On Making Gigs A Safe Space For Fans & Being Mates With Camp Cope

Few young bands have seen the kind of meteoric ascension that has been enjoyed by Philadelphia indie-punk darlings Modern Baseball.

Rocketing from revered cult favourites to bankable international headline drawcards in the lead-up to, and wake of, their acclaimed third album Holy Ghost, released earlier this year, the band have carved out a reputation as one of the hardest-working, most earnest and downright likeable ensembles of our era. Indeed, they packed out raved-about shows on their maiden trip to Australia in April, a feat they'll no doubt replicate when they touch down at the end of the year for Falls Festival and some affiliated sideshow appearances. 

Part and parcel of their growing renown as performers is undoubtedly their commitment to making their gigs a safe space for their fans; over the course of their tours for Holy Ghost, MoBo implemented a way for their audience to let them know if they were feeling uncomfortable by providing a public phone number for their manager, Eric Osman, to field calls in real time from people in the crowd having a bad one.

"I think you could kinda see a new respectfulness in the crowd after a certain amount of time, because people, knowing about the hotline when they came to the show — they knew what they were getting into."

According to vocalist/guitarist Jake Ewald, the band experienced a little bit of trepidation prior to pushing ahead with the initiative but, along with guidance from influential peers Speedy Ortiz, decided to go with it and, he says, it was probably one of the best calls they've made.

"It's been great; the first big push for it was on that headline tour we did a couple months ago, and... it was a little bit freaky before we did it, because we just had no idea how it was going to go," Ewald explains. "We got the idea from this band called Speedy Ortiz, in the States, and they had done it once or twice before, so we just kind of got the lowdown from them on how it would work in a perfect world. So then we just hooked it up to a phone number and put up a video to announce it, and we pinned a tweet on our Twitter so you could always see what the number is.

"We got on the tour, and the response was really good. It got used maybe, like, once a show, couple times a show, depending on where we were, and it felt really helpful. People were really glad that we had it there; we just got a lot of people, even people who weren't using it, just tweeting at us or messaging us and saying, 'Hey, it's so cool that you have this, this makes me feel better about being at your show,' and also I think you could kinda see a new respectfulness in the crowd after a certain amount of time, because people, knowing about the hotline when they came to the show — they knew what they were getting into: this isn't going to be like a hardcore show, where everybody jumps on everybody else and beats each other up; this is going to be — we're going to watch music and listen to music and, like, jump up and down and have a great time."

Presumably the plan will be in effect for their headline shows over the next few weeks, especially given MoBo's desire to pick up where they left off with new friends and fellow safe-space activists Camp Cope, with whom they bonded deeply on their previous visit. In fact, they may be the reason that we're getting to see these guys again so soon in the first place.

"I think we were planning the second trip before we left the first time, because we were just like, 'This is crazy, we have to come back here — why do all these people so far away like our band? We should come back,'" Ewald laughs. "So we're stoked to play some new places, stoked to do a festival over there — that'll be neat — we just started doing more of that kind of thing in the States, so it feels really cool to be able to do it over there too.

"And we're all really excited to play with Camp Cope again. Before we left the first time, we were like, 'We have to come back soon, and we have to do more shows with Camp Cope,' so it was pretty quickly decided."