Review and Photography by Chris Bowman (Do not use without permission)

The Rocket Summer, which is the solo-project of Bryce Avary, has been a personal favorite of mine for about 15 years now so when I saw that he was coming to Columbus I had to make sure I was there. Bryce not only writes and produces every song on his albums but he plays every instrument on them as well! Currently, The Rocket Summer is on the road performing the album ‘Do You Feel’ in it’s entirety as a celebration of it’s 10 year anniversary. If you’ve never seen The Rocket Summer live then you truly are missing out on an incredible experience! Bryce puts on one of the most energetic, passionate, and authentic live shows that I think I’ve ever seen and this show at Skully’s Music Diner was no exception to that.

A three man band by the name of 888 opened up for The Rocket Summer and did an awesome job of getting the crowd ready and kicking off the night. Their sound was very synth/keys driven with tons of hard hitting drums. After a set of about 8 songs and a quick stage turn over, The Rocket Summer took the stage. Upon playing every song off of the ‘Do You Feel’ album, Bryce launched into a slew of other songs from his many other albums. You never can tell where Bryce will end up on stage for each song and during his live shows he makes his rounds to end up playing every instrument on stage at least once all while maintaining a certain level of connection and intimacy with the audience. At one point during the night, Bryce came down into the middle of the crowd where he performed a song with just his acoustic guitar. At the end of the song he handed his guitar off and hopped up onto the hands of the crowd for a round of crowd surfing. The Rocket Summer is constantly evolving from album to album while still maintaining a consistency and familiarity that allows his fans to just trust that each new album will be something worth investing in. If you have no idea who The Rocket Summer is then I suggest you change that. Right now.