of huge success. Formed in 1984 in Garden Grove, California, the Offspring broke through in a big way with their third album, 1994’s “Smash.” Featuring the hit singles “Come Out and Play,” “Self Esteem,” and “Gotta Get Away,” it became the biggest indie album to date, with sales standing
at more than 11 million worldwide.

With its energetic and fun punk rock songs, “Smash” joined Green Day’s “Dookie” as the primary album that brought punk into the mainstream. Then, after a follow-up album, “Ixnay on the Hombre,” which didn’t sell as well (it still topped out at around 3 million copies sold), the next album, “Americana,” became another blockbuster. It featured the hit singles “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy),” “The Kids Aren’t Alright,” “She’s Got Issues,” and “Why Don’t You Get A Job?” and the album sold more than 10 million copies.

Still, this summer’s tour, with Sum 41 and Simple Plan as opening acts, takes the Offspring to new heights.

“I think it’s the biggest headlining tour we’ve ever done, actually,” Holland said. “We’re playing like 25 cities, all amphitheaters, tickets are selling really well, and we’ve got a great package.”

Fans can expect to hear the songs that have kept the Offspring on the radio and in a prominent place in the rock world for more than three decades.

“You get to the point where you’ve put out nine or 10 albums, it’s a lot of material to choose from,” Holland said. “But I believe you’ve got to play the songs that people want to hear, right? Sometimes artists can get a little obscure with their stuff. You’ve kind of got to play the hits. So that dictates a good chunk of our set.”

Far from resting on their considerable laurels, the Offspring, which includes Holland, guitarist, and fellow founding member Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, bassist Todd Morse and drummer Brandon Pertzborn are acting like a band that’s still inspired and looking to grow musically.

While the studio's five albums that followed “Americana” haven’t sold in the eight figures, they’ve generally done well commercially. There have also been almost another dozen top 10 singles, including “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid,” which has become the Offspring’s most streamed song.

That single is featured on the 2008 album, “Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace,” which was recently re-released for its 15th anniversary with a pair of live tracks added to the original album. Holland considers it one of the band’s best efforts and an important album in the overall career. 

In 2005, the band released a greatest hits album, and Holland said the band wanted to prove the hits album didn’t mark the end of the road for the Offspring and that they were inspired and as good as ever musically.

“It’s an important record for us,” Holland said. “And it’s something I’m really proud of, that that far into our career (we had) our most popular song.” 

Having released their current studio album, the well-received “Let The Bad Times Roll” in 2021, Holland and his bandmates have been back in the studio recently.

“We did another song, and that makes six, not completely done, but they’re mostly done,” Holland said. “So we’re four-ish songs away (from an album). I think we’ll get something out early next year.”

Holland can’t yet say for sure how the next album will compare to other Offspring albums, but it’s bound to have some of the usual musical and lyrical signatures. “Sometimes you just start writing songs and you don’t realize how an album is coming together until it’s almost there,” Holland said. 

“Like on ‘Americana,’ ‘Americana’ was one of the last songs I wrote because I didn’t realize until then all the other songs like ‘Why Don’t You Get A Job?’ and ‘Pretty Fly,’ they were describing American society. I didn’t really realize that’s what the album was about until I got almost done and thought well, I’ll call it ‘Americana’ because that’s like ‘Americana’ means American culture. This was my vision of what I thought American culture was doing in the late ‘90s. We’re kind of still in that phase with the songs, but we’ve always liked the energy of punk music and the rebelliousness...What I’m focusing right now on is just melody. I want the songs to be really good.”

Offspring will be performing at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center on Sunday.

Photos by Philip Casper.