TOP FESTS 2024

12 fests to note and annotate.

The Toppest of the Top Fests in the Unceasing Daydream of Eternal 2024, a Green Light, Signifying Hope, and Rowing Boats, Until 2025.

Presented in Chronological Order.

Part of the 2024 Year In Review.

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TOP FESTS

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Boston Celtic Music Festival

January 11 through 14

We're not breaking any news when we write that Boston, and the greater Boston area, has a strong Irish cultural tradition. So a Boston Celtic Music Fest is a natural fit into the local music.

But what’s especially striking about the annual fest, heading into its 22nd year, is how attendance cuts across all sorts of groups beyond the usual red-haired, freckled crowd. At the end of the day the fest is about traditional folk music, and traditional folk music is the foundation of popular music across the globe, local yokelism aside.

We’re especially enamored with one particular event during the fest: the Boston Urban Ceilidh. It’s a carnival of traditional music with dancing, dancing, dancing (and dancing instructor emcees), and you can jump in the fray because it’s “participatory social dances from the Scottish and Cape Breton traditions.” No experience required.

Expect beautiful mayhem. No teeth pulling needed to fill the dance floor, it’s full steam from start to finish.

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We Black Folk Fest

February 4 and 11

They called it the ”inaugural” edition in 2024, so let’s look to see if We Black Folk Fest becomes an annual tradition at Club Passim. A musical outgrowth of the Folk Collective. The two-day bonanza, spread across two Sundays during Black History Month, will remap the way you think about the history of folk music. Plus, you’ll hear a slew of your favorite local folkies and folky-adjacent folks. Anjimile was a nice score for the bill as well, perched on the second Sunday, the once-upon-a-time local musician returned to their old digs.

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JP Music Fest

Smell The Love (2/17), a fundraiser for JP Music Fest (9/7)

Can you smell the love? Rick Berlin leads a three-ring circus through its paces as part of the “Smell The Love” annual fundraiser for the JP Music Fest. It’s a celebration of community, music, and, of course, love. The 2024 bill included a motley crew of local musicians jamming on covers about love. The fundraiser is scheduled every year at Midway Cafe around Valentine’s Day, so maybe the theme is “love” every year? Take a big whiff. And hit up the JP Music Fest when it rolls around in September.

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New Colossus Fest

March 6 through 10

The annual indie music fest, New Colossus, is a beautiful standalone fest, but it also benefits from being a kind of pitstop for bands en route to SXSW. As a result, the Lower East Side plays host to all variety of locked-in, on-the-money, international acts eager to strut their stuff on American stages. Shout out to Spain, which showed up and showed out with The Spanish Wave showcase at Heaven Can Wait, featuring acts like Los Premios, airu, Reme, and more.

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Rock N Roll Rumble

Through April and the start of May

Artists are competitive, but there’s something over the top about pitting bands against each other in a bracket-style elimination tournament, right? That’s OK, the Rock N Roll Rumble is all in good fun, a long running tradition that’s just one big excuse to shower love on the local music scene. Maybe not a “fest,” strictly speaking. This year The Ghouls walked away with the win, besting a field of many worthy competitors. What’s more, the Lowell band went on to win Rock Artist of the Year at the Boston Music Awards. As if the yamheads up in Mill Town needed another thing to yammer about. ;)

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Somerville Porchfest

May 11

Holy shit, the Somerville Porchfest was crowded this year! Don’t take my word for it, check out the Band Map linked at the live review. (Whoops, the organizers un-embedded it). Hundreds of artists, playing gigs in a massive gig wave that rolled west to east throughout the day. Some local news sources credited the human traffic to Guster, a big name act with local roots that decided to show up on someone’s porch. That might explain the knot of traffic around a particular intersection at a particular time of day, but the Band Map didn’t lie. It was going to be a day of beautiful pedestrian hegemony regardless. Looking forward to the 2025 edition.

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Boston Calling

May 24 through 26

Boston’s own marquee “big summer fest” event, Boston Calling, takes up residence every May at the sprawling grounds of the Harvard Athletic Complex. A few top tier pop acts, with a healthy middle class, and a “locals only” Orange Stage to drop a little shine on the local music scene. You asked for Ed Sheeran, you got Ed Sheeran. And the Killers played all the hits for their headlining Sunday set (to say the obvious: all killers, no fillers).

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Solid Sound

June 28 through 30

Expectation builds for a festival that comes only once every two years. The Wilco-driven, multi-day barnburner at the Mass MoCA campus in idyllic western Massachusetts boasts a bill as eclectic as the Chicago band’s discography. If you missed it in 2024, schedule yourself a reminder gmail in late 2025, because you’ll want to book your lodging early. Plenty of green hills, short of choice digs.

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Nice, A Fest

July 25 through 28

The winner of the Shock’n Y’all prize: Nice, A Fest. Four days of local or local-ish underground music. If you don’t go to a show all year long, strap yourself in for a multi-day pass and you’ll enjoy a crash course in the local music scene. At times the breadth of the endeavor feels overwhelming. This must have been a spreadsheet nightmare, but the Get To The Gig Boston crew pulls it off with finesse. Tip of the hat. And shout out to The Rockwell and Crystal Ballroom for hosting a beautiful fest that lights up Davis Square unlike any other all year long. Keytar Bear wouldn’t miss it for the world.

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Somergloom

August 23 and 24

The ‘Gloom! Our pick for Top Curated Fest of 2024. “Genre fests” can be rote and perfunctory affairs, but co-presenters Treebeard Media and ONCE assembled a bill that didn’t rest on their laurels. The two-day fest offered a slate of artists that satisfied the true believers while also challenging, expanding, pushing, pulling, testing the boundaries of what you think of when you think of “heavy music.”

The fest claimed that it was “unencumbered by genre.” On the contrary, they hit the nail on the head so profoundly that they might have authored their own genre, let’s call it gloomcore, at least for two sweet nights out in August.

Shout out to Day 1 headliner Big Brave and Day 2 headliner Royal Thunder for killing it, gloomcore-style.

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Moon Over Salem

September 14

The MOON also rises! We’ll probably use that tagline as long as we cover MOON, a non-profit promoting underground music in the Greater Salem area. When the sun set on Hope Fest, Moon Over Salem took its place. The one-day music fest is a chance for Salem venues to shine, and more than a half dozen stages hosted more than thirty artists for an all day music extravaganza. Prince Daddy & the Hyena sparkled in the headlining spot at Ames Hall, but the real fun is exploring all the nooks and crannies of the schedule, dodging Witch Tours to get to the next gig in time.

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Fuzzstival

October 18 and 19

Illegally Blind fucking slays. If they staged Fuzzstival as a quarterly event, we’d go to all four outings per year. But maybe you don’t want to go to the well too often. The two-day fest showcases lineups that feel like they’re assembled with the tender, and the loving, and the care. What’s the unifying theme? Experimentalism, probably. Textures tended toward the loud, abrasive, and confrontational. Whimsy too. A kind of post punk medley. But acts like Greg Freeman, Francie Medosch, and Latrell James on Night 2 bend the sounds in all sorts of directions. Because who wants to be predictable?