Aminé at Capitol Hill Block Party on July 21, 2019 (Image: CHBP/Joshua Lewis)

Capitol Hill’s live music scene is primed to take over the city but the Pike/Pine producers behind it say a new Labor Day weekend music festival at Seattle Center won’t replace the city’s Bumbershoot festival and does not mark the end of Capitol Hill Block Party.

The new Day In Day Out festival is planned for Saturday and Sunday, September 4th and 5th, at the Fisher Green Pavilion and will bring together a CHBP-worthy mix of high buzz acts and local up and comers including Chvrches, Kaytranada, Aminé, Big Wild, STFKR, Parisalexa, and Chong the Nomad in a ticketed event featuring “an all-age viewing lawn, a 21+ VIP lounge deck, a spacious indoor-outdoor beer garden, some of the city’s most hype-worthy food trucks and more.”

Producers say Day In Day Out will be “the first Seattle music festival of its kind in the last two years.”

The major new music event is produced by Daydream State, the company formed by Jason Lajeunesse behind Pike/Pine institutions including the Neumos and Barboza family, Lost Lake Cafe, the Comet, and Big Mario’s.

“After an incredibly difficult year for artists, fans and our local creative community, we’re excited to celebrate the return of live music by providing a new platform to revive the festival scene in Seattle,” Lajeunesse says in Wednesday morning’s announcement of the festival.

The neighborhood’s live music scene roared back to life last week but the annual three-day Capitol Hill Block Party music festival usually held at the end of July won’t be part of the 2021 opening.

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Producers canceled the 2021 event in May for the second year in a row saying they were unable to plan the festival given uncertainty about the state’s announced lifting of most COVID-19 restrictions on June 30th.

Attracting around 30,000 attendees every year, the Capitol Hill Block Party is a nationwide rarity as a ticketed event that takes place on city streets. In 2019, years of tensions between the festival, neighbors, and some of the area’s business community again bubbled up with the city’s event planning officials promising to take a new look at how the event impacts the neighborhood.

But Day In Day Out is not a CHBP replacement, producers tell CHS.

Paris Alexa (Image: CHBP)

“Preparations for Capitol Hill Block Party 2022 are in full swing, and we’ll have more details to share later on,” a Daydream State event producer tells CHS.

It will also not replace Bumbershoot, the Day In Day Out team says, as the long-running Bumbershoot Arts & Music Festival was also canceled for the second year in a row and has formed “an exploratory committee to determine the future of the Labor Day event.”

The Daydream State event producer says “there’s more than enough room for both festivals to coexist.”

“While we are unsure what the future holds for Bumbershoot’s return to Labor Day weekend in Seattle, we are excited by the prospect of continuing to produce Day In Day Out at Seattle Center and hope we can return in 2022 — even if on another weekend,” the producer said.

The new music festival arrives as Seattle and Capitol Hill’s live music venues are springing back to life after COVID-19 restricted closures and months of economic uncertainty. CHS reported here about how the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program is hoped to aid the recovery of Capitol Hill clubs and stages. In the meantime, the venues are stretching back into action. Neumos kicked off its first shows last week with Spirit Award taking its stage last Thursday night. Others are lining up including Chop Suey with a planned August reopening. New life will also join the Pike/Pine scene with a new home for Cafe Racer on 11th Ave.

Chong the Nomad (Image: CHBP/Joshua Lewis)

Day In Day Out will come together with the help of that Pike/Pine energy and Capitol Hill Block Party experience. For many, the DIDO recipe will have a familiar CHBP flavor with local vendors providing food, and afterparties taking place at The Vera Project, Barboza and Neumos following the festival. Many acts on the bill also have made past CHBP appearances.  But the CHBP recipe has also been tweaked for the new start including days more focused by genre and “a more intentionally curated experience” with “more hip hop/R&B artists” on Saturday while Sunday includes “more electronic/indie artists.”

“For this new single-stage event, our goal was to curate complementary and diverse daily lineups that offer the city’s music lovers a two-day mixtape experience to close out the summer,” Lajeunesse said.

Building on years of Capitol Hill Block Party experience but stretching plans for the festival in new ways also means leaving the familiar grounds of E Pike behind. DIDO is not CHBP.

The event producer says they settled on Seattle Center as “the perfect place to host the first music festival of its kind in nearly 2 years” as they explored “venue options for our second festival platform.”

“We didn’t consider the Pike/Pine location because we wanted to build an all-new experience.”

The Day In Day Out festival will be held Saturday and Sunday, September 4th and 5th, at the Fisher Green Pavilion at Seattle Center from 2 PM to 10 PM. Tickets will go on sale beginning Wednesday morning at dayindayoutfest.com.

DAY IN • DAY OUT 2021 LINEUP 

SATURDAY: KAYTRANADA • AMINÉ • TRAVIS THOMPSON • PARISALEXA • DAISY 

SUNDAY: CHVRCHES • BIG WILD • STRFKR • BLU DETIGER • CHONG THE NOMAD  

 

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Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.