stray cats uk tour 2022

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Stray Cats  

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There are some artists who become the personification of their genre. They represent everything good about that type of music to such an extent that most other acts simply sound derivative. When it comes to rockabilly, it's undoubtedly Stray Cats who define the sound.

Formed in 1979 while the rest of the world was lost in an ocean of synthesisers, Brian Setzer, Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom perfected the rockabilly formula. Over the years they recorded countless classics but, quite simply, if you haven't seen them live you'll never know what truly gifted musicians they are. In a sold out Brixton Academy, the Stray Cats sound as fresh now as they ever did. Setzer's guitar sizzles as he picks out flawless licks and howls to the roof with a passion and rawness that belies his age. The rhythm sections seamlessly slips between the effortless cool 'Stray Cat Strut' and the psychobilly aggression of 'Rumble in Brighton'. (With an obligatory lyric change to 'Rumble in Brixton' on the last chorus) The band blast through old classics like 'Gene & Eddy' and 'Ubangi Stomp' with a swagger and energy reminiscent of glory days of rock n' roll. The slower numbers such as 'Summer Nights' give a chance for Setzer to show off how rich his voice has become with age as 4000 leather jacketed fans sway along.

All this comes before an encore including covers of 'Twenty Flight Rock' and 'That's Alright Mama'. The final number is a wild version of 'Please Don't Touch' where Lee Rocker mounts his double bass like a possessed rock n' roll gargoyle as Setzer leaps across the stage monitors with an enormous grin on his face.

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I had the pleasure to see them in '83 at the US Festival in California. It was the '80s Woodstock, they played their 2nd album to 200,000+ before it was released. The 3-day line up was incredible, just google the bands and videos. When the cats started their first song all of the fringes of the crowd went to the stage for the first time making the food vendor area a ghost town. I know, I was the Icce vendor dude... The reviews said that they were the highlight of the event...

Incredible show. Three musicians really showcased their talent instrumentally, vocally, and with lots of energy. I would definitely recommend to any fan of theirs or those who love the rockabilly beat! Well worth the price to herd these cats!

Amazing time. First time I have seen them live, band were brilliant, boyfriend has seen them many times before and still says they have what it takes and would love to follow them around at each live concert.

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Stray Cats tour dates and tickets 2024-2025 near you

Want to see Stray Cats in concert? Find information on all of Stray Cats’s upcoming concerts, tour dates and ticket information for 2024-2025.

Stray Cats is not due to play near your location currently - but they are scheduled to play 16 concerts across 1 country in 2024-2025. View all concerts.

Next 3 concerts:

• Woodinville, WA, US
• Bend, OR, US
• Saratoga, CA, US

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• Los Angeles (LA) (9)
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• Manchester (3)
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Past Events

Here are the most recent UK tour dates we had listed for The Stray Cats. Were you there?

August 2022

• Wed 10 Aug Blackpool, The Waterloo Music Bar Slim Jim Phantom Trio Darrel Higham, The Stray Cats
• Thu 27 Jun London, Eventim Apollo The Stray Cats, The Living End, The Selecter
• Wed 26 Jun London, Eventim Apollo The Stray Cats, The Living End
• Tue 25 Jun O2 Apollo Manchester The Stray Cats, The Living End
• Sun 23 Jun O2 Academy Birmingham The Stray Cats, The Living End

September 2008

• Fri 12 Sep O2 Academy Glasgow The Stray Cats, Vince Ray & The Boneshakers
• Thu 11 Sep Manchester Academy The Stray Cats
• Wed 10 Sep London, O2 Academy Brixton The Stray Cats

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Brian Setzer

Stray Cats original members Brian Setzer (guitar, vocals), Lee Rocker (upright bass, vocals) and Slim Jim Phantom (drums, vocals) will rock their way across America this summer when they return to the road for a three-week tour on July 27. The multi-million selling band’s trek will include stops in Bend, Los Angeles (two shows in Costa Mesa), San Diego, Denver, New York City and more before wrapping up August 17 in Bridgeport, CT. They’ll be joined for these dates by The Midnight Cowgirls as the support act. The tour dates are below, with more to be announced soon.

Tickets go on sale this Friday, March 29 at 10:00 AM (local time). Artist fan club presale kicks off Wednesday, March 27 10:00 AM (local time); sign up for the band newsletter at Straycats.com to get access.

These shows will mark the STRAY CATS’ first performances since the release of their critically acclaimed 2019 album 40 and subsequent reunion tour, which they followed with a live album ROCKED THIS TOWN: FROM LA TO LONDON in 2020. Concertgoers can expect to hear the band’s signature unparalleled virtuosity and red-hot rock & roll spirit via their classic tunes alongside their most recent material. Their setlists will include massive hits such as “Stray Cat Strut,” “Rock This Town,” “Runaway Boys,” “(She’s) Sexy + 17,” and more.

