Neighbor 3: Ascending (2022-2023)
For the next 15 months, as Neighbor began to play the festival circuit, tour nationally and increase their fanbase, I stayed away from the scene, hesitant to assemble the work I had shot on the band during the Pandemic. Although I assumed that I had successfully captured the photographs that I foresaw as the natural ending of a project that I had begun almost a year and a half earlier, there was something that didn’t feel quite right with using those prior images as the final chapter. I knew deep down the project was not yet over, and it was still missing it’s natural ending.
On September 10, 2022, I arrived back home from California where I had gone to photograph my cousins wedding. I had survived my first airplane flights since covid, and although I continued to stay vigilant, the paranoid bubble that I had been stuck in for the past 2½ years had finally burst, or at the least had released some of it’s air. Neighbor were playing once again the following day at Soundcheck Studios where they were about to conclude a three-day run of their now annual Into the Sun Festival, and I decided to attend the final day of the event. It felt good being back in a scene I had become so familiar with, and I was embraced by the community, welcoming me back after being gone for so long. From the beginning of this show there were no visible signs of the Pandemic. There were no masks and no social distancing, but there was plenty of embracing hugs and physical closeness. This was the first time I had experienced this post-covid concert world since the second to last Thunder Road show of March 3, 2020. The Pandemic had changed life for all of us, but I could now feel the collective embrace of the crowd moving past the Pandemic, and all of us beginning to live a “normal” life once again.
And then it came to me like a flash… that what I needed to do to bring an end to this photographic project was to somehow capture images that documented Neighbor's newfound fame and popularity, to document the incredible four year ascent of this band's rise from a small bar band to a national act. But how was I going to do that? The thought that came to me was to photograph the band playing to a very large crowd, one that would contrast with some of the first intimate photos of them that I had taken playing to a few dozen audience members during their early residency at Thunder Road.
I set about to accomplish my mission. I shot a show at The Met in Pawtucket Rhode Island in March of 2023 without getting the photo I needed, and then figured my best chance for a large crowd shot came when the band played a sold-out performance in May at the 1093 capacity Wilbur Theatre, a show that was celebrating the release of the band’s first official album. (In case I was unable to get the photo I needed that day, I was also planing to photograph the next night at The Music Hall in Portsmouth NH, where I had previously shot a socially distanced show during the Pandemic). I was excited as I arrived early to the Wilbur, and although I was able to document the excitement, energy, and many meaningful images of that historic night in Neighbor history, the specific photograph I needed to finalize my project did not seem to be coming together. But then from the stage an announcement was made that changed the direction of what I thought I needed as the final image in this project. Ricky announced that in six weeks time, Neighbor would be singing the Star Spangled Banner at the Red Sox's classic home, Fenway Park. I instantly knew that this was the moment I needed, and I envisioned with clarity the photograph that would end my Neighbor project...a wide angle shot, photographed from slightly below, of the band on the field at Boston’s historic ballpark singing the National Anthem, with the Green Monster and a sold-out crowd of 37,500 looming behind them.
As a nervous band made their way onto the Fenway field, I positioned myself for the shot that I had been anticipating for the past six weeks, and in the 90 seconds I had to capture the single most important image in my Neighbor project, it all came together as I anticipated, and I got the shot I needed.
After deep sighs of relief and congratulatory hugs, the band, their family and fans made their way off the field and into a Fenway tunnel behind home plate, and for the first time since that last Goodbye Thunder Road set-break group portrait that I had shot in 2020, everyone posed for one last Touster group portrait. This time, the set break photo was not taken on Thunder Island or even between two sets of music, but was taken during the break between Neighbor's singing of the National Anthem, and a 10-1 Red Sox loss to the Texas Rangers.
(For image data, click thumbnail and hover cursor over enlarged photographs)
