Glastonbury 2022 music festival: full line-up | CNN

(CNN) The world is a divided, contentious place right now but Britain's biggest music bash appears poised to try to bring people together -- if ever so briefly -- this weekend.

After a two-year break due to the pandemic, massive crowds will return to the fields of the English countryside for the Glastonbury Festival. The diverse lineup of artists performing this year span musical genres and generations.

Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and Paul McCartney will headline the event, while Diana Ross will take the stage for the Sunday Legends slot.

#Glastonbury2022 on Twitter. These are our three official accounts...

🗞 @glastonbury official news, announcements and updates

📷 @glastolive regular photos and posts from right around the site

❓@glastoinfo answering Festival-goers' questions from 8am til late pic.twitter.com/qjgYjUjPSn — Glastonbury Festival (@glastonbury) June 22, 2022

Other artists scheduled to perform include Megan Thee Stallion, Olivia Rodrigo, Pet Shop Boys, St. Vincent, Lorde, The Libertines, Kacey Musgraves, Leon Bridges, Herbie Hancock and dozens more.

A rundown of the performances and times can be found here

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Paul McCartney set to headline Glastonbury music festival

AP Entertainment

LONDON (AP) — Paul McCartney has snagged the coveted Saturday night headline slot at Glastonbury next year as the British music festival celebrates its 50th birthday.

Festival organizers confirmed Monday that the former Beatle will perform on the main Pyramid Stage on June 27.

McCartney last played Glastonbury in 2004, delivering a set of songs covering the Beatles era, his later work solo and with Wings.

The 77-year-old star tweeted: "Hey Glasto - excited to be part of your Anniversary celebrations. See ya next summer!"

The festival takes over Worthy Farm in southwest England from June 24-28. The 135,000 tickets sold within an hour of going on sale last month.

More:'I have a lot of dreams about John': Paul McCartney reminisces about The Beatles

Grading summer festivals' biggest headliners

Patrick Ryan

USA TODAY

Another sweaty, songful music festival season has come to an end. Over the past few months, up-and-comers Elle King, Azealia Banks and Flume all made waves on the circuit, while mid-level acts The Weeknd and Tame Impala both cemented their star status with dynamic live sets. But not every major artist could carry a top-notch tune. We give five multi-fest headliners a summertime report card:

DRAKE

Festivals: Coachella, Governors Ball

How he fared: He's making headlines as the undisputed champ of a feud with rapper Meek Mill, but back in April, Drake was considered a loser on the festival circuit. Sleepwalking through his top-billed Coachella slot in Indio, Calif., his awkward smooch from Madonna easily overshadowed the rest of his first-weekend performance, which The Desert Sunlikened to running through a checklist of hits (such as Legend and Crew Love) for an "over-hyped, underwhelming" hour and a half. Consequence of Sound took it a step further, rounding up poor reviews and asking if he was the "worst headliner in Coachella history?" Probably a stretch, but his merely OK set at New York's Governors Ball in June didn't do much to convince us otherwise.

Grade: D+

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

Festivals: Coachella, Governors Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza

How they fared: On the opposite end of the spectrum, some headliners can be detrimentally excited. Such was the case with British frontwoman Florence Welch, who leaped from the Coachella stage and broke her right foot. After some recovery time between April and her How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful album release in June, Welch was back on her feet for Governors Ball early that month, prancing across the main stage for swelling anthems Dog Days Are Over and What Kind of Man, and slowing it down for Calvin Harris collaboration Sweet Nothing. It was a rapturous intensity the festival MVP echoed throughout the summer, according to euphoric write-ups from The Huffington Post and The Tennessean, among many others.

Grade: A

KENDRICK LAMAR

Festivals: Sasquatch!, Sweetlife, Summer Jam, Bonnaroo, Summerfest

How he fared: Coming off one of the best-reviewed albums of the year, expectations were sky-high for Lamar going into the festival season. So naturally, some fans were disappointed when he only played one song (Alright) off To Pimp a Butterfly at Oregon's Sasquatch! festival in May, filling most of his set with popular, but tired tracks off Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. The New York Times was also disenchanted when the rapper headlined at Summer Jam in East Rutherford, N.J., in June, calling him a "B-list version of an A-list star," whose serviceable set concertgoers regarded "with something less than ebullience." USA TODAY's Brian Mansfield was more impressed with his performance at Bonnaroo a week later, remarking how he had "some 70,000 people in the palm of his hand."

Grade: B-

LANA DEL REY

Festivals: Sasquatch!, Governors Ball

How she fared: People don't go to a Lana Del Rey show for her charisma. As Consequence of Sound noted of her Sasquatch! headlining set in May, "she's less of a performer and more of an aesthetic," which didn't stop the likes of The Oregonianfrom praising her dark, unironically whimsical performance that weekend. But she's not the kind of singer whose magnetism can keep a crowd spellbound when sound issues strike — a hurdle she faced at New York's Governors Ball a week later, causing hordes of fans to file out. Although we were unengaged by most of her set (save for the final handful of songs), publications such as Billboardwere more forgiving: writing that her "smoky, if thimble-sized voice" couldn't reach the whole audience, but "it only added to the near-hypnotic attention she commanded."

