I met up with The Backlash earlier in the week before their first headlining show at Lost Lake Lounge on Colfax. It was almost exactly one year into this lineup. “About a year at this point,” Emerson Vaughan told me. “Like the actual anniversary.”
The name has been around longer, but this version is where it locked in. What was supposed to be a one-off gig turned into a jam session instead. Katie asked Vaughan to play guitar for a show that never fully came together. They kept playing anyway. “It stuck,” he said. Simple as that.
Katie Overby grew up with a cowpunk dad. That is not branding. That is history. She was raised around the Los Angeles punk scene and has been writing songs since she was fifteen. Some of those early songs still show up in their set now, just heavier and more defined.
The influences make sense when you hear them live. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Concrete Blonde, Bob Dylan, KISS, Guns N’ Roses, and Oasis. Glam and punk sit atop a classic rock structure. When Katie said, “They all flow together,” it did not feel like a pitch line. It felt accurate.
Saturday at Lost Lake felt earned. Early afternoon on Colfax, and the room still filled in close, shoulder to shoulder near the stage, drinks sweating in hands while sunlight still slipped through the front windows. It was the kind of crowd that showed up on purpose – not wandering in. Waiting.
Aratik opened with tight, driving energy and set the tone immediately. No wasted space between songs, just momentum. Soneffs followed and built on it, pushing the volume and tightening the room even more.
By the time The Backlash stepped out, the crowd was already leaning forward, ready for it, like they knew this was not just another set on the calendar.
It was also a celebration for both of their birthdays. Vaughan had just turned twenty. Katie was turning twenty the next day. The flyer read “Big Ass Backlash Birthday Bash,” and the room treated it like one.
From the first song, they were locked in. The guitar tone stayed sharp and bright without getting muddy, and the fiddle did not sit politely in the mix. It cut straight through it.
Mid-set, her dad walked onto the stage – the same cowpunk dad who shaped her sound in the first place. You could see the shift immediately. Confusion, then recognition, then that look you cannot fake. He started singing “Happy Birthday,” and the whole room followed. It felt real and personal in a way that warmed everyone in the room’s hearts.
They also played “Liars,” which Katie will be releasing under her self-titled solo project Katie Overby. It already sounds finished, not like a test run to get the kinks out, but like something that belongs on a record.
One year into this lineup, The Backlash does not feel like a band trying to figure it out. They feel like a band stepping into something they have been building toward for a while, and I am here for it.
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