From Here: Twenty One Pilots Go Big and Come Home With Biggest, Boldest, Longest Show Ever at Hometown Stadium: 12 Best Moments

All the clichés apply: you can go home again, home is where the heart is, and, most importantly go big or go home. Twenty One Pilots did all those things on a crisp Saturday night (Oct. 17) in their hometown of Columbus, Ohio at a triumphant, career-highlight show that pulled out all the stops to cap their two-year-long Clancy tour.

There was a drone show, pyro galore, a three-hour set list (their longest ever), a cameo from the home team’s drum corps and, almost, a few tears from singer/pianist Tyler Joseph and stalwart drummer Josh Dun when they took a moment near the end of the night to take in the gravity of the situation. The group that started out playing a 300-capacity club called The Basement across town had a 33,900% blowup to the city’s largest venue, packing The Ohio State University’s football stadium (The Shoe) with more than 100,000 fans from all over the city, the country and the world converging for an epic night spanning their catalog and the many chapters of their multi-chapter Trench saga.

The culmination of a year of playing stadiums, Saturday’s show flooded a city already swathed in red on any given Saturday with a sea of Clikkies (the familiar nomenclature of the Clique fan group name), who set up a Bandito fan camp outside the stadium where they traded memorabilia, helped each other prep their looks for the night and shared intel on all the spots in town associated with the duo, who evince a cult-like following among their devoted followers. 

Everywhere you looked in Columbus there was evidence of Clique activity, from the signature red and yellow strips of tape applied to carefully curated outfits alluding to group lore, to the thousands of devotees with their throats and hands painted dun black and a massive conclave of ominous red robed “Bishops” floating past bars and restaurants typically packed with red-wrapped Buckeyes fans.

All the hype and anticipation culminated in a three-hour spectacle that packed in all the things fans have come to expect from the dynamic duo, plus a few surprises that lit up the sky, and 100,000 hearts, as Joseph and Dun humbly thanked their diehards for taking them from the basement to the big show (or Shoe).

Check out our 12 top moments from Saturday’s show. 

• From Here

  Everywhere you looked around town, there the Clique was. Marching down High Street in their red bishop robes and black body paint, mixing and matching incongruously with the thousands of crimson-clad Buckeye fans at bars watching the home team (barely) defeat next-door rival Indiana University. Local media and fans provided helpful checklists of local spots seen in 21P videos or photo shoots for out-of-towners to check out. The Bandito fan camp included photo ops with a woman who’d built a gigantic furry Clancy costume, a paint-dipping station where Clikkies could slather on the black neck and hand paint that singer Joseph sports during shows and a local bakery that was offering 21P-themed cookies for sale.

• How You ‘Goner’ Start This?

  For the first time ever, the band opened a show with the wrenching final Blurryface tune “Goner,” with Joseph at piano on a satellite stage in the middle of the stadium floor bathed in red light. Midway through, Dun joined in and a barrage of finale-worthy fireworks shot up all around the duo, filling the air with smoke and the screams of 100,000 elated fans as Joseph wailed “I wanna be known by you!”

• Togg And Jogg Sports Ball Talk

  After bombing through fan favorites “Overcompensate” and “The Contract,” Joseph and Dun emerged as Togg Dunseph and Jog Joen, characters in a recurring segment called SportsDesk, paying homage to their hometown college football stadium on their fake FBESPN network. “Columbus, Ohio, how are you feeling? Because I’m feeling slightly unsure about this idea … now that I’m sitting here,” Joseph/Togg admitted about the duo’s fears that they wouldn’t be able to fill The Shoe. He then tossed to Dunn/Joen, who was posted up in the middle of the crowd in a fake mustache and overcoat, where he (via his body double) threw to a segment the pair taped featuring man-on-the-street interviews with Columbus natives who had clearly never heard of them. While a woman said Dun looked “like a rock star,” and another tagged him as a drummer for sure, the general consensus on Joseph was that he read “mechanic. The bit would be repeated a few more times over the course of the three-hour show.

• “Robot Voices” Debut

  Joseph intro’d a song the band had never played in the U.S. before by noting that his dad had asked him before the gig if he planned to bring any famous people on stage as surprises. So, he did just that, inviting up the band’s longtime videographer and video director Mark Eshleman, who has been with them since their days playing small basement clubs in Columbus. The band then tore into the Breach favorite “Robot Voices,” with Eshleman slashing away at his electric guitar as the big video screens morphed the trio in giant, pixilated, glitchy ghost images.

• Can I Graduate?

