Summerfest Announces 9th Headliner for NEW American Family Insurance Amphitheater - blink-182 with Special Guests Coheed and Cambria, The Used, and grandson on June 28th
MILWAUKEE, WI (February 19, 2020) – Summerfest presented by American Family Insurance is excited to announce the ninth headliner for Summerfest 2020 – blink-182 with special guests Coheed and Cambria, The Used, and grandson, headlining the new American Family Insurance Amphitheater on June 28, 2020.
Tickets go on sale on sale Friday, February 28, 2020 at 12:00 p.m. CST at Summerfest.com and Ticketmaster.com, or in person at the venue box office, and include admission to Summerfest.
The redeveloped American Family Insurance Amphitheater will provide an unparalleled live outdoor music experience for fans and performers when it debuts during Summerfest. Within the American Family Insurance Amphitheater, fans will enjoy improved sightlines, improved accessibility, new food and beverage offerings, expanded concourses with views of Milwaukee’s downtown, increased restrooms and more.
About blink-182
One of the most prominent bands to emerge from the Southern California punk scene, blink-182 gained mainstream success in the early 2000’s. The band has remained chart favorites, scoring five Top Ten albums and two number one Billboard 200 hits, including 2016’s California. blink-182 formed in the suburbs of San Diego around guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge, bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus, and drummer Scott Raynor. Originally known as simply Blink, the band debuted in 1993 with the self-released EP Fly Swatter. After releasing the album Buddha in 1994, the trio signed to Grilled Cheese/Cargo and released Cheshire Cat the following year. The threat of a lawsuit from a similarly named Irish band forced them to change their name to blink-182, but that did not slow them down: the group earned a higher profile by touring the world.
The third blink-182 LP, Dude Ranch, was jointly released in 1997 by Cargo and MCA. Dude Ranch expanded the group's audience and went platinum by the end of 1998, due in part to the popularity of the infectious teen anthem "Dammit (Growing Up)." The group also officially signed with MCA, which released the band's fourth album, Enema of the State, in the summer of 1999. The album, produced by Jerry Finn (Green Day, Rancid), also welcomed a new member into the trio's ranks; Travis Barker, formerly with the Aquabats, settled in on drums after Raynor left midway through a 1998 U.S. tour. Enema was greeted with almost immediate success, and helped the band achieve the mainstream status of toilet-humored pop-punk kings that Dude Ranch had only hinted at. Driven by the commercially successful singles "What's My Age Again?," "All the Small Things," and "Adam's Song," music videos for the three songs (whose clips included themes of streaking and boy band spoofs) were MTV smashes as well. After selling over four million copies of Enema of the State, the trio played on with the limited-edition release The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back) in fall 2000. The album featured their radio hits in a live setting, intertwined with their quirky sense of humor as well as the new song "Man Overboard." Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, issued in spring 2001, saw the band return to their SoCal punk roots and became their first number one album in the U.S. Maturity, of a sort, came with 2003's self-titled album, released on Geffen. Not only did the album sport a song ("All of This") that featured Robert Smith of the Cure, but "I Miss You" also topped the modern rock chart in 2005. In February of 2005, however, popular as ever and seemingly indestructible, blink-182 unexpectedly announced they would be going on an "indefinite hiatus," supposedly to spend more time with their growing families. Asking fans for help in selecting tracks, the group issued Greatest Hits that November.
Following a string of sold-out dates in Los Angeles in 2013, as well as headlining appearances at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2014, blink-182 began discussions concerning a follow-up to Neighborhoods. However, in January 2015, Hoppus and Barker were quoted in Rolling Stone saying that DeLonge had left the band and announcing the possibility that Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba would fill in for the guitarist at future shows. DeLonge then quickly responded via Facebook that he had not quit blink-182, and that any decision for the band to move forward was made without him. In the end, Skiba officially joined blink-182 and the band entered the studio at the end of the year to begin recording new songs. The first taste from the new trio was "Bored to Death," which was released in April 2016. Their seventh LP, California, was released that summer and debuted at number one, just before they embarked on a tour featuring All Time Low, A Day to Remember, and All-American Rejects. That same year, blink-182 also released the career-spanning vinyl anthology Box Set, which featured all six of the band's studio albums prior to California. In 2019, blink-182 returned with their aptly titled ninth set (according to Barker and Hoppus), Nine. Despite a bright and colorful album cover, Nine featured dark lyrical content stemming from Hoppus' struggles with depression. The LP included singles "Blame It on My Youth" and "Happy Days."