BRIAN SETZER : “I’ve always said that we all grew up in the same neighborhood, so there’s an instant feeling between us when we play. It allows us to be confident and spontaneous. Man, that’s priceless.”

LEE ROCKER : “With just a string bass, a guitar and a drum, we have always had less instruments and gear, but more rumble, more twang, more shake, and more bang than anyone else. Now’s the right time to bring it back!”

SLIM JIM PHANTOM : “I’m thrilled to be doing shows in 2024 with Stray Cats in the U.S.A.! Playing drums with Brian and Lee in our rockabilly band is the best possible way to spend a summer!”

The STRAY CATS 2024 dates are as follows:

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• Classic Album

Classic Album: Stray Cats

By Vintage Rock | March 14, 2022

• 10 minute read

In 1980 the British rockabilly revival was primed, ready and waiting for somebody to light the touchpaper. Vintage Rock pays tribute to the punky trio who caused a rock’n’roll explosion. By Jack Watkins

I n 1983 Barney Hoskyns wrote an article on the Stray Cats for the NME . The band was riding the crest of the wave in the US, but record sales in Britain, where they had enjoyed their first major success, had levelled off. Hoskyns pointed out that it was almost exactly 23 years since one of the Cats’ heroes, Eddie Cochran, had met his untimely end while on a tour of England, and he wondered whether, in decades to come, the country would still be cherishing memories of the boys from New York with similar warmth.  

Fast-forward 37 years, and the answer’s surely a resounding “Yes!” The band celebrate their 40th anniversary this year, and just a few months ago released a brand new single, Cat Fight (Over a Dog Like Me) . A new album, their first in 25 years, follows on 24 May.

Old school Teds might disagree, but Top 10 hits like Runaway Boys and Rock This Town have now entered the canon of rockabilly greats. And you can carve in stone the word ‘classic’ next to their debut album Stray Cats , released in 1981.  

In its own way, that LP was as raw, naïve and uncalculating as the work of the first-generation rockers in whose footsteps, without overdoing the awe, they so ably trod. Even more remarkably, they were signed to major record label Arista at the time. Can you imagine an equivalent company putting their weight behind such an album today?  

Accounts of the 1980 rockabilly revival usually head off with admiring references to Stray Cats, but a little rewind is in order to pay credits due to the rock’n’roll scene that already existed in Britain when the band arrived in London in the summer of that year. Not only were there many good groups playing to enthusiastic, well-informed audiences on the club and pub circuit, but Matchbox had already had a steady run of UK pop chart success with singles like Rockabilly Rebel , Buzz Buzz A Diddle It , and Midnight Dynamos . Shakin’ Stevens had also registered in the Top 30 with Hot Dog and Marie Marie , and Crazy Cavan And The Rhythm Rockers were churning out a stream of fine albums for Charly Records.  

So rockabilly was already bubbling over into the British mainstream. All that was needed, nearly everyone agreed, was some energetic new band who could really seize the imagination of the nation’s youth. That band was to be Stray Cats – a trio made up of Brian Setzer on vocals and guitar, Slim Jim Phantom on drums, and Lee Rocker on bass fiddle. They’d cut their teeth on the club scene of Long Island, New York, before graduating to the trendier bars of Manhattan. Slim Jim had learnt to play drums from Mousey Alexander, who’d worked with jazz greats like Benny Goodman, Bud Freeman and Sy Oliver. Both he and Lee, whose parents were acclaimed classical musicians, had played together in a band before hooking up with Brian, two years their senior. Quizzed on his influences, Setzer would reel off a string of names going all the way back to Charlie Christian. When you peered beyond the poses and the obligatory rock’n’roll lifestyle excesses, you could see this band took their music seriously.

Their back story was a marketing man’s dream. Having honed their chops and grown their audience in New York, they’d taken the step of crossing the Atlantic because they felt their songs would be more appreciated than in the US, where the name of Gene Vincent was almost forgotten. But for a few weeks things were so tough the Cats were forced to sleep on the floor of a music publicist’s in Soho while he got them some gigs.  

The dates that followed, from Camden’s Dingwalls to the underworld haunt of the Thomas A Becket pub on the Old Kent Road, showcased the tough energy of their act, and the fact that many older rockers, from Keith Richards and Mick Jagger to Chrissie Hynde and members of The Clash, were often to be seen in the audience, crystalised a growing reputation.  

The key rock contact, however, was Dave Edmunds, who would produce their debut album. “There was a bunch of names that were being batted around to produce us once we got the contract with Arista,” recalls Slim Jim. “Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wanted to do it, but that was going to be difficult to organise, whereas Dave had been following us a bit, and expressed a wish to produce us. We’d been to his house, where he had a basement made up like a pub with a jukebox. We just thought he was a cool guy.”  

Edmunds would produce eight of the 12 tracks that comprised Stray Cats , which was cut very quickly, to “strike while the iron was hot,” in Slim Jim’s words. The first song they recorded, album opener Runaway Boys , was rushed out as a single in November 1980. Co-written by Setzer and Slim Jim, the song had climbed all the way up to No.9 in the singles charts over Christmas, guaranteeing national TV exposure time during the festive season.  