  For a pair of hometown guys done good, graduating from dingy rock clubs to the biggest venue in town is something to crow about. That’s why the lyrics to the Clancy favorite “Next Semester” suddenly took on new meaning in the home of the Buckeyes. “Graduate now/ I don’t wanna be here, I don’t wanna be here,” Joseph sang, turning upside down the smile he flashed at the crowd just a few songs earlier during a moment of reflection after “Shy Away.” The song about a severe anxiety attack Joseph said he suffered during college, wanting to escape and the possibility of second chances provided its own answer as the Clique joined in on the “I don’t wanna be here” refrain. On this night, however, they were together, supporting one another and there was definitely nowhere else they wanted to be.

• Stressed Out Trike Ride

  After “Next Semester,” the pair hopped on a pair of giant Big Wheel tricycles — as seen in the “Stressed Out” video — and rode them through an aisle on the stadium floor as fans laughed and cheered them on. In yet another silly Easter egg bit for the hardcore Clikkies, at the end of his journey, Joseph gave a sly look as he grabbed a heavy chain from a nearby post and wrapped it around the trike before he made his way to the B-stage in a winky call-back to the time last year when a fan snagged one of Dun’s not-locked-down drums at a show in Manchester, England.

• “Can’t Help Falling in Love” … Twice

  The hit-heavy set included such live staples as “Chlorine,” “Nico and the Niners” and “Heavy Dirty Soul,” as well as the homage to staying grounded, Blurryface‘s “Fairly Local” and the roof-rattling “Jumpsuit.” What fans didn’t expect after a 10-minute intermission was a reprise of the duo’s gentle cover of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love” — which they recorded for their 2013 Holding on to You EP — that found Joseph fumbling the opening lines. “That’s not the right lyrics sorry,” the singer admitted after the false start of his solo piano version of the King’s beloved ballad. “Columbus, Ohio I dedicate this next song to you, I mean it from the bottom of my heart,” Joseph said before starting over. Despite the 100,000-plus in attendance, the entire building was cloaked in silence as he sang, “I can’t help falling in love with you.”

• Putting on a Drone Show

  Just playing their longest show with their most expansive set list would have been enough. But during “Holding On To You,” from the group’s 2011 sophomore album, Regional At Best — whose anxiety-fueled self-fulfilling prophecy title had clearly turned out to be a total fallacy, at best —  the sky suddenly lit up with a giant drone show. Fans marveled at the shape of a slowly spinning ballerina dancing over the main stage and then morphing into the band’s three-bar logo as they dove into Breach‘s riotous “Drum Show.” The flying copters then, naturally reformed into the words “Drone Show,” which drew a huge laugh from the audience.

• Insurance Woes

  With the buzz from the drone show still percolating, Joseph asked the crowd to help with a bit that he said the group’s insurance company warned them against. As they often do, the duo sent Dun out onto a platform help up by fans on the floor, this time asking them to help transport him all the way back to the main stage from the b-stage. Gently! The singer admitted that when they came up with the bit, they figured the Clique would get Dun back to home base “real quick, but they all want to touch him. Stop touching my boy!” he warned with a smile. “You guys are slow, that’s why the insurance company said don’t do it.” As the interminable journey stretched on to several minutes, Joseph killed time as Dun played an extended drum solo before the real drum show started.

• Give the Drummer(s) Some

  After an intro video featuring Jack White, the band dove into the White Stripes’ iconic sports anthem “Seven Nation Army,” giving the tune they’ve covered before their signature bass and drum-heavy take before getting joined by the night’s other special guests: The Ohio State marching band drum line. The collegiate corps, dressed in their full game-day attire, provided a thrilling, percussive punch to the already foot-stomping song, as well as yet another nod to the homecoming feel of it all.

• Longest, Biggest, Brightest

  What befits a crowning achievement home town blowout? How about the longest, widest and deepest set list ever? The three-hour, 38 (or 39 depending on how you count) show had the longest set list and running time of any of the band’s gigs to date. It featured songs from nearly every one of albums, including nine from Blurryface, eight from Breach, five from Vessel, four each from Clancy and Trench and two from Scaled and Icy, one from their self-titled independently release 2009 debut, the two covers and a handful of singles.

• Tears of Joy

  Before bringing it all back home with their traditional, heart-swelling finale “Trees,” Togg and Job were back for one last sports update, this one setting up a message with the heart of two champions. “Usually at this point in the show I’m playing the synth for ‘Trees’ and I say something on stage like a ‘thank you’ and a heartfelt ‘we appreciate you,'” Joseph said in another pre-taped bit. “The truth is, I booked and scheduled us getting into the stadium a few days early to film this video specifically because I was worried that I was gonna cry,” he added, looking a bit misty. “And I thought if I just did it on video then I wouldn’t cry.” He said when they started the group nearly 20 years ago he couldn’t put into words what they were trying to do, “it was just something that we felt. And I think the closest tangible thing that we have to what it is, that we were trying to do is this show here tonight in our hometown.” The show then ended with the sound of 100,000 bodies and voices proving him right as a final drone message lit up the sky with a two-word message that said it all: “from here.”