311, Live, and more play ‘Electric City Rocks’ at Montage Mountain in Scranton on Aug. 2
From a press release:
Today, Hazleton rock radio station 97.9X announced Electric City Rocks, a new concert event featuring a variety of rock bands this summer.
311, Live, AWOLNATION, Neon Trees, and Des Rocs will take the stage of The Pavilion at Montage Mountain (1000 Montage Mountain Rd., Scranton) on Friday, Aug. 2, starting at 4:30 p.m.
Tickets go on sale to the general public this Friday, April 12 at 10 a.m. via livenation.com. The venue pre-sale begins Thursday, April 11 at 10 a.m. using the code RIFF.
311 was formed in 1990 in Omaha, Nebraska by five friends: Nick Hexum (vocals/guitar), Tim Mahoney (guitar), S.A. Martinez (vocals/DJ), Chad Sexton (drums), and P-Nut (bass). 34 years later, they’re still rocking together. Widely regarded as one of the most entertaining and dynamic live bands in the United States, 311 mixes rock, rap, reggae, and funk into their own unique, hybrid sound. As veterans of over 2,000 shows across 27 countries, this is one of the longest-running original lineups in rock, alongside legends like U2 and Radiohead.
311’s celebrated live shows and dedicated touring schedule have earned them a massive grassroots following nationwide. Their annual headlining amphitheater concert is one of the most anticipated events of the summer and a staple of the U.S. summer touring season. Past support acts include Sublime with Rome, The Offspring, Snoop Dogg, Slightly Stoopid, Cypress Hill, Dirty Heads, The Roots, Matisyahu, and Ziggy Marley.
The group has released 13 studio albums, two greatest hits albums, two live albums, three DVDs, and a boxed set and has sold over nine million copies in the U.S.
10 albums reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s Top 200 Sales chart, and nine of their singles have reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s Alternative Radio chart, including three No. 1 singles – “Down,” “Love Song,” and “Don’t Tread on Me” – along with “Amber,” “All Mixed Up,” “Come Original,” “Creatures for Awhile,” “Hey You,” and “Sunset in July.”
Formed in York, Pennsylvania in 1984, Live has sold over 22 million albums worldwide and earned two No. 1 albums, “Throwing Copper” and “Secret Samadhi.” Their catalog is filled with such gems as “Lightning Crashes,” “I Alone,” “All Over You” and “Lakini’s Juice,” which live on today as classics on rock radio.
“Throwing Copper” – which the band celebrated in 2019 with a new deluxe 25th anniversary edition via Radioactive/Geffen/Ume, along with a global tour across major festivals, amphitheaters, and arenas – produced the band’s biggest single, “Lightning Crashes,” which was No. 1 on modern rock radio for 10 consecutive weeks. The 1994 album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 and eventually surpassed sales of 10 million albums sold, with Rolling Stone honoring the album with placement on their “1994: The 40 Best Records from Mainstream Alternative’s Greatest Year” list.
“Secret Samadhi” immediately shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 in 1997 and eventually went double-platinum. The release of the platinum-selling record “The Distance to Here” in 1999 turned Live into an international powerhouse and moved the band from arenas into stadiums.
Live has been and remains today a global concert juggernaut. The group released an acclaimed five-song EP in 2018, “Local 717,” their first new music in over a decade.
Since its formation by multi-talented musician and songwriter Aaron Bruno in 2010, AWOLNATION has redefined alternative music. With multiple radio hits on the alternative format, including eight Top 5s and two No. 1s, the act has inarguably already made a permanent mark, not just in their genre, but across modern music. Most notably, the chart-topping, record-breaking, diamond-certified track “Sail” created a reference soundscape for a myriad of hits in the last decade. That song launched a career that already spans four albums.
