If you grew up watching “Big Time Rush” or you binge-watched “Daisy Jones & The Six” and are itching for another fictional band to obsess over, then Amazon Prime’s newest prodigy, “The Runarounds,” might be for you. Better yet, the band is not entirely fictional. The Prime show follows a fictional storyline about an indie, pop-rock band, the Runarounds, but they also exist outside of the show and are currently touring the United States.
The show follows Charlie Cooper (William Lipton), Neil Crosby (Axel Ellis), Wyatt Wysong (Jesse Golliher), Bez Willis (Zendé Murdock) and Topher Park (Jeremy Yun) as they finish high school and navigate trying to start a successful band while balancing love lives and their parents’ expectations. The entire first season is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, and there is no word yet regarding a second season. However, looking at the enthusiastic response from viewers, a second season is likely.
The Runarounds were formed back in 2021 by Jonas Pate, the creator of the award-winning Netflix show “Outer Banks,” who needed a real band to play in a scene during Season 3. Pate sent out a casting-call on social media, and thousands of musicians applied to be in the band. The promising nature of the five selected band members further inspired the teen drama centered around them.
The line between fiction and reality gets a little blurry when it comes to the Runarounds. Lipton and Yun were close friends before the show started, and they played music together in the past, similar to how their characters, Charlie and Topher, were childhood best friends.
For much of the cast, the show is their acting debut. Murdock, Ellis and Golliher have all strictly been musicians in the past, with Ellis having another successful band, Ax and the Hatchetmen. The band’s musical experience and shared pasts allow their cohesiveness and authenticity to shine both through the screen and now from the stage.
This fall, the Runarounds will play their completely real, completely sold-out “The Minivan Tour” that spans a multitude of dates and locations across the Southeast and a handful in the Northeast. The band does not perform as their characters, but rather they play their true selves. On Sept. 27, after already upgrading the venue due to high demand from their fans, the Loft at Center Stage in Atlanta was lucky enough to host the brand new sensation on their stage.
That night may as well have been a fever dream for the audience at the Loft. They got to watch the band, which they thought was fictional up until a few weeks before, put on a wildly impressive show. There was screaming, crowd surfing, dancing and a very unexpected appearance from Maximo Salas who plays Pete Antuna in the show. Salas joined the crowd for the last few songs of the night and started a very petite mosh-pit of people at the barricade. It was very wholesome to say the least.
The Runarounds played most of their original songs and also threw in a few covers. Opening with “Ghosts” and “Cellophane” earned a very ecstatic response from the crowd that lasted all the way up until the encore. “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry and the beloved Amy Winehouse “Valerie” cover were perfect additions to the set that came later on.
Though their current catalog, the TV show soundtrack, is small, there was not one song that the crowd did not know all the words to, which goes to show how much the Runarounds have taken the world by storm. Neither the band nor the crowd faltered as the night went on, and the band expressed their gratefulness for the enthusiastic turn out.
It is one thing for a fictional band to play with passion, high energy, smiles and drive on the screen; some would just play that off as decent acting. But, it is another thing entirely to carry that through to the real stage with a real crowd on an entire tour. While their music might not be anything revolutionary or new, the Runarounds’ catchy, feel-good sound and powerful nature is refreshing, fun and most of all, appealing to their hordes of new fans.