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DESCENDENTS & Frank Turner
Rock House of Blues Anaheim
March 10th, 2026 Review by Kevin Gomez
Descendents and Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls are currently on the final leg of their coheadlining tour of North America. Friday night both bands played the second of back-to-back sold-out shows at the House of Blues in Anaheim.
Crowds were lined up around the corner to squeeze in when doors opened. A large crowd packed the dance floor for an early catch of opening act, NOBRO. It’s not often you get two headlining acts like Descendents and Frank Turner and the opening band has one of the best sets of the night but that’s exactly what fans were treated to. NOBRO opened with the catchy singalong, “Where My Girls At,” featuring co-lead vocalist Karolane Carbonneau on lead.
Keyboardist and percussionist Tara Cohen picked up Kathryn McCaughey’s bass allowing McCaughey to take on lead vocals as she jumped down to the crowd and sang “Eat Slay Chardonnay.” For the song’s final chorus she got back on stage, hopped on Andy Silver’s bass drum, pulled her top off, and did a jump kick off resulting in a huge ovation.
McCaughey continued lead vocals and explained “Delete Delete Delete” was about the negative aspects of the world wide web stating, “Fuck the internet and fuck I.C.E., too!” There’s the obvious influence of punk and Riot Grrrl, but I even get a hint of glam rock from the band out of Montreal, Quebec, such as the chants and keyboards on “Better Each Day.” The band closed out an energetic set with “LALA,” leading me to check when their next local show was going to be.
Frank Turner and his backing band The Sleeping Souls took the stage, Turner brandishing an acoustic guitar. He immediately launched into “I Still Believe,” preaching out the saving powers of rock ‘n’ roll.
The band played a proper English folk song turned punk about aging called “Never Mind the Back Problems.” Fans chanted along to the chorus of “Photosynthesis” singing back, “I won’t sit down, and I won’t shut up, and most of all I will not grow up,” followed by an electronic mandolin solo from guitarist Ben Lloyd.
In between songs Turner told the audience, “This is show 3,128 for me.” He said “Girl From the Record Shop” was about, “how Descendents are the best fucking band in the world.” He explained that “1933” was an anti-fascist song.
During the breakdown for “No Thank You for the Music,” Turner split the crowd in half which would normally signal an oncoming wall of death. However, in his usual spirt of positivity he explained he wanted to see a “wall of hugs.” When the band started back up, the crowd embraced one another before turning into an eventual pit.
Turner introduced “My Bad” as a song they haven’t played in a long time, and “the fastest fucking song I ever wrote – a proper hardcore song” and the crowd moshed accordingly. He said “Haven’t Been Doing So Well” was a song about anxiety and depression. The Sleeping Souls took a break while Turner played solo acoustic, dedicating “Be More Kind” to the “fine people of Minneapolis.”
The Sleeping Souls rejoined him for the ending of “Love Ire & Song,” dedicated to Oxnard, where Turner played his first shows in California. For the last song of the evening, The Sleeping Souls played “Four Simple Words,” which turned out to be “I want to dance” and Turner did just that. I noticed early in the song he was not wearing a guitar as he did his entire set, only to then see him stage dive and crowd surf, while still singing and never missing a beat.
Descendents walked onto stage with lead singer Milo Aukerman wearing a helmet of a Papier-mâché white toilet with a cartoon Milo reading a book inside the bowl. Aukerman explained it was a piece of fan artwork someone threw on stage the previous night. Aukerman then talked about the awful current stage of the nation and said, “I guess you can say everything sucks,” signaling the band to jump into “Everything Sux,” which saw him come down to sing on the railing.
As he returned to the stage after the song’s conclusion, he told the crowd, “but you’ve gotta have hope,” signaling the band to kick into “Hope.” They followed up with the bratty “I Don’t Want to Grow Up.” For “’Merican,” Aukerman altered the lyrics to sing, “fuck our government and fuck Donald Trump!” The song featured an epic guitar solo from Stephen Egerton. Karl Alvarez began the righteous bass intro for “Myage” joined by Bill Stevenson’s machine-gun drumroll.
They played the rare gem, “Marriage,” which saw Aukerman asking, “do you want to know what I think about you?” Trying to keep the set fresh for fans who attended both nights, Aukerman said, “Here’s one we didn’t play yesterday” and they did “Talking.” Descendents gave us my absolute favorite song, “Good Good Things,” which again saw Aukerman going onto the railing to sing along with fans.
They did two of their biggest hits back-to-back with, “I’m the One” and the punk anthem, “Suburban Home,” with Egerton telling the crowd, “I want to be stereotyped, I want to classified.” “Bikeage” saw Alvarez providing honey-like bass notes ever so smoothly before the band closed their first set with “Smile.”
Again, not repeating the same songs for both nights, the band played an entirely different encore than they did Thursday. They opened with the rarity “Jean is Dead” before “Feel This.” Descendents played fan favorite “Sour Grapes” before closing out the night with their theme song, the aptly titled, “Descendents.”
With the band all in their 60s and a career that’s spanned five decades, Descendents still played like one of the best bands in the world and don’t appear to have plans to call it quits anytime soon. With a completely spent, sold-out crowd for two nights, I think it’s safe to say they’ll always have a crowd to come watch.
SHOW PHOTO GALLERY
by Tiny Toyland | Christina Sanchez
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SID 260311 | TRACI TURNER | EDITOR
