2022 Concerts and General Speculation

We will be here with my sister's fam and the Mrs.  Was considering Floyd, but this knocks it out of the water for them.

The War on Drugs presale for Raleigh in June starts at 10am today if anyone is interested. Presale code DRUGS22 I believe from my intertube sleuthing. I hope to get some pit tix.


Edit: Code confirmed. I got front row seats behind the pit!

Yeah I didn't really care for it either.

Think you might enjoy TK & The Holy Know-Nothings and Briston Maroney

I kind of think thats fake, but why do the revivalists get thrown into these things as a 'jam band'?


I've seen them twice at lockn and they are ok and they get played a lot on siriusxm jamon, but I don't remember them actually ever breaking into a jam.

Oh and if that line up is real, I'd be pretty happy with it. Maybe needs a little more Allman Brothers.

re: that Peach Poster, I'll still go because its only 2 hours away from me and I'm a Peach lifer, but that would by far be the weakest lineup I think they've ever had. It honestly reminds me of Lockn '19, taking bands that were tier 2 or 3 in years past and placing them at the top of the bill. I'm probably the biggest Phish fan in this group but I'm sorry, TAB isn't a "top artist on the bill" headliner. I'm sure it will still be a blast of a fest but I really hope they add more.

Maybe it's a budget function, having been out of business a year or so, plus counting on the "pent-up demand" that they can fill the seats with that and lifers. Plus all of the events need to drop down the age bracket some, so that necessarily brings lower tier bands at least for this type of music (real, not pop). 

Interesting times, these are.

My question is… beyond Phish and Dead & Co/ Phil & Friends, who is top tier??? Widespread, SCI, TTB are the next level, then your Umphrey’s, Gov’t Mule, Bisco bands, I think the bands on the come up (Goose, Billy Strings & Twiddle) are beater options for headliners than alotta bands that get those spots. Personally, I feel TAB is a headliner. I like them better than Phish. Haven’t seen them with the new bass player, but Ray & Russ are awesome & the girls on the horns put it over the top. I think it’s just hard to book “headliners” today b/c not everyone agrees on what’s a “headliner”.

I strongly agree with everything you said. I look at “our bands” in 3 categories.
1.) Bands that sell out Sheds (Phish/ Dead & Co)
As long as Dead & Co has Weir & Mayer, they’ll still fill sheds, Krueztmann isn’t a deal breaker for ticket buyers.
2.) Bands that sell out Red Rocks & can do 3 night runs in large theaters. This would be Widespread, String Cheese, Tedeschi Trucks and soon to be Goose & Billy Strings.
Caveat to this being String Cheese, while they don’t fill sheds or anything near 10,000 outside of Colorado they do headline & curate the two biggest festivals of the year, every year with Electric Forest & Hulaween. No other band really does that. They are “THE” Festival Band in my opinion.
3.) The 3rd tier are the theater & auditorium bands that can fill Red Rocks on a double bill, your Twiddle’s, Pigeon’s, JRAD, etc…

The thing that really made Lockn great wasn’t the headliners by themselves, but rather the one offs that get out together. Layla, Furthur w/ Trey, Lettuce’s JGB Set, JT Taylor w/ Cheese, Zac Brown, The Airplane Thing & probably the best of if all Mad Dog’s. Without that, there’s not the draw, because I can see all the bands in my market for $50 instead of $400 and I can sleep in my bed with A/C.

“Doing Well vs. Getting By” is a matter of perspective. A guy with no family living in South Bend, Indiana making $150,000 a year is living way better than a guy with a wife, two kids, student loans & a Long Island, Austin or Bay Area mortgage.
That said, I’d say that tier 3 level prolly makes $200K a year or so. A guy like Russo may make more cause he can be a “hired gun”, or Dave from JRAD makes Ween money, some guys get song writing royalties, etc. So I’m sure there’s guys that could get by, depending on age, marital status, etc… I’d say most would need to work to some degree unless their music was picked up as a commercial jungle or something.

I read that reddit thread, amazing.

Makes me think I need to be buying more band t-shirts from their websites.