It’s hard to convey the impact of seeing and hearing the Cats for the first time. There was, of course, the look, especially the bouffant quiffs. Setzer was blond and blue-eyed, like a “demented Renaissance cupid,” as Barney Hoskyns put it. Slim Jim was tall and angular, wore huge earrings and, despite his off-stage friendliness, looked quite fierce. Lee Rocker was more laid back, twirling an enormous double bass beneath dark, broody eyes.  

But the look was nothing next to the sound of Runaway Boys with its incredible sparseness and heavy slapback echo. After years of skinny, screechy guitars, Setzer, with his Gretsch 6120 hollowbody, reintroduced a rich, chunky sound lost since the 1950s. Jim’s crisp staccato snare seemed to sit on top of the beat, his pared-down approach reflected in a minimalist drum kit consisting simply of snare, bass, and cymbal. Strangest of all was the monster rumble of Lee Rocker’s bass, supplying a shuddering, recurring riff throughout the track. Rockabilly anoraks might have noticed how Setzer deployed a tiny back-of-the-throat Eddie Cochran stutter on the reprise of the first verse, but this was no slavish tribute act. It was rockabilly alright, but with a punkish attitude.  

Side 1’s closer, the Setzer-penned Rock This Town , wore its roots a little more conspicuously than Runaway Boys , which is possibly why the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame placed it in among the 500 songs that helped shape the genre, but all the components of the Stray Cats sound were there. Their second single, it followed its predecessor into the UK Top 10.  

The Stray Cats live show around this time mixed revivals of old songs with new originals. The oldies included Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie , a tiny hit for Eddie Cochran in 1958. Setzer’s introduction of an expletive into the lyric prompted a threat of court action from the song’s publishing company (the matter was settled out of court). A lively version of Warren Smith’s old Sun single Ubangi Stomp had jungle warrior cries and hair-raising screams from Slim Jim. “Those screams came from our love of Gene Vincent And The Blue Caps,” remembers Slim Jim. “That was the way Gene’s drummer Dickie Harrell used to scream.”  

Another vintage track was Double Talkin’ Baby , a song Danny Wolfe had written for Vincent, with a clean production providing the perfect setting for some scintillating guitar runs from Setzer, following in the footsteps of Vincent’s best-loved guitarist Cliff Gallup, but stepping up the tempo. Wild Saxophone showed how far deeply the Cats were prepared to dig back into rock’s heritage. The song had originally been recorded by Fats Domino guitarist Roy Montrell as (Every Time I Hear) That Mellow Saxophone at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in New Orleans 1956. It also showed they were never intended to restrict themselves to pure rockabilly. It was one of several tracks they produced themselves, which tended to showcase their more contemporary influences.  

But Stray Cut Strut, another Setzer-penned song, showed as the lyric said, that they’d “got real class and got real style”. It was their last big hit in the UK, but was an even bigger seller when they eventually broke through in the States.  

As an album, the absence of gimmickry on Stray Cats is one reason for its abiding appeal, reflecting a quality going to the heart of why people are still attracted to rockabilly today. Slim Jim gives much credit to Edmunds. “Although we were an ‘overnight sensation’ in London, we’d already been at it for a year and a half in New York. We knew we could play very well.  

“But making a record was different. I would never have known, for instance, how much echo to put on a snare drum. Edmunds never told us how to play. Maybe he’d say: ‘I think there’s another take in you, try again,’ but he knew we had our own sound and that we knew what we were doing. He just recorded us and then worked his magic from behind the window.” Magic is the only word; Stray Cats is still casting its spell 38 years later.

Lee Rocker on Stray Cats

In midsummer 1980, Stray Cats were splashed over the cover of the NME before they’d even entered the studio. But could this striking trio cut a record to match the hype? Bassist Lee Rocker remembers it all…

Is it true that you cut Stray Cats in under two weeks?  

Absolutely. It’s something I have a very clear memory of. We cut it in 11 days, really rapid and virtually live for the most part. Maybe overdubs on a couple of vocal and guitar parts, but the vast majority was us going into the studio, setting up and playing like we’d do in gigs. Dave Edmunds was really aware of the need to capture the energy and sound we had, and not trying to make something different for the record.

Stray Cat Strut was a song you’d already had while you were still in New York…

Yes, that and Rock This Town and Rumble In Brighton . The band took off so quickly in every way when we came to London, but what a lot of people don’t realise is that in New York from around December 1979 up to our departure for England the following summer, we’d gone from a handful of people at our gigs to lines down the street at these venues. We were already a well-oiled machine. And Stray Cat Strut was a song that was there pretty much from the start, from when we rehearsed in my dad’s garage. It has an almost classic, jazzier take to it. It was rockabilly, but with another dimension. It was our calling card in some ways.  

Did the band choose all the songs on the album?

