Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties play Seattle’s Neumos next week

New York-based singer-songwriter Aaron West has had a tough decade. 

His father died. His wife had a miscarriage. Spiraling into divorce, binge-drinking and self-loathing, West hoisted himself back up, but then found more trouble: After a bar fight, he skipped town, riding freight trains to California. West found purpose in music and community, and started a band that started gaining steam — before his brother-in-law got sick, drawing West home, intent on being someone his family can rely on. 

That’s where the story picks up on “In Lieu of Flowers,” the third album by Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties, who will play at Neumos in Seattle on May 2. 

If the narrative sounds heavy, fret not: It’s all made-up. Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties are a real band led by a fictional character brought to life by Dan Campbell, frontman of Philadelphia rock band The Wonder Years. 

On this concept project, Campbell writes from West’s perspective and embodies him during live performances, weaving real-life moments into the narrative. So, keeping tabs: Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties make folksy, emo-tinged big-band rock, telling the tragic story of a fictional singer with a dash of performance art. 

“I honestly think the only fair corollary is pro wrestling,” Campbell said. “It is the only live event where the story unfolding in front of you is going to change the narrative direction moving forward. It’s kind of this amalgam of Springsteen-influenced Americana-band concept-album musical-theater pro-wrestling, but pro wrestling only in the way that it propels the narrative, not in the way that we’re drop kicking.”

Across three albums and an EP — a decade in Aaron’s life — West and those around him have often rallied to lift our flawed hero off the mat. On the new LP, West navigates the pandemic, his burgeoning music career and a rekindled relationship, working to mend open wounds: alcoholism, a fear of vulnerability, grief from his divorce and the losses of his father and his miscarried child.

“If you don’t confront your problems, eventually they will come back for you,” Campbell said of West’s arc. “So a lot of this record is him confronting these things about himself that need work and then doing the work.” 

On “Alone at St. Luke’s,” a rambunctious standout from the new album, West’s drinking slips from celebratory to depressive while touring in Scotland. It’s all fun until the band gets sick, leaving West to finish the tour alone.

“The graffiti on the wall says it’s a new low,” West sings, “and it’s so quiet I think I can hear my pulse. The gig’s in an abandoned church in Glasgow; the irony’s a little on the nose.”  

Campbell said the song is a product of the “push and pull of your best-laid plans” and “what the universe has for you.” Because the pandemic happened in real life, it happened to Aaron, too. And that story is true: On a long-delayed United Kingdom tour in support of 2019’s “Routine Maintenance,” COVID scrambled the Roaring Twenties back to the U.S. and Campbell finished the run solo. 

Of course, West’s experiences are not based exclusively on Campbell’s. The project is “a balancing act between writing what you know and hiding in little Easter eggs,” with an eye for logical progression. Campbell puts a lot of thought into the details. He’s not infallible — he caught flak for mispronouncing “Wenatchee” on 2019’s “Bury Me Anywhere Else.” 

Plotting out the track, Campbell said he envisioned a broke, carless Aaron riding freight trains west in search of meaning. So he asked a train-hopping friend how to get from the mid-Atlantic to the West Coast — ergo, Aaron passes through Washington en route to Los Angeles. 

Campbell did have an “obsession with Seattle” growing up.

“My mom had a friend there, so she’d go all the time and she’d bring me back SuperSonics stuff,” he said. “And like any kid growing up in the ’90s, Nirvana was godlike to me.” 

On an early-career tour with The Wonder Years, the band got to the Tri-Cities when their van broke down, and Campbell “was so crushed, because the next show was in Seattle” — well, Tacoma — “that I convinced the rest of the band to let just me and [guitarist Matt Brasch] go and play acoustic.” They rode to Seattle with another band from the tour just so Campbell could see Pike Place Market — just so he could walk down Alaskan Way and look out over Puget Sound.

As for Aaron West, Campbell said the story could end with “In Lieu of Flowers” closing track “Dead Leaves,” or it could “go on for five more records.”  

On that song, it seems Aaron’s heart has healed: Returning to New York for a concert, Aaron West hears “the dead leaves scrape the concrete behind me. You’d think that by now I’d have learned to stop turning,” West sings, so long resigned to being alone, “but it’s you this time — you walk in alone and you’re pushing a stroller.” 

You’ll have to see the band on tour to follow the next chapter.