With Success of Emo Night, the Great Northern Celebrates the Joy of Singing Sad Songs

On what would have otherwise been “a random Wednesday” at the Great Northern Bar in November 2023, Thomas Ducsak and a group of friends did their best to guide the local music scene — which leans toward Americana, country and covers — in a different direction.

The resident sound engineer at the Northern, Ducsak had been able to convince the bar’s general manager Scott Larkin to let him devote an entire night to DJ’ing music from a genre that had come to define his life and musical tastes more than 20 years ago, and which to this day still holds a special place for him. That is, in short, how “Emo Night” at the Northern was born.

Featuring music from the likes of Fall Out Boy, Paramour, and My Chemical Romance, “Emo Night” at the Northern has grown by leaps and bounds since it first launched a couple years ago. And with the fourth iteration on tap for this Friday, April 11, Ducsak is optimistic that the recurring event — devoted to the typically sad, but emotionally cathartic outsider music, which sprung out of the punk scene in the 1980s and came into its own in the late 90s and early 2000s — is hitting its stride.

The last Emo Night, held in October 2024, brought in 500 people to the Northern and raised over $1,500 for the Nate Chute Foundation. Ducsak said at one point he even wound up crowd surfing. Certain songs have had the crowd singing louder than the PA sound system.

“It was like having the Vans Warped Tour inside the Northern 20 years later,” Ducsak said.

The upcoming rendition of Emo Night will seek to raise money for North Valley Music School, and Ducsak said that people are welcome to dress to the occasion — and, if they feel so moved, to apply some eyeliner and throw on a studded belt and ripped jeans. But it’s by no means a requirement. The bottom line is about having a good time, enjoying the music, and supporting a local nonprofit, Ducsak said.

The group behind the event consists of Ducsak and his longtime friends Kate Berry, Stephanie Stabenow and Kate Siddall. As Ducsak recalls, it was Stabenow who first came to him with the idea. It quickly made sense for him given the absence of anything like it in the area. From there, the rest of the friend group—all of whom shared a love of emo music—were looped in.

“I just remember getting the phone call from Thomas and just being like, ‘Hey, like, here’s our idea. What do you think?” Siddall said.

From day one, she says she was all in, but she wasn’t completely sure if the event would really be a big hit. “I think everyone just thought this was going to be a fun thing for us four friends to put on, raise some money. And then it just took off,” she said.  “And it’s like, better than any of us could have imagined. It’s been such an honor.”

Siddall said she’s been particularly moved by the appreciation that younger emo fans have shown for the event.

“They’re just coming and they’re saying we’re basically giving them a safe place to be themselves for the night. Which has been insane, because I was one of those kids back in the day in high school, and, you know, to actually feel like I can even be myself with all these people, it’s so fun. Like, I’m 32 now, and actually having some place and seeing this blow up like this. It’s just crazy.”

Early on, she said there was almost this feeling that people were there undercover, as if their fandom had been kept a secret. But people have become more at ease, and she said it’s been a fun atmosphere.

“There’s no hate in that crowd,” she said.

For Berry, who grew up in Whitefish in the 90s as a fan of punk and emo music, she said that if her 15-year-old self could see the turnout for Emo Night at the Northern, her jaw would be on the floor.

“And you know, as a girl who always kind of fancied herself as existing on the fringes as kind of this, this punk rocker. I never, ever, ever thought that there were people like me out there who had the same interest and penchant for this,” Barry said of her perspective when she was younger.

“It’s such a deviation from the norm. And, like, I know that our community does boast some really great rock and punk bands, but they’re certainly the minority,” Berry said. “So having something like this — and I’d say this even going to other punk shows in the valley — it feels like this whole other part of the community comes out of the woodwork.”

She added that it was an easy choice to start off raising money for the Nate Chute Foundation, given that things like despair and depression are frequent themes with emo music, and knowing how many people in the local community have struggled with such things.

The enthusiasm and support for the recurring event has reached the point where Ducsak said it’s not uncommon for someone to see him out and about and ask him when the next Emo Night is, or lament that they missed the last one. The idea for now is to try and keep it going with an event every six months, and taking place in the offseason, when locals are itching for something to do.

Asked about his own origin story as an emo fan, Ducsak’s memory went back to when he first heard the St. Louis band Story of the Year, which broke out in the early 2000s with the release of their first album “Page Avenue.” With singles off the album like “Until the Day I Die” and “Anthem of Our Dying Day,” their debut sold nearly a million copies.

Ducsak said that that was probably his main influence getting into emo music, and that it made him start to wonder if there were other bands out there that sounded like them, which led him to discover groups like Senses Fail and Bayside. In explaining the enduring appeal of emo music, Ducsak said that people associate it with how they felt at the time they heard it, which in many cases for older listeners, means going back to turbulent times in their lives as they grew and evolved and tried to get through things like anxiety or depression.

“And now it’s like ‘Oh, my God, I remember when I got through this situation because of this song or this artist or that lyric, or whatever,’ you know? Because we all grow, and we all grow and evolve as we go on through life,” Ducsak said. “So being able to go back to the things that we enjoyed during that time that helped us get through everything, it reminds us of who we are now, where we’ve come from, and how much we have worked to get through all of that crap to be who we are today.”

The upcoming Emo Night at the Northern event, which will raise money for North Valley Music School, starts this Friday, April 11 at 8:30 p.m. The cover is $5.

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