Foo Fighters and Tame Impala lead 2022 edition of baseball-centric Innings Festival
Next year’s edition of the Innings Festival – an annual event that blends live music and major league baseball (MLB) – has been announced, with Foo Fighters and Tame Impala locked in to lead the programme.
The two-day event is set to go down across 26-27 February, split between the Beach Park and Arts Park in Tempe, Arizona. Tickets go on sale at 10am local time this morning (October 6), and are available in five tiers – General Admission, GA+, VIP, Platinum and Cabana – from the festival’s website.
Foo Fighters will lead the festivities on the Saturday, with a line-up co-headlined by St. Vincent and Billy Strings, and rounded out by Caamp, Dashboard Confessional, White Reaper, The Dip, Del Water Gap, Girlhouse and Almost Monday.
The Saturday’s programme also sports (no pun intended) an “All-Star Baseball Jam” hosted by former Padres and White Sox pitcher Jake Peavy. Details for such are yet to be unveiled, however it’s listed under the festival’s line-up of artists, so there’s potential for it to be a supergroup comprised of musically talented MLB stars. It is worth noting, after all, that Peavy has moonlighted as a guitarist in years past.
Tame Impala are due to headline on the Sunday, appearing alongside My Morning Jacket and Black Pumas on a bill fleshed out with Fitz And The Tantrums, Matt & Kim, Nothing But Thieves, Jade Bird, Low Cut Connie, Briscoe and Sydney Sprague.
In addition to Peavy, MLB stars set to appear at next year’s Innings festival include former New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, LA Dodgers all-star Dave Stewart and four-time Gold Glove Award winner Kenny Lofton. Ex-Miami Marlins pitcher Ryan Dempster will also host a live version of his podcast Off The Mound.
A poster also notes that more names will be announced in the months leading up to the festival’s kick-off.
Foo Fighters recently announced a stadium tour of the UK for 2022, with frontman Dave Grohl telling NME: “It’s the first place we did a stadium of our own after we played that Live Earth benefit [at London’s Wembley Stadium in 2007].”
The band released their tenth album, ‘Medicine At Midnight’, back in February. It featured the singles ‘No Son Of Mine’, ‘Shame Shame’, ‘Waiting On A War’ and ‘Chasing Birds’. It scored a four-star review from NME, with writer James McMahon saying the album “suggests the future of the Foo Fighters is more interesting than you might have anticipated”.
Back in July, the Foo Fighters released a full-length album of Bee Gees covers under their newly minted disco moniker, the Dee Gees.
Last month, Tame Impala played their first full-band live show in 18 months, treating fans in Chicago to a 20-song set that included a cover of Travis Scott‘s ‘Skeletons’. The band are currently in the midst of a sprawling US tour in support of ‘The Slow Rush’, where proof of either full vaccination or a negative COVID test are required for entry.
‘The Slow Rush’ was released last February via Modular, and was supported by singles like ’Borderline’, ‘Posthumous Forgiveness’, ‘Lost In Yesterday’, and ‘Is It True’. The band also released an 18-minute reimagining of the album’s opening cut, ‘One More Year’.
In a four-star review, NME writer Thomas Smith praised ‘The Slow Rush’ as an evolution of Tame Impala’s sound, saying the band were “unlikely to lose any fans by embracing Parker’s pop sensibilities – genres are history, man – but you have to admire their wilful desire to push into new directions”.
Speaking to NME ahead of the LP’s release, Parker spoke of the fantastical element of Tame Impala, saying: “I’ve always considered Tame Impala as a thing that people can use to escape from whatever the physical strains and problems in their life are. Tame Impala is the fantasy [fiction] of music. It’s The Lord Of The Rings.”
