Nicotine Dolls - an Attempt at Romantic at Aladdin Theater

Name: Nicotine Dolls - an Attempt at Romantic at Aladdin Theater
Start: 2025-10-13T20:00:00-07:00
Location: 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Portland, OR, United States, Oregon 97202

Schedule

Mon, 13 Oct, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Portland, OR, United States, Oregon 97202 | Portland, OR

TICKETS 🎟️ truewest.info/Dolls25
On Sale Friday, April 4th at 10am PT
This Event is All Ages
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Nicotine Dolls make the kind of music you can’t hide from. The storytelling is front-and-center, beckoning your attention like a dusty old novel you can’t put down until the last page. The vocals are gritty and honest, holding nothing back in fits of joy, regret, and sadness similar to a phone call from one of your best friends at 3am. The instrumentation is equally punchy and nuanced, grafting rafter-reaching hooks on top of rich soundscapes. The moment the New York alternative quartet—Sam Cieri [vocals], John Hays [guitar], John Merritt [bass], and Abel Tabares [drums]—plug in, it’s as if a rush of collective emotion floods through the speakers.

Nicotine Dolls officially emerged in 2019 at the crossroads between its members’ respective paths. As the story goes, Sam met John Hays in 2015 during a Broadway tour. “I ended up there because I was getting evicted from my apartment, and my friend told me to try musical theater since you get a consistent paycheck,” he recalls. They instantly became best friends.

By this time, Sam’s journey had already twisted and turned from “leaving high school to be a musician, living in motels, playing Las Vegas, going to South Florida, and amassing all of these crazy ass stories.” Nevertheless, his newfound musical bond with Hays eventually attracted Merritt and Abel to the fold. The guys gained traction with the likes of “What Makes You Sad” which has received more than 13 million Spotify streams. The band’s cover of Tina Turner’s iconic “The Best” has surpassed 12 million streams. Collectively, music released to date, is nearing 50 million streams on Spotify alone.