Never Dakota // Press kit

Never Dakota are a Northampton band bringing Emo Night to pubs, parties and weddings: 2000s pop punk and emo anthems, played loud.

Never Dakota are a four-piece from Northampton playing the 2000s pop punk, emo and alt rock anthems their audience grew up on: Blink-182, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Green Day and more, plus a few newer ones. One two-hour set, straight through, with every word sung back at them. It's not "a band on Saturday". It's Emo Night.

Never Dakota are a pop punk and emo band from Northampton, formed in 2023 with one rule: play the music they actually love, not the songs on every other pub band's setlist.

The name comes from the shout every pub band knows. Somewhere around the third pint, someone at the back yells "Play Dakota!", and the band plays it. Never Dakota decided early on that they never would. Instead, their set is the 2000s pop punk, emo and alt rock their audience screamed along to at 15: Blink-182, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Green Day, Sum 41, All Time Low, Jimmy Eat World, Bring Me The Horizon and more, plus a few newer pop punk bangers.

The bet paid off. Pubs started booking them back, the same faces kept turning up with their mates, and somewhere along the way the gigs stopped being "a band on Saturday" and turned into Emo Night: one two-hour set, straight through, in a room full of people who know every word.

The band are Jack Betts on lead vocals and guitar, Nigel Ferguson on guitar and backing vocals, Dan Merrey on bass and backing vocals, and Dave Gopinath on drums. They're regulars at the Wig & Pen, King Billy and the Crown & Anchor in Northampton, The Squirrels in Duston and the Green Dragon in Higham Ferrers, and they also play weddings, birthdays and private events.

They're a covers band and they know it. They didn't write "Teenagers". But they'll play it like they mean it.