Maya Martin, Editor

For those of you who are not Twenty One Pilots fans, or what is officially called “The Skeleton Clique,” you may not know that Twenty One Pilots is on tour right now for their 2024 “Clancy” album.

Twenty One Pilots is a two-piece band from Columbus, Ohio that formed in 2009. Tyler Joseph is the band’s singer who also plays a variety of instruments including piano/keyboard, guitar/bass, ukulele, tambourine and basically most other instruments you can think of. Josh Dun is the band’s drummer who makes an occasional appearance with the keyboard.

Twenty One Pilots is a band I could talk about for hours on end because on top of their great music, they have secret story lines within their work, albums that technically don’t exist anymore and so many hidden messages for fans. While they are mainly known for their radio hits like “Stressed Out,” “Heathens” and “Ride,” the band has so much more to offer that most music listeners are unaware of. However, in this piece I am going to specifically focus on the “Clancy” album and “The Clancy World Tour” that has been following the album’s release.

I, myself, have attended three concerts from this tour in Philadelphia, PA, Newark, NJ and Columbus, Ohio (their hometown performance). The setlist features 11 out of the 13 songs on the “Clancy” album as well as a variety of songs from their other albums including “Trench,” “Scaled and Icy,” “Blurry Face,” “Twenty One Pilots” and even songs from their album that technically does not exist anymore, “Regional at Best.”

The show itself is an incredible mashup between the band’s popular hits, older songs that only some fans know and songs that you cannot find on streaming platforms including “Slowtown” and “Forest.” While the band kept the setlist mostly the same throughout the tour, during their three shows in their hometown, Columbus, they mixed it up.

While “Slowtown” was originally on the setlist, it was cut at the beginning of the tour. However, it was brought back for the three Columbus shows only. During the show I attended, the final out of the hometown shows, Tyler Joseph stated, “I only had $2 dollars in my bank account when I wrote this song.” The song itself is incredible live and had the whole arena on their feet, even those who were not familiar with the song.

During their hometown run, it was only fitting that Twenty One Pilots also performed a slowed piano version of their song “Hometown” from the “Blurryface” album. There were two other occurrences during the hometown shows, however, that really made it special for fans.

Before each hometown show started, words appeared on the big screens indicating that they were recording for a live album. During the show I attended, the screen stated, “This show will be recorded for a live album. We have placed 40 crowd mics all around this place. Friday and Saturday crowds were pretty great, but we have a feeling we saved the best for last? -Tyler & Josh.”

When fans saw this they went wild for many reasons. It meant we were contributing to their album which will be featured on music streaming services, and it meant that we would finally have streamable versions of the songs “Slowtown” and “Forest.” In addition to this, Twenty One Pilots filmed a music video during the shows for their song “Routines in the Night” from the “Clancy” album. Although this was very exciting, this part of the tour had some problems.

One of the reasons Twenty One Pilots concerts are so entertaining is because of how much the band interacts with the fans, specifically Tyler Joseph. During shows, Tyler has been known to do a regular crowd surf, crowd surf inside of a giant hamster ball, run through the pit and much more. The most well known interactive element of the show is during their final song, “Trees,” which is basically the anthem for the Skeleton Clique at this point. During this song, both Tyler and Josh stand on platforms in the middle of the general admission pit and sing with the crowd, bang drums that have water flying off of them and confetti cannons burst.

Before the band became very famous, these interactive moments were easy for them to do. However, now that the band is so well known, the audience is much bigger and rowdier, making these stunts more dangerous for both Tyler and Josh.

During night one of the hometown run, fans pulled Josh Dun into the crowd before he could get up to his drum stand during “Trees.” He was visibly shaken up after this which is supposed to be a fun and heartwarming moment with fans.

In addition to this, while Tyler was trying to film the music videos for “Routines in the Night” in the pit, he was supposed to walk through the crowd and make it back to the front of the stage. However, during all three nights, fans were grabbing on to him, and making it impossible for him to move about. During the final Columbus night, he even got lost in the crowd and separated from the cameraman. It was a scary moment as the camera kept flashing on and off on the big screen and Tyler could not be found. After the moment was over, Tyler joked about it, but it must have been a scary moment for him, nonetheless.

Aside from these scary moments, the tour has been such a success and is highlighting how special of a band Twenty One Pilots really is. The messages they give to fans about mental health, their constant love for fan interaction and the way they are such down to Earth people is very visible in every show. I am so lucky to say that in total, I was able to see Twenty One Pilots four times in concert, and I look forward to seeing many more of their shows.