Ike’s Place was booming with more energy than the bar across the street Jan. 23, when they hosted three dream punk bands: Creekside and Citysick—which are both local bands—and Glacier Veins, a Portland-based band with a Chico State alum playing bass.

The sandwich shop only had enough room for around 40 people. But the intimate venue kept all of the positive energy balanced between the audience, the bands and the booming speakers.

The show opened with Creekside, whose introspective lyrics and gnarly guitar raised the energy of the crowd early in the night. As they are Chico-based, they played their song “5&i,” dedicated to the very intersection they were performing on.

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Glacier Veins playing at Ike's sandwich shop, hosted Creekside, Citysick and Glacier Veins last Wednesday Photo credit: Mathew Boe

Citysick represents more punk than dream punk; however, their large Chico following gave them a great welcome to their first show of 2019. They closed the show with the same high energy that it started with, and it never faltered—even through a broken E string.

Glacier Veins played the second set of the night, kicking off their tour along the West Coast just a few days after they played 8123 Fest in Phoenix, Arizona. Their bass player, Kyle Woodrow, graduated from Chico State in 2014, and the band has played multiple shows at the Naked Lounge in the past few years. Woodrow joined the band a couple years ago.

“They played a show at a venue I worked at,” Woodrow explained.

“I mixed for them, ran their sound and talked to Malia and Tyler (Groce), our drummer, through mutual friends and they found out I played bass and asked me if I was interested because their bass player at the time was leaving,”

Malia Endres is one of the band’s guitarists, their lead singer and founder of the group. She started Glacier Veins over three years ago and the current group has been together for about a year.

“We have two EPs out—Clear Your Head and Dreamspace,” Endres said, “and we’re going to be recording a full-length record next month.”

Jason Espinoza is the band’s lead guitarist and their newest member. He joined just under a year ago.

“This is my second time playing in Chico – last time we were at the Naked Lounge,” Espinoza said. “I’m excited for the tour, although I honestly don’t know exactly where we’re going; they just tell me to get in the van and we go places and play music.”

Malia and the band also support a nonprofit organization called Half Access, whose goal is to make live music more accessible. They offer a database of venue information in order to inform disabled people about what they should expect when attending a concert at a certain venue.

“Cassie Wilson, a friend of mine, started it,” Malia said. “She just wanted to have a place for people to look up the accessibility of a venue so that disabled people can know what to expect when they arrive.”

The Ike’s Place staff offered food and drink throughout and while the crowd was compact, everyone could always see the band playing. This was not the first concert at Ike’s and it likely will not be the last.

Mitchell Kret can be reached at [email protected] or @theorion_arts on Twitter.