Grade: C+

PAUL MCCARTNEY

Festivals: Firefly, Lollapalooza

How he fared: Veterans such as Billy Joel, AC/DC and Jack White rocked the festival circuit this summer, but none more than 73-year-old Paul McCartney, who earned mostly positive notices for his jam-packed, 32-song set at Firefly in Dover, Del., in June. Although he "started off sounding a bit hoarse," he loosened up as the show went on, Philly.com noted, tearing through Wings and Beatles hits including Live and Let Die and Back in the U.S.S.R., respectively. He also reached into the Fab Four catalog at Lollapalooza, reviving Helter Skelter and Get Back (with the help of another festival favorite, Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard). Chicago Tribunelamented that his "voice showed signs of fraying" in the career-spanning performance, but he "still provided a lasting memory or two."

Grade: B+

15 most memorable ACL Fest moments through the years

Peter Blackstock

With the Austin City Limits Music Festival’s announcement on July 1 that this year’s event has been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, we’re taking a look back at some of our favorite memories from the fest’s first 18 years. Organizers said in the announcement that they plan to return the festival to Zilker Park on Oct. 1-3 and 8-10, 2021.

PETER BLACKSTOCK

Paul McCartney, 2018. The single best ACL Fest moment ever? That’s subjective, of course, but it’s easy to make a case for the almost universal appeal of the Beatles’ music that dominated McCartney’s sets on both weekends.

Willie Nelson, 2016. I didn’t even see most of this one, opting for a great Amanda Shires set on the BMI stage that overlapped. But walking down the hill to catch Willie’s glorious “I’ll Fly Away” finale to a huge and euphoric crowd packed into Zilker Park’s east end was an indelible ACL Fest memory.

Yola, 2019. The year seemed dominated by Lizzo’s massive breakout and Billie Eilish’s pre-Grammys-sweep appearances. But it’s testament to the upside of the fest’s undercard that this English country-soul dynamo also blew the roof off of the Tito’s tent on the way to her own Grammy best new artist nomination.

J.T. Van Zandt, 2004. Here’s a sleeper pick. The son of legendary songwriter Townes Van Zandt rarely plays shows anymore, but his voice and style are so evocative of his father’s music that it was something special and almost surreal to hear him play to a small, devoted group of fans that gathered around the shady BMI stage.

Asleep at the Wheel and Barton Hills Choir. Superstar headliners and buzz-bands aside, these two local institutions have been central to the fest’s identity, with the Wheel playing every single fest since the start and the choir a fixture for more than a decade. Their respective noontime sets have always felt like a perfect way to get in the right frame of mind for a joyous day in the park.

DEBORAH SENGUPTA STITH

Lizzo, 2019 (and 2016). The Minneapolis rapper’s 2019 performance was a spectacular booty club soul revival and self-love communion that drew one of the largest crowds we’ve ever seen in Zilker Park. The gluteal gyrations were mind-boggling; the calls for love, compassion and positivity were inspiring; and “Truth Hurts” was explosive. The queen claimed her crown. But I also have a soft spot in my heart for her 2016 performance, when she played an opening set to a small but ecstatic crowd. Backstage after the set, she talked about how profoundly the death of her city’s icon, Prince, had affected her. It filled her with a drive to spread as much love and light as possible, and those of us who came to the fest early that year were showered with her radiant vibes.

Janelle Monae, 2018. In a flawlessly executed hourlong spectacle that included expert dance routines, soaring vocals and upward of a half-dozen costume changes, Monae “spoke truth to power in the darkest hour.” Surrounded by her crew, predominantly female and black, she preached a love revolution with such jubilant verve it was easy to get swept up in the magic. She’s a powerful visionary who inspired us to believe once more in the American dream, to embrace the idea that Black people, white people, brown people, queer people, immigrants, we’re all equal.

Outkast, 2014. The Playa and the Poet were essentially on a farewell tour, and on the first Friday of the fest they put in the funky dirty South hip-hop throwdown that longtime fans of the ATLiens had been dreaming of for the better part of a decade. A show for the ages, it was a reminder of exactly what hip-hop at the top of its game is supposed to sound like.

Kendrick Lamar, 2016. Standing in a field full of thousands shouting “We Gon’ Be Alright” at the end of a terrible summer defined by far too much death was cathartic and necessary.

Gary Clark Jr., 2019. No one puts the Austin in ACL better than Gary Clark Jr. With fiery licks and sweet falsetto, he used his 6 p.m. Saturday set to remind us why he’s our hometown hero. Then, to close his set, he brought out blues upstarts the Peterson Brothers and dynamic rap duo Blackillac for a thunderous cover of the Beatles classic “Come Together” that felt like ATX history.

ERIC WEBB

Robyn, 2019. The Swedish pop was an unusually cultish pick for a headliner last year. I vouched for her bona fides, of course, but I’ll admit the “Call Your Girlfriend” singer is an “if you know, you know” kind of star. Robyn’s set was transcendent: fluid, narcotic, balletic. When the music from the stage dropped out, and the crowd sang the chorus of “Dancing On My Own” in unison straight to Robyn, it was one of the most communal moments I’ve seen at ACL Fest.

Solange, 2017. Music festival sets do tend to blend together. Play the hits, maybe have some stunts, give the sunburned people a beat to slosh their beer to. Solange, riding the critical anointment of her album “A Seat at the Table,” gave us crimson style and creative substance. You could have watched it at the MOMA instead of Zilker Park.