Yes, it was all the stuff we were doing live. That record is an exact representation of what we were doing at that point. The old songs came from us going down to Greenwich Village and haunting these little shops which had boxes of vintage albums. You’d dig through, and if the cover was cool and the guy had a guitar and a good haircut then you’d buy it for a dollar, bring it home and see what was on it. But some songs we just enjoyed listening to and didn’t necessarily incorporate into our show. We liked Ricky Nelson’s My One Desire because it had a great groove to it, and we were looking for something with a different pulse to it, to get a variety of tempo, groove and feeling.

Do you have a favourite track?  

I’d probably have to say Runaway Boys , the first one we tackled when we went in the studio with Dave Edmunds. It’s the biography of the three of us, summing up the way we felt, but it also sums us up musically. It was a song which, although it was a rockabilly track, would never have been recorded earlier.

The power of the bass fiddle underpinning that track is unbelievable… how did you get that particular sound?

It came after a lot of experimenting with different strings and pickups. Although we recorded the album in 11 days, we probably burned at least one working on bass tones and sound. I was using basic electric bass guitar and magnetic pickups screwed onto the neck. Dave said: “Why don’t we use gut strings?” but we eventually realised you couldn’t do that. These days, of course, you wouldn’t even think about that… I mean, of course it’s not going to work, you know? But everything was so new back then. So in the end we used steel strings with magnetic pickups, and that was part of a sound that was a hybrid of punk, rock’n’roll and rockabilly.  

The way the drum and bass sounds combined was also unusual…

Yes, instead of being sort of underneath the track, the drums came through on top of the bass. We were always explaining to the sound men that the bass needs to lead the bass drum as opposed to what happens with a lot of rock and metal bands where you’ve got the big ‘boomff’ on the bass drum, and the bass guitar just fits onto that.

On Double Talkin’ Baby Brian’s guitar playing is phenomenal, and much faster than the original…  

Yes, but on the album we were actually settling it back a little from how fast we played in the live shows. Looking back at some of the old footage, we played everything double time. In a 35-minute show we’d play around 15 songs, so on the album we actually pulled it back somewhat!

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Special guests announced for Stray Kids’ London BST Hyde Park show

The K-pop stars will be headlining the London series in a UK-exclusive show for 2024

Special guests have been announced for the upcoming Stray Kids headline gig at BST Hyde Park .

• READ MORE: Stray Kids – ‘5-Star’ review: cementing their superstar status

The South Korean pop group will be headlining the 2024 edition of BST Hyde Park l ater this summer, in what will be their only show in the UK this year. Find remaining tickets here .

Their slot will take place on Sunday, July 14, and sees them close out this year’s series. This comes as they’re the last of numerous headliners set to perform across this summer – others include SZA (June 29), Kings Of Leon (June 30), Morgan Wallen (July 4) Andrea Bocelli (July 5), Robbie Williams (July 6), Shania Twain (July 7), Stevie Nicks (July 12), Kylie Minogue (July 13).

Now, with just over a month to go until the gig, the first wave of artists joining the K-pop stars on the night have been announced.

Rising pop star Maisie Peters is among the first newly announced artists who will be joining the band on the night. She broke onto the scene with her 2021 debut album ‘You Signed Up For This’, which she wrote across London, LA and Nashville alongside the likes of Ed Sheeran , Fred again.. and more.

Her emotive and heartfelt lyrics soon put her on the map, and she has since gone on to sell out Wembley’s OVO arena. Her second album, ‘The Good Witch’ arrived in 2023 and made her the youngest solo British female artist in almost a decade to chart number one on the UK Albums Chart.

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Also joining Stray Kids is singer-songwriter Alec Benjamin, who had his breakthrough back in 2021 when he went on a huge tour across North America. He is widely known for the tracks from his sophomore album ‘(Un)Commentary’, which he shared in April 2022, and contained tracks like  ‘The Way You Felt’, ‘Older’, ‘Shadow Of Mine’, and ‘Speakers’.

His latest album ‘12 Notes’ arrived last month, and has already seen tracks ‘Sacrifice Tomorrow’, ‘Pick Me’, ‘In a Little’ and ‘By now’ become fan favourites.

South Korean girl group NMIXX is also joining the line-up. They were formed by SQU4D, a sub-label of JYP Entertainment, and broke out onto the scene back in February 2022 with their debut ‘AD MARE’. It contained the massive single ‘O.O’ and gathered the highest debut sales recorded by a girl group ever in K-pop history. Since then, they have shared a follow-up single ‘Entwurf’, debut EP ‘Expérgo’, and single album ‘A Midsummer Nmixx’s Dream’. Their sophomore EP ‘Fe3O4:Break’ is arrived earlier this year.

Finally, solo artist KIRE completes the first wave of support acts for the July 14 show. Formerly a member of the popular hip-hop idol band BOI! , KIRE is a singer, songwriter and producer. Before venturing into a solo career, he wrote for numerous esteemed artists, and ultimately launched his own discography with 2020’s debut single ‘Beautiful.

Earlier this year, KIRE embarked on a new venture by launching his own brand, ‘The Kid Who Flew’. It draws inspiration from his personal journey, and sees him aim to forge meaningful connections with others who relate to it.

“We’re so excited to welcome international superstars Stray Kids to BST Hyde Park in July for the first time,” said Jim King, CEO of European Festivals at AEG Presents. “We’re honoured to bring Stray Kids to the stage in 2024, as this genre only continues to grow from strength to strength.”

Last year Stray Kids achieved their first Billboard Hot 100 entry with ‘Lalalala’ , a single from their 2023 EP ‘Rock-Star’ . They became only the second-ever K-pop boyband to do so, following BTS .

The group’s latest studio album, ‘5-Star’ , was released last June. In a glowing five-star review of the record, NME wrote: “Stray Kids are flying so high above the crowd that they’re in a galaxy of their very own, where the parties are endless and the vibes are always five-star.”

Meanwhile, Stray Kids picked up the Global K-pop Artist prize at the 2024 Golden Disc Awards earlier this month. They also put on an explosive performance of ‘Megaverse’, ‘S-Class’ and ‘Hall Of Fame’ at the ceremony.

In 2023, Blackpink became the first K-pop band to headline a major UK festival with their set at BST Hyde Park .

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Stray Cats - Summer Tour '24

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Stray Rise Tour – 2022 – updated

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Little Kitty, Big City review – the cat’s meow

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After the success of Stray, a new indie cat simulator has appeared, with a more cartoonish style and a suitably laidback attitude.

As cat lovers, we’re perfectly fine with them always playing the bad guys in movies. Cats can be as affectionate and loyal as any other animal but what makes them so fun is their unpredictability and their absolute indifference to what you, or anyone else, wants them to do. This is a difficult thing to get across in a video game and, although it seems to have been popular with many, we never particularly liked 2022’s Stray , whose overly altruistic feline could’ve been any kind of creature and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

In Little Kitty, Big City though the cats actually act like cats. The one you control is young and inexperienced, and altogether too polite towards birds, but the other, older ones are as marvellously lazy and manipulative as they should be. This is clearly a much cheaper and low-tech game than Stray but it’s also more light-hearted and fun. Plus, you get to knock flowerpots from walls for no reason other than you want to.

The resultant game is essentially a laidback 3D Metroidvania and while it’s very short, and a bit too expensive, it really does feel like a gamified version of what a day in the life of a cat would actually be like. Assuming you don’t go for an ultra-realistic version where your protagonist is asleep for 23 hours a day.

The game begins with your unnamed kitty asleep on an outside window shelf and, startled by a crow, ends up falling off. It’s a long way down and when he ends up at ground level he decides he lacks the energy to climb back up – which we suspect is just an excuse, to himself and others, to procure a lot of fish, in order to give him the power to climb back up.

The visuals for the game are a lot more cartoonish than Stray, with a Tokyo backdrop that looks straight out of Katamari Damacy (even though developer Double Dagger Studio is based in Seattle) and anthropomorphised facial animation. Despite the simplistic visuals, the animation in general is pretty good, if also exaggerated when doing things like landing from a jump.

As a cat, your special abilities are limited to swatting things with your paws and rubbing yourself up against humans when you want something. You can also carry small objects, from rubber ducks to cans – which can be deposited in recycle bins in exchange for shiny trinkets that crows use as currency. Although the most fun is intentionally tripping up humans to steal their sandwiches or run off with their mobile phone.

Jumps are handled more realistically than Stray, in that you hold down the button and then direct a dotted line in an arc to where you want to jump, like throwing a grenade in a third person shooter. It’s not terribly accurate though and while that usually works in your favour it makes the times when it doesn’t all the more frustrating.

Climbing is not dissimilar to Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, in that you can keep going for a short while before your stamina runs out. Increasing the number of things you can climb on is what the fish are for and one of the key Metroidvania elements, as you’re initially only able to scramble up ivy. This and other platforming elements can cause confusion for the camera though, which feels very old-fashioned in its inability to keep up with the action.

The game’s an odd mix of the relatively realistic and the purposefully cartoonish, such as trying to retrieve a duck’s children, one of which can’t tear himself away from watching the attract sequence of an animal-themed parody of Street Fighter 2 – until you work out a way to turn it off by leaking water onto its power plug.

Little Kitty, Big City is a purposefully mellow and trivial game and there’s a very great need for such things at the moment. Although you could easily spend three times the time finishing every side quest, you can get through the main story missions in around two hours and there’s something very appealing about that – even if the price doesn’t reflect the game’s length.

We would’ve preferred the game edged more into Untitled Goose Game territory, in terms of the attitude of the cat, but you can be pretty mischievous all on your own, so that’s fine. The game’s fun and charming and it’s also perfect for casual and non-gamers, as the challenges are very mild and the controls uncomplicated. It is a proper game though, with some clever Metroidvania style obstacles that never feel patronisingly simple.

We definitely enjoyed it more than Stray, both as a game and a cat simulator, even if it falls short of being the perfect feline-themed video game. Either way, and unless you absolutely hate cats, this is a fun little amuse-bouche to play between other, bigger games and that’s certainly something the games industry could do with more of.

Little Kitty, Big City review summary

In Short: A charmingly short and sweet Metroidvania style adventure, featuring an ordinary cat doing ordinary cat things, in a game that’s perfect for casual gamers and for enjoying between larger epics.

Pros: The premise works very well, with a tidily designed open world environment and simple but non-patronising controls and puzzles. Plenty of side quests, even though the short length is a positive.

Cons: Skittish camera and jump controls. Quite expensive.

Score: 7/10

Formats: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC Price: £22.49 Publisher: Double Dagger Studio Developer: Double Dagger Studio Release Date: 9th May 2024 Age Rating: 3

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MLS and its weird history of raccoons: On the field, in the press box and ruining merchandise

There’s a line in nearly every job posting you see these days, a catch-all for employers looking to extract maximum value from their employees: “O ther duties as assigned.”

To those of us who are tethered to desks and chairs, the term doesn’t mean much. To Mark Mello and Ryan Haines — members of the Philadelphia Union ’s grounds crew — “other duties as assigned” can sometimes feel like their entire professional existence.

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“When you have a job such as ours,” says Mello, with just a hint of exasperation, “’anything and everything’ is in your job description.”

Yet nothing could’ve prepared the two for the “other duty” they would be called upon to perform a few weeks ago during the Union’s match against New York City FC.

About 20 minutes into the first half, the referee blew play dead as a pitch invader made their way over the ad boards and onto the playing surface. This was not your run-of-the-mill interloper, an overzealous fan seeking a selfie or an autograph. With a mask over its eyes and trotting at a leisurely gate, this invader felt distinctly more… mischievous.

Ah, the common raccoon. ‘Procyon lotor’ to the science crowd, ‘trash panda’ to the rest of us. Racoons, once wild creatures, have become ubiquitous in urban landscapes, occasionally wreaking havoc as they root through dumpsters, trash bins and the like. And at Subaru Park — the Union’s home, south of Philly in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania — they’ve made themselves right at home.

“We’re very lucky to be on the banks of the beautiful Delaware River,” says Mello. “We have deer, we have eagles, foxes and groundhogs here around the stadium. We just coexist, that’s our thing. We have plenty of grass for them to munch on outside the stadium. It’s just a fluke one of them made it inside. Maybe they smelled some of the delicious concession food.”

Nobody is sure where this raccoon lived or how it made its way onto the pitch, but the stadium was sent into an absolute frenzy when fans realized what was happening. Players and coaches steered clear of the animal as it cut a path across midfield and streaked towards Philadelphia’s goal. Play-by-play announcer Calum Williams offered an assurance to those tuned in on Apple TV: “We promise you that you are not watching the nature channel right now. We’re told that pest control is on the way to remove a rather adventurous raccoon from the field.”

RACCOON ON THE FIELD!!! MIDWEEK @MLS AT ITS FINEST pic.twitter.com/tO8AJUrkJw — Andrew Wiebe (@andrew_wiebe) May 16, 2024

Pest control, it turns out, was not on the way — not in any qualified sense, at least. The experts who handled this situation were Mello and Haines, along with nearly every other member of the Union’s ops crew.

“I don’t have nets or anything like that,” says Mello. “So I looked into the stands for anything we could use. I sent somebody over the railing and into the stands to grab a trash can. Our boss John grabbed the other trash can from our shop. It’s what we had. We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know how long it would go on. Our job is just to help make sure the game gets played.”

The raccoon had traversed the length of the field by the time it intersected with Mello, who was now in a full sprint toward it. Mello looked understandably out of steam as he made his best attempt to trap it.

“I was gassed,” he says. “I ran from the visitor’s bench to the other side and I was just… done. I had to get someone else to carry the trash can because I was simply not built for speed.”

Racoons aren’t, either. But what they lack in pace, they make up for in a form of chaotic resourcefulness that’s made them one of North America’s most adaptable animals.

“Raccoons are a generalist species,” says Laura Dudley Plimpton, a PhD student at Columbia who has spent years researching raccoons and other wildlife that have gained a foothold in urban landscapes. “They are amazing at using an anthropogenic (human-inhabited) area, using the resources in it and populating it beyond what that place can often sustain. That’s why you see really large, often high-density populations of racoons in these urban landscapes — like stadiums.”

Eager to evade capture, the raccoon — who league broadcasters went on to affectionately dub “Raquinho” — continued its lap around the playing surface. By now, the interloper had lost a step and, after a few unsuccessful tries, Union ops personnel finally trapped it between two trash cans. And just like that — after an industrious, crafty four-minute shift on the pitch — they whisked Raquinho away.

