Photo by Ed Colver
(MONTCLAIR, NJ) -- The Wellmont Theater presents Descendents with Teen Mortgage and Liquid Mike on Saturday, August 2, 2025. Doors are at 7:00pm, showtime is 8:00pm.
Since first emerging from (and defining) the Southern California pop-punk scene in 1978, the legendary Descendents have released classic after classic, from their landmark 1982 LP Milo Goes to College to 2016’s Hypercaffium Spazzinate. Now, after issuing a flurry of singles to get fans through the past few years, the band — Milo Aukerman (vocals), Bill Stevenson (drums), Stephen Egerton (guitar), and Karl Alvarez (bass) — will be touring in support of a new album. With a very cool twist.
What started with Milo Goes to College now comes full circle on the blistering 9th & Walnut (Epitaph), a “lost album” quietly recorded in 2002 by the MGTC lineup of Stevenson, Aukerman, Tony Lombardo on bass, and Frank Navetta (d. 2008) on guitar. Audiences should be geared up for shows featuring songs spanning Descendents’ incredible career, from “Suburban Home” and “Silly Girl” to “I’m the One” and “Without Love,” and including 9th & Walnut tracks like first single “Baby Doncha Know” and its incendiary follow-up, “Nightage.”
Tickets start at $30 and are available for purchase online. The Wellmont Theatre is located at 5 Seymour Street in Montclair , New Jersey.
Washington DC’s Teen Mortgage climbed from the city’s primordial punk soup in 2017 after guitarist/vocalist James Guile relocated to the nation’s capital from Liverpool, UK and by a stroke of luck was quickly able to find hard hitting drummer Ed Barkauskas via a desperate craigslist post.
As a two piece they stood out – crossbreeding east coast hardcore aggression and garage/surf sleaze with a focus on pop sensibility. This sonic blend perfectly set the scene for vocalist and guitarist James Guile to illustrate what he describes as “the absurdity of living in the era of late stage capitalism and tech feudalism”. He adds, “it’s even woven into our name, like Mortgage in latin means ‘death pledge’”
Known for their rowdy live shows, Teen Mortgage detonates a sonic bomb that leaves no room for apathy, let alone time to breathe. Guile’s caustic riffs and sneer paired with Barakauskas’s brawn have fostered a new established meeting ground for those looking for a place to mosh. Their DIY headline national tours have seen crowd members become rabid as soon as the pair kick in the first riff of the set, like a pack of coyotes chasing down their prey.
Liquid Mike is an indie power pop rock band from Marquette, MI, in the Upper Peninsula. Liquid Mike began in 2021 and is the product of MikeMaple’s pop-rock song writing. The band features a cast of U.P. standouts including Monica Nelson, Dave Daignault, Zack Alworden, Cody Marecek. Liquid Mike inhabits a sweet spot in the musical pantheon: catchy, well-crafted guitar and vocal hooks that will snag any fan of power-pop/poprock.
The band invokes a relatable feeling of nostalgia with everyday lyrics of the quickly-receding flavor of Big League Chew bubblegum, drinking beer from used marinara sauce jars in college, and every 4th handrust-bucket of a car you ever drove in a Great Lakes snowstorm.
