Opening for the Goo Goo Dolls on August 2nd, 2025, Dashboard Confessional played to a sold-out crowd at Northwell Health at Jones Beach Amphitheater in Wantagh, NY, all ready to embrace their inner emo.
Starting with “The Best Deceptions,” Dashboard Confessional played a 13-song set covering songs from six albums, including their biggest hit, “Screaming Infidelities” off their album The Swiss Army Romance.
It was an emotional performance that had the crowd singing and swaying with the music, right up until the last song. At that point, singer Chris Carrabba announced to the audience that he was going to sing a song about “the best day I ever had,” and everyone lost their minds. Jumping to their feet at the sound of the first few chords playing, the entire amphitheater erupted with “Breathe in for luck, breathe in so deep,” the opening lyrics to “Hands Down.” It was the best choice for a finale, leaving the audience on a high they could ride while they waited for Goo Goo Dolls to take the stage.
New York’s own Goo Goo Dolls took the stage at Northwell Health at Jones Beach Amphitheater in Wantagh, NY to an absolutely energized sold out crowd. Opening with “Naked” from their album A Boy Named Goo, the band played a 25-song set that kept the audience on their feet and singing all night long.
The night was complete with a few fun moments, including the audience playing with black balloons during, appropriately, “Black Balloon.” But what followed was probably one of the most endearing moments I’ve ever witnessed at a concert. After announcing he was going to “bring it down a little,” singer John Rzeznik brought out his acoustic guitar and, alone on stage, told the story of how he wrote the next song, “Sympathy,” while he was trying to quit drinking in rehab. About three-quarters of the way through the song, he forgot the words. He stood there playing for a moment while everyone cheered in support, and then said, “What do I do? What do I do?? Go to the bridge!” He continued playing, then stopped to say, “Don’t put that on YouTube, ok? Don’t fuck with me.” Everyone had a good laugh because, hey, we’ve all been there, right? He played the rest of the song without incident and, once he finished, announced, “I get a B.”
Rzeznik finished up his acoustic set with “Acoustic #3,” a song he said he wrote for his mother and a lot of women in his life, and then followed with a song he called, “the song that started all the trouble,” namely, “Name.” He’s right, too. I think if you were alive in 1995 and didn’t know this song, you were probably living under a rock. The album went double platinum in the US, and the song was number one on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, along with number five on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. At the end of “Name,” Rzeznik added, “Thank you for remembering that song. Thank you for keeping this band alive.”
The evening continued with songs new and old, including a cover of Tom Petty’s “You Wreck Me” that had the audience hanging on every note from minute one. But as all concerts do, this one also had to come to an end. The Goo Goo Dolls chose “Iris” for their finale, a song you may know from their 5x platinum album Dizzy Up the Girl, but also from the movie City of Angels, with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage. It’s always a fun moment when a singer points the microphone to the crowd and has them sing a line from a song in unison, but there was something a little extra special about it this time. “Iris” is a very emotional song, so when Rzeznik pointed his microphone to the crowd and everyone shouted, “Yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive,” you didn’t just hear it. You could feel it. It was in the air. It was palpable. And that feeling continued. So much so, in fact, that at the end of the song, when the band stopped playing and Rzeznik had the audience join him for two acapella rounds of “And I don’t want the world to see me, ‘cause I don’t think that they’d understand. When everything’s made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am,” I looked around me and people had tears running down their faces. It wasn’t just music. It was a memory.
Review & photos by I’m Music Magazine Photographer Amanda Packey
GOO GOO DOLLS
DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL
