From ‘Death Cab for Bootie’ to front row: Sacramento fan celebrates band’s return
Sacramentans were clearly hungry for Death Cab for Cutie’s return to the city after 16 years, as evidenced by tickets for their July show at Channel 24 selling out immediately. It makes sense — the band’s most famous albums, “Transatlanticism” and “Plans” each came out around 20 years ago, aligning perfectly with the current nostalgia cycle, particularly for 30-somethings missing the golden years of indie rock.
The audience at Death Cab’s first show of their 2025 tour was about what you would expect: mostly elder white millennials in khaki pants who you can safely bet once gifted an old flame a burned CD including songs like “Soul Meets Body” and “Talking Bird” along the likes of other indie rock outfits like the Decemberists, the Shins and Modest Mouse.
But one show attendee clearly stood out among the crowd. Front-and-center against the barricade at Channel 24 Wednesday night was Mone’t Ha-Sidi, a Black woman with purple hair, decked out in a colorful band-themed outfit complete with custom Crocs devoted to Death Cab and the Postal Service (lead singer Ben Gibbard’s electropop side project).
No local (or otherwise, for that matter) millennial was as excited for Death Cab’s return to California’s capital city than Ha-Sidi, a 46-year-old burlesque performer, hair stylist and self-described “professional concertgoer.” Ordained by the band as their No. 1 fan, Wednesday’s show was her 77th time seeing Death Cab and her 102nd time seeing Gibbard in concert since 2003.
Ha-Sidi is known in fan circles as the Washington-based band’s most enthusiastic supporter — over the past 20 years, she has traveled to dozens of cities to follow the band while touring, cultivated several friendships, befriended Gibbard’s parents and has even been featured in the band’s official photobook. She is also known for hosting emo dance classes and a recent burlesque performance called “Death Cab for Bootie,” with the tagline “the saddest twerk you’ll ever learn.”
Becoming a fan
Ha-Sidi, born and raised in Sacramento, acknowledges that she doesn’t look like the typical Death Cab fan. As a queer Black woman who has been into rock and alternative music for several decades, she’s used to being visibly different from the rest of the crowd. When attending Grant High School, which she described as a then-majority-Black school, her classmates didn’t understand her, she said.
“It wasn’t easy being a Black alternative girl in the ‘90s,” she said. “People didn’t know what to do with me.”
An ex-partner introduced her to Death Cab in 2001, but it was the end of their relationship that deepened her relationship with the band. Ha-Sidi said that Death Cab’s 2005 album “Plans” helped her cope with the painful breakup.
“The music just evokes a lot of visuals and a lot of emotion,” she said. “The way that Ben writes his lyrics, it’s like you can see a picture clearly painted of what he’s thinking and how he conveys emotion. … I feel like they have a song for everybody, for anything that you’ve been through, they have a song that explains it and makes you feel less alone in that feeling.”
She first met the band members at a show on that tour, who she said showed genuine empathy for her situation. A former band member, Chris Walla, put her on the guest list for a subsequent Reno show, which she called out of work sick to attend.
In the years since, Ha-Sidi has collected ticket stubs, set lists, photos and memories like Pokemon cards. She’s hard-pressed to come up with any single favorite moment but she described a few: being given a hand-written set list at a Glendale show, Gibbard holding her hand while he sang “Natural Anthem” with the Postal Service, and being thanked and featured in a spread of the photobook “BETWEEN, EVERYWHERE” by Gibbard’s then-wife.
Despite looking unlike a lot of the crowd at the typical Death Cab show (she plays a game called “how many Black people are here” at every one she attends, with the result typically being quite low), Ha-Sidi said that the band has cultivated a warm, accepting audience and that she always feels safe at their concerts, especially at a time of increasing racism and bigotry.
“The Death Cab fandom has actually been a very safe space for me,” she said. “They also seem to align with my same morals and ethics, too. So that’s really refreshing, especially in this day and age with everything that’s happening.”
Taking fandom further
For Ha-Sidi, her obsessions and fandoms aren’t just about consuming art, but making her own.
With the band’s return to Sacramento, Ha-Sidi found the opportunity to do something she’d long aspired to — she leveraged her career in burlesque and her passion for the 2000s indie band to host a tribute show Sunday in Elk Grove called “Death Cab for Bootie,” featuring an ensemble of burlesque and drag artists from Northern California.
Kayte Jackson, also known onstage as Wednesday Hendrix, is a longtime friend of Ha-Sidi’s who was eager to return to burlesque to participate in “Death Cab for Bootie.” Jackson described herself as a modest fan, but was excited to work with her friend to realize this dream of hers.
Ha-Sidi’s unapologetic passion is one of the qualities that Jackson admires most in her friend. Jackson’s favorite burlesque performance of Ha-Sidi’s is an award-winning act born out of her love for the movie “Titanic” wherein she dresses as the ship, crashes into a prop iceberg and throws Barbies from her body to the tune of Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me.”
“You’re not going to fake being into ‘Titanic’ that much,” Jackson said. “That’s as pure as love can get. That’s what makes Mone’t so awesome and genuine is that she comes in so hot and she loves these things with her whole chest. It’s refreshing — she’s being herself, there’s no posturing.”
Hard work, a love of performing and unbridled enthusiasm has sustained Ha-Sidi through a 17-year career in burlesque, but still faces an uphill battle, she says, due to racism in the local performing arts scene.
Despite securing a Seeding Creativity grant to bring a Black nerdlesque (pop culture/fandom-themed burlesque) festival to Sacramento, she could not find a venue willing to host the event. She’s heard of other burlesque artists also having trouble securing space, but says that the problem also affects other Black artists in Sacramento trying to host shows that cater to Black audiences. A loss of performance venues in the city has also hurt local artists’ ability to gather and perform.
“We need to keep these art spaces open, because if we’re just stuck with hearing the bad news every day and we don’t have an escape from it, it’s going to keep us down and we’re going to lose the energy to fight,” Ha-Sidi said.
Death Cab’s Sacramento show
Ha-Sidi was the first in line for Wednesday’s show, waiting seven hours to make sure she had the best spot in the house to see her favorite band. She was particularly excited because it was the first night of the band’s 2025 tour, and there was mystery about what the band would be playing.
She was packed and ready with entertainment and snacks, but the most important item in her cargo was an inches-thick stack of photos of her and the bandmembers taken over the years that she intended to gift them. Ha-Sidi caught Gibbard a few hours before the show to hand him the heavy manila envelope.
Later, at the end of the show, Gibbard handed Ha-Sidi the bright pink set list to add to her collection at home.
“That’s why I love Death Cab, it’s the music — but also, they say never to meet your heroes, but they’ve always been genuinely nice guys, and that’s refreshing.”
