The Sounds of Sad Summer Festival

New York, NY (September 16, 2024)—For a quarter-century, the Warped tour was a cornerstone of the alternative music world, helping emerging bands cut their teeth, scene mainstays grow their audiences and punk elder statesmen show the kids how it’s done. When the venerable touring festival called it a day in 2019, a number of Warped organizers and acts banded together to fill the alt rock touring void with the smaller but similarly determined Sad Summer Festival.

Careening through its fifth edition this year, the scrappy production crossed the U.S. in July and August, playing 17 shows in just under a month. Selling out 3,000 to 5,000-capacity venues along the way, the jaunt was headlined by Mayday Parade and The Maine—both of which played the inaugural edition in 2019—and The Wonder Years. Along for the ride was a bevy of opening acts—We The Kings, Real Friends, Knuckle Puck, Daisy Grenade, Hot Milk and Diva Bleach—and while a nine-band bill makes for a long day, as front of house engineer/system tech Bryan Macdonald related, the presence of veteran groups and crew kept everything running smoothly throughout.

While the tour picked up local stacks and racks at each stop, it carried considerable control gear from Camarillo, Calif.-based Rat Sound Systems. “That works very well for us,” said Macdonald, a graduate of Arizona’s Conservatory of Recording Arts. “They really understand the festival philosophy, and what works and doesn’t work with one. They’ve been great to deal with, supplying us with everything we need, and a little bit extra at times.”

Touring with Sad Summer Festival for the last four years, Macdonald once again spec’d the consoles and stage split, developed the festival patch book and so on, but this time around, he was also kept busy throughout the day mixing Like Roses, Daisy Grenade, Diva Bleach, Knuckle Puck and Real Friends. “I’d never worked with these bands until July,” he said, “but I knew a lot of their material, so building their shows every day on the run has been a bit challenging, but fun as well.”

With headliners given the option to bring their own control gear, The Wonder Years and The Maine chose to bring along Allen & Heath CTI1500 surfaces for their FOH mixes, but everyone else made use of the control gear from Rat Sound. “We have Avid S6L-24C desks on both ends of the snake with a three-way split, and we feed out Whirlwind W4 fanouts for people carrying racks or things of that nature,” said Macdonald. Waves servers were also onhand, which he made judicious use of, noting, “I think Waves Primary Source Expander is always worth it, especially with quiet singers, but generally I try and lean on the $100,000 desk as much as possible.”

Manning the FOH desk for so many opening bands allowed Macdonald to not only build each act’s set, but also ensure that audiences’ ears weren’t burnt out by the time the headliners took the stage: “I always appreciate building a show, keeping things within reason for a rock show to save some room as we go up.”

Most of the tour dates were outdoors in sites ranging from Manhattan’s toney The Rooftop at Pier 17, located in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, to simpler parking lot gigs on temporary Stageline SL320 stages. “We pack in pretty quickly, get one soundcheck in and do a quick system tune before doors at 1 PM,” he recounted. “We’ve used a lot of L-Acoustics, but we’ve also had Adamson E Series, d&b, EAW Anyas, older JBL Vertecs and VTX. It’s a little bit of everything, but they’re great systems, so we just make sure it’s all there. We use Smaart and try to get it as cohesive as possible, because with nine bands and one actually soundchecking, it’s just a fair advantage across the board to make sure no one has a terrible, terrible day.”

Like many tours this summer, Sad Summer Festival faced some extraordinarily hot days, including the July 11 tour opener at The Backyard in Sacramento, Calif., where it hit 110º midafternoon. “That was painful, but we made it through—nothing showstopping,” Macdonald said with a chuckle. With Sad Summer Festival now but a happy memory, pop-punk practitioners and emo aficionados alike can start counting down the days until next year’s edition.