The Disco Biscuits Honor Joey Friedman’s 500th Show in Buffalo, N.Y.
Photo Credit: Tara Gracer
On Sunday, Nov. 24, The Disco Biscuits rode their rapid-fire Fall Tour to a performance at Buffalo, N.Y.’s storied Town Ballroom. For the jamtronica pioneers, this engagement marked not only another step towards the year’s end and a return to a favorite venue, but also a landmark anniversary with its collaborator Joey Friedman: as of Sunday, the lyricist, band coach, project manager and longtime fan, who has been an integral component of the quartet’s creative process since 2022, had attended a whopping 500 Bisco shows. To salute their friend and peer, Marc Brownstein, Jon Gutwillig, Aron Magner and Allen Aucoin worked up a setlist composed of only songs marked with Friedman’s signature, demonstrating the wealth of recent fan favorites that they’ve produced since he came on board.
While Friedman spent a long time in the band’s orbit as a fan and friend, he officially began working with The Disco Biscuits in his present professional capacity in 2022. Since then, he’s contributed to nearly the entirety of the band’s new work, most notably lending his pen to the entirety of Revolution in Motion, the band’s space opera that arrived to tremendous acclaim in March as its first studio album since 2011. That project sourced five of the 12 cuts in Sunday’s setlist, including the opener “To Be Continued…” and first frame closer “Another Plan of Attack,” which was reworked as a jittery, angular dyslexic version.
“I’m successful with these guys because they’re all my best friends, not just one of them,” Friedman offered in The Disco Biscuits’ cover story for the June 2024 issue of Relix. “Sometimes, if they have an argument, they’re all calling me to talk about it. They know that I’ll listen to them and that I’m not going to make them look bad in front of the other person. I’m always gonna reflect back to them the best version of their bandmate that I can. And hopefully, over time, those arguments have gotten less and less, and they’ve started to look at each other differently.”
“Joey really helped us move the ball downfield—he has the executive functioning skills that we, as individual musicians, might not have and a band does not lend itself to,” Magner echoes, underscoring how Friedman facilitated the band’s recent revival. “He works in software and has the corporate skill set to get everybody on the same page.”
Outside of Revolution in Motion, The Disco Biscuits’ Sunday show was highlighted by a range of recent live favorites, including first-time inverted treatments of “Country Royale” and “Risky Business,” as well as massive jam vehicles like “Ring the Doorbell Twice,” “Dino Baby” and the second set finale “Photograph,” which closed with a return of “To Be Continued…” After the lights went down, the band set up an anthemic encore of “Buy the Time,” elaborated by one last tease of “Ring the Doorbell Twice.”
The Disco Biscuits will perform next on December 27 and 28 for a pair of shows at Silver Spring, Md.’s The Fillmore Silver Spring. This double-header will set the band up for its highly-anticipated hometown New Year’s Eve series, to be set at Philadelphia’s The Fillmore Philadelphia on Dec. 30 and 31. For tickets and more information on the band’s full tour schedule, visit discobiscuits.com/shows.
Read on for the complete setlist from Sunday night.
The Disco Biscuits
Town Ballroom – Buffalo, N.Y.
11/24/24
Set I: To Be Continued > Ring the Doorbell Twice > Country Royale* > One Chance to Save the World > Risky Business* > Another Plan of Attack+
Set II: The Wormhole > Twisted in the Road > Dino Baby > Another Plan of Attack+ > One Chance to Save the World > Photograph > To Be Continued
Encore: Buy the Time > Ring the Doorbell Twice
Notes:
* First-time inverted version
+ Dyslexic version
