Born to Quit Tour featuring Smoking Popes – REVIEW

We recently had the chance to check out the Born to Quit Tour featuring Smoking Popes and Roll The Tanks. You can check out our review after the break.

It seems like lately a lot of bands are doing tours where they are playing seminal albums from front to back.  Alkaline Trio has done it.  So have Taking Back Sunday, New Found Glory, Finch, and The Starting Line.  But also doing the same type of tour is a band that perhaps is a major influence on some, if not all, of these bands, The Smoking Popes are doing a tour to support of the re-release of their masterpiece album, Born to Quit, with support from up and comers Roll The Tanks.

The concert was scheduled to start at 9:00pm, but by 9:30 no one had taken the stage, leaving the crowd a bit confused as to what was going on.  10:00 rolled around and the show was still not underway.  Finally around 10:30 Joe Sirois, drummer for not only Roll The Tanks, but also the venerable Frank Black and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones stepped on stage and started to pound away on his set.  The rest of the band quickly hurried on stage to join Sirois and begin their set.  Having never heard of Roll The Tanks and based solely off their name, I was expecting a sound similar to Hot Water Music or Against Me.  I was partially right and partially wrong.  They sounded like a punk rock meets an indie rock meets and arena rock band.  And it all blended together beautifully.  They fought through a partially angry crowd that had been standing around the Double Door for over two hours since the doors opened at 8:00pm.  Roll The Tanks rolled through their set playing songs such as “Pistolero”, Goodnight Jimmy Lee”, “Hornet” and “Police Me”.  As soon as Roll The Tanks finished the entire crowd started chanting “Smoking Popes” at the top of their lungs until 11:15 when their heroes finally took the stage.

The band wasted no time getting down to business, opening with “Midnight Moon” the opening track off of Born To Quit.  The Popes then played through the rest of the album along with various songs off of other releases before leaving the stage.  The band returned for their “encore” playing about seven more songs including “Megan” and a cover of Willie Nelson’s “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground”.  The band finally exited the stage for good at about 1:15 in the morning, even with the crowd still begging for more.

Its not often you get a chance to see a band you’ve been listening to since middle school, as most bands don’t have the staying power to keep making quality music for almost 20 years.  But the Smoking Popes have not only been around for that long, but much like a fine wine, they keep getting better with age.

Information about the review…
Tour: Born to Quit Tour
Bands: Smoking Popes and Roll The Tanks
Date: October 20, 2012
Venue: Double Door in Chicago, IL