On March 4, Lobby Boxer headlined at the Sinkhole, alongside fellow DIY emo-punk legends Inches From Glory and Dialogue.
The show was well attended, packing the far-south-side venue on Broadway by the Mississippi, across the street from an industrial river-city scene — chemical tanks, the smell of asphalt, railroads.
Inside the bar, the crowd sang, banged heads and, up front, hurtled into one other. "People leave our mosh pit and say it's the most fun mosh pit they've ever been in," drummer Max Sandza tells RFT. "No one's throwing punches."
The show was significant for Lobby Boxer because, well, they hadn't played one in a long time.
"We're coming out of this gopher hole to see what's going on," says bassist Andrew Gurney.
He's referencing the fact that the last concert they played was in December 2019, when Cherokee Street venue Foam was in its final week. The venue is missed; it was a hub for a big cross section of musicians, including local and touring bands. "We always knew if we played that place, there would be people there," says Gurney.
"This wouldn't be the first time this has happened to us either," guitarist/vocalist Zach Fendelman says. "We've gone through a couple times when we've had a trajectory as a band, there was a crowd, and then something happened, and everyone just went away. Then we had to build it back up again."
Lobby Boxer started in 2013, focusing on a DIY aesthetic and touring all over the Midwest and East Coast with bangers like "Cap'n Gown" and "Kingshighway Dot Gov."
After their fourth release, Eugene's Preference, in February 2019, the group began recording another album. But it seemed to be crying out for another guitar. Jack Catalanotto joined the group in 2020 on guitar and vocals, and he worked to get up to speed.
"I was learning all those tunes," Catalanotto says, "all the old songs, and I was kind of struggling to find a lane."
Then: the promise of an amazing show. "We were going to play at the art museum, at SLAM Underground," Gurney says, "and it was going to be this huge thing. We were imagining how funny and absurd it was going to be to have our style of music there, and then it got canceled."
When live shows were taken off the table thanks to the virus, the band took a step back. Lobby Boxer writes as a group and used quarantine to work on new music. Catalanotto fit right in. "He's so cohesively part of the band now," Gurney says. "We have so much new, beautiful material that's built with, and around, what Jack brings."
Lobby Boxer, like so many other DIY St. Louis bands, commissions its own posters, promotes its own shows, figures out practice spaces, and generally works to find an audience all on its own. Without many record labels in St. Louis, and fewer places to play thanks to COVID-19, everything becomes that much harder and more atomized.
"As somebody who's worked in the live-venue world," Sandza says, "as well as played in bands that have done a bunch of different things to see what sticks, a lot of it boils down to people who love giving this stuff to St. Louis."
Matt Stuttler, owner of the Sinkhole, is a great example. He works to operate sustainably. Larger venues with big capacities are harder to book, so he helps others who fall just short. "You have to jump through a lot of hoops just to prove to someone that you can sell that," Sandza says.
Fendelman points out how many different music scenes exist in St. Louis, and how they often stay siloed off. "It would be nice to see a mixed-genre bill where you've got a metalcore band, a DIY band and Z107-type band. I'd love to see the crowds mix together and meet each other and build something new."
Dream venues for Lobby Boxer include the Pageant, City Museum, playing a QuikTrip rooftop (kind of like the Beatles). Or maybe an IKEA, near the meatballs. Catalanotto's personal dream is to go back to his dad's hometown, Smithtown, and wreck the local high school gymnasium.
When they wanted to kill time and get a little exercise on their last tour, Lobby Boxer would pull over and throw a lacrosse ball against a shuttered TJ Maxx on the side of the highway. There's a Midwestern existentialism to the band that causes them to rejoice in the absurd, and thrash in the face of all the bad stuff in the world. "It sounds so cliché and dumb," Gurney says, "but it really is about community and sharing creativity."
Lobby Boxer wants you to start a band, go see a band, take it serious and not literally, vibe off the absurdity and get in on the joke.
"Live music can get formulaic quickly," Sandza says. Some bands default into getting really over the top with it. "But we've found a way to circumvent that. 'What was so fun about the Lobby Boxer show?' Well, this dude laid out on the ground, and they kept saying they were 'pissed.' Then they made all these weird noises."
Adds Fendelman: "We try to walk onstage as we are offstage, and just continue to be as authentic as we can."
Lobby Boxer promises a new seven-inch single soon, "Lifeline," and the next Lobby Boxer show will be with Taking Meds and The Chandelier Swing at the Heavy Anchor, at 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 25.
