A Free at Noon goodbye for The Caulfields

“Thank you for coming to watch us play our 30-year-old songs as men who are pushing 60 years old,” John Faye joked a few minutes into WXPN’s Free at Noon, right after The Caulfields finished their first song. The sold-out afternoon crowd laughed along, and the line, funny and a little self-aware, pretty much summed up what the afternoon was about.

Before they started playing, XPN host Mike Vasilikos reminded the crowd that their farewell show at The Queen in Wilmington was already sold out, so this Free at Noon set was a rare extra chance to see them one last time. As soon as he wrapped, the band went straight for one of their fan favorites with “Devil’s Diary” full of chiming guitars and big chorus energy. Hearing it in 2025, in a room full of fans who clearly knew every note, it felt less like a throwback and more like a song that has simply kept aging with its audience.

Midway through the set, Faye paused to introduce “The Day That Came and Went,” which he called the first song he ever wrote where he felt like he was really telling the truth. Written in memory of his father, the song quieted the room, trading the band’s usual energy for something more raw and direct.

Later, Faye talked about how people constantly left the first “L” out of the band’s name, a running joke that inspired the title of their 1997 album L, before launching into “Figure It Out,”

Faye, joined by longtime bandmates Sam Musumeci, Brett Talley, Richie Rubini and “honorary members” Matt Caponegro and Jill Knapp, closed the broadcast portion of Free at Noon with “Born Yesterday,” turning its wide-open chorus into a communal singalong. Once the livestream was done, they treated the in-room crowd to “Where Are They Now,” a song Faye said they kept off the air because of one especially colorful lyric, but which he said still captures the spirit of “snotty 25 year old punks from the nineties.” 

To finish, they reached outside their catalog for Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Faye admitted, “Back in the last century we used to play this song with a fair dose of irony, but the longer we play it, the more it rings true,”.

(Both of those off-air songs are included in the full audio of the set on this page.)

By the end, it felt less like a farewell and more like a thank you. Thirty years after Whirligig, The Caulfields are wrapping things up with gratitude, dry humor, and the same infectious energy that first put them on XPN’s airwaves.