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No Encore Necessary: Franklin Jonas and the Byzantines’ First of Many Tour
On the road with Franklin Jonas and the Byzantines during their first of many headlining tours.
Photography by Rebecca McDevitt & Madison Cozzens.
Article contributed by Rebecca McDevitt & LJ Portnoy.
Videography by LJ Portnoy.
There is something different about seeing an artist on their first headlining tour.
The rooms are smaller, the connection is closer, the songs are still finding their shape in real time, and the audience is not just watching the beginning of something. They are becoming part of it.
Franklin Jonas and the Byzantines’ First of Many Tour brought exactly that feeling to rooms across the country, and SoundCheck was lucky enough to experience five nights of it. Between Indianapolis, Columbus, Lakewood, Philadelphia and New York, we watched the tour grow from night to night, captured the moments that could only happen in rooms this intimate, and watched fans follow the band from city to city to hear songs that, for now, can only be experienced live.
Franklin is a friend of SoundCheck and the cover star of our most recent issue, so being able to follow along for five dates felt especially full circle. From the moment he walked onto the stage to the moment he disappeared behind the merch table at the end of the night, one thing remained consistent: Franklin made sure everyone in the room felt like they were part of the show.
Polyglam Set the Tone
There are openers, and then there are artists who make the room feel ready for whatever comes next. Polyglam did exactly that. The Los Angeles trio, made up of Allie Stamler on lead vocals and strings, Rachel White on guitar and keys, and John Sinclair on bass, drums, keys and backing vocals, brought a dreamy, transcendent energy to the beginning of each night.
This was SoundCheck’s first time seeing Polyglam, but hopefully it will not be our last. Their sets were beautiful without feeling distant, technically impressive without losing their sense of fun, and by the time Franklin and the Byzantines took the stage, the audience was already completely locked in.
From the First Second
Franklin makes his presence known instantly. The set opened with “Revelator,” before the room got the announcement fans had been waiting for: the band would be playing The Byzantines, the still-unreleased album, in full and in order.
That decision changed the entire feeling of the shows.
Nobody was singing along to a record they had already streamed a hundred times. Nobody knew exactly what was coming next. These songs were still new, and the only way to hear them was to be in the room with Franklin and the Byzantines while they were being played.
For fans, that made every night feel like its own little piece of history. It also became one of the reasons people kept showing up from city to city. The tour was not simply a chance to see Franklin perform songs fans already knew. It was a chance to experience songs together for the first time. Many fans were avid listeners of the various recordings available on TikTok and Instagram, and still were able to sing along, belting many of the words to each track.
Nobody knew exactly what was coming next, but everyone was there for it.
“Theodora”
If there is one song the entire tour seems to bend around, it is “Theodora.” The fan favorite is the emotional center of the set, a slower and more vulnerable moment that feels completely different from everything surrounding it. Franklin gets visibly emotional while performing it, and some nights, the emotion completely takes over.
But what happens onstage is only half of what makes “Theodora” so powerful. The room gets quiet. Not concert quiet. Not simply “the audience is listening” quiet. The kind of quiet where it feels like you could hear a pin drop. And somehow, that happens no matter where the band is. It does not matter what city or state they are in. It does not matter whether the room holds 100 people or 20,000. The emotion radiates through the entire room. For those few minutes, everyone is simply there.
Franklin leaves everything on the table during “Theodora,” and the audience responds by giving him the same vulnerability right back.
The Byzantines
The name on the ticket is Franklin Jonas and the Byzantines, and the second half of that matters. This is a band. Franklin introduces them as one, nicknames and all, and watching them move through the set night after night makes it impossible to see them as anything else. The Byzantines include Tim Bruns, known as “Timmy T-Bone,” on guitar; Aidan Harbeson, known as “Eight Ball,” on banjo; Ben Wood, known as “Ringus,” on upright bass and trumpet; and Nick Harrison, known as “Trailer Park Nick,” on drums and saxophone. Nic Vernali, better known as “NASCAR Nic,” serves as the band’s tour manager.
The Byzantines (Tim, Aidan, Nick, and Ben) in various cities and states | Photography by Rebecca McDevitt (@RebeccaJeanLimitedPhotography)
Banjo, upright bass, trumpet, saxophone and guitar give these songs a texture that you might not expect walking into the room, and the chemistry between the musicians is a huge part of what makes the live show work. One of our favorite band moments came in Lakewood. Midway through the set, Tim handed his guitar out over the edge of the stage to someone in the crowd, who played it while the band continued on around him. It was completely spontaneous, completely chaotic, and exactly the kind of moment that makes an intimate tour like this so memorable.
