SUSTO gets real in Milwaukee

Yes indeed, SUSTO is real. The band cruised into the Cream City Saturday night to perform in the unassuming Back Room of the Colectivo Coffee House on North Prospect Avenue. Meanwhile, a little-known band called The Lumineers was playing some large arena further down the Lake Michigan shoreline.

For SUSTO’s lead guitarist Johnny Delaware, Saturday’s show was a sort of homecoming. Delaware spent some of his youth even further down the lakeshore in Racine, Wisconsin. Though he and the rest of the band now call Charleston, South Carolina, home, all received a warm Wisconsin welcome.

SUSTO’s current lineup consists of Delaware, Justin Osborne on lead vocals and guitar; Marshall Hudson on drums; Kevin Early on bass; and Ian Klin on keys. While not performing as SUSTO, each of the guys has other gigs. Delaware records as a solo artist (https://johnnydelaware.com/); Osborne recently recorded an album with his then fiance (now wife) as Biscuit and Gravy (https://biscuitgravymusic.bandcamp.com/album/biscuit-gravys-homemade-breakfast-album); Hudson is a talented visual artist (http://marshallhudson.com/); and Early moonlights with The High Divers (https://www.thehighdivers.com/). They were joined Saturday by tour manager Cannon Rogers on pedal steel. Rogers fronts his own band, Cannon and the Boxes, as well.

They all came together under the SUSTO banner Saturday in support of their latest album of songs called “My Entire Life.” The set list included six songs from the most recent record, but their 22-song set spanned the band’s 10-year career, starting with “Far Out Feeling” and “Hard Drugs” from 2017’s “& I’m Fine Today.” In fact, it wasn’t until eight songs in that SUSTO broke out the new stuff with the title track from the July 28 release.

The performance proved to be a wonderful balance of new and old, perfectly suiting the crowd that was similarly a mix of younger and older fans. It is easy to see why SUSTO’s fanbase ranges in years from puberty to retirement — their sound is timeless and genre-bending. Like a number of similar bands (think CAAMP, The Revivalists, Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, Josiah and The Bonnevilles), they aren’t quite rock, not quite country, not quite folk, not quite pop. In this writer’s opinion, SUSTO hit that sweet spot in the center of all of those genres.

Their music explores love found, love lost, struggles with addiction, and the pain of mental illness.

“SUSTO’s narrative has always been confessional, and songwriting is my way of trying to make sense of the chaos — good and bad — around me,” says Osborne on the band’s website (sustoisreal.com). He says the new songs particularly “cover the spectrum of everything that’s happened in my life the last few years. There’s been a lot of change, which can be painful, but there’s also been a lot of joy and hope, along with everything in between. I figure that’s what life is.”

The talent found in good musicians is the ability to tell those tales over a harmony that makes the listener either want to dance or cry — sometimes both. Or maybe, in the case of “Cosmic Cowboy,” they’re just songs about a cowboy who took too many mushrooms. From what I witnessed there was more dancing than tears in the Back Room.

SUSTO built the night’s show up to a rocking climax with two of the heavier hitters from “My Entire Life” — “Rock On” and “Mermaid Vampire.” Then, just as the vibe in the room had reached its peak, they reset the stage. “You guys remember MTV Unplugged, right?” asked Osborne. The band stripped down for two more songs from “& I’m Fine Today” — an audience sing-a-long of “Jah Werx” and what is probably the closest to a political statement the band have recorded “Gay in the South” — and a third, “Break Free, Rolling Stone” from “My Entire Life.”

The band played for about an hour and a half and kept the close gathering of fans in the Back Room enraptured throughout.

The opener — The Harmed Brothers — was a nice surprise and a fitting addition to the set. Calling Ludlow, Kentucky, home, The Harmed Brothers reside in the same vein and offer a complementary sound to SUSTO. While they’ve been around since 2013 as well, there weren’t any sing-a-longs during their opening set. Though they have yet to gain the traction their tourmates have, the audience offered a warm reception for a band that held its own and one that could be just one catchy song away from their own headlining tour.

SUSTO continues its trek through the U.S. through Dec. 3 before kicking off the new year cruising out of Miami on The Rock Boat XXIII. Check to see if they are coming near you at sustoisreal.com/tour or follow along on the socials: Instagram, Facebook, and X.

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Setlist

Far Out Feeling

Hard Drugs

County Line

Homeboy

Cosmic Cowboy

Motorcycle Club

Good Right Now

My Entire Life

Off You

Wasted Mind

Rock On