LCD Soundsystem, 2016. This set and the band’s 2010 ACL Fest stop sandwiched an infamous band breakup, so nostalgia came as part of the deal. Idiosyncratic dance breaks, glitched-out lights and a feels-good-to-be back “All My Friends” all put this Sunday headline slot in the hall of fame.

Florence and the Machine, 2015. The first female-fronted act ever to close ACL Fest. Yes, that’s wild! There’s a whole machine behind Florence Welch, but the British alt-pop dynamo is her own power generator. Until you’ve seen this belter hypnotize a massive festival crowd through the sheer magic of joyful cavorting, you haven’t lived.

Lorde, 2014. The first line of my review from the Kiwi upstart’s ACL Fest debut: “Why wasn’t Lorde a headliner?” I know 2020 has been 18 years long on its own, but ACL Fest grew into its super-fest status gradually. Lorde’s audience was massive and impenetrable. If you got in, you weren’t getting out — which was fine, because it was a thrill to watch her thrash to “Royals” and “Team.” It’s one of the more notable examples of a skyrocketing new artist booked on a smaller stage drawing an army come fest time.

Why so few women on music festival lineups?

Patrick Ryan

USA TODAY

If you want to headline a music festival, it helps to have a Y chromosome.

Paul McCartney, AC/DC, Kendrick Lamar and Sam Smith are among the dozens of male music acts with top billing at this summer's major fests, which kick off Friday with the mammoth Coachella in Indio, Calif., and continue through August with gatherings large and small across the country.

But only a handful of women are headlining this year's events, including Florence and the Machine, Alabama Shakes, Lana Del Rey and Sleater-Kinney. Tally up the female artists' names, and the gender imbalance is even more startling.

Out of nearly 160 artists, only 26 at Coachella are female-fronted acts — about 16%. Similarly, fewer than 20 of the 100 artists appearing at Bonnaroo (June 11-14 in Manchester, Tenn.) are female. Roughly 30 of the 135 bands playing Lollapalooza (July 31-Aug. 2 in Chicago) are women-led. Smaller fests such as Hangout (May 15-17 in Gulf Shores, Ala.) and Sweetlife (May 30-31 in Columbia, Md.) fare slightly better, with about 25% and 35% women performers, respectively.

It's not a new issue, either. Despite women such as Lorde, Haim and Ellie Goulding playing multiple fests on the circuit last year, Coachella still had only 28 female-fronted acts in 2014, according to Slate. And in 2013, Buzzfeed ran through Coachella's lineups since its 1999 inception and reported that only two women have had the festival's highest billing — Björk in 2002 and 2007, and Portishead in 2008 — and the event has never had more than a 25% female lineup.

'Musical diversity'

Coachella producer Goldenvoice declined interviews for this article, and an email to Bonnaroo co-producer Superfly Presents was not returned before publication.

But from the perspective of other festival promoters, the shortage of women is not for a lack of trying.

"A lot of it is just timing: Who's got a record cycle? Who's going out? Are they playing other stuff that's in the radius?" says Hangout festival director Sean O'Connell. "It's unfortunate, but it's going to happen. There's definitely offers going out." (Hangout offered four potential headlining slots to female artists this year, none of which panned out due to scheduling, O'Connell adds.)

When taste-making music publication Pitchfork organizes its annual Chicago fest, diversity is "something you definitely keep in mind; you want to make sure the festival is representative of all genders and races," says Pitchfork president Chris Kaskie. Given that most artists playing this year's event (such as Sleater-Kinney and Chvrches) have already been covered extensively by the site, "the good news is that we don't obsess over the consideration, because it's already a pretty natural thing anyway."

Overall, Pitchfork's priority is to accurately represent the current music landscape — a philosophy that promoter Huston Powell of C3 Presents adopts while organizing Lollapalooza's yearly rosters.

"It's not like I'm counting, out of 130 bands, 'How many are fronted by women? How many women are represented in these bands?' " Powell says. "I feel like in a given year, if we take care of the musical diversity, the rest will kind of play out."

Instead, it could come down to the continued scarcity of women in mainstream rock, hip-hop and electronic dance music — three genres that are heavily featured at summer music festivals, as opposed to pop. Also, most promoters don't pursue top-40 staples for their top slots, although there have been exceptions, such as Lady Gaga (who headlined Lollapalooza in 2010) and Beyoncé (who closed out the 2011 Glastonbury fest in the U.K.).

"Every festival thrives on exceptions. Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga could kill it at Coachella, and they'd be the exception there," says Billboard editor-in-chief Joe Levy. "That said, the question is whether or not festivals in general can afford the kind of wildly entertaining spectacles the biggest women in touring put on."

For acts of that caliber, "they can go on a stadium tour and make more than they would at a festival show," says Alex Young, founder of music/film site Consequence of Sound. After all, the likes of Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Cher all scored some of the top-grossing tours of 2014, according to Billboard, with upcoming jaunts from Madonna and Taylor Swift guaranteed to be hot tickets as well.

More inclusiveness

That doesn't change the fact that there are still so few mid-sized and up-and-coming female acts on festival rosters. Sarah Barthel is one half of electronic-rock duo Phantogram (with Josh Carter), which has played nearly every major event on the circuit in recent years, and soon heads to Hangout, Sweetlife and Electric Forest (June 25-28 in Rothbury, Mich.) this summer.

