Honey Revenge, South Arcade, Winona Fighter Bring Upperclassman Energy to Summer School in Chicago

The peak of my junior year of high school didn't even happen during my junior year. It was actually the last day of my sophomore year. School was over. The next time I set foot on campus, I would be an upperclassman. Things were going to be different. On top of all that, the girl I had a crush on at the time asked if I could give her a ride home. Sounds too good to be true, but that's exactly how it went down. This was it. The stage was set. I was finally going to have a growth spurt and get a better car and things were gonna change. I could feel it.

And...that was it. In reality, my junior year did not live up to the hype whatsoever. My first year on the varsity football team resulted in a third consecutive 1-8 finish. I might have talked to the girl I gave a ride home to maybe 2-3 more times ever before she moved away about a month into the next school year. I did hit that growth spurt, but I didn't gain any weight with it, resulting in going from having a body like a professional jockey to having body like Jack Skellington, but not freakishly tall enough to make it useful athletically.

If you could take the experience I had that year and somehow create whatever the exact opposite of that would be, that's exactly how the Chicago stop of the idobi Radio Summer School Tour went last week. Like me, the 3rd/junior year of this mini-festival came with a whole lot of hype. But unlike myself and the 1999 Huntley Redskins, this tour lived up to every bit of it. Having attended the freshman iteration of this tour back in 2024 (and having missed last year's due to a summer abroad aka trying to keep up with a 3 year old), I was stoked to see that the format of the tour hadn't changed: a whopping 5 bands on the tour with a 6th spot going to local support on each stop.

Chicago's spot on the tour went to Windy City pop punk/skate punk vets Guardrail. The band describes themselves as 'diet-punk' ("loud, catchy, and a little easier to digest"), but the way their live performance smacks you in the face from the start is more like Coke Zero-punk if anything. It tasted exactly like the real thing and you can't convince me it's not. One of the band's most oft-cited influences is The Bouncing Souls, and you can hear those roots throughout the band's 5 song set, most notably during the opener 'Seriously?' off 2020's Yikes! EP. The band mentioned that this show was the last with their current drummer, who was leaving to join Scene Queen (ironically, a member of the first Summer School tour), but I doubt that will take anything away from the kind of live show this band puts on every time they take the stage. Chicago is spoiled to have local bands of this caliber that can hop onto a tour like this no problem. I guess the property taxes have to go toward something, right?

Chicago's House of Blues isn't a small venue by any means. I would assume that taking the stage essentially solo could be a pretty intimidating feeling. And while Chase Petra has traditionally been a trio, lead singer/guitarist Hunter Allen seems to be performing this iteration of the band as a semi solo act, joined onstage by only a touring drummer.

It's a good thing Allen is no stranger to Chicago, with Chase Peta making stops at both Bottom Lounge and Riot Fest just last year. It's hard to describe the kind of confidence she brings to the stage other than saying the energy from the first song (last year's single 'Famous') felt like we were already in the middle of the set if that makes sense. There was no easing in or need to warm up. The performance had an urgency to it that you could feel, possibly amplified by the fact that each of the supporting bands only got 5-6 songs total. Regardless, the end result was a compelling stripped-down dose of self-described “quarter-life-crisis pop”.

Speaking of my awkward high school years, I would have killed for Games We Play to have been a band during that period of my life. Don't get me wrong, I had more than enough sad/mad/all-around awkward boy music than I could listen to. But it wasn't specific enough to really have the chance to hit hard. Weezer's problems seemed to...aspirational? Silverchair's problems were to elegant and high class for me. Green Day were burned out on their hometown, but at least they had a town to walk around. It was a lot of "sure these are someone's problems but they aren't really my problems."

Games We Play write straightforward emotional songs that are so easy to connect with because they're so goddamn relatable. The challenges they sing about aren't the challenges of future arena rock stars coming from a rough upbringing. They're a bunch of dudes slamming Diet Cokes onstage, who look like everyday average dudes and sing about the problems that everyday dudes face ("Once a month, we clock in like a 9 to 5 job/When we do, we both keep our T-shirts on" probably isn't something you would hear Mick Jagger or Prince sing about) (mostly in Prince's case because he is no longer alive).

But even though a lot of Games We Play songs relate to the struggles of the average young man in America, don't let that make you think their performances are anything but joyful occasions, with this specific Chicago set having the exclamation point of including an actual marriage proposal (and acceptance thank god)!