A Setlist That Listened
The setlist grew throughout the tour, and it grew because the fans asked it to. In Indianapolis, someone asked for “Spaceship.” Franklin played it, and it stayed. Then, in Columbus, “Cherub” was added to the set, and it stayed too. By the time SoundCheck reached New York for the final night of our coverage, both songs had become part of the evolving setlist.
It is a small thing, but it says a lot about the way Franklin approaches these shows. A request from one person in one room can become part of the experience for everyone who comes after them. The set was not simply something Franklin and the Byzantines brought with them each night. It listened, it changed, and it grew.
Franklin Jonas Dives Into the Crowd
Franklin is not the type of performer to stay on the stage for long. Trailing what has to be the world's longest microphone cord, he jumps down into the audience and plays a stretch of the set from the floor, moving through “High and Sad,” “Oasis,” “Break the Levee,” “Beverly Hills” and “That Psychic.”
He twirls people around. He dances and jumps with them. He sings to them and with them, one face at a time.
Most importantly, he looks at them. Franklin makes a point of giving the people in front of him his full attention. In a room full of hundreds of people, every individual interaction somehow feels personal. That connection is not something that can be manufactured. It is one of the defining characteristics of the First of Many Tour.
Franklin Jonas & The Byzantines tour compliation video | Videography by LJ Portnoy (@ljportnoy)
One of the moments that stayed with us came from Lakewood, when Franklin went out over the crowd at Mahall’s and was carried above them, crowdsurfing, while continuing to sing. The moment works because of trust. Franklin trusts his audience to hold him up, and they do. There is something incredibly special about watching an artist put that kind of faith in the people who came to see him. It turns a concert into something more than a performance.
For a few seconds, Franklin was literally in the hands of his audience, and they made sure he stayed there.
By the end of the night, that line between band and audience disappears completely. Franklin brings fans onto the stage for “Road Soda,” and they remain there for the closer, “First of Many," a tribute song to the tour, that is never planned for release. What began as a room full of people watching a band becomes something much more communal by the time the final song arrives.
The audience is no longer just watching the show. They are in it.
Five Rooms, One Tour
Indianapolis. Columbus. Lakewood. Philadelphia. New York. Five rooms, five nights, five different atmospheres, but one continuous experience. From HI-FI in Indianapolis to the Summit Music Theater, in Columbus, Mahall’s in Lakewood, MilkBoy in Philadelphia and Bowery Palace in New York, each room brought its own personality to the First of Many Tour. But the biggest thing we noticed across all five nights was just how much the audiences overlapped.
Fan Talks video | Videography by LJ Portnoy (@ljportnoy) / Interviewer Rebecca McDevitt @RebeccaJeanLimitedPhotography)
Fans were traveling. People who had been in Indianapolis showed up in Columbus. Columbus fans returned in Lakewood. Fans traveled from Philadelphia, Michigan and beyond to hear songs they could not hear anywhere else. That says something about the music, but it also says something about the community Franklin and the Byzantines are building around it. These were not five separate shows. They felt like five chapters of the same experience.
No Encore Necessary
There is no traditional encore at a Franklin Jonas and the Byzantines show. When “First of Many” ends, Franklin heads to the merch table, and somehow, that becomes the encore. He stays to talk to the people who want to shake his hand, give him a hug, tell him what a song meant to them or simply say hello. The same openness that defines Franklin onstage follows him offstage.
Throughout the tour, he also shared his experience through his tour talk videos on TikTok, creating a running diary of the First of Many Tour as it happened. Watching those moments alongside the shows only reinforced what was already obvious in the rooms themselves. Franklin genuinely loves what he is doing, and he genuinely seems grateful that people want to be there with him.
The First of Many
Franklin Jonas & The Byzantines - Revelator - Full Song (Live Version) | Videography by LJ Portnoy (@ljportnoy)
The tour is called The First of Many, and after five nights across five rooms, the name feels fitting. There is still plenty ahead for Franklin Jonas and the Byzantines.
The next stop takes them somewhere much bigger: Franklin is set to perform at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 20.
Tickets can be purchased for this show, here.
And if these first five nights showed us anything, it is that the size of the room is not what makes a Franklin Jonas show feel big. It is the people in it. The band. The fans. The songs.
The moments that could never be recreated exactly the same way twice, after all, this was The First of Many.
The First of Many Tour was just that. The first of many.
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