Broadway Calls

A decade of practice before the first show

Broadway Calls came together over the winter of 2005 and 2006 around four musicians who had already spent roughly ten years playing together, most recently in Countdown to Life, which had been signed to New Age Records. The line-up was Ty Vaughn on guitar and vocals, Matt Koenig on bass and backing vocals, Robbie Baird on second guitar and Josh Baird on drums, all out of Rainier, Oregon.

The band played a single hometown show and then went straight out on the road with labelmates Daggermouth — a ratio of touring to resting that has held ever since. A first EP, Call the Medic, came out on State of Mind Records, and a US run with Set It Straight followed in July and August 2006.

The self-titled debut album arrived on 10 July 2007, cut at Nu-Tone Studios in Pittsburg, California with Willie Samuels producing, and released by Smallman Records in Canada and State of Mind in the United States. Adeline Records picked the band up in January 2008 and reissued the record that March. Robbie Baird left the same month to support his newborn daughter, and the group carried on as a three-piece — a US tour with Teenage Bottlerocket, Bamboozle Left in California that April, a UK debut at Give It A Name at Earl's Court in London on 10 May 2008, dates on Warped Tour, a split 7-inch with Teenage Bottlerocket on 15 July 2008, and a December show in Los Angeles opening for The Gaslight Anthem and Alkaline Trio.

The Blasting Room, and the year everything moved at once

On 6 January 2009 the band announced a deal with SideOneDummy Records. Two weeks later they were in Europe with Alkaline Trio, a run from 22 January to 17 February that took in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France and eleven dates in England.

Recording for the second album began at the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado on 10 March 2009 with Bill Stevenson producing. Pre-production settled on thirteen songs by 15 March and tracking finished on 8 April. Good Views, Bad News was released on 18 August 2009 and reached No. 24 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. The first single, "Be All That You Can't Be", came out as a 7-inch on 21 July 2009 and was also placed on that summer's Warped Tour compilation.

The touring around it was the densest stretch of the band's career: five Warped dates, shows supporting The Offspring in London and Manchester on 25 and 26 August 2009, Leeds Festival on 29 August and Reading on 30 August, a US run behind Streetlight Manifesto through late September and early October, and further dates with The Gaslight Anthem. A spring 2010 tour of the east coast and midwest with Cobra Skulls, The Flatliners and Off With Their Heads followed, and the video for "Basement Royalty", released on 13 May 2010, was built partly from footage shot at an in-store performance at Banquet Records in the UK.

Two departures and a quieter decade

Matt Koenig left in early June 2010, with the band citing a lack of songwriting contribution towards a third album. Adam Willis, who had played with Vaughn and Baird back in Countdown to Life, took over on bass that same month and has held the position since.

What came next was spaced out rather than abandoned. The six-track Toxic Kids EP was recorded at The Atomic Garden in San Francisco, Jack Shirley's studio, and released in October 2011 on All For Hope Records in the US and Banquet Records in the UK, pressed across four vinyl colours. A split with Mixtapes, Vision Quest, appeared on No Sleep Records in 2012, and the third album Comfort/Distraction followed on the same label, with a release show in Portland on 11 February 2013.

Then the long gap. The band's name stayed in circulation mostly through other people's records: a track called "Sunday Morning" turned up on Red Scare Industries: 15 Years of Tears and Beers, the label compilation released on 27 September 2019, which pre-dated the band's own move to that roster.

Red Scare and a return on its own timetable

Sad in the City, the fourth album, came out on Red Scare Industries in July 2020 — seven years after Comfort/Distraction. It was trailed by "Meet Me On The Moon", issued with a video and backed on a 7-inch by a stripped-down version of "Call It Off".

The follow-up was deliberately small: Coming After You!, a four-song 7-inch EP released on 26 January 2026's predecessor year — specifically 26 January 2024 — again on Red Scare, produced by Scott Goodrich. The tracks were the title song, "A Little Shake", "Dead Before I Hit the Ground" and "Dreamin' (Castle Rock Version)".

Reviewing it for ThePunkSite on 27 March 2024, Phinky wrote that the title track showed the band had "lost none of their punks chops", picked out "A Little Shake" for its poppier, wistful streak and "Dead Before I Hit the Ground" for a darker turn, and named "Dreamin'" the standout for its "deliciously melodic and melancholy tone". The review read the band's activity that January as a sign of more to come from what it called the Oregon lumber punks.

Where they stand in late 2026

The band has not released a new record since the 2024 EP, and the current position is that of a well-connected support act with a headline habit rather than a touring operation running at full tilt. They played the Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival in 2025 with a twelve-song set that pulled from all four albums plus the new EP, running from "Van Rides and High Tides" and "Call It Off" through "Basement Royalty", "Radiophobia" and "Troops" to "A Little Shake" and "Meet Me on the Moon".

In October 2025 they joined the Common Thread Tour in the UK, playing Camden Assembly in London on 25 October in a half-hour afternoon slot and Leeds the following day from 5.55pm to 6.25pm, on a bill that also carried Comeback Kid, Hot Water Music, Joyce Manor, Spanish Love Songs and A Wilhelm Scream.

April 2026 brought a short Pacific north-west run opening for Goldfinger: the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver on 17 April with sullvn also on the bill and doors at 7pm, then the Showbox in Seattle on 18 April. They closed the run with their own ten-song headline show at Dante's in Portland on 25 April. As of late October 2026 there is exactly one date on sale — Aclam Club in Barcelona on Thursday 12 November 2026.

The scale is clear from the numbers Songkick keeps: 384 logged past performances, some 5,686 users tracking the band for alerts, and a touring map weighted to Los Angeles with 22 shows, the San Francisco Bay Area with 17, and Seattle and London level on 12 apiece.