Touring
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The Knitting Factory brand is returning to Los Angeles after more than a decade.
The new venue, Knitting Factory NoHo, will open on the second floor of the Federal Bar in North Hollywood. The venue is a 300-plus-capacity room that offers a patio and expansive local views from the historic building. Formerly a bank, the Federal Bar building was built in 1929 and has high-beamed ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows.
Since Knitting Factory Hollywood closed in 2009, Knitting Factory Entertainment (KFE) CEO Morgan Margolis has developed a hospitality division of the company. In Los Angeles alone, this includes The Federal Bar, El Tejano, Thirsty Merchant, Cantiki and Boomtown Brewery partnerships. KFE is also behind the Desert Daze festival with partner Phil Pirrone. Additionally, the company remains a longtime partner with local promoter and Spaceland Presents CEO Mitchell Frank on the Regent Theatre in Downtown L.A.
“While this is a more intimate venue than our partner venue, Regent Theatre (1,000 cap.), our team plans to bring incredible live experiences for musicians, comedians, artists, and fans alike, as our company has been doing for decades,” said Margolis in a statement. “In North Hollywood specifically, we’ve been in the area since The Federal Bar opened with a private performance from jazz legend Stanley Clarke in January 2011, and there is an appetite for more music-based programming as the neighborhood continues to grow into a distinct residential and entertainment district.”
Knitting Factory
Morgan Margolis
The space above the Federal Bar previously hosted private events and live shows from artists including John Doe, Kurt Vile, Big Thief, Ducktails, Cayucas, Sea Wolf, Chuck Prophet, Jenny O. and Motopony. Existing facilities are currently undergoing major renovations, including raising and widening the stage, improving sightlines, and upgrading audio-visual production. The new venue also hides a classic speakeasy, which will operate as a private VIP bar and green room.
Veteran music curator Chris Diaz will serve as Knitting Factory Noho’s consultant talent booker. Diaz got his start as a sound engineer and local booker at Knitting Factory Hollywood. Diaz moved from sound engineer to senior talent booker, moving to New York after Knitting Factory Hollywood closed to program the newly opened Knitting Factory Brooklyn. He returned to Los Angeles in 2013 to book two venues for California promoter Goldenvoice — The Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip and The Glass House Concert Hall in Pomona — before booking for Spaceland Presents at The Regent Theatre.
“Working with Knitting Factory Entertainment again, and specifically with Morgan, is like being reunited with a long-lost family member,” said Diaz. “It is very exciting to be a part of bringing this legendary brand back to Los Angeles, to help ensure its future legacy.”
Programming for the new L.A. venue is set to begin later this year. The news of the new North Hollywood location comes after the closure of Knitting Factory Brooklyn and the announcement of a new Knitting Factory venue that will open in New York’s East Village neighborhood in early 2023.
Greta Van Fleet have been forced to postpone a trio of shows after singer Josh Kiszka ruptured his eardrum during a show in Bangor, Maine earlier this month. “It’s with a heavy heart that we must reschedule our shows this upcoming week,” the band wrote in a statement.
“During our last show in Bangor [on Oct. 8], I ruptured an eardrum and upon further evaluation I have just been advised it needs more time to fully heal than initially anticipated. I’m working closely with my team to ensure I get proper rest in order to finish out the year strong.” The group said they are working on rescheduling the dates as soon as possible.
The affected shows were slated on Tuesday(Oct. 18) in Raleigh, North Carolina, Wednesday (Oct. 19) in Greenville, South Carolina and Oct. 21 in Jacksonville, Florida. “I’m gutted to have to do this and I cannot begin to express how much I appreciate the love and support you give us every night,” Kiszka told fans. “It’s devastating me to make this announcement, but know it’s imperative in order to keep performing.” The band encouraged fans who will want to see them to hold on to their tickets, or to seek a refund at point of purchase.
According to GVF’s updated tour scheduled, their next date will be at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida on Oct. 25; at press time it was unclear if an announced Oct. 22 show in Estero, Florida at Hertz Arena is still on.
Back in March the band postponed the eight remaining dates on their Dreams in Gold tour after guitarist Jake Kiszka was hospitalized with pneumonia.
