The Exit/In has always felt familiar, almost like walking into a friend’s house. Maybe it’s because I can get there and back in five minutes, or maybe it’s because I’m usually seeing smaller artists I’ve followed for a while. The size of the venue adds to that feeling, making it seem less like a concert and more like watching someone you’ve known for years do exactly what they love. That sense of closeness was especially present at Steinza’s show April 15. The performance also marked the second-to-last stop on his “Steinza Was Here” tour, making it feel almost like a homecoming for the Nashville-based artist.
Wormy opened the night with a chaotic, funny and extremely self-aware solo set that leaned heavily on samples, sound clips and genre mashups. He kicked things off with “Steve M. Grocery,” a song framed around the idea of not being someone’s only choice but still being the person they want in the moment. This more emotional song was offset by Wormy’s surprising inclusions of audio clips from things like the “Cha Cha Slide” and the viral Julia Fox “Uncut Gems” meme. Wormy also played “I Hate You,” a song about his friend whom he was incredibly jealous of being successful.
“If you live in Nashville, you probably know the feeling,” Wormy said.
Next, Elias Hix brought a springy Americana folk energy to the stage. Accompanied by a string band, with Izzy Olson on bass and bluegrasser Ella Thomas on fiddle, his vocals blended into an easy, lived-in chemistry. His tone carried a similar emotional weight to Steinza’s bigger vocal moments but stayed rooted in bluegrass textures with an expressive delivery that someone in the crowd joked looked like a “tall Ed Sheeran.” Songs like “Father’s Coat” and “Helen” leaned into that seasonal, reflective feeling, leading Hix to joke about the shift in weather.
“It’s so green and spring and pretty outside, now I know why I was sad for months,” Hix said.
The set moved between older tracks like “Empty June” from Hix’s high school days and newer, more energetic material like “What Have You Done,” which built into a fast, fun breakdown. Hix closed on “Dogwood Trees,” reflecting on touring life, small group dynamics and the quiet beauty of noticing details while traveling with Steinza and his team.
This was my third time seeing Steinza, so I was expecting a show that balanced humor with the heavier themes in his music. Even the merch leaned into that sense of familiarity and community, with postcard designs at the merch stand that his team offered to mail out. Steinza himself came out in a formal, understated outfit, wearing a sweater and loafers, and a presence that felt more mature than in past shows. He opened with “Tricked,” immediately setting a melancholic tone, followed by “Visions of You,” moving through the first stretch of the set with almost no speaking between songs, though that did not last long given his tendency for long stories.
That quieter energy was quickly interrupted by a small but beloved tradition at his shows: whenever Steinza paused to take a drink of water, the crowd would loudly yell “SIIIIP,” turning those moments of silence into something communal and playful.
Steinza then leaned into the heavier emotional core of the set as he moved through newer material from his album “Steinza Was Here,” including “What You Wanted.” The emotional peak came with “High and Dry,” where vocal cracks and runs cut clean through the room. Between songs, he reflected on loneliness, touring and how making music full time over the past few years had reshaped his relationship to it. The set shifted into more direct storytelling as he spoke about a period in his life where he was in college to become a pastor while also doing drugs and feeling like a hypocrite, a contradiction that ultimately inspired “Bible Bluff.” He then took us into another phase of his life.
“When I was 23, I was confronted with the idea of existentialism,” Steinza said.
That idea carried into “23,” a song that traces a spiral he described as quitting his job, living at home, and spending days playing Smash Bros. while grappling with meaninglessness, before arriving at the realization that there is no certainty in life and you just have to live in spite of that. Hearing it live now, the song felt more reflective and grounded, as if he was looking back at that version of himself with relief rather than distress. A similar mix of humor and storytelling came through in “Taste The Dirt,” which he framed as a song written after finding out he had been cheated on, written, as he joked, while very drunk at a baby shower. The set then shifted in tone with “Wait and See,” about a future wife who may or may not exist and still feels like a stranger, before closing the main set with “The Former.”
By the end of the main set, Steinza left the stage, but the crowd immediately began begging for “Christine.” He returned to finally play it, closing the night by telling the well-known and often repeated story of the dental hygienist he fell in love with during a dentist appointment. A Steinza show is not complete without this poppy, oddly endearing track. Ending the show on a laugh, with a story the crowd clearly knew was coming and still fully leaned into, added to this familiarity of being at the Exit/In.
