Maggie Rogers: Feral Joy

Closing a chapter “so deeply dedicated to surrender,” Maggie Rogers brought the final sold-out night of the Feral Joy Tour to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, CA. It was an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish as Maggie Rogers was an embodied reflection of what her sophomore album, Surrender, is about. The trailer for the album was played over the speakers and set intentions for the show the same way it set the intentions of the album: “When I’m angry or in love, I feel it in my teeth… For a long time, I fought it. Resisted. Held up my fists. Wanted on my terms, in my way. This is the story of what happened when I finally gave in. When I felt it all, when I finally let go… Do you ever want to bite?” She appeared on stage belting the climax of “Overdrive,” the first song on Surrender, as the final question in the recording, “Can you surrender?” came over the speakers, before bringing it back and starting the song from its quiet beginning.

It was a powerful start to the show, turning the concert into a spiritual experience as it established the feeling of being connected to the music – of something bigger than each individual in the room. Maggie must have had an awareness of this effect, as she completed her Masters of Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School last year and wrote her thesis (also entitled “Surrender”) on the spirituality of public gatherings (such as concerts). She is incredibly intentional about the concert experience and places a lot of importance on the synergy between herself on stage and everyone in the crowd. In San Francisco, that meant taking a few minutes to give a six-step line of reasoning to get those seated on the balcony to stand to physically open up the reciprocation of the energy on stage before launching into “Shatter,” a high-energy anthem for which she would proceed to give everything she had.

It wasn’t just the upbeat and desperate energy of “Shatter” that the audience felt. During “I’ve Got a Friend,” a song written for her best friend, Maggie stopped after the first verse – she had been angry about something. “The funny thing about joy and really getting to express joy… is that there’s no joy without getting fucking mad sometimes,” she tells the crowd after taking a moment to breathe. She continues, “In a post-pandemic world, being on stage and getting to sing narrative songs about my life… It’s a very strange, emotional thing to do every night, and some things just come out when you’re not expecting them.” Her vulnerability was felt by everyone in the crowd and they responded by cheering and clapping to support her, causing her to shed a few tears. The room’s energy shifted to one of complete trust as she let the crowd witness her in her entirety, completely surrendered to her feelings and letting herself express them openly. Only after a deep breath was she able to restart the song.

In another celebration of friendship, Maggie Rogers brought longtime friend and collaborator Samuel Holden Jaffe, A.K.A. Del Water Gap, who opened earlier that night, back onto the stage for “New Song.” The song, which was the last one they wrote together when they were 18 and in a band together in New York City, was a stirring and intimate duet, with Maggie on the banjo and Holden on the acoustic guitar. Maggie had come out during Holden’s set to do a song with him as something special for the last show of the tour, but while her cameo during Del Water Gap was fun and energetic, “New Song” was 6 and a half minutes of haunting melody and slow burn. The audience could feel their connection and it was so special to see the pair on stage together, for which Holden had also expressed his gratitude for earlier.

For the last handful of songs of the pre-encore set, a crew member wielding a video camera joined Maggie on stage for a live feed to the large screen backdropping stage, adding even more to the experience that Maggie intended the crowd to have at her show. The live feed featured shots from facing the crowd where you could see both Maggie and her crowd, a visual representation of the synergy between them. She would also occasionally sing directly to the camera, letting everyone in the room see her facial expressions and emotions clearly. “Light On,” the uplifting hit from her 2019 debut album Heard It In a Past Life, was one of the most harmonious performances of the night, with Maggie passing the song back and forth with the audience to allow their voices fill the room, and in those moments looking out to the crowd with pure elation and joy. All this was captured on the live feed, amplifying the connection that everyone was feeling to the music.

After a night – a full tour, really – so surrendered to her feelings and so emotionally connected to her fans, it was difficult for Maggie Rogers to let it come to an end. Spontaneously adding an extra song to her encore in an effort to defer the ending (the crew was ready and all with her guitar and mic stand for the final song), she decided to play “Dog Years,” a fan favorite from her 2017 E.P., Now That The Light Is Fading. The song was met with so much love from the crowd with every word being sung back to her. Nearly an hour and 50 minutes after the show started, the night arrived at the final song of the show. Maggie stood at the center of the stage, strumming her guitar, as she spoke to the audience, thanking them from the bottom of her heart. Laying it all out there, she tells the crowd, “When I write songs, it’s just like the deepest, most intimate part of who I am, and putting them out into the world means trusting that somebody else is going to hold onto them until they can’t hold onto them anymore. You showed up for me so unbelievably hard for me tonight,” to which many people in the crowd yelled back thank yous. “Thank you for letting me be myself,” she says while shaking her head in disbelief, “There are some nights where I think about coming on stage as, ‘You do this to heal other people,’ and there are some nights where I feel so unbelievably held and healed.”

Another part of her thesis was on the ethics of pop power, and she applied it to her practice – with her on tour were HeadCount (to register to vote) and Planned Parenthood. She made sure everyone there knew by introducing them before the last song. Alluding to the fear of the unknown during the pandemic and looking to the future in the midst of it, she says, “To be able to stand in this room together tonight… It’s the thing that makes me think there’s something better coming.” The night ended on a hopeful note with “Different Kind of World,” the final song on Surrender, a poignant finish to the emotional night – one that was filled with humility, rage, awe, despair, and feral joy.