I Hate Music Part 2: Four Days with Carpool

Click here to read Part 1. Read on to learn what it’s like touring with Carpool.

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When Josh and I first met Carpool at Richmond Music Hall, there were lots of jitters on both their side and ours. The two of us were worried (or at least conscious) of how well we’d assimilate into the group, making sure to stay out of their way and not cramp their style, allowing the members to be as natural as they could while knowing a camera might be pointed toward them at any time. On the band’s side, this was the first show they had played together in almost six months and the beginning of the biggest tour they had ever been a part of. Opening up for emo legends like Free Throw is a blessing and a pressure, but Carpool were ready to deliver. 

That night, I saw the band take the stage and witnessed the same spectacle that poured out of them at Fauxchella just a few months prior. They ripped through a 25-minute set of old and new material alike, stacking fresh singles like “Can We Just Get High?” and “No News Is Good News” up against old favorites like “Whiskey & Xanax” and “The Salty Song.”

Gradually, I watched the band win the crowd over more and more with each song, which was a trend I noticed at all three shows. The beauty of a song like “Can We Just Get High?” is that it’s dumb and straightforward, but because it’s dumb and straightforward, that also means it’s catchy as hell. Pretty much anyone can hear that chorus once, get it, and join in before the second one is even over. 

With the first song, I’d notice lots of head bobbing, swinging hips, and nodding along. By the second song, a few people might be finger-pointing or filming short clips on their phones. By the end of the set, at least a few people would be headbanging, thrashing around, shakin’ ass, and screaming along. It was beautiful to watch this transformation happen each night with completely different crowds of people; it felt like I got to watch the genuine power of rock music happen again and again. 

Left to right, Carpool is Stoph Colasanto (Lead Vocals, guitar), Torri Ross (Vocals, Bass), Alec Westover (Drums), and Tommy Eckerson (Vocals, Guitar). Photo by Abby Clare.

Even though there’s an entire documentary showcasing Carpool’s live presence, it’s worth breaking down a little bit here. Just like in the band’s music, Stoph Colasanto is happy to fill the role of charismatic ringleader. He has a yowling, scratchy voice that defaults to a scream but can also stretch and hit a beautiful high note whenever he needs to serenade. To give you an idea of fits and vibe, I saw him rock a David Cone Jersey, black leather cowboy hat, and vintage Hamm’s work shirt across our three shows. 

On the opposite end of the stage, you have Tommy Eckerson, a classic rock guitar god with natural-born solo wizardry and a clear admiration for the greats. He can belt it out when he’s on lead vocals like on “Crocodile Tears,” but more often than not, he is happy to just hit the occasional backup vocal so he can focus on his impressive guitar tapping skills. Tommy dresses in classic single-color outfits like James Dean; he might have a chain or sunglasses on, but not in a flashy way. 

Between them, you have Torri Ross, an Arizona-born bassist who bounces across the stage like a pinball, busting out a high kick and nailing every note along the way with an infectious grin. At one point, Tori said someone compared them to a character from Guitar Hero, so that’s the level of icon we’re working with here. Tori is also a knockout vocalist; their presence makes the band sound even more full, and their delivery during the bridge of “No News Is Good News” would regularly get stuck in my head for hours after each show. 

Behind them all is drummer Alec Westover, a fellow Pacific Nortwesterner who apologized in advance if he was ever a bit of a “space case.” The two of us pretty much immediately spoke the same language, as I also share a rainy-day pensiveness, which means I’m often content to sit back and observe as opposed to being the center of attention. He was usually fitted in another DIY band’s merch or a hoodie with a sports team on it. It was amazing to watch him shift into performance mode each night, busting out 30 minutes of pretty relentless drumming, knocking out every mathy twist and turn of a song like “Whiskey & Xanax” with absolute precision. It was bonkers to watch him hammer out something like that and then find him minutes later backstage chilling like it was no big deal. 

Together, I watched these four rip through the same 25-minute set three times over, and each night, it was nothing short of captivating. The setlist consisted of the same eight songs: they’d kick things off with the two-note nod-along “Can We Just Get High” and then hit us with a Carpool Classic in the form of “Whiskey & Xanax.” From there, the band would wind through songs off each album, with a couple pulled from their recent EP for good measure. If the crowd played along, they’d be treated to a cover of “Teenage Dirtbag,” a nice little throwback that allows for a unique form of participation as half the members of the crowd remember the lyrics in unison, eventually building up to that cathartic cry of “OH YEAH!!! DIRTBAG!!!” 