"A lot of times we'd go to a festival and I'd be the only person wearing high heels," Barthel says. Although those were generally smaller fests, "you always respect the women you see on tour and the girls you meet, because they're usually just as dirty as you and you kind of have to think like a guy. There's no nice green room where you can take a nap and someone's going to blow a fan at you."

In general, the bands that make it to the festival-level are the hungrier artists that "tour their (butts) off and spend as much time as they can on the road," she adds. "You don't see many women in that world because it's pretty hard to do in that aspect. It's not very glamorous."

The demand is there

But fans still want to see more female faces. Brittnay Johnston, 23, of Los Angeles is going to Coachella, whose lineup includes St. Vincent, FKA Twigs and Sylvan Esso. She's been to Bonnaroo and Ultra fests in past years, but didn't notice the dearth of women until she saw buzz on social media, with Photoshopped lineups that eliminated male artists to make a point about women's festival numbers.

"It definitely does make me more inclined, when I'm going around and figuring out the smaller bands I want to see, just to pick one who maybe features a woman or just a solo female act," Johnston says.

Alison Gary, 40, of Greenbelt, Md., feels similarly. Having started going to festivals such as Bonnaroo and Forecastle nearly a decade ago, she says she has noticed fewer women on lineups as festivals become more "homogeneous," leaning toward more mainstream-friendly acts.

But with so many ways to discover and support new artists online, she believes it's fans' responsibility to spearhead the changes they want to see.

"The people have a voice, and I think music festivals used to be about the people and now they've started to become about the ad revenue and sales," Gary says.

"Festivals are successful based upon their attendance, so we should use social media and let our voices be heard, and get what we want at these events."

Innings Festival review: Chris Stapleton, Avett Bros, Queens of the ...

“Baseball and music,” Chris Stapleton mused, looking out on the thousands of fans who’d come to see him headline Sunday’s Innings Festival, a three-day baseball-themed event at Tempe Beach Park. “It doesn’t get much better than that.”

Even if you didn’t bother with the batting cage, the home run derby or the professional speed-ball critique by Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Jake Peavy, the Innings Festival was a really good weekend for music.

And it managed to draw more than 33,000 attendees over the course of three days.

Tyminski

Sunday’s lineup was by far the festival’s most country-oriented offering, starting with the first main-stage performance of the day – Tyminski, led by Dan Tyminski, whose bandmates included a man who was equally gifted on banjo and dobro.

A member of Alison Krauss and Union Station, he topped the U.S. dance charts with his vocal on “Hey Brother,” Avicii’s bluegrass-flavored EDM hit.

Wait, George Clooney can't really sing?

But Tyminski’s biggest claim to fame may be his having briefly fooled us all into thinking George Clooney could sing in “O Brother Where Art Thou?”

As he announced before treating the fans to his version of the bluegrass standard “Man of Constant Sorrow,” of all the songs he’s ever done, it “probably more than any other is the one that gave me a soggy bottom.”

Luke Combs

Things got way more country during Luke Combs’ second-stage performance.

It’s hard to imagine the fans who stood in that same spot just two days earlier rocking to Eagles of Death Metal raising their beers in response to the question “We Got Any ‘90s country fans?,” much less singing along to the biggest country single of that decade, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.”

That Toby Keith song was part of a medley with the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” and Alan Jackson’s “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow.”

The kid has only country radio hits to perform as well, and he did those, too, bringing his set to a crowd-pleasing finishing with his platinum breakthrough, “Hurricane,” one of the few songs in his set that failed to mention beer (although it does include a reference to whiskey).

Chris Stapleton

Stapleton’s headlining set wasn’t nearly that country.

He’s a maverick that way, setting the tone with the blues-rocking swagger of “Midnight Train to Memphis,” his guitar tone set on “Live at Leeds.”

And speaking of the Who, he unleashed a torrent of tremolo chords with Pete Townshend-esque fury over the swampy garage-rock vibe of “Second One to Know.”

The man who can do it all

His “Outlaw State of Mind,” which he also performed, may not have anything to Outlaw Country, but he’s definitely part of that tradition.

A “rough and rowdy honky tonk man,” as he sings in “Hard Living,” he filters his love of traditional country through a heavy dose of blues and not just Southern rock but rock in general. And it plays to his musical strengths.

He’s an expressive vocalist whose gritty rasp was put to brilliant use throughout, from the playful delivery of “Them Stems,” a song he prefaced by telling the crowd “You sure do smell good out there,” to soulful urgency he brought to “Nobody to Blame.”

His guitar work is just as expressive

Nearly every song in Sunday’s set included ample room for Stapleton to stretch out on guitar, from “Might as Well Get Stoned” to “Outlaw State of Mind,” which ended in a wall of noise, Stapleton playing with an effects pedal.

He stripped it down to acoustic guitar and vocals for a suitably heartbreaking version of “Whiskey and You” and led the fans in a singalong on “The Devil Named Music” accompanied only by the strum of his acoustic.

"Tennessee Whiskey"

After turning in a moody version of the Charlie Daniels ballad “Was It 26,” he introduced his bandmates by literally singing their praises to hilarious effect.