See the band’s post below.
Way back in 2018, Elton John launched the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, billed as his final, three-year-long global trek. The announcement of his final shows has paid dividends, generating more than half a billion dollars while he plays to more than four million fans. So far, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour has grossed $661.3 million and sold 4.5 million tickets across 257 shows around the world through Oct. 9.
John has been banking millions since the tour began, but stepped on the gas after returning from a two-year COVID-19 delay. After playing 39 North American arena dates in the spring, he flew to Europe for a 19-date stadium run, and then came back stateside for more than 30 domestic stadium shows. Of those, 20 have played so far, adding $133.4 million and 830,000 tickets to the tour’s sum.
From one North American leg to another, attendance jumped by 192% to 41,513 per show, and nightly revenue increased by 160% to $6.7 million.
The 39 stadium shows that have played so far in Europe and North America have earned $202.6 million and sold 1.3 million tickets, making up 31% and 30%, respectively, of the tour’s total figures, despite accounting for just 15% of its shows.
In getting to this point, John’s goodbye run is the third tour in Boxscore history to pass the $600 million threshold, following U2’s 360 Tour, which grossed $736.4 million in 2009-11, and Ed Sheeran’s reigning champ, The Divide Tour, which earned $776.4 million from 2017 to 2019.
Sheeran’s all-time champ is an interesting comparison point, with 258 shows throughout its two-and-a-half-year run – just one more than John’s tour has played so far. In contrast to Sheeran and U2, as well as other $500 million tours by Guns ‘N Roses, The Rolling Stones and Coldplay, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour has spent most of its time in arenas. While these classic rock greats made their sums quickly in 50,000-plus-capacity stadiums, John has been a road horse in 15,000-cap arenas, able to push high ticket prices in a relatively intimate setting.
The current North American leg continues with 13 more shows before its Nov. 20 close at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium. John continues with a 10-stadium run in Australia and New Zealand in January, plus a return to European arenas with more than 40 shows in the spring. The Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour is scheduled to close at Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena on July 8, 2023, and with just $115 million between him and the all-time record, John soldiers on at breakneck speed.
Across his career, John has grossed $1.7 billion and sold 19.1 million tickets, becoming the highest grossing solo act in Billboard Boxscore’s three-decade-plus history.
Catching her breath as she opens up a Zoom call, Rina Sawayama is quick to offer an explanation.
“Sorry if there’s some slight background noise,” she says, as a low rumble of hushed conversations echo behind her. “I’m in rehearsals right now and trying to step out. Everywhere else is too cold, so I have to sit in the corner of the rehearsal room for this.”
It’s indicative of the British pop star’s life as of late — when she speaks with Billboard, she’s putting the final touches on her Hold the Girl Tour, an international set of live dates that began Wednesday, Oct. 12 in Glasgow, Scotland that will see her perform in Great Britain, North America, New Zealand and Australia through January 2023.
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The show simply continues on the momentum Sawayama has been building throughout the year — along with completing her long-delayed U.S. tour of her debut album Sawayama, the star has been hard at work promoting and releasing Hold the Girl, her critically-acclaimed sophomore set dealing starkly with mental health and childhood trauma through the lens of alternative pop songs.
For Sawayama though, the release of Hold the Girl has felt more like putting out two albums at once — since COVID-19 effectively shut down much of the promotional work surrounding her debut in 2020 (as well as her original European tour), the star has been working double duty when it comes to unveiling the new project.
“It’s the fans who couldn’t come and get their records signed the first time are coming round with two vinyls now,” she explains. “They’re talking about their experience about how both albums have helped them through difficult times, so it really feels like I’m promoting two albums in a way.”
A lot has changed for the singer since debuting Sawayama — back then, for example, the star says that because she didn’t have a live opportunity to commune with her fans, she found herself diving deep online to figure out what the response to her work looked like.
“It was all online, it was all tweets, and back then I used to read every tweet and YouTube comment and all of the stuff like that,” she says. “I was reading every review and comment, and I did that for the first record — I read so many and I really cared about what everyone thought. I’ve very happily moved on from that.”