It’s a wonderful note to end on a non-canonical song because it feels like a fun way to let people know what you revere as a band without taking everything so seriously. In the past, Carpool has put “My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit into a similar spot at other shows, but I could see any Sum 41 or Third Eye Blind slotting in there if the band ever needed any more rowdy 90s alt-rock crowd-pleasers to cap off the set with. On a similar note that I want to include here for completeness sake, I still maintain that Carpool’s cover of “Soak Up The Sun” should have been a bigger deal than it was; that thing is a work of art with an amazing video to match. Regardless, Carpool nailed their Wheatus cover and walked off the stage to raucous applause and maybe even a few new converts. Based on the amount of vinyl I saw the band singing that night, it’s safe to assume people were excited to go home and listen to the new record. 

Behind the scenes, the band was already abuzz with an infectious, if not slightly shitposty energy. Throughout most of our time together, Stoph radiated a charming and hilarious front-person energy, indulging in plenty of dirtbag antics but still keeping everything fun and good-natured, much like Carpool’s music. 

The band members already had an ongoing bit, singing the chorus of Lonestar’s 1999 hit “Amazed” back and forth to each other whenever there was a brief lull in conversation. They’d affectionately refer to each other as “cousin,” a term that felt recently re-popularized thanks to The Bear but, in Carpool’s case, felt steeped in the fact that most of the band members still work in the service industry. At one point after their first set, Stoph turned to me and, over his shoulder, offered, “Cousin is gender-neutral,” a surprisingly open-minded logic for something that just felt like an affectionate auditory tick. There’s also “cro,” a portmanteau of “cousin” and “bro” that served a similar purpose. 

Later on in the run of shows, the phrase “Stand on Business!” would take on a life of its own, eventually becoming a universally positive affirmation you could use to respond to just about anything. Just ripped a set? Stand on business. The green room has the exact flavor of Gatorade you like? Stand on business! Hearing someone bark that out and mentally nodding along in affirmation became a shared language. 

Once the concert wrapped up, Carpool spent a good chunk of time slinging shirts, signing vinyl, and snapping pics with fans. We were only an hour or so from the album’s midnight release, so we hung around the bar long enough to celebrate with the band when My Life In Subtitles officially dropped. The vibes were immaculate; Carpool’s first set of tour went off without a hitch, and the record they had spent years working towards was finally out for the world to hear. We celebrated an adequate amount, but eventually, we all packed up and headed north toward New Jersey, where we had an off-day before show #2.

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After a full day of driving, our “off-day” in Asbury Park was more like an off-night. We arrived at the Airbnb around 6 pm after navigating through the utter hell that is the DC highway system. I’ve driven across the country multiple times, so I’m no stranger to long road trips, but that specific drive reinforced how much of tour is just spent packed in a car getting from one city to the next. It’s a lot of gas stations, rest stops, and fast food. You take vegetables where you can get them and get good at constructing a queue of music and podcasts long enough to stretch across multiple hours. By the time we rolled into Jersey, Carpool already had pizza on the way and YouTube up on the flatscreen TV in the shared living room space. The group flipped from the Gel Audiotree to goofy music videos and, at one point, wound up sparking (mostly ironic) a group sing-along to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”

I already had some idea of who Carpool were as people before this, so I wasn’t too worried about anything dramatic or salacious happening during my time with the band. Even still, I was wondering if things would ever get tense or “real” once we were all out on the road together. The closest we ever got to some Behind The Music-style drama was when the band’s manager, Danny Doyle, learned that Tommy ordered from a jerk chicken place without him. This restaurant was apparently a bit of a tradition any time the band visited Asbury, but Doyle was only (jokingly) a little put out that Tommy ordered without him. That exchange, the cold and calculating betrayal at the hands of Tommy, was about the closest the group ever came to rising tensions.

A tender moment between Stoph and Alec

After long enough, Carpool, plus myself and Josh in-tow, moseyed a few blocks down to Georgies, a gay bar, in search of karaoke. While we didn’t find an open mic, I quickly discovered that Torri and Dan were absolute pool sharks as I watched them each go on six-ball hot streaks, sinking multiple billiards into the bar’s only pool table. 

