Aly & AJ • Amanda Shires • October 1, 2025 • The Complex
Reviewed and Photographed by Amelia Weyerstall
Aly & AJ started off October by bringing their Silver Deliverer Tour to Salt Lake City. The sister duo played a fun set showcasing their new album of the same name along with a few of their favorite hits. Aly a & Aj were joined at The Complex by Americana music favorite, Amanda Shires!
Amanda Shires
Amanda Shires’ angelic voice radiated around the venue, and her violin playing was ethereal. The song “You Are My Home” showcased her voice perfectly, and the crowd was instantly in love with her.
Amanda opened up her show by saying, “It’s a huge honor that Aly and AJ would take me out and let me open shows for them. They’re just so you know, they’re everything like you’d hope they’d be. They’re warm and friendly, they’re hospitable, they’d give you their shirt off their back if they had an extra one on. Just kind, kind humans, and it’s an amazing thing. It’s a good time to be alive with them in this way.”
This was a cute, kind way to open her set, and made the crowd even more excited to see Aly & AJ. Shires continued by saying, “I have a new record out. It’s called “Nobody’s Girl”, for anybody that’s had to start over or has gone through some hard stuff in their life, it’s not like an instruction manual, but rather containing. And if you don’t want to buy it, you don’t have to. I also have T-shirts and hats just in time for the fall. They make it really good, like you could get it for your enemy, and really just say don’t talk anymore, you know.” This had the crowd giggling, and the crowd loved her songs.
To introduce one of her songs, Shires said, “I would like to ask you something personal, feel free to not raise your hand but if you want to this is a good safe space. How many of you here are currently successful in love?” Many raised their hands. “What’s that like? Congratulations yall, that gives me hope. I haven’t been successful. How many people here are in the friend zone? Yes all right there’s some of us. There’s my people, it’s just us. It’s okay, it’s a safe place, not a good place to be in but we find ourselves in anyway. Well maybe we can bridge the gap.
“Who likes the movie tombstone? There we go, yeah! Anybody here like super sour jelly beans? Me too! Any kinds of cookies or whatever? Just imagine a lot of snacks, and being in the friend zone. Alright here we go…” then the intro of “Friend Zone” started to play. The crowd thought this song was a massive hit, and loved how the questions they were just asked played into the lyrics of the song.
The crowd was left wanting more from Amanda Shires, her sweet comments and gorgeous voice, but her set had to unfortunately be cut a little bit short because a violin solo had taken a bit longer than expected. Luckily Shires came back on stage later in the night to play a few songs with Aly & AJ.
Aly and AJ
The sisters, Aly and AJ started off their performance by saying, “It’s good to be back in Salt Lake, we missed you guys. We’re so happy to be on this tour. It just started and we go through November. We’re so lucky to be celebrating the “Silver Deliverer” out on the road. You’re catching us fresh and rested, we are so happy we planned to see you this evening, for you this evening, with this killer band behind us!”
The crowd loved this and loved them being back, fans were shouting “We love you” from all around the crowd. Aly continued by saying, “Before we play this next song, I wanted to talk about how this song kinda came to be, and you know we’ve been making music, as you all know, many of you have been there from day one. We realized that we don’t have a song about celebrating womanhood and just the fact that our society doesn’t always, you know, embrace all the changes that almost getting older as a woman, and we felt like this album deserved a song specifically about that, so ladies this song is for you tonight its called, “This is What it Feels Like””
Aly and AJ were so fun to watch interact with each other on stage and their voices harmonized so well together. The California based duo had the crowd jumping, dancing, and singing their hearts out all night to songs from their latest album, and oldest hits.
Aly and AJ have so much love for their opening act Amanda Shires that they brought her back out on stage to play a couple of songs with them. AJ said, “We just want to thank her for being out on the road with us. We’ve become fast friends and we have such an admiration for her music and her talent, so we’re very grateful to have her up here playing tonight. She even wore her blue dress for us tonight! Alright, we’re gonna play one of my favorites, this is called “Blue Dress”.” The crowd loved having Shires back out onto the stage and both bands’ talents meshed so well together, and added so much to the already incredible song.
Aly shared a special tour tradition that they decided to carry on in their Silver Deliverer tour, “If you’ve been to an Aly and AJ show in the past, you know that we like to bring out an organization on the road with us, and this year we felt like it was important to us to bring out an organization that was doing their best to push for the gun reform. We have the pleasure of having Every Town out with us on the Silver Deliverer tour.
“We’ve been talking about this and some of you may not know but AJ and I and our band and crew in 2022 survived a mass shooting on the first night of our tour for Touch the Beat, and from that moment on it really changed how we looked at this epidemic we have with gun violence and because it became personal to us we felt like we needed to be more outspoken about the subject matter.
“So this evening we are asking if you would take out your phones and help donate towards Every Town and all of the amazing work they are doing.” Aly sharing this resulted in huge applause from the crowd, glad that they chose such a prevalent organization. She added by saying how the donations would mean the world to them and sneakily added them into a raffle to come backstage to meet Aly and AJ after the show if they donated as a thank you.Tons of people in the crowd had their heads down looking at their phones and donating to the cause and it was clear it meant the world to the band. Aly and AJ then played the song they wrote about their experience in 2022 called, “Sirens”
Towards the end of the night, Aly and AJ played some of their hits from the “Rush” era. Their song “Rush” was a huge hit with the crowd, and everyone was dancing along. Before playing the songs “Something More” and “Out of the Blue” acoustically.
AJ shared, “These are very special to me because I wrote these about my first relationship and I met this guy when I was preteen at Disneyland on a ride. It’s a true story. We’re gonna play the song when we met and the song when we broke up.” Aly then shared, “We wanted to play these songs in a stripped down way because thats how these songs were born and created, in her bedroom as teen girls and honestly without songwriting I don’t know if we would even have the relationship that we have as sisters which I think is really special. A lot comes down to the songs and the songwriting and the people we get to play these songs for, which is you guys.” It was a super sweet moment really showcasing their sisterhood and love for making music together.
Aly and AJ ended the night by playing their hit song “Potential breakup song” which the whole crowd screamed every word to. It was the perfect way to end the night on a high note and left the crowd energized and wanting to see them play in SLC again.
