The rock band brings the drama with 2000s sensation Evanescence as a special guest.
Photo by Nick Fancher
Austin has never quite been a stadium rock city, but interest is piqued as the new Moody Center continues to prove its value to 15,000 people at a time. One of England’s most theatrical rock bands, Muse, is perfect to put it to the test. On February 28, 2023, Muse is bringing the Will of the People Tour with special guest Evanescence, for a show that’s sure to melt faces and souls.
Will of the People is Muse’s ninth album, with an almost peppy glam rock-influenced title track calling for revolution: “With every second our anger increases/We're gonna smash a nation to pieces.” This concept album fits right in with Muse’s usual offerings, in other words, high-octane rock gone electric; moody musings gone dancing.
A live show by Muse includes everything from masks to pyrotechnics, all alongside a lot of falsetto and lung capacity. With his semi-operatic songwriting, Matt Bellamy has given himself a superhuman task onstage, and does not seem to tire of belting his heart out.
Neither does the group tire of high-tech guitars, and thanks to these shows, millions of viewers have learned that the instrument is not limited to strings. Still, despite a clear love for his custom builds, Bellamy holds the world record for most guitars smashed on tour: a healthy or totally unhinged 140, depending how you look at it.
The smashing was the group’s first indication that they may be a smash hit, and a good metaphor for the group’s pop anarchist bent in general. In 1994 the group, then called Rocket Baby Dolls (and earlier still called Gothic Plague), accidentally won a battle of the bands competition that Bellamy claimed they performed in protest, destroying their gear in the end. The group changed its name to Muse and continued on to conquer both England and the United States, with two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, and much more acclaim.
During the height of the pandemic, Bellamy got some cinematic and stripped-down solo work out of his system. The Will of the People Tour is the band’s first one back, joined by the American rock band Evanescence, known for equal or greater melodrama and otherworldly songwriting. Austin is toward the start of the North American leg of the tour, three nights in. The band will then head to Houston's Toyota Center on March 2, 2023, followed by Dickies Arena in Fort Worth on March 3, 2023.
Tickets will be available through a Muse pre-sale on Tuesday, October 4, at 10 am, followed by a Moody Center pre-sale on October 6 from 10 am to 10 pm. Moody Center will share the password on social media. A general public sale starts on October 7 at 10 am on moodycenteratx.com and Ticketmaster.
Only in Austin does recording in a tin can create excellent sound. Specifically, this "tin can" is a 1955 Spartan Imperial Mansion trailer, a spacious mobile home converted into a relatively cramped studio. But the unconventional setup is no match for producer and engineer James Westley Essary.
Essary and his videographer brother, Brantley, have been using the space to build up their inner circle of musicians, capturing intimate performances in professional recordings available on YouTube. Live From The Tin Can premiered its second season on April 15, 2024, and is looking forward to a long string of diverse performances to come. Right now listeners can enjoy Ron Gallo, David Ramirez, Vondré, John Calvin Abney, Angel White, and more on the YouTube channel.
First up this season was Worn-Tin (an amazing coincidence of a name), performing "Hard Ease," "Bitter," and "Kid Changed," a pleasantly lackadaisical series of alt-rock romps, somehow squeezing in two drum sets. Worn-Tin, like many other artists this season on the YouTube series, performed live at South by Southwest in March. The festival, along with the concurrent Luck Reunion, brought a wealth of artists to the Live Music Capital, so the Tin Can crew took advantage of the easy scheduling.
"South By's website is actually a great way to find out who was coming into town," says Brantley. "So we started thinking about things like, what is what is their sound like? What is their performance like, and will that translate into our space? ... [We] just started contacting managers: 'Hey, do you have a free morning, free afternoon? Want to come by?' The sessions only take about a couple of hours."
Although the Essarys are hoping to get more national acts into the Tin Can to boost views, their hope is that over time they can narrow their focus back to local artists. (The series premiere featured Austin band Kelly Doyle.) Beyond the view counts, these recordings are mutually beneficial; Artists don't just get exposure, but lasting high-quality recordings for free, and the brothers get to build a portfolio. Westley, who just goes by his second name in conversation, appreciates the stylistic challenge.
Producer and engineer James Westley Essary does the auditory impossible.Photo courtesy of Live From The Tin Can
"I get to create a little calling card, [and] they get a way to push their new record when they're rolling through town and on tour," says Westley. "As you put out records you get pigeonholed ... I want to make a punk record, and I want to make a metal record. I want to make a country record. So it allows me to be able to dabble in whatever I want — whatever we book in the studio."
Making these connections was Westley's main goal in creating the series during the pandemic. It'd been a loose idea at the producer's prior studio, with occasional shoots for social media. As we all remember, 2019 was not famous for its sense of urgency. But when the studio was "sold out from under" Westley in October, he got tired of hopping from one rental to another.
He bought the trailer in December 2019 and spent the following year working on it. The end of his work coincided with Brantley's desire to move back to Austin from Seattle, so the returning brother provided the property to park the trailer on. The rest was good, old-fashioned pandemic restlessness.
The Tin Can in all its metallic glory.Photo courtesy of Live From The Tin Can
"When you're on the road all the time, you're meeting new bands every day, because you have a different opener or something," says Westley. "And I was like, 'How can I bring that to me?' It's a lot of fun when there's not really any money involved. You're not dedicating a ton of time, necessarily, to it. Bands come here, they have a really great time, [and] it's really nice to be able to host them."
Of course, recording in such a small space has its challenges. Most of the solution was in arranging; not the music, but the musicians. Placing everyone just right minimizes the bleed of certain instruments into other microphones, and as long as the singer stays relatively still, the drums — the biggest culprit — mostly keep their sound to themselves.
Some issues are also fixed with slightly quieter playing, unintentionally creating a sort of sonic brand for the series. It's not all bedroom pop, but the combination of a cozy recording environment and slightly restrained volume makes for some homey performances. This also works nicely for Westley — isn't that happening a lot? — who says he usually prefers listening at home to watching in a crowd.
Still, live recordings add a certain spice to the music. Many music fans will attribute it to the organic mystery of musicians clicking together, but Westley thinks there's something else at play. There's no substitute for practice, and by the time musicians are making live recordings, they've probably played the song live dozens or even hundreds of times. That allows for improvements on the original ideas — sometimes ones that originated in the studio at the time of the first recording.
Ron Gallo squeezes into the Tin Can.Still from Live From The Tin Can
It's also an easy way to make additional income without writing more, he says. Brantley points out that live music has always been at the core of the business.
"Live music has been at the top for forever," says Brantley. "Now we've got artists selling out huge arenas. They're competing with the NFL; They're not competing with movies or TV as much anymore. ... So I love the opportunity to not just record live music, but also film it. You're getting a full experience of both the really compelling live recording [and] even more compelling video to watch them in their element — really playing it live rather than just in a box in the studio."
The next frontier for the Tin Can crew will be hosting live shows onsite. Westley will be in the trailer recording while the band plays outside, and eventually Brantley might start capturing video, too. Also down the pipeline are audio-only live recordings, so listeners can enjoy the tunes without relying on YouTube.
One episode featuring NOBRO from Montreal, Quebec, is out now, with more to come. Next up is Evangeline from Los Angeles. Follow along with Live From The Tin Can ("Like and subscribe," says Brantley with a smile) on YouTube.