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TICKETS 🎟️ truewest.info/Menzingers26On Sale: Friday, May 8 at 10am PT
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w/ Hot Water Music & Weakened Friends
Everything I Ever Saw finds the Menzingers entering a new era in what’s already been a storied career. The Philadelphia punk legends’ eighth album chronicles moments of significant change—the personal, the political, and the universal—while returning to the core creative principles that first put them on the map with listeners the world over. Twenty years in, the Menzingers have discovered that the wisdom gained with time’s passing is even stronger than the emotional armor they once wore in their youth, and Everything I Ever Saw captures the quartet embracing the here and now while strengthening the bonds that have held them together.
Work on Everything I Ever Saw started in earnest after touring behind 2023’s Some Of It Was True, as the group felt a re-energized urgency while their worlds changed around them. “It wasn't something that we initially set out to do,” vocalist/guitarist Greg Barnett says. “We started writing immediately after our last record in a very fun, casual way—but we were going through really special moments that we wanted to document.” “We've been doing this for so long that it’s routine,” vocalist/guitarist Tom May adds. “Between this record and the last record, however, so much happened in our lives, and we always write about what's going on.”
Indeed, the last three years have been plenty busy in the Menzingers’ world: while Barnett got married and welcomed his first child, May got divorced and navigated new emotional territory both in and outside of the band. “We're no strangers to writing about breakups, but divorce is different,” he says. “There's a weirdness to it that cuts so much deeper and hurts much more. The most devastating part is that you had a vision for your life that's gone now, and you have to figure out how to navigate that while growing as a person. But through that suffering, I definitely became a better person than I was before. When you're broken, you can put yourself back together in a way where you are who you truly want to become.”
“It was sad for him, but he became the person that he always wanted to be, and he found so much happiness in this way his life changed,” Barnett adds. “I'll always look back on this record as living in the moment of these massive changes in our lives.” While working on the record in the band’s new studio space in the Port Richmond area of Philadelphia, the quartet—rounded out by bassist Eric Keen and drummer Joe Godino—engaged in some group camaraderie (and, yes, a couple of frosty beverages) to help their bandmate and lifelong friend navigate this particular era of growing pains in his personal life. “Those guys took care of me,” May says, “and I can't even put it into words how powerful that was. It solidified our creative relationship, because they’re some of the few people that I can talk about these things with.”
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Event Venue
1300 SE Stark St, # 110, Portland, OR, United States, Oregon 97214
Tickets
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