“I’m kind of living out my fantasies...it’s very surreal.”

Brian Warren’s band Weatherbox toured with Say Anything circa 2008; Warren recalls playing in rooms in front of 2000 people. Last month, Say Anything played the two-day When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas, which drew 85,000 patrons per day. He estimates that Say Anything played in front of about 10,000 fans at that event. And this time, Warren wasn’t in the opening band. He was an official member of Say Anything.

“I’ve been friends with the bass player in Say Anything [Alex Kent] for a long time — since fifth grade,” explains Warren. “He left the band, but now he’s back. We grew up together. We were going to shows in the late ’90s. All that Fat Wreck Chords and Saves the Day, New Found Glory sort of stuff. We were best friends back then, and he joined Say Anything in 2004-2005. I tried out at the time, but I wasn’t good enough. So it’s always been in my mind that to be in Say Anything was a possibility, but I just wasn’t really good enough. I tried out and failed. It was kind of a bummer. When Alex rejoined the band, they asked me if I wanted to be in it, and it was kind of like a full circle thing. I’m kind of living out my fantasies about being a little kid and wanting to be in a big rock band. It’s pretty crazy. It’s very surreal. Say Anything was always my favorite band, so being in it is a whole other level.”

Just now, Warren is back in San Diego and preparing for Weatherbox’s appearance at Soda Bar’s 15th anniversary celebration on Saturday, November 11. Anticipation is high: the band had planned to record a new album in Atlanta in April 2020, but that plan (along with some tour dates with Manchester Orchestra) was derailed by Covid. And their last San Diego show was a bit of a debacle: they played as part of the 2022 Escorted Trips festival at the WorldBeat Culture Center in Balboa Park on a Saturday during the park’s extremely popular (and absurdly packed) December Nights Festival. “It was very bizarre. There was no parking. People were getting stuck for an hour in traffic before they got there. It was not ideal, but it was fun. It was fun to be onstage and play with the band. I loved that part of it, but everything else was a nightmare.” Some specifics: Weatherbox drummer Jordan Krimston says he had a friend who tried to Uber from Bario Logan to Balboa Park, a trip that would usually take 20 minutes at the most. “He said after an hour of being in the Uber, he just got out and walked the last mile to get there, which is just insane.”

Drummer Krimston will be pulling double duty at the Soda Bar gig, drumming for Future Crooks as well. “I didn’t even realize that the first Soda Bar show I played was with Future Crooks, almost exactly ten years ago,” he recalls. “I was just filling in, and that was my first time playing with anyone in that band or the Weatherbox circle.” Krimston was only 15 when he played that show, and he had to leave the club after the band had finished due to his age. He recalls standing outside the venue on numerous nights, listening to various bands playing their sets. “It’s kind of a bad spot if you’re not 21 and you’re trying to listen in,” he explains. “But the Casbah is really good if you’re under 21 and trying to listen in, because the stage is right at the front of the venue. At Soda Bar, I would go to the side parking lot where the bands load-in in the back. I think I figured that out because I had played there a couple of times and loaded from there. When you were loading out and you were in the back parking lot, you could hear the next band pretty well.”

Back when Facebook was the dominant form of social media, Krimston and his fellow youngsters would occasionally utilize the site’s powers and exert their influence via event RSVPs. “Back when Facebook events were more popular, you could see who was RSVPing a show. If there was a 21 and up show that me and my friends wanted it to be all-ages, we would all comment on the event page ‘Please move this to the Che.’ It was cool that sometimes Cory [Stier, the promoter] would do that for us.”