Papa Roach & Die Trying

It's not too often bands as large as Papa Roach play a venue as small as the Brick Works, let alone play in Chico at all. However P. Roach's lead singer Jacoby Shaddix wanted to play some small venues in familiar places to test out some of the new material on their new album, Love, Hate, Tragedy scheduled for a June release. Shaddix reminisced with me about the old days when Papa Roach was still an up and coming band, playing Chico and rocking the now-legendary Juanita's bar and restaurant.
The line was forming early in the afternoon and a good hour before the show there was a line already around the block. Seeing the diversity of the fans waiting to witness Papa Roach rock the house really made me realize how large the boys from Vacaville had become. There were parents with their younger children, goth kids, smelly punk rock wannabes, vatos, lusciously ripe teenage girls and the never missed wife beater-adorn steakheads pumped and ready to mosh. The doors opened and the fans flowed in, packing the house almost immediately. It's always a great feeling for an opening group to get to play in front of a good crowd. I've seen countless shows where people show up late to purposely miss opening bands or boo the group before giving them a chance at all. This wasn't the case for Die Trying. The four-piece cranked out some straight up rock 'n' roll for a crowd who had never heard any of their music before. If I were to compare it to something I would have to say glam rock with a twist of Deftones minus all the screaming. Most of the songs played appear on Die Trying's debut CD, Sparrow. For a young group that has only been together for 8 months they played like vets and when they left the stage the crowd cheered for a job well done.
Okay, now for Papa Roach. Never in my career have I been more thankful for my backstage privileges than I was when Papa Roach hit the stage. It was as if every person on the floor of The Brick Works wanted to be in the front and everyone up against the front barricade paid the price. The entire crowd went fucking nuts. Papa Roach played the favorites from their previous album Infest as well as the new material from Love, Hate, Tragedy, and the only difference in the crowd response was that they didn't know the words to sing along. For fans of Papa Roach the newer material is just as rocking as the older stuff, but with more singing and less rapping. They even resurrected a pre-Dreamworks song called "Barbed Wire," which I hear has been redone and is going to appear on the new album. Papa Roach played 15 songs in total and ended with their breakout song "Last Resort" - at that point I thought the floor of the Brick Works was going to break and collapse down into the U-Bar. Throughout the set unfortunate females had to be pried from the front barricade by security to prevent them from passing out. This was much to the dismay of Papa Roach's asshole road manager who I will say was the only sore spot in an otherwise great evening.
- Elias Perez
- Photos by Alyssa Starkey

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