When Strangers Stop Being Strangers: Finding Your Community at Concerts

How many concerts are too many? At some point "You really like this band, don’t you?" turns into "You've spent how much on travel?” For anyone who follows an artist from city to city, this question is probably familiar. From the outside, travelling across countries for the same artist can seem excessive, especially when you could just wait for them to come to your city later in the tour. But once you start doing it, the shows almost become secondary to everything that happens around them.

There is a strange kind of community that comes with following live music; you start recognising the same faces at airports, on trains and in the crowd. People you have never properly spoken to become familiar and eventually some of those familiar faces become friends. You might not know anything about each other outside of the band but you do know that you are both going to the next show.

After a while, you stop measuring trips in dates and start measuring them in wristbands. There is something about repeatedly being in the same place with the same people that makes strangers feel less like strangers. At the beginning, you might just notice someone because they are wearing the same merch as you, then you see them again at the next show, and then again. Eventually, you start wondering if you will see them at the next one.

This summer, I experienced this directly while following Twenty One Pilots across Europe on their festival tour run. I started noticing just how many people I kept finding along the way. One girl in particular became someone I recognised after the first two festivals. We never actually spoke but somehow we were always on the same flight or train to the next stop. When you are travelling so much for one band, it can sometimes feel like you are the only person doing something this ridiculous. Then you see someone else in the same merch running through the airport with you and, suddenly, you feel less alone.

That is one of the odd things about touring communities: they are built around movement rather than a place. Everyone is constantly going somewhere but you always end up alongside the same people. A train station hundreds of miles from home can become familiar because you know there is a chance you will see someone you recognise there.

The travel itself became part of the experience. One of the hardest journeys this summer for me was eight hours by train from the Netherlands to Germany which involved multiple delays, train connections and running through stations and repeatedly hoping I was going in the right direction. Somewhere along the way, I kept seeing other people with merch doing the exact same thing. On flights between festivals, especially when there were no days between one and the next, there would be people rushing to the gates because everyone had just left one festival and was already on their way to the next.

It sounds exhausting because it is, social media rarely sees that side of following a tour, as the glamorous parts are the thing usually posted. Sometimes, it's sitting on a train for hours, not sleeping for days and carrying too much stuff wondering why you thought this was a good idea but there is something funny about looking around and realising everyone else is thinking the exact same thing.

There is also a weird sense of anticipation that comes with it. Everyone knows where they are going next, everyone has heard what happened at the last show and everyone is waiting to see what will happen when they get to the next city. You end up sharing train updates, flight information and queue times with each other and someone is always at the next stop telling everyone else what it’s like.

And then there are the queues.

Suffering in a queue together really does make people grow closer; You spend hours being around people you might have never met otherwise talking about the last show, the next show, where you are travelling from and how long are you going to be away from home. Somehow, without really deciding to, everyone starts looking after each other. It could be someone’s outfit needing to be fixed or something as simple as someone needing water.

Some of my closest friends have come from one of those queues, we all met because we camped for a Twenty One Pilots show in Belfast and, although we have only properly known each other for just over a year, it feels so much longer than that. The first show we all really did together was in France, and we always plan to meet up in the next city all of us are going to be in and we end up making memories that have very little to do with the actual performances. After the final song, a lot of us were crying but we ended up in one huge group hug – and somewhere, in the middle of it, I realised that these were my people.

Even on the rare days off from having shows, when you probably should be resting, we always seem to find something else to do. For example, being in France meant a trip to Disneyland Paris because apparently travelling across countries for concerts wasn’t exhausting enough.

That is one of the biggest things I've noticed about following live music. When I look back on this summer, I barely remember each show. It's all a blur, but I remember travelling with my friends, going for dinner the night before a show or just figuring out when we are all arriving in the next country. The time between shows somehow becomes just as important as the time inside them.

That is something you don't necessarily get from going to one concert in your hometown. When you are following a tour, the experience stretches beyond the few hours you spend in a venue.

Some of the best parts about these communities are the reunions; you can go months or years without seeing someone then suddenly find yourself standing beside them at another show as if no time has passed. But in reality, a lot has happened since the last time you saw each other, everyone has grown and moved on to different parts of their lives and collected stories to tell each other to make the time go by quicker.

There is something really special about catching up with someone at a show when the last time you saw them was at a previous tour. You end up filling each other in on everything that has happened since. It feels like picking up a conversation that was paused rather than starting a new one. You might only see each other because of a band but the friendship has continued to exist outside of the shows.

In a strange way, it feels like you have grown up together, not because you have been in each other’s lives every day but because you have shared so many of the same moments. You remember what someone was like the last time you saw them and then suddenly you’re hearing about everything that has happened since. The artist has changed, the music has changed and so have you, but there is still this shared history that brings everyone back to the same place.

That feeling became particularly obvious at the most recent London show. As I walked around, it felt like everyone I knew from previous shows was there. People I met at completely different points of the tour were suddenly all in the same room again.

Everyone was feeling the emotional and physical effects of doing so many shows. It is draining and at some point you question "do I even like this band this much" and you don't need to explain it to the people around you. You look at each other, exchange a smile and know that you are all thinking the same thing but you all know it’s worth it in the end. There was something really beautiful about being surrounded by people who understood why you had travelled so far, why you were so exhausted and why you are still there anyway.

There are smaller moments that probably would not mean much to anyone outside of it, too. I met up with my American friends and we were helping each other fix our outfits and add the finishing touches of duct tape to make sure everything looked just right.

It was such a normal thing to do but those are the moments that stick with you the most. You don’t need a life-changing conversation to know that someone has become your friend. Sometimes it’s just fixing their outfit because they cannot quite do it themselves.

The community also exists online, of course. The group chats, Instagram stories and updates from people already at the next festival don’t stop when you leave the venue. A stranger you met in a crowd can suddenly become someone you talk to every day. Social media helps make the distance between you all feel a little smaller.

Next month, me and my friends will be doing Twenty One Pilot's final headline show of this run in America. There is something quite fitting about the fact that I am ending this run of shows with the same people I met when I started it. It feels like a full circle moment.

That is what I think people miss when they question why anyone would travel so far for the same artist: it’s not just about seeing the same songs being played again, it’s about everything that happens around them. It’s the feeling of finding the same people in different cities and knowing you are going to keep finding each other.

Maybe that's why these friendships can feel so different; they are not built around living in the same place or having the same everyday routine. They are built around showing up, you might disappear back into your normal life after a tour but then a new tour date gets announced and the group chats quickly come back to life as you figure out flights and book trains.

But no matter how far away we all live from each other, the music keeps bringing us back, and that is the best part of following a tour. You don’t just have somewhere to go, you have people you can always return to that make it feel like home.