Posted on Jul 23, 2019 in Festivals, Lists and Bests

Over 1000 festivals with links

Photos: LTTL

List of Music Festivals USA 2020

Over 1,000 Festivals Included

Updated 9 June 2020

Here we are with our FIFTH annual edition of music festivals in the USA.

From a scratchy start and with a little diligence, the Listening Through The Lens list has now become rather lengthy.  We set off on this quest purely because we could not find what we were looking for anywhere else.

True, there are some lists and sites out there, but either there’s a pay-for-more-info-catch or you have to juggle through too many pages to find what you want.  Also many sites don’t provide up-to-date, easy to view information nor do they focus on the music that we love the most – alt. country, folk, Americana, blues, rock, folk and soul. 

This labour of love has involved more and more work as we have researched, refined and improved the list over the journey, checking back on websites repeatedly to get the latest dates.  Although we have passed 1,000 events, more keep appearing.  It does include a few music cruises but we are sure there are many events still missing.  Your comments are welcome!

The churn rate from one year to the next continues to be significant.  Once gone, most don’t surface again.  Some say “stay tuned for next year” and nothing comes of it.  It must be a tough business if there are so many events that have fallen away.  There is a moral to this.  If there is a festival in your backyard, don’t assume it is going to be there forever!  Support it while you can.

We usually re-check monthly and update the list. Obviously there are many festivals for which dates have not been announced – we will monitor these as news come to hand.

Here is our offering – both by date order and (in this update for the first time) by State.  Some with dates to be announced remained pinned to the 2019 order – we will fix this as we get advice as to the 2020 dates.  Almost every festival has a link to the relevant website.

Over 1000 festivals with links

CLICK HERE FOR OUR 2019 USA LIST 

We have published lists of events in Canada and Australia as well – links below

CLICK HERE FOR CANADIAN FESTIVALS

CLICK HERE FOR AUSTRALIAN FESTIVALS

Over 1000 festivals with links

IMPACT OF COVID-19!!

Many events have been/will be cancelled in 2020

The impact of COVID-19 has been devastating to the live music scene and to festivals particularly in 2020. 

Generally, festival organisers have adopted three reactions to the global pandemic:

(1) cancel the event altogether,

(2) move the date to later in the year in the expectation that health and safety issues will be lessened or,

(3) in a very small number of cases, festivals have become an on-line version. 

Over the past month, we have been trying to track each event to update them for you.  Where the festival has been cancelled, we have drawn a line through the original date.  If the event has been moved, we have adjusted the order.  Given their small number, we have ignored any on-line event and marked them as cancelled, so you may want to check the link to see.  Tba signifies no announcement dates, tba means no specific dates have been detected but the event has been cancelled for 2020 anyway.

One advantage of the early cancellations has been the early announcement of dates in 2021.  We are currently working through these and will publish our 2021 edition soon (brighter times indeed!!).