The platinum debut LP “Megalithic Symphony” produced the gold-certified “Not Your Fault” and two other Top 10 U.S. singles. Sophomore album “Run” arrived in 2015, and the follow-up, “Here Come the Runts,” came in 2018. Then entering a creative partnership with current label Better Noise music, the band’s fourth full-length album, “Angel Miners & the Lightning Riders,” containing the hit single “The Best,” was released in 2020 and features collaborations with Rivers Cuomo of Weezer and Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. In their positive review of the project, AllMusic called it “an energetic, fun, and compulsively listenable set that distills the best of what AWOLNATION can do – making pop-savvy, dance-friendly, alternative rock anthems that are not bound to traditional genre conventions.”
That boundary-breaking of genres continued in Bruno’s creative calling, even more so as the world shut down in 2020. While quarantining, he had the idea to celebrate music unapologetically with a team of talented friends, new and old. The result was 2022’s “My Echo, My Shadow, My Covers and Me,” a collection of unexpected yet passionately crafted covers and collaborations. Launched with the first single, a powerful rendition of “Winds of Change,” featuring Portugal the Man and Brandon Boyd of Incubus, the project offers a sonic experience that takes listeners inward on a retrospective journey and outward on a collective celebration. The homage paid to each song’s original artist is just as fun to dive into as the mutual respect heard in every note from both AWOLNATION and guests.
Starting in 2005, Neon Trees began a rapid ascent from the Provo, Utah pop punk scene to the forefront of popular culture, fueled by their 2010 debut album “Habits.” Its lead single “Animal” scored a double-platinum certification from the RIAA and took home Top Alternative Song at the Billboard Music Awards. Success continued for the band with their 2012 sophomore album, “Picture Show,” and its hit single, the five-times-platinum “Everybody Talks.” The subsequent 2014 release “Pop Psychology” bowed at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart and produced another hit, “Sleeping with a Friend.” Most recently, Neon Trees returned with their fourth studio album, 2020’s “I Can Feel You Forgetting Me,” featuring the single “Used to Like,” which landed at No. 1 on the current Alternative chart.
In addition to chart success, the multi-format band has amassed one billion streams and logged over 40 million views on TikTok while garnering acclaim from Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today. Their live performances continue to electrify with over a decade of countless sold-out shows, marquee festival performances, and appearances on “Good Morning America,” “Conan,” “Today,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “America’s Got Talent,” and “Live with Kelly.”
“I’m here to drag rock and roll into the 21st century kicking and screaming if I have to. It’s what I was put on this Earth to do.”
If that sounds ambitious for a skinny misfit from New York, consider the following – in the first three years Des Rocs began releasing songs from his New York City bedroom, he racked up more than 150 million streams, cracked the Top 30 on alternative radio, and even opened for The Rolling Stones. In 2021, he released his pulse-pounding, genre-bending full-length debut, “A Real Good Person in a Real Bad Place.”
Self-recorded in his homemade studio, the album is a bold and intoxicating slice of bedroom arena rock fueled by defiant, magnetic performances that hint at everything from Freddie Mercury to Elvis Presley. It’s a collection that’s as addictive as it is unpredictable, a wild, cathartic work of liberation and escapism that thrives on breaking the rules and subverting expectations at every turn.
A fourth-generation New Yorker, Rocs began his career playing in a variety of groups that toured with the likes of Weezer, Fall Out Boy, and Panic! at the Disco before going solo in 2018 with his debut EP, “Let the Vultures In,” which amassed more than 50 million streams on Spotify alone. He followed it up with two similarly well-received EPs, 2019’s “Martyr Parade” and 2020’s “This Is Our Life,” which helped earn him dates with Muse, Grandson, The Struts, and The Glorious Sons, among others.
“Dream Machine,” his second full-length studio album and first for legendary rock indie label Sumerian Records, is his vehicle to take audiences to a place where life is heightened and rock ‘n’ roll once more rules the zeitgeist. Released on Aug. 25, 2023, he’s not going to be a best-kept secret for long. His brand of self-titled “bedroom arena-rock” – which captures a blend of DIY intimacy and large-scale vision – is ready to infect the masses, to find the artistic tightrope within that populist thrust. Every performance is “on the edge of life and death” for Des Rocs, who works without a safety net in a “Never Ending Moment.” As he said, he was born to do this.