We wound up hopping to another bar that actually contained multiple other bars, a needlessly complicated way to cram several distinct vibes on top of each other. My night almost evoked that one Lady Gaga clip, except it was bar, bar, another bar. At one of these bars-within-a-bar, I wound up chatting with Jake Trieste and Frankie Mancini, two of Stoph’s high school friends who were in town from Rochester just to watch the band perform the following night. They were more than happy to tell tales of putting up with a younger version of Stoph and how it felt like he had eternal senioritis, even back then. “Teachers thought he wouldn’t do shit, but look at him now, he’s following his dreams,” Jake laid out at one point. While I was already privy to Eyes Wide Shut, an (admittedly bad) post-hardcore project featuring members of Carpool and calicuzns, Jake was the first to inform me of Stoph’s high school rap project, something I’m still hoping I’ll be able to get my hands on at some point, if the files still exist at all. 

That night, I ended up having some pretty in-depth discussions with most of the band members. At one point, Tommy and I were embroiled in a conversation about our shared reverence for classic rock, specifically Van Morrison. He informed me how this admiration for that older style of rock music influenced his approach to songwriting for the new LP, and I could totally hear it. The proggy guitarwork at the end of “CAR” and the fiery solo at the end of “Can We Just Get High?” made total sense when placed in a lineage of boomer rock I inherited from my dad. 

Similarly, Alec and I were both from Oregon, a fact I didn’t know until I saw him sporting a forest green University of Oregon hoodie. Bonded by that shared upbringing and mutual appreciation (or tolerance for) rain, the two of us got deep talking about the creation of Subtitles and how it compared to the band’s previous work. He explained his role as drummer and how the instrumental parts for some of the songs on this record took shape long before the lyrics were in place. 

The group communally discussed their shared appreciation for Bug Jar, a 200-cap music venue in Rochester that the band has played so many times they might as well have their name engraved on the rafters. In fact, this July, Carpool will be playing two triumphant nights at Bug Jar, celebrating the release of My Life In Subtitles. The first night will be a set of Carpool classics, covers, and songs the group never plays anymore, while night two will be a full album playthrough of Subtitles for the ravenous hometown crowd. With support from legends like Equipment, Carly Cosgrove, Del Paxton, and Cheap Kids, these shows are gonna be a Carpool summit for the ages.

Carpool Album Release Shows

In a telling moment, at one point, I overheard the band talking to a table of patrons as they were hunting for a lighter. Upon learning that Stoph and Tommy were in a band, they asked what kind of music Carpool made. “Good luck playing Wonder Bar if you’re not a ska band,” one of them warned, “This is a ska-only town,” he said with the most serious grimace one can manage while still talking about ska. 

Knowing how averse everyone is to the “emo” label, my ears perked up to hear what the answer would be. The two band members shared a knowing look before Tommy said, “You wanna know what the actual answer is? Real scumbag rock.” The labels of “punk” and “emo” encapsulate so much yet feel so limiting, especially for a band that just put out a record as diverse and varied as My Life In Subtitles. 

That same night, your boy made a rookie mistake of Taking Too Much. While I’d been cautious to monitor how much I’d imbibed on night one, on night two, I wasn’t drinking at all. Instead, I decided to help stimulate New Jersey’s blossoming dispensary economy. I started the night off with a little baby joint to myself as we were on the way to Bar #1 and felt fine. Actually, if anything, I felt leveled out after a day's worth of travel in the car. My mistake came at Bar #2, where I went back for seconds, cheefing on a $10 pre-roll of Jersey weed that sent me into an actual panic attack by the time we’d reached Bar #3. 

The band had decided to leave the second bar in search of a casino, something that we quickly learned does not exist anywhere in Asbury Park. Instead, the band was stopped by Joey DiCamillo of NJ emo band Straight Jacket Feeling. “There’s no casino in Asbury Park,” he laughed towards our group, “Come on in here and grab an espresso martini.” At this point, I was so deep in my head that I was sure it would be my last night alive. I pulled Stoph outside, muttered an exchange that was probably as confusing as it was incoherent, and walked back to the Airbnb, fully freaked the fuck out. Not exactly my finest moment. 

