3 Days at So What?! Music Festival in Arlington, TX
So What?! If it’s 100 degrees, that won’t stop fans and artists from traveling all over the world to Arlington, Texas for So What?! Music Festival! Third String Productions brought the festival back to the Dallas for the first time since 2017 with a huge upgrade to previous years. This year the festival was 3 days long and featured 6 stages with an expansive variety of artists performing including alternative, metal, rap, and pop punk artists, there really was music for everyone to enjoy, even the little kids were having a blast!
One kid in particular named Luke Rocca was having the time of his life at the festival with his dad, the 6 year old became quite the highlight of the festival gaining the attention of festival goers and performers all weekend long when they would spot him in mosh pits and even on inflatable dinosaur during The Ghost Inside. One of our favorite memories of the festival was during Knocked Loose’s set during Dead Ringer when a bunch of grown men started up a push pit with Luke and would fall dramatically, it was the most heart warming thing to watch and brought so many people joy over the weekend. We thought it would interesting to hear more from Luke about the festival so check out this video they made talking about the festival as well as his cover of I’m Just A Kid by Simple Plan.
Hot Topic Stage
The Hot Topic Stage was definitely the stage be at if you loved Pop Punk or Alternative music. Friday was filled with the most Alternative acts on the lineup, 100 Gecs headlined the stage after amazing performances from artists like 3OH!3 and Rebecca Black performed. We also got to see one of our favorite up and coming artists, Hot Milk get to perform their first US festival and they had everyone there watching impressed by their set! Saturday was filled with tons of classic emo throwback artists. Sum41 took to the stage right after Simple Plan and anyone who was a fan of Pop Punk seemed to be in the large crowd. It was also fun getting to see artists like Stand Atlantic and Mothica who didn’t get to perform at Warped Tour play in a similar setting. On Sunday, artists like Girlfirends (Travis Mills), Mod Sun, and Blackbear all got to perform on the same stage once again, for reference at some point those guys have all brought one another on tour and they’re all doing bigger and better things. State Champs and The Maine performed back to back, which led to a lot of crowd surfing.
STAY LIT STAGE
The Stay Lit stage was for fans of heavier music and was located inside the baseball field, artists like I Prevail, The Ghost Inside, and Underoath headlined this stage over the weekend. While it may have felt hotter inside the stadium, fans weren’t going to stop raging for artist like Knocked Loose, The Devil Wears Prada, We Came As Romans to name a few. In fact the crowds at this stage were more energized than probably any other stage, there was always a pit going or someone crowd surfing! It was cool getting to see artists on the stage interact with fans like when Palaye Royale’s frontman Remington Leith ran down to the crowd.
Monster Energy Stages
The Monster Energy Stage was divided into two separate stages, so while one performed, another was setting up. We got to see a a mix of hardcore bands such as Spite and Upon A Burning Body. As well pop-punk bands like With Confidence and Heart Attack Man and their fans really showed up, there were a ton of crowd surfers. The headliners for the weekend were Carnifex on Friday, Hawthorne Heights on Saturday and Chunk No Captain Chunk closed out the festival on Sunday.
Flows Backyard Stage
This stage, which felt like the largest in the whole festival, hosted the majority of the Hip-Hop and Rap artists. To help with crowd control, they split them down the middle, as well had extra security to keep everyone safe. While Waka Flocka was not a headliner, he had the best performance, he brought the stage to the fans and got in the crowd with fans, moshing with them. The headliners were Trippie Redd on Friday, Rae Sremmurd on Saturday and 2 Chainz on Sunday.
REVOLVER Stage
Revolver Stage was the smaller stage to the left of Stay Lit and it kept up with the same heavier music vibe. We were there to catch bands such as Attack Attack!, Hail The Sun, i set my friends on fire and Volumes. The headliners were Escape The Fate, The Fall Of Troy and Comeback Kid. Revolver really felt like it consisted of major throwbacks that felt good to hear and see again.
IDOBI STAGE
The Idobi stage was located at the bottom of a hill with perfect view overlooking a small lake, one of our favorite spots to watch the sunset. This stage had a lot of amazing artists performing on it, Poutyface, Tiny Moving Parts, Grayscale and Concrete Castles were amongst the few. Unfortunately this stage almost felt forgotten about since it was located so close to two big stages, the sounds from the other stages could sometimes be heard at this stage. Some fans also seemed to be bummed out about the location of this stage because they wanted to form circle pits, or even crowd surf. However this stage was the perfect location for anyone who wanted to sit down and check out some incredible performers, many fans flocked to the hill to watch artists like Mom Jeans, Dreamers and Billmuri.
Bowling For Soup Stage
This stage was for the local artists and right behind the Monster Stage. We didn’t have much time to hang out this stage but we did catch Colorblind, a 4 piece band from Austin, TX who put on an amazing performance.
It’s been amazing to see what So What?! Music Festival has evolved into since 2007. With the upgrade to becoming a multi genre music festival that also features amazing local foods and wrestling, it’s really become bigger and better than ever.