Bigger Than You Think! Tour – The Sequel!: Simple Plan, 3OH!3, Bowling For Soup
- Phantom Light Media
- Aug 7
- 3 min read
When I reviewed and shot photos for an Offspring show earlier this year, I made it very clear that I don’t land in the age range that would have enjoyed that era of music in its prime. I was born about a decade too late, and instead was only able to catch the final dying breaths of rock as a mainstream genre. That hasn’t stopped me, however, from being a massive fan of the sort of party rock anthems (I unfortunately WAS subjected to the rise and fall of LMFAO, but I digress) of the early 2000s. This isn’t an entirely uncommon sentiment among my peers, either. After I got back from seeing Simple Plan at the Ford Idaho Center, I was talking to a group of friends on Discord, all of us in our late twenties, and they all agreed that the lineup sounded incredibly fun. It’s clear that the often irreverent, unserious tone of these bands still pulls a lot of weight, even twenty years later.
Texas-born Bowling for Soup opened the show, which, while still warm, was mercifully well below the triple-digit temperatures the Boise area had been enduring for weeks. Frontman Jarret Riddick, while showing his years, still possessed all of the vocal panache of the band’s peak. Taking time to poke fun at the fact that they were still singing songs about high school after nearly twenty years, it was refreshing to finally see a band at this level that didn’t take themselves too seriously. There were no overdone theatrics, no dramatic drawn out entrance. Just a band that, above all else, was there to have a good time and share it with whoever would listen. Their 40-minute set was nothing short of a riot from start to finish.
Electronic duo 3OH!3 followed, with the sun finally setting behind the trees. Leaning much more into the pop-rock transition of the late 2000s and early 2010s, they brought a faster tempo and higher energy that had the growing crowd moving from start to finish. As the temperature dropped throughout the set, the cluster of people at the front rail soon swelled to almost fill the entire front pit area. By far the most modern sounding of the three-act lineup, they offered a taste of what would become of the genre in the coming years, relying as much on pop-ish synths as it did electric guitars. While once again only having 40 minutes for their set, they managed to play most of their biggest hits, as well as some more recent work, keeping the pace fast and the crowd alive.
While headliner Simple Plan originally rose to fame back in the early to mid-2000s much like Bowling for Soup, they experienced a bit of a resurgence in the last five years due to their song “I’m Just a Kid” becoming a trending backing track for countless Tiktok and Instagram videos, and thus a good portion of the crowd was actually younger than me, and as I mentioned earlier even I fall outside the age bracket that would have grown up listening to them. That’s not to say their adult audience felt at all left out. Their roughly 90 minute set was interrupted twice, once when lead singer Pierre Bouvier brought a couple up on stage as the man proposed to his girlfriend, and again as he was handed an envelope to do an impromptu gender reveal. These highlights combined with Bouvier playing one song on a piano situated right in the middle of the crowd by the sound booth and bringing a number of Scooby-Doo fans on stage proved that the band wasn’t afraid of interacting closely with their audience, and that their top priority was to simply have fun! In an age where it often feels like bands go on tour simply to promote themselves for their next release, it was refreshing to see a group of musicians that had already been there and done that, and now were simply playing shows for the sake of playing shows. Overall, their signature lighthearted and youthful sound carried well into the modern day, and in a way brought a sense of timelessness to their set that I haven’t felt in a very long time.
Even more than two decades down the road, Simple Plan proved that simply being able to make people happy and provide a good time will go much further than any amount of grandiosity and self-reverence. Being able to put on a fun show is something they have been doing for a long time now, and they don’t show any sign of stopping. If you haven’t been able to catch a Simple Plan show yet, I would highly recommend it!
Photos & Review By: Eric Gibson
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