On Friday, June 27, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sacramento Fire Mountain was rocking as Sacramento’s hardcore rock band, Dance Gavin Dance, delivered a thrilling performance to a sold-out crowd. 

The concert was held at the Hard Rock Live Sacramento venue in Wheatland and was filled with booming drums, electrifying guitar riffs, and impassioned screams. 

From the first song, it was a full-body experience, as the audience got together to form mosh pits and lift each other up to crowd surf. The crowd cheered and sang along to the band's blend of new songs and old-school classics, which stretched back to their mid-2000s roots.

DGD played many crowd favorite songs, including “Uneasy Hearts Weigh The Most" from their self-titled album, “The Backwards Pumpkin Song" from their debut album, Downtown Battle Mountain, and “Midnight at McGuffy’s” from their forthcoming album Pantheon.

“Sacramento, you are indeed the loudest crowd in the tour,” lead singer Andrew Wells said to the crowd midway through the concert.

The concert was at the tail end of their “Return of the Robot Tour,” which ended Sunday, June 29, in San Diego after 37 days and 26 shows.

In an interview before the concert, original member of DGD and drummer/percussionist Matt Mingus said that performing near his hometown is special to him because he has a “large network” of friends and family who come to the show. 

“That means a lot to me that they all care,” Mingus said about his friends and family. “I do get this strange anxiety and nervousness that I don’t get playing other places, but it’s exciting and it’s cool to play at the Hard Rock. We’ve never played here before.”

Andrew Wells, the new lead singer of DGD, said the show at Hard Rock is the largest indoor show the band has played in the Sacramento region.

“We've done Concerts in the Park. We did our festival, Swanfest, here a couple years back. But as a concert DGD headliner, this is our biggest Sacramento show that we've done,” Wells said.

Through the years 

The band formed in 2005 and has a long history of member changes.

DGD's current members consist of lead singer and guitarist Andrew Wells, original member and lead guitarist Will Swan, original member and drummer/percussionist Matt Mingus, and John Mess, who is also an original member and vocalist.

The name Dance Gavin Dance came from when they had their first show 20 years ago at a venue in Roseville off of Douglas Boulevard called The Underground, according to Mingus.

“We didn't have a name, and we were throwing around a couple back and forth. We didn't like any of them,” Mingus said. “Dance Gavin Dance was in the mix. Our old singer came up with it, and he claims that Gavin was a pet turtle that he had.”

Mingus said that at worst, they’ll just use the name for that show only, and then after, they’ll change the name.

“Here we are, 20 years later, still. We never changed the name,” he said.

DGD’s music can be described generally as hard rock, but it’s so much more than that, according to Mingus. 

Their music incorporates elements of post-hardcore and screamo, with influences from 1970s funk and 1990s R&B.

“It still has a heavy core influence, but we also incorporate funk, pop and jazz, R&B and soul into the music as much as we can,” Wells said. “Some of the stuff is really dancey and fun. Some of it's really obscure and weird, but still has some heavier rock undertones of the whole thing.”

Still, after one Extended Play, 10 studio albums, and three live albums, their music has steadily evolved throughout the years.

Mingus said initially the band had a hard time getting booked for shows because booking agents didn’t know what their sound was.

“After a few albums, it's like that is our sound,” Mingus said. “We just kind of do whatever the hell we want and what we like to create.”

Mingus said their past few albums took a more pop direction because of their previous lead singer, but now, with their new album, they have a new lead vocalist, Andrew. 

“We wanted to kind of take it more back to our roots and write some heavier, more experimentally sounding, different stuff that doesn't really necessarily fit a specific mold,” Mingus said. “But I think also just collaborating with other members throughout the band's career has been a big difference. We kind of still keep it with the familiar sound, while adding new layers to it.”

New music on the horizon

Wells is now the lead vocalist of DGD after spending 10 years with the band playing the guitar and doing backup vocals.

DGD has had a total of four lead singers throughout its entire discovery as well as dozens of different guitar collaborators.

On Sept. 12, Dance Gavin Dance will release its 11th studio album—the first with Wells as lead vocalist.

He said he’s fortunate that it's been “somewhat of a gradual progression” where he started doing guitar and backups to get more integrated as a writer.

“To me, Dance has always been like this collective of musicianship, where the singers come in and throw their new flair on the new era,” Wells said. “It's been super collaborative and fun to write new music with my voice in mind and try new things and experiment with what I'm capable of.”

DGD has released two songs from their forthcoming album “Pantheon" so far with “Midnight at McGuffy’s” and "All the Way Down,” which were both released in May.

The rest of the album, according to Mingus is all over the place because they experimented with different sounds. One of the songs will feature the “Godfather of Funk” himself — George Clinton. 

“Funk’s always played a role in a lot of our music,” Mingus said. “So to get the funk master legend, the atomic dog himself, George Clinton on this song was a huge deal.”

Wells said he’s excited to put out the album and he thinks it covers a lot of ground for the band. He said the album is the most eclectic diverse sounding DGD record. 

“It really tackles the highest highs and the lowest lows thematically, conceptually and sonically,” he said. “It's got blistering, chaotic instrumentals and soaring vocals, and it really experiments in all the right ways. It scratches a lot of itches for people who are into this style of music.”