Take Action Tour merges music and philanthropy

The Take Action Tour is a yearly tour that uses music and concerts to promote various charities and good causes, hoping that young music fans will donate to these charities while they are enjoying some great music.

In the past couple of years, a percentage of tickets sold were sent to charities that helped “shed the light on important issues like depression, suicide prevention, and volunteerism,” among many others, according to Takeactiontour.com.

This year, the tour is donating 10 percent of every ticket sold to Driving For Donors, a charity that hopes to receive able-bodied donors of bone marrow to join the National Marrow Registry.

Any person who attends any of the Take Action Tour shows are able to sign up to be a donor if they are over 18 and by being a donor they have the opportunity to help save a life.

The line up for this year’s tour included Call The Cops, There For Tomorrow, A Rocket To The Moon, Mayday Parade and We The Kings. All of the bands that performed mentioned that the New York City date was the first date to sell out and all the musicians thanked the fans for giving so generously to a charity that could use any help that it can get.

The first band up was California’s Call The Cops, who played a decent set. Their brand of pop-punk seemed comparable to various artists in the industry, like You Me At Six and The Maine, which allowed eager fans to quickly get into their set.

While they were good, the quality of the bands that followed Call The Cops overshadowed the band greatly and because of this, some easily dismissed their set.

The band that followed Call The Cops was There For Tomorrow from Orlando, Fla. The band’s “rough-around-the-edges” sound was a welcome change to the lighter pop sound of the rest of the line-up and their musicianship was a prime example of an impressive live sound.

The audience as a whole might not have expected the harder sound of There For Tomorrow, but once they got used to it they enjoyed it.

Vocalist Maika Maile’s smooth tone gave a lot of the younger female fans something to coo at, but it was the rest of the band that made an impact on the audience. By the time that their set had ended they were sure to have won over a few new fans.

A Rocket To The Moon (ARTTM) went on next, causing a large percentage of the audience to shriek as loud as possible. Lead singer/guitarist Nick Santino has a faithful following of many teenage girls. With many of the band’s songs being about relationships, love and heartbreak, it’s very understandable.

ARTTM was much more pop than rock, but the audience didn’t seem to mind that much. Their set was good, but it was a little bit too long. Although many were anticipating the last two bands performing, it was more of an impatient feeling from the crowd than a feeling of boredom.

Mayday Parade came on a few minutes after ARTTM and soon the crowd was ready to party. Opening up with the song “If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?” from their newest release, Anywhere But Here, Mayday Parade kicked off an extremely great set.

Some fans were disappointed by one fault in their set, the band did not play any songs off of their first EP, Tales Told By Dead Friends, being the first tour in a long time that they did not play a song from that album.

Other than that, the band’s set was easily the best of the openers and they are finally garnering the attention that they deserved.

Finally, after a long wait, headlining band We The Kings took the stage and they set the bar high for the night. Their set was almost impossibly good, flawless even.

Playing a great mixture of songs from their self-titled debut album and their most recent release, Smile, Kid, the band covered every possible favorite song of the audience. 

Their set was extremely fun and energetic and it did not have any lulls, which was great. We The Kings’ performance was definitely one of the best they have had in the New York Area and this year’s Take Action Tour is definitely not one to miss.