And then he brought his set to a triumphant close with a crowd-pleasing version of “Tennessee Whiskey,” a country standard he’s done such a good job of making his own, it’s hard to imagine him getting through a show without it.

Counting Crows

It wasn’t all country or country-ish Sunday.

Counting Crows drew a large, attentive crowd for a mainstage performance that opened with an epic rendition of “Round Here,” a radio staple that clearly did its share to help “August and Everything After,” their 1993 debut, go seven-times-platinum.

All the hits: "Round Here" to "Mr Jones"

And they kept that crowd’s attention through lesser-known tracka before bringing the set to a user-friendly finish with their version of “Big Yellow Taxi,” “A Long December” and the breakthrough single Adam Duritz only plays when he’s feeling it, “Mr. Jones.”

It even felt like he was feeling it.

Then, Duritz – who, it should be noted, was wearing a really cool Iron Fist T-shirt – joked about how they could go offstage and come back for an encore or just play another song.

They did not leave the stage, bringing their set to a crowd-pleasing finish with another track that made their breakthrough album such a big deal in the ‘90s, “Rain King.”

Dispatch gets political

There wasn’t much in the way of jam-rock for an outdoor festival in Arizona, but jam-scene veterans Dispatch had it covered with their heartfelt blend of reggae, funk and folk-rock.

“Only the Wild Ones” seemed to occupy a breezy middle ground between Dave Matthews Band and Paul Simon in “Graceland” mode while “Bang Bang” found them rapping to a lilting reggae vibe in a way that would speak to Sublime fans.

They also got political, dedicating a song to “all those high school kids leading the way, knocking some sense into the grownups” in the gun debate.

“As a band, we’ve been pretty amazed that there seems to be a polarity between two worlds,” they said, “when really there isn’t. We’re OK with guns as long as it’s really, really, really hard to get them. So universal background checks would just be the right thing to do to save lives.”

And then they played “Dear Congress, (17),” a powerful new song whose title references the number of children killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

It was chilling in the best way possible, especially the outro, in which they recited the number of victims in other mass shootings, from Sandy Hook to Columbine.

J Roddy Walston

Sunday’s most raucous performance was an afternoon second-stage set by the great J Roddy Walston and the Business.

Their piano-rocking front man is a wildly entertaining force of nature when he lets his inner Little Richard take the wheel, pounding the keys with the reckless abandon of a madman while whooping and shouting his way through the rockers.

Actually, his vocals sound more like his inner Paul-McCartney-channeling-HIS-inner-Little Richard, especially on "Don't Break the Needle," but that’s just as rocking.

It wasn’t all breathless piano rock and wailing vocals.

“Take It As It Comes” had a bit of a hand-jive beat but managed to sound wistful at the same time, while “Bad Habits” was a lilting folk-rock ballad with chiming guitars and a singalong chorus.

Day 2: Avett Brothers' unstoppable rally, Gin Blossoms' hometown heroes welcome

Day 2 coverage was provided mostly by Serene Dominic.

It's hard recapping a Spring Training-inspired music festival and not want to couch everything in baseball terminology or see everything as a competition.

Anyone caught trying to incite the audience to clap by demonstrating the very same clap over their heads? The equivalent of a corked bat.

Anyone performing on the Left Field stage in the early afternoon? Rookies paying their dues. Unknowns to look out for in the future? Major league prospects.

Here's a play-by-play on the second day of the inaugural Innings Festival at Tempe Beach Park. (Serene Dominic)

White Reaper

Watching White Reaper kick off the Home Plate festivities Saturday afternoon for the tiniest fraction of the crowd size that had greeted Bishop Briggs in the opening slot a day earlier, it felt like attendance was off from the opening day.

Which is a shame, because their set was great, at times suggesting Cheap Trick writing hits for the Ramones (or possibly Buzzcocks), what with the reckless abandon they were throwing at those effervescent pop hooks.

They even did a Misfits cover, “Horror Business.”

I would definitely stand in line to see them in a club. (Ed Masley)

Gin Blossoms

So where was everybody?

Apparently staking their claim on a spot near the front of the second stage for a homecoming set for Tempe’s own conquering heroes Gin Blossoms.

The formerly local sensations seemed touched to be given the hometown heroes welcome down the street from where a number of their greatest hits had been composed.

I shared something on Facebook at the time about how suddenly the crowd at Innings Fest quadrupled when they hit the stage, but I think maybe I just like the word quadrupled. There were six or seven times more watching them.

And they delivered.

They opened with one of their biggest hits, “Follow You Down," which featured Robin Wilson on harmonica and encouraging the crowd to sing the chorus hook.

"We’ve returned to our hometown to kick ass and chew bubblegum," Wilson announced. "And we are all out of bubblegum."

"Allison Road"

In addition to crowd-pleasing staples like "Allison Road," they dusted off a country-rocking ballad from a forthcoming release recorded with Mitch Easter and Don Dixon. And it effortlessly held its own in the company of those fan favorites, ending with a future singalong of "Close your eyes / Hold me tight / Everything is gonna be all right.