Which is where things probably would’ve ended years ago. But in the modern era, when highlights are clipped and instantly shared on social media, the incident began to draw interest. Significant interest, the kind MLS sometimes struggles to generate with their actual product.

Raquinho, along with the Union employees who wrangled him, became a bit of a sensation. By the time comedian Stephen Colbert shared the clip during his monologue on The Late Show, the little raccoon had firmly ingrained itself in the weird, wild history of MLS.

“I came to grow grass at a high level for professional sports,” says Mello, who feels more than a little uncomfortable with all the attention he received. “People aren’t talking about the grass, they’re talking about what’s on the grass. No matter how you spin it, it’s good for our team.

“And we’re putting a product out there, too, that can host such a fine animal.”

As for what happened to Raquinho? A Union spokesperson says the animal was turned over to the team’s corporate pest control sponsor and released “off campus”.

“Rest assured,” said the Union, “our new friend was released unharmed.”

Raquinho might be MLS’ newest raccoon, but he may not be its most famous.

By the time D.C. United moved into RFK Stadium in 1996, the venue was already an aging, concrete goliath, primitive even by MLS standards. United, though, made the most of the place, filling it with some of MLS’ most dedicated fans and winning a mess of trophies in the club’s early days.

Even when it was open, RFK was a bit of a wildlife sanctuary. There were the run-of-the-mill city dwellers — mice, rats, cockroaches — but there were also stranger residents. The stadium, which sits on the banks of the Anacostia River, had become a bit of an avian sanctuary, with herons, ospreys and kingfishers circling overhead. Occasionally, fans would arrive to find a dead fish in their seat, dropped from the talons of a bird above.

In general, RFK was one giant circle of life. The rats ate the cockroaches, the birds of prey ate the rats and D.C. United’s fanbase took it all with a grain of salt. Until the raccoons came and set up shop. They were in it for the long haul.

>Nathan Fry remembers all of this well. As United’s director of merchandising, Fry oversaw the team store, an aging, decrepit space on the stadium’s west side. The store had a drop ceiling, one of those charmless, foamboard grids that curse a ton of American office spaces, and one day Fry noticed something a little concerning: several of those tiles were badly discolored.

Fry didn’t think much of it at first, assuming it was a run-of-the-mill water leak — the entire stadium, at that point, had become one giant water leak. Slowly, though, he grew suspicious.

United’s front-office staff began to speculate. Fry and several associates thought it might be “caramel, or some other restaurant thing” leaking from the Capital View Club, a disused space directly above the team store.

Eventually, Fry got a broomstick and very tepidly pushed the access panel aside, hoping to get a better look. Before he could even stick his head into the void, though, a fully-grown raccoon leaned through the opening to get a better look at the landscape below. The old bandit locked eyes with Fry. And quickly, something else became apparent: this raccoon was not alone. There were maybe a half dozen other critters living in the ceiling.

“That,” says Fry, “is when we realized that what was leaking out of the ceiling and onto our stock was urine. It was raccoon urine.”

These raccoons were newer residents, but those who worked at the stadium had a long history with them. Longtime D.C. United president Kevin Payne, who founded the club and passed away in 2022, would frequently come across them and sometimes hear them in the walls of his office. Payne, and others at the club, recalled arriving at work one day to find a stray cat tangled up in one of the goals on the stadium’s playing field. The cat survived — losing a paw in the process — and was eventually adopted by a stadium employee who named it (what else) RFK.

The cats probably only helped control another wildlife problem at RFK. A whiteboard across the hallway of Payne’s office was full of tally marks — they represented the number of mice and rats the staff had managed to kill. By the time 2010 rolled around, Payne, who was long the primary driver of United’s efforts to leave RFK altogether, was ready to surrender to the wildlife.

“We spent more money trapping animals sometimes than we did on a lot of other stuff,” Payne told The Athletic in 2022. “I would see raccoons everywhere. I remember just really being ready to find a new facility and let them have the run of the place.”

Fry, though, couldn’t afford to do so. He started by discarding products in the team store which had been ruined by the urine. Fry recalls Judah Cooks, a former United player who had become a coach in the club’s academy system, attempting to pry the product from his hands. Times were lean at D.C. United.

“Despite his best efforts,” Fry says, “he was not allowed to have those jackets.”

As for wrangling the raccoons themselves, this was above the pay grade of any mid-level employee at an MLS club, so Fry, along with D.C. United’s CEO at the time, Mike Williamson, called in some professionals. They rounded up the raccoon, along with its family, which included a couple of babies, Fry remembers. They popped the access panel back on and just like that, RFK had five fewer residents.

Just hours after they were captured, Williamson — who most recently became the CEO of Welsh side Wrexham — was at his home, which backed up to Rock Creek Park, a huge, sprawling expanse of nature in Northwest D.C. Peering out his back window, he spotted a van belonging to the animal control company he had called only hours earlier. They were releasing a family of five into the woods.

“We couldn’t really escape them,” says Fry.

