Digital Tour Bus - Bringing You On Tour

In this First Concert Ever segment, the metalcore/alternative rock artist, BONESTEEL, talks about the story of of his first experience with live music. You can check out the story below:

It was early 2006, and like most preteens, I was assembling my identity as if it were a scrapbook collage of everything I absorbed through music and TV. Unlike a lot of kids my age, I had unrestricted access to the Wild West of late ’90s and early 2000s media. My dad and I bonded over Jackass when I was little, which evolved into my absolute obsession with Viva La Bam on MTV (and a blatant disregard for the “Do Not Try This At Home” warning—but that’s for another time).

Bam and WWE were my gateways to an entirely new world of music. Of the many bands I was exposed to through the television screen, CKY became one of the defining bands for me. If you had asked 13-year-old me what my favorite song was, I wouldn’t have hesitated: “Sporadic Movement” from Infiltrate–Destroy–Rebuild.

By then, I had moved from a bustling city in the Bay Area to a tiny, quiet fishing town on California’s Central Coast. The nearest concert venues were in San Luis Obispo, a nearby college town that, by some divine alignment of WTF, was hosting CKY on February 15 as part of the Cities of Evil Tour.

The headliner? Avenged Sevenfold. I had heard the name and seen the shirts at school, but their music was unfamiliar to me. That didn’t matter. If CKY was coming, I knew I couldn’t miss it. My friend Max and I went to the local record store and handed over what little cash we had from our paper route (no, this isn’t 1956—believe it or not, they still had paperboys in the mid-2000s, and the pay sucked), but we had enough to walk out with physical tickets—less than $20 apiece. You can’t even park for $20 in 2025.

Show Day: A Defining Moment

That Wednesday, I wore my typical attire for the show. My blonde, Jeff Hardy-inspired hair (complete with blue and purple streaks) was pulled into a ponytail, the sides of my head freshly shaved. I threw on my baggiest jeans and zipped up an Affliction hoodie from a local shop called Liquid Soul. Max and I piled into his mom’s car, and she dropped us off at the Cal Poly Rec Center.

This wasn’t some grimy club with sticky floors and sticker-plastered urinals. It was an actual college venue—probably one of the nicest places these bands had played at that point. We walked inside, immediately spotting some of the other kids from school. Among them was a girl with a pet rat she’d bring to class and keep in her locker.

As we stood around talking, the lights suddenly cut out.

No warning. No buildup. Just—boom—darkness.

Before I could process what was happening, the opening band, Bullets and Octane, detonated into their set. And that’s when I realized we’d made a rookie mistake: we were standing directly next to the left PA speaker.

The sound wasn’t just loud—it was fucking seismic for my inexperienced ears. The kind of decibels that rattle your teeth and vibrate your guts. My first instinct was to plug my ears, but Rat Girl immediately shot me a look and said, “Don’t be a little bitch.”

“...I’m not a little bitch,” I ruminated in my head. I unclenched, let the noise consume me, and braced myself for what was next.

CKY: The Reason I Was Here

When CKY took the stage, they were everything I thought they would be. They delivered exactly what I had spent years imagining—filthy, fuzzed-out guitars, manic drumming, and enough profanity between songs to be the perfect bad influence. The band from West Chester, Pennsylvania, that I’d heard constantly through Bam’s MTV shenanigans was now right in front of me.

Then their set ended—but not before some girl bashed a guy in the head with a bottle as they got pulled apart and ejected from the show. After CKY exited the stage, some people started leaving. But we weren’t going anywhere. We had paid for these tickets, and we were about to see what this Avenged Sevenfold thing was all about.

Avenged Sevenfold: A Core Memory

The curtain dropped, revealing a monstrous Deathbat backdrop. When the second Avenged Sevenfold hit the stage, I realized I was in completely uncharted territory.

It was as if The Nightmare Before Christmas and Guns N’ Roses collided with one another in that very theater.

Their presence was cinematic. Their music was daunting. The combination of The Rev’s signature double bass/ride, Syn and Zacky’s twin guitars, and M. Shadows’ uncanny melodies—pulsating through gravel-drenched, roaring vocal cords—was sensory overload for my little 13-year-old mind.

Curious, Max and I inched toward the pit, perplexed by the sporadic movement (get it?). That’s when Max decided that the best way for me to truly experience the show was to shove my scrawny ass into the middle of it like I was Simba in a gorge full of wildebeest. Spoiler: Mufasa didn’t come to save me.

Suddenly, my stick-like, lima-bean-shaped frame was flailing through the air, colliding with a monolithic dude in a drenched white T-shirt. Before I could even process Max’s betrayal, I was on my back, staring at the ceiling.

Then, without hesitation, the same burly stranger reached down, yanked me up, patted me on the back, and sent me right back in.

That was my first pit.

Getting knocked down was inevitable—but so was getting picked back up. I probably ate shit half a dozen more times that night, but every single time, there was a college-aged dude who hoisted me to my feet and shoved me forward. Even if the kid was cramping their style, they still welcomed me in. I’ve been pretty critical of how I feel metalheads treat each other when it comes to accepting other people’s tastes, but that night, they could not have been more welcoming.

I finally understood it.

After the Show: The Epilogue

As the night ended and we shuffled into the lobby, the bands hung around to meet fans. Jess Margera was there, and Max, in peak 2006 fashion, didn’t even ask for a picture—he just shoved his ancient flip phone into Jess’s face and snapped a blurry pic now lost to the ether.

We met some of the Avenged Sevenfold guys too, then stumbled outside, ears ringing like emergency sirens. It was midnight on a school night. I was drenched in sweat, physically wrecked, and completely transfigured.

That show rewired me and pushed me off the cliff into a nosedive of pursuing rock and metal music.

Full Circle: Manifesting the Dream

What I didn’t realize then was how small the world is. That night was just the first of many times Avenged Sevenfold would cross my path. They became a massive influence—not just in my music taste, but in the music I would create.

Years later, I found myself in their music videos. Even crazier, my song “Upside Down” would feature McKenna Haner, an incredibly gifted artist in her own right and, ironically, part of the Avenged Sevenfold family. The Haners have always been kind, always supportive, and through a series of surreal twists and turns, my music has some A7X DNA imprinted on it.

The Band That Started It All

I came for CKY.

I left part of the A7X Army.

That night wasn’t just my first show—it was a defining moment. It shaped my passion, my career, and my friendships. As inspired and hopeful as that show made me all those years ago, that feeling has never left. I have, at times, retreated, contemplated the likelihood of success, and even taken small breaks, but the mission of making others feel the way those bands made me feel that night remains the mission of my life. And for all the music, inspiration, and support I’ve received since that show—February 15, 2006, at the Cal Poly Rec Center—I am eternally grateful.