The subject matter has also evolved — throughout the new LP, Sawayama explores the idea of parenting her inner child and coming to terms with traumatic events from her childhood. Songs like the title track and “Forgiveness” seek to create reconciliation, while others like “Your Age” and “Frankenstein” seethe with rage at having gone through pain in the first place.
It’s an album dappled with personal truths and revelations that Sawayama was ready to share after a few years of therapy. The therapy process itself was “really hard,” she says, as she was encouraged to “come to a realization that your whole world is turned upside down.” But once she had moved past that, the writing and producing process of her album “was very good for me.”
Then, it came time to promote the project, which came with its own complications for the singer. “I talked about the very deep, emotional parts of the record to too many people, and it felt like I was sort of re-traumatizing myself every time,” Sawayama offers. “I think I did 120 interviews for this record, and I really thought I could handle it emotionally — but it was quite a lot. I never got specific, but even just alluding to the trauma, your body sets up this little reaction inside of you where it’s getting ready for fight or flight.”
But instead of succumbing to the emotional exhaustion of reliving some of her darkest moments over and over, Sawayama is choosing to find the silver lining in the promotional push. “I think it was a lesson that you can be boundaried about what you talk about; you can share it with the people who understand, but you don’t have to share it with everyone,” she says, relief hanging off each word.
As a cadre of excited voices begin to rally behind her once again, Sawayama is more than happy to refocus onto the task at hand — creating a show that fans are going to love. “It’s my favorite bit of what I do,” she says, excitedly.
The Hold the Girl Tour promises to be a spectacle in and of itself, with Sawayama describing the everything as “bigger.” She’s teamed up with production company WFB Live — who helped craft Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia Tour as well as Post Malone’s 12 Carat Tour — to take the same number of people on stage (two band members, two backup dancers, and Sawayama) and make it feel more extravagant.
Sawayama quickly rattles off just a few examples of the amped-up production — new lighting rigs, stunning choreography, interesting stage pieces — before coming to her own conclusion of what they’re accomplishing. “We’re now maximizing the sound, maximizing the slay,” she says, before laughing at her own joke.
It’s a strange experience for the star, especially with her U.S. tour set to kick off on November 1 in Brooklyn, NY — despite having spent the earlier part of this year touring the States, Sawayama is returning a mere six months later and playing venues doubled in size. Plus, she adds, they’re traveling to states they didn’t get to hit the first time around.
“There’s cities like Nashville, and places in Texas, and North Carolina, where we’ve never been to, and we’re having to scale down the show quite a bit,” she says. “Even thinking about, if we’re walking five steps in the New York show to get from one end to the other, let’s say, you have to cut it down to two steps in these other places. It’s a weird puzzle, and it keeps things exciting.”
That excitement remains in the singer’s voice throughout the interview, as she remains in awe of the task at hand. “For a U.K. artist, being able to tour the U.S. and have success doing it is a dream,” she says. “I feel so lucky that I can do multiple tours and festivals in the same year.”
“Success” is an important word to associate with Sawayama at the moment — after unveiling Hold the Girl in September and earning a No. 3 debut on the U.K. Albums Chart, the singer officially became the highest-charting Japanese artist in the history of the U.K charts.
It’s especially important for an artist who fought publicly for recognition as a British artist back in 2020, prompting the BRITs to change the rules for their eligibility regarding British citizenship. “When I heard that, it was like, ‘Oh my god, maybe I’m helping make that happen for someone else right now,’” she explained, adding that BLACKPINK earning their No. 1 position on the chart that same week felt appropriate. “Just to see all of this East and Southeast Asian representation like that is something I never would have thought could happen five or six years ago.”
With the whiplash of her tour-to-album-back-to-tour schedule weighing on her, Sawayama takes a moment to breathe as she lays out her plans for the future. “I’m allowed to take time with my third record,” she says, audibly relaxing as she does. “It’s been a very crazy, very fast journey; with the first and second albums, I felt like I was working with a lot of limitations in terms of writing and promoting it. I feel like I’ve made a lot of different mistakes with the first and second record — I’m immensely proud of them, but on the third record, I want to consolidate and take time to really focus on what I enjoy and love.”
