Name: Jax: Wage War at FIVE (May 30, 2026)
Start: 2026-05-30T18:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-05-30T23:30:00-05:00
Location: FIVE

Grandaddy at Regency Ballroom (Sep 16, 2025)

Grandaddy Setlist

— The Sophtware Slump —

He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot
Hewlett’s Daughter
Jed the Humanoid
The Crystal Lake
Chartsengrafs
Underneath the Weeping Willow
Broken Household Appliance National Forest
ed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)
E. Knievel Interlude (The Perils of Keeping It Real)
Miner at the Dial-a-View
So You’ll Aim Toward the Sky
— Set 2 —
Now It’s On
Lost on Yer Merry Way
Laughing Stock
Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World
Watercooler
Stray Dog and the Chocolate Shake
Ghost of My Old Dog¹
El Caminos in the West
My Small Love
Levitz
— Encore —
I’m on Standby
Taster
with David Bazan
A.M. 180
¹ Jason Lytle song

Tour Dates

9/11/2025: San Diego, CA @ The Observatory North Park #
9/12/2025: Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre #
9/13/2025: Pomona, CA @ The Glass House #
9/14/2025: Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy + Harriet’s #
9/16/2025: San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom #
9/18/2025: Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
9/20/2025: Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall #
9/21: Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall #
10/7: Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall *
10/8/2025: Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue *
10/9/2025: Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall *
10/10/2025: Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew’s Hall *
10/11/2025: Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall *
10/13/2025: Montreal, QC @ Le Studio TD *
10/14/2025: Boston, MA @ Royale *
10/15/2025: Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel *
10/17/2025: Washington, DC @ Howard Theatre
10/18/2025: Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *
# = w/ Pedro The Lion
* = w/ Greg Freeman

Grandaddy with Pedro the Lion
The Regency Ballroom
San Francisco
September 16, 2025

2025 isn’t going so hot. By the time I wander into the stately, ornate Regency Ballroom—which serves as the perfect venue for the annual Edwardian Ball—I’m in a daze. In my news feed: ICE raids, political foreboding, fascist feelers out and proud in the light of day. I’m feeling the weight of the world with the state of the world, even in what feels like a relatively, semi-safe bubble of California (for now).

So why not go back to 2000? A musical time trip might be a balm to dealing with the horrors of the present. Grandaddy, the Modesto-born band who gained traction in the late ‘90s—is happy to oblige me. Touring in support of the 25th anniversary of their 2000 album, The Sophtware Slump, frontman and songwriter Jason Lytle, a skateboarder-turned-musician, offers a nostalgia-tinged complementary American precursor to the creepy, hi-fi fears on Radiohead’s 1997 album OK Computer.

With moodier melodies than Pavement’s lo-fi rock, the Slump gave us elegant elegies to what we thought the West was becoming. Grandaddy’s music was ensconced in the full-on indie Americana of its time—dreamy rock love songs for suburban dustbowls and Y2K fears, analog odes drenched in keyboards and Lytle’s echoing, melancholy vocals.

Live, 25 years after its release, I feel like I’m in a diorama of the year 2000. A screen projects slowly moving mountains, lakes, and birds, eventually landing on the valley that served as the cover of the album, interspersed with images of stacks of cassette tapes and skateparks at sunset. The set opens with “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot,” the first track on the album. The band walks out in soft, desolate reverence to what sounds like a simpler time. “How’s it goin’ 2000 Man? Welcome back to solid ground, my friend… Well, it’s just nice to have you back again.”

Every song, played in order that it appears on the album by Lytle and a full five-piece backing band, packs a ton of lyrical ennui in its 42 or so minutes, including its hit, The Crystal Lake”: “Should never have left the crystal lake, For parties full of folks who flake… I’ve gotta get outta here… I’ve lost my way again.”

The band never wears out its welcome. Amid the nostalgia-loving fans who cheer them on with whoops and hollers, the band sound as polished live as they do on the album. They come out to play for another hour or so, including indie hits from other albums, like “El Caminos in the West” and “Laughing Stock” from 2003’s Sumday. Singer David Bazan of opening band Pedro the Lion joined the band for “Taster,” off Grandaddy’s A Pretty Mess By This One Band EP. They closed with “A.M. 180” from their debut album, 1997’s Under the Western Freeway. The song, which gained fame when it was featured in Danny Boyle’s 2002 apocalyptic zombie hit 28 Days Later, features Lytle’s soft vocals peeking out from plonky keyboards, a sing-songy ode to doing “whatever, together”—a fitting, idyllic ode to the power of melody and music for handling whatever life throws at you, with its real and imagined zombies from today and yesterday.

Bazan’s Pedro the Lion opened with minimalist simplicity: two guys on guitar with backing tracks queued up. But it fits the band’s slowcore sound. Bazan’s moody vocals and quiet-loud guitars is the kind of late-90s American emo that complements Grandaddy’s fuller sound—more stripped-down than bands like Ben Folds Five but more guitar-forward than artists like Sufjan Stevens. With a backdrop of Grandaddy’s gear in shadows behind them, Pedro the Lion felt like a piquant opener to the evening’s trip into American indie rock’s wistful past.