Then, they finished the set with their other big singles, "Found Out About You," "Hey Jealousy" and "Til I Hear It From You." (EM)

MORE:Gin Blossoms celebrate a 'Miserable' anniversary with new music, hall of fame induction

GALLERY: GIN BLOSSOMS OVER THE YEARS:

Lord Huron

By the time I slid into the Home Plate stage to catch LA indie-folk band Lord Huron, they were midway through the set, hitting an early peak when the sun was just starting to go down with "Wait by the River," a song that came off like a mysterious 45 in a stack that you can't believe you never heard before but is instantly recognizable as a home truth.

Like many of the acts on the second-day roster, the lyrics had an air of fatalism about them (sample lyric: "If we can't be together/ What's the point of life?").

But on the strength of that moment, I was hooked to check out more of his set, which included a more modern-sounding if no less downtrodden outback rendezvous "Meet Me in the Woods" ("I can see what the darkness does/Say goodbye to who I was").

Who knows how the fabric of our civilization would be forever changed if Justin Timberlake's Abercrombie and Fitch "Man in the Woods" fiasco had approached this existential realism? (SD)

Local Natives

Silverlake's Local Natives make the panorama of a broken heart even more expansive, mostly thanks to the added tribal percussion and the double attack of Kelcey Ayer and Taylor Rice's respective high tenor wailing on numbers like "You and I" and "Past Lives."

The former is the kind of breakup song a forlorn heart could listen to on an endless loop until help in the form of hope arrives.

A lot of bands try to rock the wordless chorus as a cheap ploy for audience participation, but Local Natives do it just to demonstrate that five-part block harmonies are in their wheelhouse.

Case in point: "Fountain Of Youth" which was dedicated to Saturday's March For Our Lives activists and couldn't have been more of a pulse reading on this still formative generation and their ability to transform the national discourse if it had been written that same day: "We can do whatever we want/ We can say whatever we mean/And if we don't care/ Then who cares?"

Then, they added a cautionary bit of advice, "I think we'd better listen to these kids/ I can't keep pretending that I'm still asleep."

Even The Head and the Heart who later followed them on the same stage and did their own forceful set noted that they were inspired by Local Native's grand slam of a set, which ended with suitable rock bombast and Taylor Rice crowd surfing. (SD)

The Decemberists

After them, the Decemberists were more like a chill-out tent or comic relief, take your pick, with the evening breeze cutting some of the nasal tone off Colin Meloy's vocal delivery for more calming effect.

The importance of Saturday's march was not lost on Decemberists, whose new album "I'll Be Your Girl," released last weekend, was written in the wake of the 2016 election and probably served to update the normally history-hewn songcraft of Meloy into something more resembling current events.

Yet the kitschy pseudo-psychedelic album cover and songs like "Everything Is Awful" (dedicated to the anti-gun activists) and "We All Die Young" (thankfully NOT dedicated to the marchers) just came off as more of the band's stock in trade out-of-time irony at best and plain ol' cynicism at worst. Especially couched between the passionate Local Natives and the double blast of Avett earnestness on tap.

If Meloy is truly trying to reach or even encourage Gen Z, better not to write a song which includes an invocation "to hoist your own petard."

And word to the concert cam operator, focusing on a gleeful audience member dutifully mouthing the words to "Severed" like "Gonna smother you all till I choke you" makes for one disconcerting recruitment poster for both band and fans.

What worked great for The Decemberists?

"Ben Franklin's Song," the unused lyric from "Hamilton" writer Lin-Manuel Miranda that has this beloved statesman and American hero resorting to rap braggadocio: "I'm Benjamin effin" Franklin" and "I'm the only American the French wanna see/ They call me a genius, I can't disagree."

"Make You Better," a song that seemed to come from a genuine place that didn't involve irritation or analogies to mining disasters.

And the accordion-lead-guitar duel that ended with all the members of the band lying down on stage and playing barely above a whisper. (SD)

White Buffalo

After a day of augmented folk outfits, it was nice to hear some power-trio minimalism with the White Buffalo, who fired on all three cylinders with kinetic drumming, lead bass and the deep baritone of Jake Smith, whose "Come Join The Murder" loomed large in the Season 7 finale of "Sons of Anarchy."

Although some compare his voice to Leonard Cohen, the band seem to have emerged from playing the kind of pub rock that could back a Nick Lowe or Elvis Costello handily. (SD)

The Avett Brothers

If you fell in love with the Avett Brothers from their Judd Apatow documentary "May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers," now running on HBO, you would not be disappointed that they are all that and more in a live setting.

And standing toe-to-toe with fans who were there for them through those earlier albums, it felt like being welcomed as a member of an extended family.

Indeed, not since the Osmonds has a brother act not only not engendered long-running feuds but have shown themselves to be this loving and simpatico with one another.

Their whole yin and yang is completely complimentary. The older Scott has the demeanor of a preacher who stands and gestures grandly while the younger Seth appears like a wired teenager so eager to play this music that he is practically running in place.

Once I read that Stephen Stills was so impressed by George Harrison's "Within You Without You" that he had the lyrics carved on a stone monument in his yard.

There hardly is a song of the Avetts that you wouldn't want to carve into stone. In fact you'd need a quarry to keep up with all the worthy quotables they toss out with frightening regularity.

Yet every tale of desperation is tempered with hope, from "Morning Song," where Scott asks the people who stop caring to not tell it to the people that still do, or " I Wish I Was" where Seth imagines himself as a flickering flame, a tune and a sweater as means of getting close to a woman he is afraid to become intimate with.

