For a tour described as the “easiest yes” by each one of its musicians, The Wooly made for a venue filled with passionate fans and fluid movement on Sunday.
Nightly, a band born out of each member’s love for alternative rock, was the headliner of the night. Before the band took the stage, however, a crowd of about 100 gathered together at 6:45 p.m. to watch the first opener, Nashville-born pop singer-songwriter Brooke Alexx. Despite the small turnout, Alexx sang like she was performing in front of thousands of people. Alongside her boyfriend, who played guitar for her, electric energy fueled Alexx as she danced across the purple-hued stage and gracefully sang lyrics with her entire soul.
Near the end of her set, she sat in the middle of the floor in front of the stage with fans gathered around her. Introspective lyrics and coded love songs aside, Alexx interacted with her audience to curate an experience so personal that left many with tears in their eyes.
Following Alexx’s set at 7:45 p.m. was pop singer-songwriter Will Linley, a 23-year-old from Cape Town, South Africa. The cool-toned lighting from before transformed into a warm shade of orange as Linley gratefully welcomed his Gainesville audience and kicked off his set with his song, “Magic.”
While South Africa is home to one of the most bustling music industries in the world, its pop music market is smaller than America’s, he said. While South Africa is more Afro-pop based, the U.S. provides more spaces for indie artists to showcase their musical talent.
With exuberant energy, there wasn’t a single second Linley was still. Interacting with audience members and referring to their names in his songs, almost everyone was captivated by his presence. Linley closed his set by opening up to a room of strangers, calling himself a “hopeless romantic.” His last song, “miss me (when you’re gone),” goes further than simply confessing his love for someone — it’s an intricate and compelling representation of how being in love can affect anyone.
“[It] was basically about when you’re in a relationship, you start to fall in love with the person that you’ve become when you’re around a significant other,” he said. “[The song] was written where, on the back end of that, when you’ve lost the person that you love and now you start to miss the person that you were when you were around them.”
At no later than 8:30 p.m., Nightly’s set finally began with strobing white lights and a mash-up of songs ranging from AC/DC to Sabrina Carpenter. More than 200 people eagerly crowded by the stage, but as soon as Nightly’s lead singer, Jonathan Capeci, sang the words “cue the lights” softly into the microphone, it was almost as if silence never existed in the first place.
Their fans danced freely from judgement, as Joey Beretta strummed his electric guitar at a steady pace and Nicholas Sainato kept time on his drums like a metronome. Although it was Nightly’s first time in Gainesville, almost every person in the room sang their lyrics back to them as they performed.
Two fans in the middle of the crowd, 29-year-old Barbara Suening and 30-year-old Natalie Rivera, swayed to the music as Capeci stripped their electric song, “older,” down to an acoustic rendition. Neither Suening or Rivera knew anything about this event prior to attending, but all it took for them to fall in love with Nightly’s music was one listen of their top hit song, “Twenty Something.”
“I thought they were a band that’s already popular, because their music is so good,” Rivera said.
Struan Shields, a 33-year-old pop-rock artist on tour with Nightly who performed at their show in Tampa on Friday, met Sainato in 2020. After Sainato helped produce Shields’ music multiple times, they became good friends. For Shields, the tour is like summer camp, he said, and it doesn’t feel real he’s performing for his actual job.
“Joey and I and a couple other crew guys were laughing until about 3 a.m., and I haven’t laughed that hard in months,” he said. “[When first offered to tour], I was like, ‘am I paying you, or are you paying me, because I don’t care. I’m down.’”
At 10 p.m., devoted fans pleaded for an encore from Nightly. Even though the music stopped, their emotional lyrics echoed across the streets of downtown Gainesville.
Contact Autumn Johnstone at ajohnstone@alligator.org. Follow them on X @AutumnJ922.
Autumn Johnstone is a freshman journalism/art student and a music reporter for The Avenue. When they're not writing, you can find them enjoying a nice cup of coffee at a nearby café or thrifting for vinyls. You may find their other published work in Strike magazine, Atrium magazine and Musée magazine in New York City.
