Taking Back Sunday talk first shows with John Nolan & Fred Mascherino in the band: “miraculous moment”

Taking Back Sunday were just in Vegas this past weekend for the When We Were Young festival, and it was an extra special weekend for the extended TBS family. They played both days of the festival, as well as a Friday night sideshow, and those three shows marked their first-ever full sets with both John Nolan (secondary vocalist/guitarist on Tell All Your Friends and all of their albums from the 2011 self-titled onwards) and Fred Mascherino (secondary vocalist/guitarist on Where You Want To Be and Louder Now). On top of that, the same Friday night show and the festival also included rare reunion sets from John Nolan and TBS bassist Shaun Cooper’s other band, Straylight Run, with TBS singer Adam Lazzara joining them on acoustic guitar and backing vocals during set-closer “Existentialism On Prom Night.”

This mega lineup of Taking Back Sunday happened after Fred made a brief cameo with the band during their 2024 Holiday Spectacular, which marked his first time playing with TBS in 17 years, and Fred also filled in for John on TBS’ recent tour with Coheed & Cambria while John recovered from surgery. So it was an extra special moment to have everyone come together and do something that Taking Back Sunday have never been able to do before: play all of their most classic songs with the same two singers who recorded the versions you know and love. And on top of that, the combo of having John and Fred on stage at once meant they could add in new vocal harmonies too.

I caught the Friday night show and then caught up with Taking Back Sunday backstage at When We Were Young the next day, and I asked them how this experience was for them. “We’ve been able to see real big highs, and we’ve seen real low lows,” Adam said, “you know, we’ve been through it. And, to go through it, and then have everything–kind of like these different parts, these different people all come together to this one thing… I don’t have the words to describe how important it is to me, and how lucky I am and how happy I am to be here. It felt really great.”

“It also came out of potential disaster,” Shaun added. “It’s like, this thing that was near disaster, to be even better and more than the sum of its parts is shocking, and you could feel it [Friday] night… That was a really, really miraculous moment.”

When the topic of a new album with both John and Fred came up, Adam replied, “I think that that would be something fun… I don’t know what the future looks like, but I think that would be really cool.”

The band also discussed 20th anniversary plans for Louder Now in 2026. They already announced that they’ll be performing the album at the UK’s Slam Dunk Festival, and Adam said they’ve “been cooking some [other] things up” too. So stay tuned for more on that.

Watch my full interview with Taking Back Sunday at Veeps.com and check out a clip below.

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Meanwhile, the John Nolan-curated Music For Everyone Volume 2: A Compilation In Support of the ACLU came out digitally today on Born Losers Records with the first Straylight Run song in 15 years, “Anthem”; the new Taking Back Sunday song “The Pattern”; the John Nolan solo song “There’s No Hate Like Christian Love”; a song from the Taking Back Sunday/Anthony Green side project Fuckin Whatever; and songs by Jeff Rosenstock, Kevin Devine, L.S. Dunes, Sparta, Zeta, Catbite, Home Star (mem Marietta), and more. Stream the comp in full below and pre-order our exclusive red galaxy vinyl variant (limited to 100) in the BV shop. Vinyl ships in late November.

And for more on that Straylight Run song:

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