THE BENDS
The Bends arrived at San Francisco’s Rickshaw Stop at a fitting moment in their rapid rise.
Formed while its members were students at LSU, the Baton Rouge-bred, now Nashville-based quartet of Hayden Field, Ian Marmande, Chase Perkins and Jacob Rhodes first built a following playing college bars, fraternity parties and backyard shows across Louisiana.
Just two years later, they are on their first North American headline run behind If You Insist, their debut album released September 18 via Warner Records.
For their San Francisco debut, The Bends sounded remarkably true to their records while giving the songs a little more weight and edge onstage. The Rickshaw Stop crowd spanned a wide range of ages, and the front rows were locked in from the start, dancing and singing along while the band largely let their songs do most the talking.
That connection was clearest at the end of the hour-long set. After the band walked off, the crowd kept calling them back until The Bends returned for an encore of “Fair Weather” and “Makeup,” the latter carrying a little extra weight as the first original song the band ever released and the track that helped kick-start their rise after Zach Bryan shared it online.
It made for a fitting end to their first night in San Francisco: four musicians who started out playing covers for college crowds, now hearing a packed room nearly 2,000 miles from Baton Rouge sing their own songs back to them.
Check out our full live show photo gallery HERE
