“A bunch of nerds in a room.”

If you can stretch that definition like a rubber band, you can squeeze DEVOtional within the resulting lasso. It makes the gathering sound not very exhilarating. DEVOtional 2021 was not that. I had been awaiting the weekend for over two years, since COVID-19 turned 2020’s event virtual. I was excited to once again witness a disparate gaggle of hipsters, super freaks, and disco dancers celebrating the existence of DEVO, the De-Evolution Band, over two days of de-evolved joyful noise. After months of slump, we were vaccinated and recharged, and the rubber band was about to snap from the pressure. It had been too long.

It took five and a half hours of highwaying it to Ohio Friday morning to make it to the hotel, where the fall foliage and afternoon sun greeted us warmly against the frigid wind. The refuge of our hotel room was crucial for primping and resting up between days.

As the sun began to sink and the chills intensified, we drove to the Beachland Ballroom some twenty minutes away on the outskirts of Cleveland. The small side tavern was intimate, granting me the chance to connect with friends who I had, for the most part, either not seen in over two years or only knew from the internet. Everyone was jittery to get back into the groove of socialization, taking photos fervently in attempts to preserve each moment.

As the night rolled on, the stage, which was almost the same level as the floor, became a showcase of some of the most interesting arrangements of DEVO songs to grace anyone’s ears. One man band Eric Nassau brought loop pedal preciseness to his passionate acoustic guitar, pulling eyes as his tongue clicks, “la-la”s, and whistles were looped and sampled on the fly with the press of his feet. Listening to an audio recording, one may assume he had at least two other guitar players and a beat boxer accompanying him. He was a man-machine with a heart full of soul.

Poopy Necroponde and the Louisiana Fudge Patch Kids followed, subjecting the crowd to a hypnotizing mutant drone-groove that hit like spiked psychedelics. I was entranced by the motley gang on performers: two drummers, women in dashing white hoods and sunglasses looking like vagrants of a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, a masked drag queen, a tiger print tracksuit bro, a helmeted scrub mutant in heels, and, most normally, Poopy looking like your average indie rocker in a backwards cap and jeans. They were the ones who were kicked out of the circus for suggesting they incorporate more brown notes. As they brought their seemingly endless blast of sonic terrorism to a close, I looked around me to realize they had cut the population of the room down by about half. I stayed. In fact, I wished their set had gone on longer. I was left fascinated and without words. All I knew was that nothing was going to beat Poopy’s platter that night. The crowded bodies slowly refilled the room, a warm refuge from the November weather—until a subtle chill took residence in the air and never dissipated, presumably because someone turned on the AC. After a peek into the Beachland’s basement shop, I departed as the hyperactive Fantastic Plastics live streamed their neon-embodying performance. I needed to rest up for the real big day to follow.

The night’s sleep then gave way to Saturday. Food, shopping at the plaza outside the hotel, food, primping, then back to the Ballroom. The main floor was open, and despite its recent renovations, the place still looked and felt the same as I remembered it. Rows of folding chairs filled the center of the room; merch tables lined the walls; DEVO posters hung high juxtaposed with polka paintings and musty curtains. Assorted freaks and geeks milled around examining the purchasable wares and chatting amongst each other. It was good to be back.

The Jimmy Psycho Experiment kicked off the event about a half hour after I arrived with techie-lounge instrumental arrangements of classic DEVO tracks. The lack of words didn’t keep the crowd from singing along to the ones they remembered—I remember the chorus to “Freedom of Choice” getting a particularly intense treatment. Everyone seemed happier than ever to be uniting once more in that little room.

The event’s special guests also helped provide support. I said hello one time to David Kendrick, who drummed for DEVO in the late 1980s, and I did not get to speak at all to comedian Fred Armisen, who took up drum duty for the band once in 2018, but many others enjoyed getting to speak with them. More power to them.

The most well known guest of the weekend, bassist and ‘chief strategist’ Jerry Casale, was accompanied by his trusty wranglers: manager and friend Jeff Winner manned the merch table for the recent reissue of Jerry’s 2006 album while Jerry’s wife, the kindhearted Krista Napp, was also reuniting with friends and places she hadn’t seen in person in years. Knowing both from the internet, I was glad to finally say hello in person. Jeff, a hep cat who had never attended DEVOtional previously, was great to hang around and joke with throughout the night. Krista proved herself to be the older and cooler version of myself that I always assumed she was, never faltering in her friendliness. We stood together with shared friend Kati to watch Jackson Leavitt’s hyperactive Fight Milk set, chatting between songs [get “Wiggly World” back in your setlist, DEVO!]. As the video projection screen screamed with color and Jackson bopped around the stage, we were given a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a new breed of DEVO fan—the Generation Z strain. There were more younger folk in the room than I remembered in previous years, from very small children to teenagers. Having practically grown up at the DEVOtional—I first attended before I had even entered high school—it was interesting seeing the littluns and the bigguns both have their fun. Then again, I was the one receiving mutual respect from Krista, Jeff, and others I looked up to despite age disparities. It was as if we were all old friends. There were no generation gaps, but we were all DEVO.