While that was an all-time embarrassing moment in my life that happened in front of a band I’d long admired, I wanted to include it here for accuracy’s sake and also to illustrate how sweet and kind-hearted the members of Carpool are. By the end of the night, Tommy, Alec, Josh, and I were huddled around a patio set in the backyard of our Airbnb talking (unironically) about the brilliance of the Goo Goo Dolls, and I could feel my anxiety dissipating by the minute. I apologized to Stoph the next day, and he assured me it was okay; Carpool, if nothing else, are a band that understands the experience of getting too high and freaking out; that’s the content of about half their songs. 

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The next day, the group filed into Wonder Bar for a stormy Asbury Park soundcheck, then proceeded to play one of the best gigs I’ve seen all year. The room was electric, with plenty of the band’s childhood friends and old roommates embedded at various spots in the sold-out crowd, plus a glut of New Jerseyans ready to cut loose on a Saturday night. The band played through the same setlist, but this time, Corey from Free Throw joined the band on stage for their Wheatus cover and set the room ablaze. People crowdsurfed, shouted along, and shared the mic, all for the god-damn opener. 

Photo by Abby Clare

After the show packed up, the remainder of Carpool and their friends migrated down the boardwalk to a discotheque blasting 70s soul classics, and the group danced the night away in a moment that felt more than celebratory. For me, it felt like everyone had forgotten about my embarrassing faux paus the night before, getting too high and getting weird, but for the band, it felt like genuine revelry. They had just played an incredible set, signed a bunch of vinyl, and were out dancing with some of their oldest friends. As we were collectively shakin’ our booties to Diana Ross, it really felt like the credits could roll at any moment. 

But there was one more show to play. 

After some post-dancing Taco Bell and unwinding with a one-two punch of the Wednesday Tiny Desk and the Elephant Gym Audiotree, the gang called it a night because we all had to be in Pittsburg the next day for the final show of this leg of the tour. 

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In the Steel City, the gig, once again, unfolded in a similar way, with the band winning over portions of the crowd minute by minute. Between songs, Stoph kept talking about how each track was actually inspired by Mean Girls 2 and were all somehow directly tied to the Tina Fey Cinematic Universe. It was also revealed that “Whiskey & Xanax” is actually about the Lizzie McGuire Lego set that got stolen from Stoph when he was in 5th grade (Genius annotators, you can quote me).

Before we all went our separate ways, Stoph, Josh, and I snuck off for a mediocre dinner at a local Schwarma place. We wound up having a surprisingly involved conversation about movies, but it eventually circled back to music. At one point, Stoph talked about how grateful he is to be around such talented musicians, referring to the rest of his band. He spoke about the difference between being an elite musician who can play something flawlessly versus being a band with personality. Ultimately, the three of us agreed that a balance between those two things is the sweet spot, and we unanimously decided that, after watching three consecutive shows, Carpool sat squarely at that intersection. 

Photo by Abby Clare

At the end of this, it was bittersweet and mostly sad to watch the band’s Honda Odyssey pull off into the sunset on the way back up to Rochester for a week off before going back on tour, but I felt like I had been a small part of something incredibly special. 

Josh and I made a brief pit stop to catch Origami Angel close out the Don’t Let The Scene Go Down On Me’s 17th-anniversary showcase, rounding out an already-emo weekend with a heaping helping of dorky pop rock (positive). 

The two of us checked into our Airbnb, and weirdly, all I wanted to do was listen to Carpool. I listened to all of Nasal Use and My Life In Subtitles before going to bed and found myself loving the album more than I ever had. After seeing the band live, I could pick out Torri’s vocals floating through the upper end of the mix. I could spot Tommy’s guitar wizardry after watching him cast the same spells night after night. I could hear Alec’s study drumming holding everything together, the silent assassin murdering every fill and propulsive hit. I could hear Stoph’s voice, literally and figuratively, across each song and every word as I read along with the lyrics and did the public service of uploading all the words to Genius. Maybe all I needed was six months of listening to this album before it clicked. Maybe all I needed was to watch this band play a couple of these songs live to “get it,” or maybe I had just absorbed so much of Carpool’s energy that I started to feel admiration by proxy. 