Beck will no longer serve as the opening act on Arcade Fire‘s upcoming North American tour, Billboard can confirm. Instead, the Haitian band Boukman Eksperyans will take his place.
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While Beck didn’t provide a reason for his decision, his exit comes just months after sexual misconduct allegations against Arcade Fire’s frontman Win Butler. The allegations against Butler were first published on Aug. 27 in a Pitchfork story. The report detailed the accounts of four individuals who claimed to have had inappropriate sexual interactions with Butler, with one alleging that the singer had assaulted them; he has denied that any of the alleged incidents were nonconsensual.
In addition to the testimonies of his alleged victims, a statement from Butler was included in Pitchfork‘s report. In it, the musician says the relationships he’s had outside of his marriage to Arcade Fire bandmate Régine Chassagne have all been consensual, and that his wife had been aware of them.
“Our marriage has, in the past, been more unconventional than some,” he wrote. “I have connected with people in person, at shows, and through social media, and I have shared messages of which I am not proud. Most importantly, every single one of these interactions has been mutual and always between consenting adults. It is deeply revisionist, and frankly just wrong, for anyone to suggest otherwise.”
“I have never touched a woman against her will, and any implication that I have is simply false,” he continued. “I vehemently deny any suggestion that I forced myself on a woman or demanded sexual favors. That simply, and unequivocally, never happened.”
“While these relationships were all consensual, I am very sorry to anyone who I have hurt with my behavior,” he added. “Life is filled with tremendous pain and error, and I never want to be part of causing someone else’s pain.”
Veteran Los Angeles concert promoters and talent buyers Brian Tarney and Liz Garo have joined forces to form Restless Presents, an indie promotion company that’s producing the upcoming Substance 2022 festival.
Previously produced by Tarney’s ticketing and marketing company Restless Nights and Live Nation, the annual celebration of dark rock, industrial, electronic post-punk will feature one of its strongest lineups to date, with performers including Jesus And Mary Chain, The Chameleons, Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Steven Mallinder, electro-royalty ensemble Miss Kittin And The Hacker, Boy Harsher, Light Asylum, Youth Code, SEXTILE and Kontravoid. The festival is slated for Oct. 21 and 22 at the Los Angeles Theater.
Tarney and Garo have also launched a New York event called Flesh & Steel — a multi-venue, multi-date celebration taking place Dec. 1-3 and featuring Boy Harsher, A Split-Second, Psyche, Phase Fatale and more. Restless enlisted NYC artists David Castillo of Brooklyn venue Saint Vitus and DJ, promoter and journalist Andi Harriman of Synthicide to serve as creative directors for the New York event.
Tarney and Garo launched Restless Presents during the pandemic and have since booked shows for ADULT, Lingua Ignota, SEXTILE and Thee Sacred Souls. Substance is the company’s first festival, but both have produced the festival brand from its inception, going back to the launch of the Cloak and Dagger series for She Wants Revenge.
“I think one of the best things about these events is the broad, eclectic audience,” says Garo, who served as the lead talent buyer for Spaceland Presents for more than 20 years, booking the Echo and Regent Theater and concert series at the Getty Center, LA’s Natural History Museum and the Santa Monica Pier. (Spaceland was bought by Live Nation in 2019). Garo also co-founded and managed the long running Echo Park Rising series.
“There is such a broad age range at Substance. You’re definitely getting an older crowd that knows the classics but a young, healthy scene too that that’s pretty vibrant,” Garo adds. “People can come in and be who they want to be. It’s a very tight scene.”
The Los Angeles Theater in downtown LA’s Theater District was chosen as host venue because of its flexibility and eclectic layout, says Tarney, who hosted Substance at the venue in 2019 with headliner Gary Numan.
“It’s a blank slate and we built the whole thing from scratch. It’s got so many little weird rooms and nooks and crannies. We’re working really hard to activate all of them with buildouts including a marketplace and a record store,” says Tarney, a former booker at Spaceland and the creator of Restless Nites, an L.A. marketing agency and ticketing platform for independent promoters and venues. Tarney adds that Restless Presents was born from a need for more independent promoters in the live music industry and says his hope is to work closely with established and emerging acts to create unusual and forward-thinking live events.
