I discovered West 22nd from my former co-worker Andrew Watters who learned about them from Dalton Domino and Jacob Stelly who could not stop talking praise about the band. We ended up playing their new release Sleeping Alone on New Music Friday following the song’s release and from there I really got into their work. Their debut EP All the Way Home was such a fun introduction to their work and their following 2-pack of Sleeping Alone and Let Down shows that they still are growing as a band.
When SXSW season rolled around and I knew I would be going down to Austin to cover it, I sat down and dove through the music festival lineup looking for bands I knew, bands that looked interesting, and everything in between. West 22nd was one band I saw immediately. I knew I had to catch them live.
The band is composed of all University of Texas students and has been embraced by the university, the students, and the city performing at the official University of Texas Hook ‘Em House at SXSW and multiple shows throughout the city including a performance at Weekend 1 of Austin City Limits Musical Festival this year. During SXSW, the band played two official showcases and 6 unofficial showcases. I caught them at their second official showcase at Valhalla and I thought they were a ton of fun. They meshed playing classic covers of songs such as The Chain by Fleetwood Mac as well as their originals like Sunburns. The bar was packed and I was excited to catch the band live. It was a great performance by the band. After the show, I talked with lead singer Logan Madsen. He told me if I ever wanted to come to another show to let him know.
For exciting family reasons (my brother proposing to his girlfriend), I found myself heading to Dallas for the weekend. I realized that the stars were aligning to see West 22nd again. They were playing at The Cambridge Room at the House of Blues in Dallas, and I found myself with a camera in hand seeing them exactly 30 days after seeing them in Austin.
The opening band was Redwall. They are a group of high school seniors from Southlake Carroll in the Dallas area who have been playing together for years. In their set they performed some of their originals as well as covers like Flipturn’s August and The Red Clay Strays Wondering Why. Some people I talked to in the crowd went to the same high school as the band and came to support them. It’s cool to see West 22nd allow a small band like Redwall to perform with them at a venue like House of Blues.
Another Austin native band, Vision Arcade, opened for West 22nd on their tour. They came out wearing matching Vision Arcade jumpsuits and rocked out on stage. They seemed really in sync as a band which is evident by their matching fits and banter on stage. Their set contained a lot of original and catchy straight-forward alternative rock, and the sound was very punchy. Their moody aesthetic that plays into their stage performance also works really well with their sound since their music feels very nocturnal.
West 22nd took the stage to close the night out and got the crowd moving. The band has a lot of the classic and refined indie rock sound that you get with a band like The Backseat Lovers, who they covered during the show, mixed with a yearning for more traditional rock sound from artists like Fleetwood Mac and George Harrison of The Beatles. Logan has a lot of charisma on stage and loves moving around giving the performance a ton of life. The band played through all of their released work, touched on some covers, and played some new unreleased songs.
They closed the show with their biggest song Sunburns and thanked the crowd for getting the song up to 1 million streams on Spotify.
The crowd was full of young and excited energy as West 22nd performed. It is really cool to see a band composed of college students feel so connected and so professional on stage. It does not feel like they are merely students but full-time artists. That’s what I think is just one piece of the puzzle as to why they are so good. They feel like the real deal compared to a lot of college-aged bands. Not putting down any other group, but the tinge of professionalism and intentionality feels more real in West 22nd than most.
After the show, the band hung out by the merch table inside the Cambridge Room talking and getting pictures with any fans. As a whole, the show was a ton of fun, and I am excited to see where the band goes from here with their upcoming performances outside of Texas and at Austin City Limits this October. Their future is bright.
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