Tom Morello Announces Power to the People Festival With Springsteen, Foo Fighters and a Cross-Generational Protest Bill
Tom Morello broke the news the way he tends to operate, from a stage. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist announced the Power to the People Festival on Wednesday night at Nationals Park, where he is currently touring as part of Bruce Springsteen’s band, before the official release went out the following today. The one-day event lands Saturday, October 3 at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, the roughly 19,000-capacity amphitheater tucked into 40 acres of forest between Washington and Baltimore.
Morello is curating it as a non-partisan celebration of peace, justice, solidarity, music and community action, language that does some careful work given the date. October 3 sits one month ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, and the festival’s home just outside the capital puts that proximity to use. Alongside the two stages, organizers are building a Freedom Village, an on-site space where nonprofits and community partners walk attendees through civic engagement, grassroots organizing and mutual aid.
The bill reaches back more than half a century and forward to performers who weren’t born when most of it started. Springsteen joins as special guest. Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews anchor the top alongside Morello himself, with Joan Baez carrying the 1960s folk-protest line that Springsteen and Morello have spent careers extending. From there it spreads across genre: Serj Tankian, Cypress Hill, Killer Mike, Brittany Howard, Dropkick Murphys, Taylor Momsen, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Matt Cameron, grandson and The Linda Lindas, whose teenage punk lands them at the youngest end of a lineage handed down without much ceremony.
That handoff runs all the way down to the kids. Jack Black performs with a group of young musicians billed under his name, including Morello’s son Roman Morello, Revel Ian, drummer Yoyoka Soma and Hugo Weiss. Shepard Fairey, whose stark red-and-black poster art frames the whole campaign, turns up for a DJ set.
Morello has built this kind of day before. In 2011 he assembled L.A. Rising at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, putting Rage Against the Machine on a bill with Muse, Rise Against, Ms. Lauryn Hill and Immortal Technique. The activism predates and outlasts any single project, running through Audioslave, Prophets of Rage and his solo work as The Nightwatchman, and it earned him a 2023 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction with Rage along with a spot on Rolling Stone’s list of the greatest guitarists.
Organizers say additional artists, activations and participating organizations will be announced in the coming weeks. Pre-sale registration is open now at powertothepeoplefest.com, with pre-sale beginning Friday, May 29 at 10 a.m. ET and general on-sale Saturday, May 30 at 10 a.m. ET.
