Going into Mt. Joy’s performance, while Amy and I would consider ourselves fans, we only really knew two songs between the two of us — “Orange Blood” and “My Vibe.” On the massive Prudential stage, the five-man ensemble of Matt Quinn on vocals/guitar, Sam Cooper, also on guitar, Sotiris Eliopoulos kicking it on drums with Jackie Miclau on the keys keyboards and Michael Byrnes laying it down on bass, kind of got swallowed up. But the crowd was vibrating in anticipation of a good time and we were all raring to go at that 4:30 p.m. start time.
One of the first songs off the setlist was “Orange Blood” — checking the box off for Amy. With little room for unneeded track introductions, the band jumped into their next song and the whole crowd sang the words “Half my love is on the run.” Mt. Joy cycled through “Sheep” before Miclau locked in for a beautiful interlude on the keys before Quinn let out “I know you think I think too much” and “Dirty Love” came and went in this golden afternoon.
Midway through their performance, Quinn told the audience how the left side of his face will be a lobster tomorrow after being pelted by the sun’s rays for 30 minutes at that point. But speaking of shades of red, Quinn’s remark perfectly set up their next song, “Pink Lady,” in which they brought out another BottleRock 2026 performer, Zinadelphia.
While the band’s music mostly spoke for them, Quinn took the time to dedicate their next song, “Lucy,” to their friend who was battling brain tumors.
“In a world that feels like it’s lost its humanity… there is this glimmer of hope,” Quinn said. “There are so many good people doing great things. It matters you take care of each other. There are great people who show up at festivals like this.”
Their next couple songs revolved around relatable experiences in the lead singer’s life: “I’m Your Wreck” being about the time he made up an illness so he didn’t have to sightsee in San Francisco, to which one fan joked that he just had diarrhea, and “Julia” being about going to a restaurant high as mountain.
The audience cried out their iconic lyric that made them famous, “Jesus drives an Astrovan” and just like that, their set was over and definitely a “Silver Lining” for many in an already stacked Memorial Day Weekend.