The Apatow documentary showing the making their last album "True Sadness" climaxes with a song about leaving this world with no malice that was so moving, it caught everyone in the studio off guard and vulnerable.

I'm glad that this night they chose to close the encores with that instead of doing it early in the set as they have done on some of this tour.

What better way to end a show than having a crowd communally singing "I have no enemies" together?

If the Avett Brothers can't bring us all together, what chance has America's favorite pastime got? (SD)

Avett Brothers' Set List

Die Die Die

True Sadness*

Laundry Room

Old Joe Clark (Instrumental) with Upright Bass solo

Satan Pulls The Strings*

Morning Song*

Kick Drum Heart

Just Be Simple

I Wish I Was

Ain’t No Man

Go to Sleep

The Prettiest Thing (David Childers & The Modern Don Juans cover)

Live and Die

I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan cover) Tania Elizabeth sings

Slight Figure of Speech - drum solo

I and Love and You

Encores

Faith (George Michael Cover)

Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

No Hard Feelings

Day 1: Innings Festival launches in Tempe with Queens of the Stone Age

By the time Bishop Briggs brought her crowd-pleasing set to a close with a soulful rendition of "River" Friday evening, it was clear that the inaugural Innings Festival, a baseball-themed event by the makers of Lollapalooza, was a hit.

When I turned my attention from Briggs at the foot of the stage as ended her final song to make my way to Phosphorescent on one of the festival's other two stages, the crowd had already filled in.

At 5:30 p.m. on a Friday for the first main-stage performance.

Briggs was one of 12 acts on the opening day of the three-day festival at Tempe Beach Park.

The day's eclectic mix got underway with Rihanna's duet partner Mikky Ekko, who wisely included a version of "Stay" in his set.

And after making its way through such highlights as Briggs, Phosphorescent, a ridiculously entertaining Eagles of Death Metal, Young the Giant and Cold War Kids, it ended with a nearly 90-minute onslaught from Queens of the Stone Age.

Queens of the Stone Age

Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age was making his second appearance on an Innings stage, having taken his place behind the drums for the raucous finale of Eagles of Death Metal's set, much to the fans' delight.

Whatever backlash remains from the incident last December when Homme kicked the camera of a photographer into her face at KROQ's Almost Christmas concert in Los Angeles, it didn't seem to have an impact on the way he was received in Tempe.

And there were no signs of erratic behavior.

The performance got off to a powerful start with "If I Had a Tail" and "My God is the Sun" from 2013's "...Like Clockwork." And like nearly ever song that followed, they rocked with conviction and swagger to spare.

Even the falsetto-driven slow jam, "Make it Wit Chu," had conviction and swagger to spare.

In the midst of the third song, "Feet Don't Fail Me," the opening track on their new album, "Villains," Homme addressed the crowd.

"Tonight is the f--king night," he said. "There's no yesterday. There's no tomorrow. Everybody's free, man. You do whatever the f--k you want."

Then, he singled out the one guy in the crowd who wouldn't clap along, which seemed to contradict the message of his monologue. And then, it was back into the song with a verse that felt like something of a mission statement.

"Me and my gang come to bust you loose / We move with an urgency / Between pleasure and agony."

"Feet Don't Fail Me" was the first of several highlights pulled from "Villains." They also did "The Way You Used to Do," The Evil Has Landed" and "Domesticated Animals."

And they pulled a few gems from their third album, "Songs for the Deaf," the punkish adrenaline rush of "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire" giving way to "No One Knows" like it does on the album.

"No One Knows," whose riff remains one of their greatest moments, included the first of two solos for drummer Jon Theodore, who made the most of the spotlight.

Other highlights of the set included the slide-guitar-fueled "I Sat By the Ocean," "Smooth Sailing," the forward momentum of the piano-banging "Go With the Flow" and the massive wall of noise they built on the set-closing "Song for the Dead."

As Coachella prepares for a weekend with no rock acts as headliners, Queens' performance made it clear that a rock act can still hold its own at the top of a festival bill in 2018.

Cold War Kids

It’s been 11 years since Cold War Kids rolled out of Long Beach with their breakthrough single, “Hang Me Up to Dry.”

And it still resonates enough with fans to touch off massive singalongs in concert, as it did on Friday night in Tempe, where they drew a huge crowd as the last act on the second stage.

But the songs from their new album, “L.A. Divine,” were also well-received, from the soulful majesty of the U2-worthy “Can We Hang On?,” one of several tracks that made the most of Nathan Willett’s upper register, to “Restless,” a ballad that ended with Willett testifying like a gospel singer, and "Love is Mystical," the album's biggest hit.

The R&B vibe they explored on their latest release was reflected in their choice of a cover song, Rihanna’s “Love on the Brain.”

And they offset the newer material with such crowd-pleasing staples as “Miracle Mile” and the Dylanesque ballad “We Used to Vacation,” which as Willett noted was "the first song on our first record."

Young the Giant

Young the Giant’s mainstage set immediately followed the non-stop hi-octane rocking and humor of Eagles of Death Metal, which made me worry that they’d seem a little light after that. But as I walked up, they were rocking their way through the headbanging swagger of “Jungle Youth,” as though they had the same thought.

And that was followed by a raucous “Something to Believe In,” the biggest single from “Home of the Strange,” their latest album, settling into the moodier, more understated side of what they do as they went on.

