Ruby Leftstep, an alternative rock band, held a concert on Oct. 3 where they recorded a live album for the release of their new extended play “TED.” The free event took place at The Dog Pound, a DIY music venue near the University of Connecticut.
Ruby Leftstep hails from New Hartford and consists of lead singer Dylan Hrinda, lead guitarist Thomas “Thom” Busemeyer and drummer Eddie Dahill.
“I think I can speak for everyone when I say that UConn really came out for that show,” Dahill said. “There were so many people, it was so packed, the vibes were so good, no drama, no nothing.”
Doors opened at 8 p.m. with the concert starting an hour later. The Boston-based band Saint Clementine opened the event. Ruby Leftstep began performing at 10 p.m., opening their set with “Remaining,” a single the band released in 2024.
“Starting with ‘Remaining’ I think is great because it’s not going to blow anyone’s brains out, but it does kind of have this big, anthemic, fun thing that pulls people together,” Dahill said.
Ruby Leftstep’s set included singles such as “The Comedown” and “Shuteye,” songs from their 2022 EP “The Ground Up” and a full front-to-back playing of “TED.” The band also played covers at the end of their set, including “I Love It” by Icona Pop ft. Charli xcx and “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift.
“The latter half of the set list, it’s pretty backloaded with just blow-people’s-brains-out music, like drink water before we start the second half kind of thing,” Dahill said.
“The covers weren’t part of the set list originally, but we had the set list and then we were like, we don’t really have an encore,” Hrinda said. “So, we were like, what covers have we done before that we can kind of whip out really quickly — I think we spent an hour practicing them the practice before [the concert].”
Hundreds of people attended the event, with people cheering, hollering and singing along throughout the band’s set. One man said that he was “having the time of [his] life.”
Fifth-semester acting major Grace Darling said that she had a “great time” despite arriving to the event late.
“I’m a big fan of [Ruby Leftstep],” Darling said. “I like the song ‘Shuteye’ and I think they have a good thing going where they have the crowd repeat the lyrics, and I really liked the covers that they did.”
Fifth-semester material science and engineering major Dylan Brockel said that it was “the best set [at The Dog Pound] in the past three years.”
“I thoroughly enjoyed [the concert],” Brockel said. “I think the audience was amazing and, truly, the audience makes the show. Dog Pound has been always amazing but this year has been actually amazing.”
Although the event had free admission, Jewish Voice for Peace UConn was collecting donations to help support Palestinians in need. JVP raised over $1,400 at the event according to their Instagram story.
According to the band, six months of work went into planning that night, which included practicing the set list, finding videographers to record the event, creating a light show, designing new merch, putting together the set design and more.
“We put a lot of work into it and it really paid off. Everyone showed up for it, easily the biggest show we’ve ever played,” Hrinda said.
The band is planning on releasing the live album from the night in tandem with a concert film. Although the band doesn’t have a specific timeline on when it comes out, they’re hoping to get to work on it soon.
“We have a show next Saturday in Jersey at Rutgers, but then after that we don’t really have anything super pressing that we need to be doing for the next month or so, so I think that’ll give us ample time,” Busemeyer said.
The band talked about the choice to have the event at The Dog Pound, with Busemeyer saying it was “a forgone conclusion.”
“As far as local venues at UConn, it’s kind of the spot, and we definitely wanted the live album to be at a UConn thing, just cause that’s the scene where we found the most community,” Busemeyer said.
“Dog Pound [has] super friendly people, but also their new space they have is like a stadium almost, where the stage is in the bottom and then there’s hill going all the way up, so it works out really, really well for this kind of situation,” Hrinda said.
This was Ruby Leftstep’s second time performing live since the release of “TED,” having previously performed at the Celebrate Mansfield Festival on Sept. 27. Having performed “TED” live, the band feels that the EP has been “well-received.”
“It seems like people have really been enjoying it, and I noticed [at the concert], during ‘I Told You So,’ people in the front knew some of the words, and I was like, that’s crazy, that came out like two weeks ago,” Busemeyer said. “I totally couldn’t even imagine that being the case when we started playing at UConn.”
The band said that their next goal is to create a full studio album.
“We’ve done two EPs and a lot of singles, and this whole project was really fun, but we haven’t done an ‘album album’ yet, and I kind of feel like that is the next logical step,” Busemeyer said. “But for the time being, we’re all ready to chillax for like a month or whatever after all this, and then we can think about the next thing.”
“Thank you to everybody who came out that night, everybody pulled through for that,” Hrinda said.
“Shoutout to anyone at UConn that stumbled across that or heard it from the road, because that was honestly the most incredible night ever and we got to see so many faces that we’ve seen so many times,” Dahill said.
This article was updated on Oct. 7 to correct the credit on a photo.
You spelled The Dog P0und wrong. The proper name has the zero.