Mom Jeans Tour Recap: Embracing Community and Culture Across America

This spring, Mom Jeans embarks on the Loud Epic Emo Music tour, spanning just under 2 months and hitting over 25 major cities in between the United States and Canada. Bringing the energy and the togetherness of a basement rock show to the big stage, this band provides a punk scene’s dream to local communities everywhere.

A Mom Jeans show is a guaranteed interactive experience. Mom Jeans revives the community and user experience of a proper 90’s emo band. Staples of the night include the typical non-stop crowd surfing and various mosh pits around the venue; but also many Mom Jeans’ special quirks. The band’s fandom is very ‘special,’ quoted by one of their supporting bands, Summer Salt. The crowd featured the most merchandise ever worn by a crowd, from merch releases spanning over the last decade. This crowd also happens to be one of the most phoneless I’ve seen, which is hard to come by in 2024.

On this tour, the band released highly anticipated unique themed nights for each city on their tour. Some included Jersey Shore night, pirate night, Hawaiian shirts, and more. The full list can be found on the Mom Jeans Instagram page. Richmond’s selected theme was Disco. The amount of concert-attenders that committed to the theme was underwhelming; the band sadly didn’t participate either! During the show, Ricky, the lead singer of Mom Jeans, addressed the elephant in the room. His reasons for not dressing up were, “I did not sleep well last night, and tummy hurt,” quote unquote.

In between songs, Mom Jeans refused to accept moments of silence. Transitions of songs included synth tracks, unfiltered commentary, or event tracks of viral videos from Tik Tok, including ‘Okay Lets Go’ and ‘Have You Ever Had A Dream That You,’

A different transition between songs included performing a call in response to introduce the supporting bands for the night. Mom Jeans brought many notable modern emo and indie bands on tour, some for longer than others. The two that remain on the entirety of the tour and the only two supporting Mom Jeans in Richmond included Summer Salt and Hunny. Both brough unique sounds to the night; Hunny opened the night with spunky upbeat rock, and Summer Salt provided some slower and chiller tones. Although the crowd seemed unfamiliar to either of the other bands’ work, they still showed utmost respect and attention to them while performing.

During this call and response, Ricky also shouted, “Free Palestine,” as a response to the human rights crisis in Gaza. Richmond, who has been and continues to be active in protests and activism towards the cause, unsurprisingly followed the response with the same energy.

At the end of the night, Ricky said a thank you to the crowd for the consistent high of energy throughout the night. “I know many of you feel overlooked by touring agencies and by the music industry,” he says, towards Richmond; it is not an uncommon feeling to be left out of the mainstream music community. But, he assures us that he has only ever felt love and support from Richmond, with great energy that has gotten only better since their last time in RVA; on tour with The Story So Far in 2022.

With Richmond having a very strong local music community, this show felt full circle for the city. As a city that’s built on very small bands just playing in bars and backyards, seeing a huge emo band play one of the biggest venues in the downtown area was surreal. Every alt subculture came together with the same energy they invest in their local music and brought that forward; Mom Jeans sees this and recognizes this.

Before ending out on their final song, Edward 40Hands, Sam, the bassist of Mom Jeans, gives a quick shout out to the local venue, The Camel, saying that they have ‘the best food ever.’ As a former Richmond local, I highly recommend.

Mom Jeans provides the crowd with an unexpected encore; both because of it’s existence, and what happened during it. The first of two songs played during the encore was an unreleased song. Ricky admits that this song may be released soon, or never released at all. The unreleased track had the staple Mom Jeans sound, which caused the crowd to keep the energy despite not knowing the lyrics. They then closed out the night with Scott Pilgrim vs My GPA. All of the venue lights were out and the only light provided came from audience members’ cell phones. During this song, Ricky played his iconic trumpet solo and the crowd went wild. Still, during one of their saddest songs out, the audience moshed and crowd-surfed until the band exited the stage.

Mom Jeans’ tour is nearly over, but do not miss it if you have the chance. If attending, take two pieces of advice; don’t be afraid to mosh, and dress on theme!