11 lessons Minneapolis’ Gully Boys learned on tour in 2025

It wasn’t Gully Boys’ busiest year on the road, but 2025 was their most important one yet as a touring band.

“We made a point of trying to get to the next level,” drummer/co-vocalist Nadi McGill said, “and graduate from being just a DIY band.”

The hard-hustling, loud-thrashing Minneapolis rock quartet will have played almost 50 shows by the time they wrap up 2026 with a sold-out hometown celebration Saturday at the Varsity Theater. They played all those gigs despite — but also because of — their concerted effort to release their ambitious full-length debut album this year, following a series of EPs.

A boisterous and booming yet personal and semi-topical 10-song collection — it definitely sounds like Gully Boys went to the next level — the self-titled LP arrived in October while the group was on tour with another ascendant Twin Cities band, Durry. So they’re also billing Saturday’s year-end bash as their record-release party.

“It sort of feels like the culmination of our life’s work,” Kathy Callahan said of the record and overall effort around it.

“We’ve been doing this band for almost 10 years now, and we were all coming up on the end of our 20s. It felt like now was the time to really show what we’re made of.”

All those adventures as a live band came with a plethora of fun anecdotes, war stories and hard lessons that Gully Boys’ members were eager to share. Other bands might benefit from their experiences. Or at the very least, fans might learn more about Gully Boys and their long-awaited album.

It pays to play with other bands. The fall trek with Durry was one of two tours on which Gully Boys teamed with another band. They also went on a spring voyage with Oklahoma punk trio Skating Polly.

Between the two tours, the group — including bassist Natalie Klemond and guitarist Mariah Timm — also made several other excursions centered around indie/punk festivals such as Jorts Fest in Nashville and several offshoots of the South by Southwest conference in Texas.

“We played to a lot of people who’d never seen us and maybe didn’t even know who we were,” Klemond said, “and we made it our mission to win them over.”

Free hands and eye contact are good. One of the big changes in Gully Boys live sets in 2025 was Callahan playing less and less guitar, freeing her up to act more like a frontperson. “I get to look people in the eye and be kind of threatening, like, ‘Are you really going to look at me now and not give me anything back?’” she explained. “I think it really works.”

Heavier songs often go over better. The new album is loaded with intense, loud and at times thrashing tracks such as “Break,” “Mother” and “Love Me 2.” Those songs came to them with their live shows in mind, and it shows.

Invest in the van. “So much is riding on your van, literally, you need to get the oil changed on schedule and really take care of it,” said Klemond, who also warned of what’s become a big road hazard for U.S. touring musicians: “Be careful about tolls. You might get home and owe more in fines than you made.”

Invest in yourself, too. The band members said they learned the hard way to get good sleep (i.e., pay for a hotel room) and responsibly eat and drink while on the road. The adherence to good health is what helped two of their members quickly get past COVID-19 bouts on the trek with Durry. They also said it just improves moods and goes a long way toward everyone getting along.

Don’t settle for crumbs. McGill started the nonprofit organization Twin Cities United Performers to lobby venues to provide musicians with more equitable payment, which has remained stagnant since COVID lockdown despite everything else going up. Her band adheres to those efforts on the road and doesn’t take gigs just for exposure or other reasons to accept low pay.

“I have friends who go on tour and lose like 13 grand or whatever,” said McGill, who happily reported modest profits off this year’s tours. “We have to work our asses off to make it work, but it’s not an option not having it work.”

But it’s certainly not all about money. As Callahan put it, “When I come off a set where I got to see people reacting to the songs — or see them shift from being mildly interested at first to getting excited and becoming a fan — I feel like a million bucks.”

Let’s talk about sexism. One of the standouts on the new record that drew strong reactions on tour is “Mother,” which references lurid comments and catcalling made to women, asking, “Would you say that to your mother?” Callahan admits she was initially sheepish to talk about the song onstage, but it soon caught on.

“When we were writing the words they seemed kind of corny, because it’s just such an everyday thing,” she said. “It was almost too easy to tap into. But that means it was easy for everyone else to tap into it, too.”

It’s pretty easy to outsmart the sexists, though. At a concert in Santa Cruz, Calif., a drunk man at the merch table whispered something inappropriate in McGill’s ear. The drummer turned it around and more or less publicly shamed the buffoon into buying T-shirts and more for other fans in line. “He wound up spending $300,” McGill noted. “Serves him right.”

Save something special for home. Saturday’s show will see the live debut of two standout tracks from the new album that the band refrained from playing heretofore, “TTML” (aka “Talk to Me Later”) and “Big Boobs,” both requiring a little extra vocal arranging and other prep. The latter song — really about letting loose — features buzzing Chicago-to-Minneapolis transplanted rapper Zora, who is one of the Varsity show’s openers.

“She got her tracks back to us in like two days, and it was just perfect,” recalled McGill, who came up with on the fly: a dance routine to the song that the band has been touting via social media videos that also will be tested for the first time Saturday.

With: Zora, Jhariah, Fiji-13.

When: 6:45 p.m. Sat.

Where: Varsity Theater, 1308 SE 4^th St., Mpls.