Saturday night So Many Dynamos played their final show at Delmar Hall. The Consider the Past – A Farewell Concert celebrated 20 years of the band by bringing everyone who has been a part of the band. Frontman Aaron Stovall (vocals, synthesizers, guitar), performers are Ryan Ballew (guitar, vocals), Nathan Bernaix (guitar, vocals), Kristin Dennis (backup vocals), Cody Henry (trombone), Adam Hucke (trumpet), Stephen Inman (guitar, keyboard, vocals), Griffin Kay (guitar, vocals), Clayton (Norm) Kunstel (drums), Travis Lewis (guitar, keyboards), Martha Mehring (backup vocals), Ben Reece (tenor sax), Ryan Wasoba (guitar, vocals, keyboards) and Joe Winters (synth drums, percussion). Over the past several months the band has been posting stories, pictures, posters, and videos from over the last 20 years on Facebook leading up to their final show. You should really take a look as it shows insight into the 20 year history of the band and how some songs came about. www.facebook.com/somanydynamosmusic/

I still remember the first time seeing So Many Dynamos. I was trying to get more experience photographing live music and if a band I liked or had at least a little interest in would come to town and play places like Mississippi Nights, The Duck Room, The Creepy Crawl, Cicero’s, or The Gargoyle I would buy a ticket and try and get to the show a bit early to get a good spot as for the most part these venues rarely would stop someone from entering with a good camera. I had graduated high school in 96 and listened to local bands like The Urge, Fragile Porcelain Mice, New World Spirits, Radio Iodine, and Gravity Kills as this was before everyone had the internet and most of my music intake was from local radio stations. The roughly ten years between the end of high school and the rediscovery of more local bands had me expanding my music taste by looking up bands that inspired bands and artists that I had liked in high school and also looking at independent labels and bands from the UK. On December 8th, 2007 I went to see and photograph VHS or Beta at The Gargoyle. So Many Dynamos opened that show and from that point on I was a fan. It was a second coming for me with bands from the local scene.

Over the past sixteen years I have several So Many Dynamos shows that stick out in my mind. An RFT showcase in 2008, the show at The Billiken Club in 2009 when ‘New Bones’ was released on 7”, The band playing an in store at Vintage Vinyl for the release of The Loud Wars playing the album from last song to first song seeing how the album had backwards parts from Flashlights in several of the songs, a show the day after Christmas at The Firebird in 2009 complete with Santa Claus on trumpet, and Griffin Kay’s farewell show at Cicero’s in 2011.

Set one:

The night started off with what frontman Aaron Stovall called So Many Dynamos 3.0, this would be the most recent configuration of the band, and the night would also see 1.0 and 2.0 play. Nathan Bernaix joked that this was So Many Dynamos ‘Eras’ show, similar to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. The first five songs consisted of four songs from 2015’s Safe With Sound, and the last song that the band had recorded ‘Consider the Past’, that is now available on streaming platforms.

The second half of the first set featured version 1.0 with founding members Ryan Ballew and Ryan Wasoba. Wasoba joked that the band could have been called the Ryans and then asked if any Brians were in the audience. When a few fans raised their hands or gave a shout out he joked that this was not a safe space for Brians. Dynamos 1.0 kicked things off with one of the first songs that they wrote as a band ‘Lets Get This Party Started’ and ‘Airtight’ both off their debut EP ¿Are We Not Drawn Onward to New Era?, also now available on streaming platforms. As soon as the band started to do the signature clapping from ‘Heat/Humidity’ the crowd followed in suit. ‘Heat/Humidity’ has always been a fan favorite for as far back as I remember and I remember shows that it was not on the set list and fans would just start doing the clapping in-between songs until the band would just breakdown and play the song. After ‘Windows Facing Walls’, also the name the band played under for a secret show back on July 25th of this year. Stovall told the fans that they would be taking a little break as the first set they played was about the length of one of their normal shows at a little over an hour but still had about an hour and a half worth of show for the second set. Version 1.0 ended with ‘Let’s Laugh About It Later’.

Set Two:

The second set saw version 2.0 take the stage with Griffin Kay taking over for Ryan Ballew. Version 2.0 is the band I fell in love with. I don’t want to take anything away from the past or future members but this was the band that I saw perform the most of all the versions and when I think So Many Dynamos this is the lineup that I will always remember. The second set was filled with songs from Flashlights and The Loud Wars and I am not sure I would have changed anything from the final performance from the 2.0 era. Opening with ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’ and then into ‘We Vibrate, We Do’ that had the crowd really get into the second set. Fans yelled out form a pit and at some point in the set a lone crowd surfer was carried around the sea of fans.  It is really hard to pick out the standout songs from the second set as both Flashlights and The Loud Wars are up there with my top 50 favorite albums and probably in my top 5 from local bands. If I had to pick though it would be ‘The Formula’, ‘Artifacts of Sound’, and ‘New Bones’.

Throughout the night the band members thanked friends, family, fans, various bands, etc. At one point Clayton (Norm) Kunstel had a microphone and joked it only took twenty years to get one and thanked the guy running the soundboard tonight for being the first person to give him one. The band left the stage briefly and while away fans started to chant ’10 more years’ instead of the typical one more song. People yelled ‘are you sure you guys are breaking up’, and to be honest if it was not a known fact that the band was calling it quits you would think that this was just a 20th anniversary show as the band was even tighter and in top tier mode and probably one of the best shows that I have seen them do over the sixteen years of following them. The encore saw the band members past and present take the stage with backup singers and a horn section all with the same So Many Dynamos t-shirts on.  The three song encore consisted of ‘Let’s Just See What Happens’, “Let’s Move Mountains’, and ‘Search Part’. Before ‘Search Party’ Stovall informed the crowd that this will be the last song we ever play. Towards the end all members past and present joined arms letting the final notes kind of fade away into nothingness and closed it out singing ‘There will be no search party for us’ along with the fans. It was really the best song to close the show and twenty year carrier of the band.

Bo and The Locomotive