-reflections-

I think you do something like this (I.e., join a band on the road) out of love but also because it teaches you something about yourself. If it’s not already abundantly clear, I love Carpool: the band, the music, the people, and it was an honor to essentially feel like part of the group, even for a few days. I set out to capture this band as best I could and try to tell their story at what felt like an important inflection point in their career; to try to capture and convey what I love about them to an audience that’s completely external to all of this. 

I genuinely believe this band possesses something special, and that’s evident in the footage we captured for this documentary, the music they painstakingly put to record, and the way that these people navigate the world and interact with each other. You can see it in the fandom they’re building, the merch and videos they’re making, and the connections they’ve fostered. Everything is considered, and nothing is half-assed. Nobody is doing it quite like Carpool.

This entire trip, the final lines of Erotic Nightmare Summer kept floating through my head: “Carpool is a band about sharing smiles with friends.” As I watched the members bounce across the stage each night, nailing every solo and sticking every high kick, it was impossible not to absorb some of that jubilation.

So sure, I did this because I adore Carpool and wanted to show what it’s like to be a young rock band ramping up to release the most important record of their lives. And, despite my initial reservations, I do think My Life In Subtitles is a great album, it’s a giant, challenging, wide-set record where no two songs sound the same. The scope is ambitious, the songs are unlike anything the band has done before, and that’s a good thing. My experience with this album, listening to it on and off for months, has unearthed a level of depth I never expected during that first listen on the Metro North. At a certain point, creating a “grower” is a true test of a band, and that’s what Carpool have done with their sophomore album.

In talking to all these people- fans, friends, the touring bands, and even the members of Carpool themselves- pretty much everyone had a different favorite song from My Life in Subtitles. I think that goes to show how varied and diverse this record is. 

Photo by Abby Clare

Sometimes, you reach a point in life where you just have to throw yourself into something full-force and see what happens. This whole experience of joining a band on the road, interviewing people, taking notes, filming things, sitting in on soundchecks, and spending an extended period of time immersed in a pre-existing configuration of people was all new to me. Sometimes you overshoot (or fly too close to the sun), but even when you do, you learn something about yourself. 

In fact, I think that’s largely the story of My Life In Subtitles as an album: the three-act structure of Dirtbag, Meltdown, and Reclamation feels like a universal truth in some ways. You’ve got this unrepentant scumbaginess in songs like “Can We Just Get High?” and “Open Container Blues,” whose upsides are self-evident. Then you’ve got the middle of the album, which covers everything else: romance (Crocodile Tears), recklessness (Kid Icarus), shitty jobs (No News), questioning who you are (Taxes), questioning organizations (CAR), and the crushing weight of capitalism (throughout). Yet all of this is speckled with glimmers of hope. Despite its title, a song like “I Hate Music” is still a nuanced mediation of the love Carpool has for tour life. They wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t love it. 

Much like “Don’t Start a Band” by Short Fictions, a song can be a biting commentary and a love letter because sometimes you can’t have one without the other. You can’t criticize something without loving it, and vice versa. In Carpool’s case, I think it’s clear that this band loves the music they’re making. Just look at their on-stage presence or who they are as people. When you’re performing songs as catchy, inventive, and high-energy as these every night, who can blame you for having a great time while doing it?

But this overarching structure of living like a degenerate, fucking up, licking your wounds, and then trying again with better intentions feels like an appropriately large thing to articulate. This feels like a process we all must go through ourselves at some point. 

Even disregarding some larger narrative, My Life In Subtitles is a collection of feelings and experiences laid bare for the listener. It feels like a scrambled collection of ups and downs, highs, lows, and just plain frustrations of life. In Stoph’s case, he argues that if his life were a movie, it would be a pretty shitty one… But I think that’s how everyone feels, isn’t it? “Who would want to watch THIS?” Fuckin’ terrible show. 

If that is indeed the top-level takeaway from this record, I think it’s funny that my reaction to it was to double down in the opposite direction. To hear an album’s worth of songs about how unglamorous and shitty and fucked up life has been for the members of Carpool, then to want to join them on the road to capture more of that life. If it’s such a terrible show, why am I so drawn to it? Why do I want more? Why do I keep coming back to this record and this band? I think the answer is right there in the subtitles.

Poster by Hallie Kanter