Simple Plan’s Bigger Than You Think… The Sequel! is a pretty aptly named tour. At every turn, in every aspect, the tour’s August 16th stop at MGM National Harbor was a production that truly out-scaled anything I predicted – in all the best ways. Openers 3OH!3, more than two decades into their career, are still an unapologetic party best consumed for fun, without pomp. Bowling For Soup are humor and heart wrapped in a blanket of nostalgia, and Simple Plan themselves may be well into adulthood now, but they put on an entertaining, energetic show that gave even the most grown and responsible audience members permission to still be a kid at heart.
3OH!3 – composed of Nat Motte and Sean Foreman, and joined on this tour by guitarist Jacob Brown and Jess Bowen, drummer of The Summer Set – have never been a band that demands to be taken seriously, but they have always been entertaining. Watching Motte and Foreman dance around the stage while affectionately pestering Brown and Bowen, bouncing between audience banter and relentless hype, kicked off the night with the perfect energy.
The fact that the audience was still trickling in never once seemed to deter them. By the time the set list reached the 2008 classic “Don’t Trust Me,” the room was fully committed to the slightly ridiculous and ridiculously unserious vibe. There’s something uniquely special about hearing a sold-out crowd of roughly 4,000 people – with ages spanning multiple generations – scream in unison, “I’m a vegetarian, and I ain’t fucking scared of him.”
And honestly, that’s exactly what 3OH!3 are good at: reminding everyone that sometimes you don’t need to take yourself, or the music, too seriously. You just need to have a good time. The band’s choice to take the stage dressed in reflective jumpsuits reminiscent of maintenance workers only underscored the message: this isn’t a highbrow music experience, and, dammit, that’s the whole point.
By the time the 3OH!3 set wrapped and Bowling For Soup took the stage, the audience was well primed for a good time. BFS is, in most cases, equally unserious, but the humor comes across less as a bit and more as a sincere belief that sometimes life just needs to be laughed at.
Songs like “Ohio”- with lyrics mourning the departure of a lost love in such hyperbolic terms that they suggest the entire state of Texas is mourning along with the narrator -“Girl All the Bad Guys Want,” and the iconic “1985” wrap very real, unpleasant emotions like pining, heartbreak, and good old existential dread in just enough laughter to take away the sting.
On stage, singer/guitarist Jaret Reddick jokes with guitarist Rob Felicetti, while drummer Gary Wiseman mostly stays quiet. All three, though, keep the fun going with silly antics throughout the set, and all three – Reddick especially – make a point of engaging with the audience whenever time and vibe allow.
At one point mid-set, Reddick called attention to an adorable young boy, maybe about six years old, dressed as Scooby-Doo – more on that later – sitting atop his father’s shoulders and throwing up rock hands with enough enthusiasm to rival any of the middle-aged, lifelong music fans in attendance. Talk about a core memory for a child.
Later in the set, the band took a brief break to pose together at various places across the stage, giving audience members the opportunity to capture memorable photos featuring the full band. It’s a small gesture, but one that feels very much in line with the band’s overall approach: they’re not just performing for the audience; they’re having fun with them.
One of the biggest highlights of the BFS set was their performance of “Turbulence,” an emotional ballad that reminds listeners that the hard parts of life aren’t forever; they’re “just a little turbulence.” It’s always an honor to hear the band play a song that means so much to so many people, but more than the song itself, it’s the moment it allows for – in which Reddick takes a moment to share his own mental health struggles and advocate for the destigmatization of mental health care – that is important and impactful, and one that doesn’t happen enough within the music community.
Reddick himself serves on the board of nonprofit Punk Rock Saves Lives, and the organization had a booth at the show providing free harm-reduction kits to concertgoers throughout the night, a fact that Reddick drew attention to during his introduction to the song. The moment was a reminder that the connection between an artist and their audience doesn’t have to end when the music does; sometimes, it can be used to make the space around the music a little safer, too.
After Bowling For Soup, Simple Plan took the stage with a bright, boyish energy that perfectly encapsulated a band whose most popular songs include “I’m Just a Kid.” From the start, the production value of the set was apparent. Large set pieces, screens adorned with intricate animations and graphics customized for each song, CO₂ and confetti cannons firing relentlessly from the first song onward, and giant beach balls tossed into the crowd during “Summer Paradise” all contributed to a show that felt much bigger than a typical touring concert production.
But it wasn’t just the sheer amount of production that made the set work. It was how cohesively everything tied together. Confetti in the shape of broken hearts, thunderstorms, and sad-face confetti all echoed elements of the set pieces and screen animations, while costumed mascot characters added another layer of playful absurdity. Nothing felt thrown in simply for the sake of spectacle. Instead, it all came together as one cohesive, entertaining production that never felt heavy-handed or overdone.
The whole set was a blast, but there were some moments that particularly stood out. During “Untitled,” a song in which singer Pierre Bouvier performs alone at the keyboard, Bouvier came off the main stage and performed on a B-stage at the back of the floor, surrounded by the crowd. For the very next song, “Boom,” Bouvier ventured into the venue’s balconies, making himself right at home among the fans.
Then came the “Scooby Party,” a now-familiar part of Simple Plan’s live show in which fans dressed as characters from What’s New Scooby-Doo? are invited on stage to sing along with the band. The MGM National Harbor crowd embraced the bit wholeheartedly, even those who weren’t dressed for the occasion. And, naturally, the moment came with its own special effects: dog-bone-shaped “Scooby Snacks” confetti rained down on the audience as the Scoobies danced not only on stage, but through the crowd on the floor.
This review, like the show itself, is already “Bigger Than You Think,” so I won’t go on much longer. But one part of the show that actually drew some real emotion from me – admittedly, as a casual fan of the band at best – was their penultimate song of the night, the aforementioned “I’m Just a Kid.”
Not only did the band bring out Talon, the official mascot for D.C. United, to join their own costumed mascot characters and BFS’s Reddick to sing along with them, but the screens behind the stage displayed a montage of photographs spanning not only the band’s 25 years, but the childhoods of its members.
It was moving in a way I didn’t expect to be moved. I was 12 years old when I first heard “I’m Just a Kid.” The members of Simple Plan were in their early 20s when they released it. Two and a half decades later, we’re all a little bit older. We’re all a little more tired than we were. And still, we’re all “just kids” in our own way, trying to navigate a world that is, after all, sometimes still a nightmare.
When life is hard, music has a way of reminding us that we aren’t alone, that we’re not the only ones going through it. There’s a community out there for each of us. And if there was one takeaway from the Bigger Than You Think… The Sequel! stop at MGM National Harbor, maybe that’s it: growing up doesn’t mean you have to leave the kid you were behind. Sometimes, you just need a few thousand other people to remind you that they’re still there, too.
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