“I think a lot of people are fed up with going to a small theater or small show and paying Ticketmaster fees or getting priced gouged on drinks when they’re there,” Tarney says. “People are looking for more than just big festivals, and many have trickled their way into some of the smaller venues. “That’s why we’re always looking for unique spaces. This is something that Liz is awesome at. She’s always finding cool, unique venues and places where we can come in and have more input.”
Tarney notes that Restless Presents has several new festival genre concepts in the works for 2023, including a roots roadhouse event and neo soul festival.
“Substance is the focal point this year, but there’s gonna be a lot more events and much more diverse sounds in the future,” he says.
Pop-punk lifers rejoiced upon the announcement that Blink-182 — the San Diego trio against which all other heavy-and-happy bands are measured — had reunited its classic lineup.
Guitarist Tom DeLonge is back after a split from bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker in 2014 (preceded by a split in 2005 and reunion in ‘09). While the band soldiered on with Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba, releasing two LPs in 2016’s California and 2019’s Nine, it was never the same, the electricity (and poop jokes) among the core trio never replicated.
But now, the group is back together and promising a new album — a bouncy new single called “Edging” just dropped Friday. An accompanying new world tour is set to kick off next year, and some fans are surely already dreaming about what the ideal Blink 2.0 setlist might look like.
Us, too! So we went ahead and built this dream setlist: 25 songs that would more than satisfy the droves of millennials heading for arenas across the U.S. and beyond next year. This setlist, which we believe the band could pull off in about two hours — pretty standard for a legacy headliner — is informed by recent tours, fan sentiment and, moreover, what we think would be freaking awesome to see.
Here’s our best-case scenario on how the new Blink tour plays out. Happy moshing!
Live Nation Urban has acquired a significant equity stake in the Washington, D.C.-based Broccoli City Festival, company officials announced Friday (Oct. 14).
Broccoli City has grown every spring since the launch of its first event in 2010; Live Nation Urban notably acquired the stake from festival co-founders and entrepreneurs Marcus Allen and Brandon McEachern.
As part of the acquisition, Live Nation Urban welcomes Allen and McEachern in executive roles. They will work alongside Live Nation Urban president Shawn Gee and his team to scale the Broccoli City brand and “catalyze the creation of new content and culture-centric live experiences and festivals,” according to a press release announcing the deal.
The Broccoli City Festival, described as “a black-owned social enterprise rooted in impact and entertainment that focuses on people and progress,” has notably featured icons such as Lil Wayne, Cardi B, Childish Gambino and the late Nipsey Hussle as well as rising superstars Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Summer Walker, Wizkid and City Girls. Based in D.C., the festival “staunchly supports environmental consciousness in the African-American community and fosters creativity through innovative initiatives at the intersection of technology, music, art, and social impact,” the release continues. “Over the last decade, it has inspired and mobilized 20 million-plus young people through events and online platforms.”
The acquisition highlights a cycle of black entrepreneurship. Beyond the festival, Gee and Live Nation Urban have focused on championing Allen and McEachern and their vision in the long run.
“For us as a company, this investment was an important one,” said Gee, noting that when Live Nation Urban formed in 2018, one of its first deals was a co-promotion agreement with Broccoli City. “I promised the guys that the success of our partnership would lead to greater things, and it was important to me to keep my word. We are not simply investing in a festival; we are investing in these amazing founders. We believe this will be the first of many brands that we will build together with Marcus and Brandon as they have an insatiable entrepreneurial spirit.”
The Broccoli City crew is “super excited about this partnership with LNU/LN, and working closer with Shawn Gee. I really appreciate him encouraging us to be big thinking entrepreneurs and brand builders… not limiting us to event producers,” added McEachern.
To position Broccoli City for further growth, “we are going to focus on curating untapped niche markets, bigger partnerships, and international expansion,” Allen added. “Our big picture goal is to create a 100-million-dollar community at the apex of live entertainment, social impact, and digital media.”