Riot Fest 2024 Tour • Page 62

We're all spending a lot of time asking what Riot Fest is but it's pretty obvious that Riot Fest is more focused on telling us what it isn't.

Kinda nice to scratch some names off the list. But between this influx and Riot being on day #2 of taunting people on X about the line-up... Man, just drop it already! Haha.

EDIT: It'll be next week. But still. Haha.

 

As much as they act like they hate it, they love to play the game. Maybe.

 

Duster’s out. Chicago show after Riot

 

Doubt it removes her from contention.

 

Honestly surprised they don’t go more in on the foreign (rock/punk) bands. Like they got Viagra Boys and Yard Act last year and got Sprints this year but I am surprised they have never gotten bands such as Idles, Fontaines, Pottery, Dry Cleaning, Shame, Squid, Porridge Radio, Sports Team, Goat Girl, Sleaford Mods, Pom Poko, Sorry, Black Midi (I saw someone wearing a Black Midi shirt at the festival last year).

I feel like that is an untapped market that would do really well at Riot Fest.

 

Im still mad Idles played Lincol Hall same weekend as Riot in 2018

Same with Black Country New Road playing Thalia Hall 2 days before Riot last year

 

Idles never playing makes absolutely no sense

 

With the new visa price increase and bands having to lay out an entire year tour in order to get approved that market will prolly be even less moving forward

I think there will be a drastic drop in international artists playing the us after this year

Visa fees for international artists to tour in the US shot up 250% in April. It could be devastating

 

Visas are expensive as hell for bands, I understand why they haven't tapped into it as much.

 

Or they squeeze in multiple tours or even work towards residency. We're already seeing large bands like The 1975 have to prioritize US dates over international.

 

I did say they had to lay out an entire year of a us tour for them to get approved. Even if it’s broken down into multiple legs

shit is still gonna mess with the amount of international bands that tour the us.

the architects tour is broken down into 2 parts. Don’t know if that’s cuz of the visa stuff or they always planned to come here twice. Now and September/october.

 

I would imagine the fees alone will be a rate-limiting factor for a lot of bands. Makes me feel really lucky that I get to see one of my favorite bands (from the UK) of the past few years for the first time this Friday...

 

Definitely not a ton of overlap potential, but I could definitely see Orville Peck and/or Sturgill Simpson fitting in nicely.

 

The only two country artists I like. I could get behind that

 

Orville has a show in June.. unless he's part of the second wave, I doubt he plays Riot this year

 

The only way I can see it working out is if the large festival promoters offer to cover part of the fee.

 

I've worked with festivals in the past that have split work visa/travel costs for international bands (which includes Canada) .. I don't see how a 300-500 person capacity room could afford this though especially if a band only plays like 10-20 shows on a tour per year.

And if there's any issues with the visas, there's been cases of people being banned from the United States for 5 years

 

The idea then is that the cost would be redistributed across the other venues they're playing but that requires coordination and confident expectations for ticket revenue. Livenation, Ticketmaster, and AXS only win out with this as they can pitch promotion across markets and distribute the cost of the visa.

 

Some international bands play smaller independent rooms.. and you have to remember not just the band, but the crew has to have visas - could easily be upwards of $10k and it's not worth it for smaller rooms to book them and lose money

 

Oh, I know. We'll see smaller crews or they'll be hiring people who are stateside.

 

I'm sure some bands will be able to find work-arounds (e.g., hiring folks stateside rather than bringing a crew along) but it's still going to be prohibitive.

EDIT: I'm mostly concerned about the smaller punk bands I like who tour for fun rather than for their actual job. That's going to happen a lot less because treating it as a "free vacation" ceases to happen when it's still a grind and you actually lose money doing it rather than breaking even.

 

los campesinos were just talking about this for their (relatively) short us tour this summer. granted they have more "overhead" than most bands but still, it's astronomical:

 

Streetlight is out. Shows during Riot weekend plus a Chicago show in the fall

 

Darn! When they didn’t announce all their dates when they were announced for The Fest, I was hoping it was because they were waiting for a riot fest announcement too.

 

So, uh, apparently Steve Albini died. Talented producer, total curmudgeon. Sucks.

But uh yeah... Apologies to anyone who was hoping for Shellac this year.