The Rocket Summer Celebrates 10 Years of "Do You Feel" With Tour

By Timothy Yap Apr 12, 2017 05:17 AM EDT

Sometimes, to see how far you've come, you have to look back at your beginnings. For multi-instrumentalist, BRYCE AVARY of THE ROCKET SUMMER, his evolution into the powerpop/indie rock powerhouse that he is becoming has origins in his dynamic and explosive entrance into the mainstream ten years ago with his breakthrough album DO YOU FEEL. Before he embarks into his evolution forward, Avary will be stepping out of the studio where he is working on new music to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of a special album for TRS fans by performing the album for the first time ever in its entirety.

The Do You Feel 10 Year Anniversary Tour kicks off in his home state of Texas on July 20 at Austin's Antone's and circles North America, hitting venues such as Dallas' Trees (July 21), NYC's Gramercy Theatre (August 3), Toronto's The Mod Club (August 8), Chicago's The Bottom Lounge (August 12), SF's Slim's (Aug. 24), and Los Angeles' The Roxy (August 25). VIP/Pre-sale tickets will become available Wednesday, April 12 at 10:00am Eastern Time, and general public tickets go on-sale Friday, April 14 at 10:00am Local Time. Tickets will be available at http://www.therocketsummer.com/tour/. (full dates below).

Celebrating the album which earned them the cover of Alternative Press who hailed him as "merging Cheap Trick's hard pop hooks with Dashboard Confessional's earnestness", Avary will be playing Do You Feel along with an additional set of fan favorites from Hello, Good Friend, Of Men and Angels, Calendar Days, Life Will Write The Words, and Zoetic and spiking it with some brand new material that he's working on. In addition, the tour will launch the first ever double vinyl pressing of Do You Feel which will be sold on the road, as well as online and in stores. A limited edition double purple vinyl will be available only for VIP ticket purchasers on tour.

His first major label release via Island Def Jam, Do You Feel launched him out of the underground and into mainstream consciousness. Do You Feel balanced melody, meaning, and musicianship, embodying Avary's forte of infusing passion into pop music with a variety of instruments and influences. From the cutting, rocking industry criticism of "A Song is Not a Business Plan", to the bouncy calls to consciousness of "Break It Out" and "Do You Feel", to the R&B-tinged, saxophone-backed "So Much Love" which featured the horn section that played on Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke album, to the epic, layered closing track "So, In This Hour", Avary made it clear that he was uninhibited both from musical and lyrical standpoints. Furthermore, the recurring message and focus on re-sensitizing and retaining identity amidst a world of cruelty and conformity found throughout Do You Feel still rings true today as it did 10 years ago.

Currently working on the follow-up to his sixth studio album Zoetic, Avary is building on the dynamic evolution of his music that Diffuser claims, "simultaneously evokes Foster The People and Justin Timberlake" and Infectious Magazine believes "displays exactly what pop rock music would sound like if it were zapped with 100,000 volts and lived to tell the tale." Forever challenging himself and his fans, Avary isn't content releasing the same record over and over again, and thus expands and grows his oeuvre without fear of risks or alienation, even spurring New Noise to compare the album to "Foster the People or Passion Pit filtered through Michael Jackson." With songs like the worldly-focused, wearily hopeful "Same Air" to the thrashing inner-conflicts of "Cold War" which Substream likened "as if Trent Reznor, Mutemath and Paper Route formed a supergroup in secret" , Zoetic continues the conscientious, heartfelt approach to songwriting felt on every album by The Rocket Summer, but carried out in a darker shell. It is with this same fierce independent spirit that The Rocket Summer is able to have the freedom to look fondly back at the album that propelled him forward, Do You Feel without embracing nostalgic tightly.