And who is more DEVO than Jerry Casale? I met him face to face once at my first DEVOtional over three years prior, and he might as well have been meeting an entirely different person. On Saturday, I was granted the chance to meet him as the person I have become since then. The times I got to speak with him across Saturday and Sunday were the most soaring highs of the weekend. We talked in truth, and he responded to me with genuine appreciation and interest. I got to see firsthand the humility he maintains while retaining passion and pride for the work he’s done. Considering my previous positive experience, I wasn’t not expecting it, but it was gratifying to be on the receiving end after such a long wait. I don’t listen to interviews with Jerry as much as I used to—his frequent devolutionist doom-and-gloom zeal, while truthful, is best ingested in moderation, especially when college applications and other investments for the future are being made. But in a few of the more recent ones I’ve heard, he’s cited the enthusiasm of the youth, that new generation, as a vital source of encouragement. It was fitting, then, that he showed someone like me respect. He seemed delighted when I told him I had my target set on his and Krista’s alma mater, Kent State—my own duty now for the future. I felt as if, finally, someone outside of my isolated small town bubble thought I was worth talking to. He had no obligation to be in that room, but he showed up anyway. He treated the people he met with respect and dignity. It was a true honor to feel so valued.

Jerry disappeared after a riveting performance of “Girl U Want” with local teen punk group Detention; their female lead singer Elliott sang the lyrics in first person right beside Jerry, who sang in third person. The group surged with youthful energy, knocking the performance of theirs I’d seen at 2019’s 5KDEVO out of the water. They were noticeably more comfortable with their position as local rock stars than they had been two years ago. They were also even better at physicalizing the raw emotions that come with teen angst, yet that clearly didn’t stop the oldsters from having a ball right along with them. The aforementioned Fred Armisen even joined in their final song, a ditty entitled “Fist Fight In The Parking Lot.” TEEN ANGST!

The explosion of energy that Detention brought was hard to follow up. Al Mothersbaugh’s Massive Hotdog Recall—Mark and Bobby’s cousin—did a damn good job of doing so, injecting classic DEVO tunes with horns, green visors, and one face plant. My initial disappointment of not being able to give Jerry a formal goodbye was washed away in a flash as I couldn’t help but let myself loose.

DEVOmatix, an Atlanta based tribute group who have been an end-of-the-night staple for the past few years, were next, serving a mixture of fun DEVO covers and entirely original songs, a daring move for a DEVO tribute band to make. Nonetheless, not shabby.

The rest of the night after Al’s band was more low-key on my end, though that could not be said for the more rowdy attendees. The final group, The Super Thing, was a lighthearted super group of members of bands who had played earlier. This was apparently a signal for everyone who had been drinking throughout the night to let loose like there was no 5K in the morning—not that most of them were running it, anyway. A football playing spaceman in a long matted black wig had been running around since early on in the day, and he was still filled with energy despite being stripped of his wig and subject to runners in his uniform. A green-bobbed Holly Hobbie was also bopping around, sometimes shielding her face from boy cooties with a reflective visor; she wore red hair and a J-Pop Strawberry Shortcake getup the previous night. A relatively normally dressed man who had been getting visibly more and more jittery as the night wore on made it known that he wasn’t just a new waver: “PLAY ‘IRON MAN!’ PLAY ‘IRON MAN!’” No Black Sabbath songs were performed. The playful drunken mayhem was extremely amusing to watch from my folding chair. By the end of the night, a strange monument to the insanity I had just witnessed was installed in the corner of the room—a puffy rainbow coat decorated with the spaceman’s armor and hat wrapped on some sort of mannequin. It was a beautiful sight.

Eventually the super group performed their last song and the lights switched on. Party people said their goodbyes and organizers began to clean up. We parted ways with friends old and newer for the night. Jeff the rookie admitted he was glad he had stuck out for the long haul; he ended up really enjoying himself. I couldn’t see why anyone wouldn’t have.

The next morning, I got up, donned my running gear, waved goodbye to the hotel, and headed down to Akron, the site of the weekend’s grand finale: the 5KDEVO. Most of the others who attended the previous night didn’t follow suit. I could see why. I still had energy within me to run three miles; I had been training for over a year at that point, and I wasn’t going to let the opportunity to show my stuff go to waste. I didn’t. I earned the third place trophy in my age group and set a personal record.

The race’s aftermath was forced to bend to that force that humans have been bending to more and more in recent years: the weather. The efforts made to defy the cold, including taking refuge in a cheesesteak parlor, were understandable, but the event in turn lacked the fanfare of the sunny late July installment of the race I had ran two years prior. A strings and flute performance of DEVO songs by a chamber quartet was worth running the race to watch, yet the low-key nature of the post-race in general, in no intended offense to the race’s organizers, felt a little anticlimactic. Maybe everyone just wanted to get it over with as the cold took hold of them. Maybe some of them wanted the overwhelming weekend to end quickly and painlessly. Yet even being left in the cold as the scene winded down couldn’t damper the warmth I was still feeling from earlier.

We moseyed to the parking garage where our car was waiting to take us back to the real world. One thing was certain: I had a new standard of living.

Thanks Nick, Michael, Tim, Jeff, and everyone else who helped make DEVOtional 2021 happen!