The atmospheric, acoustic-guitar driven “Titus Was Born” was followed by the Bowie-referencing, falsetto-driven funk-rock vibe of “Mr. Know-It-All” and a dreamy rendition of “Mind Over Matter," which featured a soaring lead vocal from Sameer Gadhia, who was rocking a very bright jumpsuit.

Other highlights ranged from the disco-flavored groove of "Nothing's Over" to an understated "Firefly," which was mostly just a finger-picked acoustic guitar and vocals with some atmospheric textures, and an impassioned "Amerika."

Eagles of Death Metal

Jesse Hughes was born to rock a festival. It doesn't matter if you go in cold with no knowledge at all of what Eagles of Death Metal do and why they do it. If you have a sense of humor and you don't hate rock and roll, you will be entertained.

And if you do hate rock and roll? There is a chance you'll be converted.

They walked on to the Pilot song "Magic" and just stood there soaking up the crowd reaction before launching into the set with the reckless abandon of "I Only Want You," which featured two fake endings. On the first song. That is how it's done.

From there, they made their way through such hard-rocking highlights as “Don’t Speak (I Came to Make a BANG)” to "So Easy," on which Hughes went from swinging his mic-cord Roger Daltrey-style to rocking the cradle with it, yo-yo-style.

Then, after admitting that he'd gotten really stoned before the set, he asked "Do you believe in rock and roll, ladies and gentlemen?"

It was clear that they had, so Hughes told them, "And that is why I believe Duran Duran wrote this next song" by way of introducing "Save a Prayer."

They also covered David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream," which featured an epic guitar lead from the great Dave Catching.

The momentum reached another peak with the audience singing along to "I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)." And then, they cranked it up a notch by bringing Homme out to join them on their set's chaotic grand finale. I'm still smiling when I think about it.

Sylvan Esso

Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso worked the stage in a pair of sneakers with six-inch plaform heels and a No Nukes T-shirt as she and her musical partner, Nick Sanborn (whose shirt said "Resist fear, Assist Love") made their way through a set of electropop crowd-pleasers.

After setting the tone with "Sound," the glitch-heavy opening track of their latest album, "What Now," they hit their stride on "Kick Jump Twist," those platform sneakers adding to the charm of Meath's exaggerated movements as she brought the lyrics to life.

They also dusted off the other singles from the new release, "Radio" and another strong contender for their most infectious melody, "Die Young," in a set whose other highlights included "Just Dancing" and "Coffee."

Phosphorescent

Phosphorescent's brand of folk-rock would've been a better fit for the roots-heavy Saturday lineup. But they turned in one of Friday's best performances.

It helps to be led by a talented singer-songwriter with a voice as expressive as Matthew Houck's, with his Dylanesque phrasing matched to a bittersweet tone fit to rival Jeff Tweedy.

And although Phosphorescent began as a bit of a one-man-band recording project for Houck, the musicians assembled onstage at Innings felt more like bandmates than backing musicians.

Scott Stapleton even stole the spotlight on several occasions, pounding his piano like a liquored-up Jerry Lee Lewis with something to prove in places.

Highlights of their set included "Terror in the Canyons," "The Quotidian Beasts," "Los Angeles" and "A New Anhedonia."

Before "Los Angeles," Houck announced, "We haven't played in a long time, it seems, so this is really nice." So maybe the guys were just itching to play, but they sounded amazing together – a little loose, but in a good way.

Bishop Briggs

Bishop Briggs turned in one of the opening day's most energetic sets. In a state of perpetual motion, she seemed to be constantly running in place or boxing the air or otherwise throwing herself into the music.

And she definitely smiled more than anyone else – the kind of smile that could light up a room. Of course, at 4:30 p.m., on an outdoor stage in Tempe, Arizona, it's already pretty bright. But her enthusiasm was contagious.

And for all that smiling, she could turn around and invest a line as impassioned as "I'd rather die than give up the fight" with the sort of intensely emotional vocal those moments require.

Wearing a black hoodie advertising the name and release date of her forthcoming album, "Church of Scars," she opened with her latest single, "White Flag," and kept the emotional urgency on high through "Have Mercy" and "Wild Horses."

Three songs in, she thanked the crowd for showing up in time to see her.

"It means so much to my heart," she said, "my little dark black soul."

From there, she made her way through such obvious highlights as "The Way I Do," which had crowd members waving their hands in the air as they sang along, and her subdued yet soulful take on INXS's "Never Tear Us Apart" before ending with "River."

She also gave an emotional speech about how good it felt to be there in these troubled times.

"I have to say to be able to look out and see all of you and all of us coming together and just enjoying music, it's such a special thing," she said.

"And I just want to thank Innings Fest for making this possible, because before I came onstage today, I felt so much heaviness from what's been happening in the world. And the minute I came out here, all of you just gave me such good energy. I think that's the power of all of us getting together and hopefully the power of music."

Queens of the Stone Age setlist

If I Had a Tail

My God Is the Sun

Feet Don't Fail Me

The Way You Used to Do

You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire

No One Knows

The Evil Has Landed

I Sat by the Ocean

Domesticated Animals

Make It Wit Chu

Smooth Sailing

Little Sister

Go with the Flow

Song for the Dead

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