At this point, what can I say about Winona Fighter? No, I'm legit asking because at this point I've filed glowing reports on their first stop at Chicago's House of Blues back in 2024. And then again when they came through town headlining at Subterranean last summer and then coming through again one more time to close out the year in support of Waterparks. This Summer School stop was my fifth time seeing the band in the last two plus years and they continue to sound better every time. All the time on the road honing the songs off last year's My Apologies to the Chef have them both razor sharp and hitting like a sledgehammer. Keeping things spicy, the band is mixing in their new single 'Bombs Away' that hits hard under normal circumstances and only has that effect multiplied as the world around us continues to crumble.

But whether the song they're performing is more on the angry side ('Bombs Away' or 'HAMMS IN A GLASS') or the goofy side ('Subaru') or channeling one of the greatest hip hop groups of all time (their signature cover of 'Sabotage'), the one thing they all have in common is that the whole band looks like they're having a blast every second they're onstage. And that authenticity jacks up the energy the crowd gives back. Winona Fighter is one of those bands that you watch and it makes you want to be in a band, and I mean that as the highest compliment possible.

Lots of bands can claim to get the dance floor moving when they hit the stage. But it's not every band that can claim that literally. I have no idea where the crowd got the energy after how wild they had been for the four bands up to that point, but it was about the midpoint of the second song of South Arcade's set ('Fear of Heights') where there were so many people in the crowd bouncing so hard that the actual floor was moving under our feet. Now I know that, just like skyscrapers, some venue floors are designed to have a little give to them to make them a bit more structurally sound, but holy shit did things feel juuuuuuuust on the edge of possibly not being safe. But there was also something a little thrilling about that kind of excitement.

And that kind of vibe continued throughout the entire 9 song set, with the band ripping through a tight set that leaned heavily on 2024's EP 2005. And the crowd was into it, one of those situations where the entire GA area feels like one singular blob of elbows and head-banging and singing along even if you know 0 of the words. Luckily the venue floor survived, but with this already being the third time South Arcade has hit Chicago in the last year and a half, we really might need to start early inspections on the remaining venues in the city on their bucket list.

If you're unfamiliar with the headliners of the evening (Are they considered the 'seniors' of Summer School? Is that even possible during junior year?), Honey Revenge is the LA duo of vocalist Devin Papadol and guitarist Donny Lloyd, who've built their sound on a genuinely unique mash-up of influences (Papadol has cited Paramore, Hannah Montana, and Demi Lovato as key touchstones, which sounds like a mishmash until you actually hear it). The guitar tone and rhythm hit like the Warped Tour veterans they clearly grew up idolizing, while the hooks are a threat to embed themselves so far into your ears that even the most aggressive q-tipping (that your doctor has TOLD YOU NOT TO DO) won't shake them loose. It's a combination that could read as a gimmick on record, but live, it just works, largely because Papadol commands a room like someone who has been doing this a lot longer than the band's short existence would suggest.

And it has been short: Honey Revenge has technically only been a band since 2021, and 2023's Retrovision was their first full-length. That makes the size of this set (a hefty 14 songs, more than double what any of the supporting acts got) feel like even more of a flex. They leaned on the hits: 'Habitual' got one of the biggest singalongs of the night, 'Rerun' had that specific kind of pop where you can watch a few hundred people simultaneously remember why the song is about the, and fan favorite/set-closer 'Airhead' turned the whole room into one giant gang vocal. But they also made room for cuts off the brand new Loving and Losing, including 'Run Your Mouth' as the set opener, which is either a bold statement of confidence in new material or just a really smart way to make sure the crowd is paying full attention before you play anything they already know. Either way, they aced the exam (sorry, I was contractually obligated by idobi to shoehorn in one more school-related joke before the end).

I know I mentioned that Guardrail's outgoing drummer is leaving to go play with Scene Queen, and it turns out Scene Queen is a noted admirer of Honey Revenge's music. It's a fun example of how nothing on this bill happened in a vacuum. Everyone both on this tour and in the adjacent pop-punk genre right now seems to be one degree of separation from everyone else, and there's something kind of rad about watching that web play out in real time across a single Thursday night in Chicago. Papadol and Lloyd closed things out looking every bit like a band that knows it's arrived, but not in a way that felt smug — more like two people who still can't quite believe this is the job now, and are going to enjoy every second of it while it lasts. And looking back, that same fun and 'taking it all in' energy seemed to be a common factor across all the Summer School bands. They're having just as much of a blast out there as we are and it absolutely shows.

So no, junior year of high school did not deliver on the promise of that last day of sophomore year. But the third go-around of the idobi Summer School Tour delivered on every bit of its hype, and then some. Six bands, zero weak links, one very lucky city, and a floor that (miraculously!) is still standing. If this is what junior year looks like for a package tour, I'm already nervous about how good senior year is going to be. You all have 364 days to brush up on Dazed and Confused.