12 Rods Setlist

If We Stayed Alive Set

All I Can Think About

My Year (This Is Going to Be)

Private Spies

Comfortable Situation

The Beating

Hide Without Delay

Twice

I Wish You Were a Girl
Make-Out Music
What Has Happened?
Summertime Vertigo
I Think I’m Flying
The Time Is Right (To Be Wrong)
Terrible Hands
— Encore —
Glad That It’s Over

Minneapolis indie rock band 12 Rods (aka Twelve Rods), headlined First Avenue’s mainroom to play songs from their new album, If We Stayed Alive. The 2023 was the group’s first album in 21 years.

Opening the show was Crimes, local group started by Andrew Jansen, with Hannah on bass/vocals, Reese on guitars, and Luke on drums. They played songs about crimes and death.

As previously mentioned, we saw the band in Oct 2013 and noted, “Minneapolis’ Crimes started the show with a garage, almost shoegazy, set, playing songs from their 2013 album Thin Sunlight, plus, I think a new one that had lyrics like “I’d like to stay away.””

Crimes played a 40-min set, and near the end, announced that Hannah was two months due… a “real rock and roll baby.”

The story of 12 Rods, named after a passage from a children’s Bible, was formed in 1992, in Ohio, when frontman Ryan Olcott was still in High School.

Having spent time in Minneapolis to record their first album Bliss in 1993, they decided to relocate to the city. It’s here that Pitchfork took noticed of the band and gave their EP gay? a perfect 10.0 rating.
Pitchfork founder, Ryan Schreiber, saw 12 Rods’ first Minneapolis concert and instantly bought gay?.

By 1996, 12 Rods signed to major label V2 Records (Virgin Records) and reissued gay?, and had them work on their new album Split Personalities. The band almost made it big, but unfortunately, the record did not do well and was commercially disappointing… which led to V2 dropping the group.

Officially, the band broke up in 2004, but Ryan Olcott kept the band alive with reissues and working on new music, with “zero help, zero support and zero financing.”

Olcott seemed really pleased how their new record If We Stayed Alive turned out, despite all the odds working against them. Some songs, such as “Private Spies” were written over 20 years ago, but finally put into recording.

The first half of their setlist were songs from If We Stayed Alive Set, showing us that all these songs can be played live, and meant to be enjoyed live.

The second part of their set were all older songs, all their “hits”, playing songs fans haven’t heard live in 20 years.