The legend of the RFK raccoons has persisted and D.C.’s fanbase embraced the raccoons as being emblematic of the state of the club as a whole. United, at that point, were MLS’ trash pandas, scavenging through the garbage in search of scraps.

D.C.’s fans even created a bit of an unofficial mascot out, dubbing him ‘Ronnie Raccoon’. One supporter made Boy-Scout-style pins bearing Ronnie’s likeness. “RFK Nature Club,” they read. In 2022, a few years after United left RFK for Audi Field, the club announced that it would be making Ronnie its secondary mascot.

Audi field, which sits on a plot of land not far from where the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers converge, has its own collection of wildlife. Many of the same birds that patrolled the skies over RFK cruise right over the club’s new home, plucking fish out of the river. Occasionally, fans will still find a fish waiting for them in their seat. And in spirit, Ronnie lives on, serving alongside Talon, the club’s long-time mascot.

Real Salt Lake’s home stadium, America First Park, is among the most scenic venues in MLS. Tucked into the Wasatch Front, snow-capped peaks and red-faced mountains provide a spectacular backdrop. And like any other place where untouched nature and humans meet, there are bound to be some unexpected encounters. Such was the case in 2022 when a young raccoon made itself at home in the stadium’s press box.

RSL had already had its own viral wildlife moment. In 2019, a stray cat made its way onto the pitch at America First during stoppage time of RSL’s Leagues Cup Showcase match against Liga MX side Tigres. The hard-charging feline came within inches of the ball at the near sideline during a promising Tigres attack. RSL head coach Mike Petke wanted play stopped, but the match referee allowed it to continue.

Moments later, Petke unleashed a tirade on that same referee, eventually leading to his dismissal as the club’s head coach. In a very short shift, the feline had put in a few touches and ended the managerial career of an MLS head coach.

RSL’s raccoon still managed to cause his own share of chaos. Real Salt Lake director of communications Trey Fitz-Gerald remembers it well.

“There are things in the building that you don’t always know about,” he says. “Feral animals.”

RSL’s Leagues Cup match against Leon was delayed by a torrential downpour, which had made the field unplayable. Fans had fled to the concourse in search of shelter. Up in the press box, a juvenile raccoon had done the same, working its way into the drop ceiling. All of a sudden, it came crashing down.

“It landed on a countertop where we typically have food, game notes and other stuff for media members,” says Fitz-Gerald, who remembers media members “hooting and hollering” as the raccoon ran up and down the table.

“My immediate reaction to this is like, ‘What the f***?’,” says Fitz-Gerald. “This building is too young to have an RFK situation. I texted our ops crew. I said, ‘We just had a raccoon fall through the roof in the press box, somebody please deal with this’.”

Cold and wet, the raccoon made a move toward the warmth of the popcorn machine on the table. Then it searched for shelter behind a photocopier. The media stood by in shock. In a video, you can hear an RSL staffer imploring those in attendance to “OPEN A DAMN DOOR, PLEASE.”

The raccoon, only months old, eventually bolted out of the press box and onto a third-level walkway. A huge throng of fans had already taken up shelter from the rain on the concourse below and were treated to drama unfolding above them: a couple of RSL operations staff hopelessly trying to wrangle the interloper with a broom and a trash can.

Finally backed into a corner, the raccoon scurried over a railing. At this point, facing near-certain capture, the raccoon cast its eyes on the concourse below. Like Richard Kimball in The Fugitive, he took a leap of faith, plunging some 20 feet onto the concourse.

Fans shrieked in horror and glee. Some gave chase. Eventually, RSL’s ops staff managed to trap the raccoon in a cardboard trash can. Quickly, they whisked it away. The entire scene lasted about 10 minutes, and it would be the most exciting thing anyone would see that night — moments later, the match was postponed.

“If you go a quarter-mile or a third of a mile straight west of our stadium, there is a canal that is part of the Jordan River ecosystem in Utah and that’s where they released the raccoon,” says Fitz-Gerald. “Caleb Turner, who is our beat writer for KSL, he’s leaving the game later that night when we finally canceled it and he sees this family of raccoons down (by where media park), which is close to that riverbed. We’re fairly sure that raccoon was reunited with his family.”

Another happy ending for an MLS raccoon, another animal cemented into MLS lore. None of this is surprising to Plimpton, who has spent years studying the habits of these resourceful creatures.

“Raccoons are notorious for being mischievous,” she says. “That’s one of the reasons they’re so successful. They know how to exploit whatever is around them.

“I had raccoons GPS collared for a while. I tried it on other medium-sized mammals and every one of them handled it great. Raccoons? They tore them off in a day. And traits like that are just inherent in their personality.”

(Top photo: Kyle Ross-USA TODAY Sports)

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Pablo Maurer is a staff writer for The Athletic who covers soccer, with a particular focus on the history and culture of the game. His writing and photography have been featured in National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Gothamist and a variety of other outlets. Follow Pablo on Twitter @ MLSist

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