FOLIOIf there is to be a change in how Against Me! is received by its diehard fans, then there is probably no better early proving ground than Omaha, Neb.
The band has collected a rabid cult of followers in a Midwestern city where the cultural pulse is more about bookish indie rock than cathartic punk-pop, and where the surrounding suburbs are packed with megachurches and hordes of values voters.
The band’s Thursday night show at the Slowdown in Omaha was the first headlining club gig since Against Me! singer and St. Augustine resdient, formerly known as Tom Gabel, revealed in Rolling Stone a lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria. Having taken the name Laura Jane Grace, she has begun transitioning to life as a woman and is now undergoing hormone therapy.
Earlier in the week, the band began a run of dates supporting the Cult during a series of bigger summer shows. But the Against Me! show in Omaha was the band’s first headlining foray back into smaller clubs.
The band was met by 400 or so fans — a number roughly equal to the attendance at their previous headlining gig here — on a night when it seemed gender didn’t matter as much as the fact that the Against Me! on stage that night was the same Against Me! that’s stormed the Slowdown stage several times in the last few years.
To that end, all of the usual trappings of an Against Me! show were present. As the band ripped through a tight set of two dozen songs, a mostly male throng of fans thrashed, moshed, crowd-surfed, stage-rushed and then, with the helping hands of the band’s road crew, dived from the stage back into the crowd again.
Once again, the band seems to have elevated into a sleeker, harder-hitting group of punk-pop warriors, giving both basement-bred venom and anthemic lift to a cross-section of songs from 2010’s “White Crosses” release (a CD full of references to St. Augustine, where Grace lives with his wife and daughter) to fan-favorites tracing back to when Against Me! was little more than Tom Gabel and a guitar.
But it was supposed to be a night when everything these fans knew about the band was in flux. Mike Farhart, a 45-year-old Omaha music fan who has seen Against Me! three other times in town, bought his ticket before the news of Grace’s transition became public. The news didn’t shake his thoughts about the band or attending the show.
“I don’t see it as a problem,” he says. “I always thought that we don’t have a decision about who we are when we are born.”
Farhart says Grace’s punk mindset and her rebellious lyrical history should be enough to keep the fans. If the music still has the same types of messages, then the gender of Grace is ultimately irrelevant.
“It’s still a punk show,” Farhart says. “[Grace] will always have the mentality of a punk rocker.”
Toni Smalley and her friend, Tony Galbraith, both 21 and seeing the band for the third time, were similarly unswayed from their fandom.
Galbraith says he isn’t concerned about Grace’s stage appearance or what other changes may occur as she undergoes all the work to transition to female. Grace’s attire just doesn’t come up when Galbraith is in the pit at the show.
“She’s dressing as her,” he says.
Farhart notes that Grace’s voice may change from the gritty baritone/low tenor range that the band’s fans know, especially if Grace undergoes tracheal shaving. That’s the only real change he thinks will happen to the music because of the transition.
But Grace’s news isn’t even Galbraith’s main concern. Instead, he’s worried that the venue’s staff may not let him enjoy the Against Me! set to his maximum capacity.
“I can’t get rowdy and crowd-surf,” he laments prior to the show, only to be passed on top of the crowd to the stage nearly a dozen times during the performance. “It’ll still be Against Me!, but in a different form,” Smalley says.
Galbraith says Grace’s own struggles speak to the struggles of a lot of kids who are into the band’s music. “Kids with broken homes and broken souls go to punk rock shows,” he says.
Tom Gabel last played in Omaha back in April, on the Slowdown’s smaller “front room” stage, as part of Chuck Ragan’s Revival Tour. He took the stage this night with the same shoulder-length hair he had back then.
The only difference in her appearance this time was a slightly tattered black tank top that dropped below the hips and two semicircles of eyeshadow around her eyes.
It was a fitting appearance, showing that a male-to-female transition isn’t tied to some clichéd drag-show-and-Donna-Summer gay nightclub narrative. Transgendered friends of mine have also shown that you can be beautiful in a shirt, skinny jeans and a little bit of makeup. It’s something my boyfriend and I both think shows you can embrace all of you when you also embrace your true gender.
There was an easiness to Grace’s delivery, as she cut into familiar songs with a familiar band surrounding her on stage. The band kicked off with two new songs, “True Trans Soul Rebel” and “Transgender Dysphoria Blues.” “Trans Soul Rebel” starts with bassist Andrew Seward’s woo-whoos, before Grace hits the anthemic chorus — “Who’s gonna take you home tonight? Who’s gonna take you home?”
It’s a song that splits the difference between Against Me!’s Sire Records albums and the music of fellow Floridian Tom Petty. Meanwhile, “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” cranks as a more traditional punk-rock pummeler, but still carried by a swaggering pop swing.
By the end of those opening songs, the crowd was already moshing. By the end of the night, Grace was smiling big, even as overzealous fans took the microphone after surfing their way on stage. Another new song, “Dead Friend,” was dedicated by Grace to “all of our collective dead friends,” she told the crowd. The song itself is a slightly more uplifting vibe than the classic dead-punk-kids anthem, “People Who Died” by the Jim Carroll Band.
As “The Ocean” built to the line “If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman/My mother once told me she would have named me Laura,” the crowd cheered its approval, while Grace gripped the microphone and slightly swiveled at the hips.
“I just want to say thank you so much for coming out and supporting us right now,” she said at the song’s conclusion. “I appreciate that so f*cking much. Thank you.”
After the closing salvo of “Sink Florida Sink” and “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong,” the encore break was surprisingly quiet. A few minutes later, the night’s pinnacle moment occurred.
“What we’re about to do is pretty predictable if you’re a fan of this band,” Grace said as the band retook the stage for the first of the set’s final four songs. “First of all, I’m a transsexual,” she said. “Second of all, I’m a huge Replacements fan.”
Then the band launched into “Androgynous,” off the Replacements’ 1984 album “Let It Be.” The mid-tempo rock band version owed a bit to Joan Jett’s 2006 cover, as well. Its inclusion was a fitting way to show that Grace sees light and happiness on her journey now.
Chris Aponick
themail@folioweekly.c
Aponick is a music editor at the Omaha, Neb. altweekly The Reader. He covered this concert for Folio Weekly.
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