About Coheed and Cambria
“What we’re doing is weird,” Claudio Sanchez admits to Rolling Stone writer Ryan Reed. “Concept records in themselves are not weird, but for a band to continue a concept over their discography can be a little intimidating to somebody on the outside. It’s like a monthly issue comic book, like, ‘I don’t want to get invested into this 10 issues in.” With that in mind, Coheed and Cambria have returned to the sprawling sci-fi world of The Amory Wars with their seventh concept album (eighth overall), but with a fresh start. Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures, is part of the epic universe Sanchez has created, but it’s a brand-new story. In fact, it's the first of a “pentalogy,” — a new five-story arc which introduces bold new characters and intense new locations — brought to life in 15 songs that match the scale of the high concept. The new story arc follows the non-fictional sojourn of their previous record, 2015's The Color Before the Sun.
Coheed and Cambria have never been easy to pin down, genre-wise – existing at the intersection of prog, metal, and post-hardcore -- and in new songs from "Love Protocol" to "It Walks Among Us," that's clearly still the case. For The Unheavenly Creatures, the band found creative satisfaction in abandoning any existing expectations. The widescreen feel of the album extends to the release itself: The Unheavenly Creatures arrives with a box set edition including an 88-page hardcover novel illustrated by Chase Stone and written by Sanchez and Chondra Echert, a "Creature" mask, a fold-out poster, the album itself, and a bonus demo CD. "It is the beginning of a new chapter," acknowledged Sanchez. "I wanted this to feel like a metamorphosis -- like a new beginning for us."
About The Used
The Used just finished making their eighth full-length album out April 24th, 2019 on Big Noise. This forthcoming album marks the return of John Feldmann to The Used family as he is producing the album and also the head of A&R at Big Noise. “They are one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen and Bert is quite possibly the best singer I’ve ever worked with. This has been a dream of mine since I met them in 2001.” Feldmann signed The Used to Reprise Records in January 2002, one short year after the band formed in Orem, Utah. He also produced some of the band’s most monumental albums including their self-titled debut, Maybe Memories, In Love and Death, Lies for the Liars, Vulnerable and Imaginary Enemy. The upcoming album will mark their first release on Big Noise.
About grandson
grandson is a 23-year-old alternative artist hailing from Canada. Born in the small town of Englewood, New Jersey, he relocated to the cultural melting pot of Toronto at a young age, and grew up surrounded by music ranging from jazz to rock & roll to rap, dancehall and R&B. He started experimenting with music production and rapping in 2013, dropped out of school and headed to Los Angeles to pursue music full time. Adopting the "grandson" moniker while living in LA, he dove deeply into rock influences such as Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana and Led Zeppelin. He found a small community of musicians to work and perform with in LA and eventually formed his band. Reminiscent of early punk and grunge music, grandson's live set attempts to create a frantic, mosh pit-inducing cathartic release of energy for fans.
Searching for his voice and for meaning in today's divisive, chaotic world, grandson's songwriting confronts the most pressing issues of his generation, such as financial inequality, governmental and environmental accountability and social justice, giving these topics a soundtrack with a genuine sense of urgency and frustration, while simultaneously touching on adolescence, relationships, and the insecurities and difficulties of growing up through your 20’s.
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ABOUT SUMMERFEST PRESENTED BY AMERICAN FAMILY INSURANCE
Following its 1968 debut, Summerfest presented by American Family Insurance has evolved into what is now recognized as “The World’s Largest Music Festival” and Milwaukee’s cornerstone summer celebration, hosting the music industry’s hottest stars, emerging talent and local favorites along with approximately 800,000 people from Milwaukee and around the world each year for an unforgettable live music experience. During the festival, the spotlight shines on over 800 acts, over 1,000 performances, 12 stages, delectable food and beverages and interactive activities, all in a world-class festival setting. Summerfest takes place June 24-June 28 and June 30-July 5, 2020, closed on Monday, June 29. For more details, visit Summerfest.com, or Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: @Summerfest.