SOLD OUT The Format (Acoustic)

Name: *SOLD OUT* The Format (Acoustic)
Start: 2025-12-15T19:00:00-07:00
Location: 800 N Country Club Road Tucson AZ 85716

Schedule

Mon, 15 Dec, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

800 N Country Club Road Tucson AZ 85716 | Tucson, AZ

The Format
with special guests
Members of the Gin Blossoms (Acoustic)
Jeff Bufano + Chris Corak
December 15th, 2025
Doors open at 6pm

Show starts at 7pm
* This show is standing room only*
Get your on sale code at www.theformat.com [https://www.theformat.com/]
The Format will donate $5 from every ticket sold to support marginalized communities and fight food insecurity. This is a sponsored project of Catalyst Philanthropy Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity
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The Format
Website [https://www.theformat.com/] | Instagram [https://instagram.com/theformat] | Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/theformat/] | Youtube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1L9Ax1l53s-FFFey3lxw3g] | Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/artist/3ZJC8cLts8Q8s8JbNJKsLf?si=G0AhL7iVRkSrIoHK-VC6Tw]

The Format was beginning to think the stars were aligned against them.

Just as Nate Ruess and Sam Means werefinally able to sort through the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic-which firststalled, then completely wiped out their last attempt at a reunion-tragedystruck again. On the very first day of recording new music in nearly 20 yearswith Grammy-winning producer Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, The Killers, BruceSpringsteen), the Los Angeles wildfires broke out, leaving devastation acrossthe city. It was enough to inspire a little conspiratorial thinking.
“It seriously felt likethe universe was against us,” Ruess says, trailing off. “It was at least…” “It was testing us, for sure,” Means adds,finishing the thought.
It’s no wonder that BoycottHeaven, their third album, is charged with there is nowaiting on tomorrow energy. After all, if the universe was in factputting you through your paces, how might you respond? Not on some far-offimagined judgement day, but right now?
“Holy roller, don’t gowasting all your time,” Ruess sings in the boisterous single “Holy Roller.” Inother words, the time for creating something more like heaven isn’t tomorrow orsome other day, but today.
A certain romanticfatalism has always coursed through The Format’s lyrics, which the more matureRuess cops to in the heartland rocker “Shot in the Dark.” “Lived my whole lifelike I was ready to die,” he confesses over jangling guitars and stomping rhythms.But Boycott Heaven is filled with reflections on reasons to stick aroundthis broken old world: family, life-long connections, distorted guitar riffs,and a stubborn belief that even as bad as it is, tomorrow could be better.
Once it was safe toreturn, the duo got back to work at Henson Recording Studios. Sam and Nate bothplayed electric guitars-Ruess having picked up the instrument in the yearssince The Format’s last album, in addition to launching a solo career, forming thechart-topping fun. with Jack Antonoff and Andrew Dost, and collaborating withP!nk, Kesha, and Hayley Williams of Paramore.) Their rhythm section wascomprised of O’Brien on bass and drummer Matt Chamberlain (David Bowie, BobDylan, Soundgarden, Fiona Apple,).
Fans of Interventions +Lullabies (2003) and Dog Problems (2006) will recognize the hooksand retro-pop bravado, but Boycott Heaven signals a new era. It’s not anostalgia play, even as it incorporates sonic nods to the alt-rock, grunge, andpop-punk sounds Ruess and Means first bonded over as Arizona teenagers.
“We first bonded listeningto bands like Weezer, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots,” Ruess says. “I’m a newguitarist, just enamored with power chords, so I’m listening to all this stuffwe’d listen to back then and cross referencing—NOFX, Lagwagon. But you takethat pop-punk stuff and slow it down, and then have Matt Chamberlain playing onit, and then it feels a little like grunge. All that’s in there.”
“It does kind of bring usback,” Means says, not just in terms of time but “As a partnership, too. Itfeels like a cool extension of where we came from.”
Though the concept ofrecording with a mega hit producer was intense at first, Means says O’Brienmade it easy to focus on the music. “Brendan just being Brendan made it so thatwe could focus on being there to make a good record and have a good time,” hesays. “Not that it wasn’t a whirlwind, cause it was. When it happened, ithappened fast.”
With steady hands likeO’Brien and Chamberlain backing them up, Ruess and Means didn’t have to worryabout second guessing the implications of following up their past work-the actof creating new sounds kept them entirely occupied. The results are diverse,from the power pop charger “Depressed,” which hinges on buzzsaw guitars andclose harmonies, to the folk ballad “Right Where I Belong,” to the rousinganthem “No You Don’t,” which sounds like a lost Pinkerton B-side.
Even as they disbanded,The Format never closed the door entirely to future collaboration. Steadilyresisting the “emo nostalgia” bucks offered to them, Ruess focused on newprojects, and Means devoted himself to solo musical work and his independentmusic merchandise company, Hello Merch.
When Ruess contacted himin August 2024, he didn’t realize that right away the band was actuallyflipping the switch into “new Format music mode”, though the work quicklyrevealed the path, and the two found that their years apart hadn’t dulled theircreative psychic connection.
“At first, we weren’t evensure,” Means says, noting that when Ruess reached out with set of guitar-baseddemos, a new mode for the mostly vocals-based composer, he thought they mightbe songs intended for the follow up to Ruess’ solo debut Grand Romantic(2015), but as they bounced ideas back and forth, it became clear what washappening.
“It was like, ‘Well yeah,this is a Format record,’” Ruess says, “What else could it be?”
Though Means admits heknows some people will read the words “boycott heaven” and immediately form anopinion, Ruess says the title came to him more or less by accident. “It was ahashtag on Twitter. I read ‘boycott heaven’ but it was ‘boycott Heineken,’” hesays, stifling a laugh. “But I just thought the words sounded beautifultogether. It’s not an anti-religion record—I think religion can be a beautifulthing—it’s just when something is out of balance, sometimes a boycott is inorder.”
Ruess cites PaulSchrader’s Ethan Hawke-staring masterpiece First Reformed (2017) as amajor inspiration on the album, and just like that bleak, beautiful movie,Ruess doesn’t avoid thorny topics-from religion to fake friends, all whilemaintaining an empathetic stance that’s less about preaching and more aboutobserving.
“I would love nothing morethan to write about the world in a cheesy way,” Ruess says with a wry laugh,but instead, Boycott Heaven portrays the world as it is: full of beauty,sadness, and always, no matter how hard to see, possibility.
Following sold-out reuniongigs in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and New York, where songs from Boycott Heavenwere debuted live, the new album signifies both a rebirth and continuation ofThe Format. When the band originally disbanded in 2008, their goodbye note madereference to a Twin Peaks DVD boxset Ruess and Means were passing backand forth, in an attempt to unravel the show’s mysteries. While cutting BoycottHeaven, Means insisted they devote a deep dive watch to 2017’s revivalseries, Twin Peaks: The Return. The mysteries-and the magic-remain.
Like Mark Frost and thelate David Lynch returning to their beloved fictional Washington town, BoycottHeaven is the product of two longtime confidants creating something theycould only create together, changed by time but still tied to their roots.
“Beengone for way too long,” Ruess sings on album closer “Back To Life.” “I nevermeant to say goodbye,” he follows up. The song signifies a new start, a newbeginning, and a new chapter in the story of The Format.