Honestav Brings the Sweet American Boy Tour to The Regent in Los Angeles
Honestav has built his music around the kind of thoughts people usually struggle to say out loud. At The Regent Theater in Los Angeles Thursday night, those thoughts echoed back at him from a room full of people who already knew every word.
The August 13 stop marked the latest date on his Sweet American Boy Tour, supporting the sophomore album of the same name, released in June. It is a record that pushes further into the space Honestav has been carving out over the past few years, somewhere between alternative, hip-hop, and the emotional directness of a singer-songwriter who rarely bothers disguising what a song is actually about.
There was no attempt to make The Regent feel larger than it was. Instead, Honestav leaned into the room's intimacy. He spent much of the night near the edge of the stage, looking directly into the crowd, reaching down toward fans, and allowing the audience to become part of the performance rather than simply watching.
His catalog gives him plenty of opportunities to move between extremes. Songs like “Stuck On The Floor,” “Growin Pains,” “Cool Kids,” “Livin' Wrong,” and “I'd Rather Overdose” have helped establish a sound that can be melodic and accessible without sanding down the heavier subjects underneath it. The newer material on Sweet American Boy expands on that approach, pulling rock, alternative, and hip-hop closer together while keeping his storytelling at the center.
His latest single with mgk, “Crash First,” is one of the clearest examples of that evolution. Released just ahead of Sweet American Boy, the collaboration grew out of Honestav's time opening for mgk during the Australia and New Zealand leg of the Lost Americana Tour, with its accompanying video filmed during that run. The song now sits near the front of Sweet American Boy, bringing together two artists whose music often finds its weight in subjects that are messy, personal, and difficult to separate from the lives behind them.
For Honestav, the collaboration also feels less like a one-off feature than another marker of how quickly his world has expanded. He went from sharing those arena stages with mgk to returning stateside with a headline tour of his own, and hearing “Crash First” within that setting gives the song a different context. What began as a collaboration tied to one of the biggest touring opportunities of his career now resides in a room built specifically for him.
That growth was visible throughout the night.
The production gave the set enough scale without overwhelming what makes Honestav compelling in the first place.
Honestav spent most of the performance at the edge of the stage, leaning toward the crowd and reaching into the hands raised toward him. His relationship with his fans has become an important part of his rapid growth. His breakthrough came through songs that found listeners online before those listeners began filling increasingly larger rooms, but The Regent made it clear the connection has translated beyond a screen. These were not people waiting around for one recognizable viral song. These were people who knew every word to every song.
That level of familiarity gave the entire set a different kind of energy. The room was loud without feeling chaotic, with fans reacting just as strongly to the quieter, more reflective moments as they did to the songs built for a bigger release.
That balance is what makes Honestav's music work so well live. His songs can move through addiction, grief, relationships, self-destruction, and the uncertainty that comes with trying to grow past those things, but they rarely feel weighed down by them. There is still melody, movement, and enough release in the music to keep the set from becoming overly heavy.
At The Regent, those contrasts felt natural. The more vulnerable material did not require a dramatic shift in tone, and the bigger moments never erased the weight underneath them. Everything existed in the same space, which mirrors the way Honestav writes in the first place.
That directness has become one of his strongest qualities. There is very little distance between the emotion behind the songs and the way they are presented, and that honesty has clearly translated into a growing fanbase that feels connected to the material that brought them there.
The Sweet American Boy Tour arrives at an important point in that growth. Honestav is moving beyond the early breakout stage and into something more established, with a larger body of work, major collaborations, and an audience that is showing up for more than one moment.
Los Angeles made that clear.
What Honestav has built still feels personal, even as the rooms keep getting bigger. And at The Regent, that connection remained the strongest part of the night.
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Heather Koepp is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rival Magazine LA, which she launched in January 2020. With more than a decade behind the lens, she has built a career as an entertainment and live music photographer, capturing artists, concerts, festivals, and culture through a sharp editorial eye.
Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Billboard, People, and more. Through Rival, Heather continues to champion emerging artists, support new creatives, and grow a platform rooted in music, storytelling, and community while raising her son, Atticus, who is beginning to find his own eye behind the camera.