UPDATE May 25: The incoming announcement will be the 2022 headliners and an early-bird ticket on-sale, the fest has revealed this morning. Perhaps too many folx were hoping a Fall 2021 edition, or some sort of scaled down even for later this year, might have been in play. Still, it’s exciting to have Boston Calling back in our lives, and we’ll have the full headliner reveal as soon as it goes live tomorrow.
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Two years ago this Wednesday (May 26), we all hit up the Harvard Athletic Complex in Allston for the third and final day of 2019’s Boston Calling Music Festival. The day kicked off with Easy Life and closed with a booming headlining set from Travis Scott — and none of us knew at the time that this would be the last Boston Calling experience for quite a while. The 2020 and 2021 editions, both set for Memorial Day weekend, were cancelled due to the pandemic, but now, on the two-year anniversary of that final slate of performances, the fest has some news.
Just what kind of news is anyone’s guess. But it seems like it’s something.
Earlier today, Boston Calling posted a teaser video to social media showing its main stage, a “Please Stand By” message, the date “05.26.21”, and a muffled sound that plays what appears to be a snippet of Rage Against The Machine’s “Testify” right at the very end.
Hmmmmmmm.
The reunited Rage Against The Machine, along Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers, were set to play the 2020 edition of Boston Calling. This year’s event was cancelled back in February, with many fans hoping the headliners would be maintained for whenever Boston Calling would return.
But with the vaccine rate on the rise and a “return to normalcy” seemingly being fast tracked by cities and regions around the country, maybe we’ll get some sort of Boston Calling this year after all. Or maybe it’s a tease for the 2022 edition, which seemed to be the plan when the cancellation news came down a few months ago. Either way, it’s exciting to look forward to something, anything, even if we’re still a year out from standing in a field in Allston, alright.
Check out the tease below, and revisit all our extensive coverage from the 2019 festival.