Way Out West Has Wow Factor

Luger’s Way Out West festival in Sweden appears to have kept its “Wow Factor,” selling out its site at Gothenburg Slottsparken Aug. 9-11.

The festival has sold out since it started six years ago, but this year’s event broke attendance records because the capacity has been upped 2,000 to 27,000 and it’s grown from two to three days.

A season that began with Luger – a wholly-owned Live Nation subsidiary – dropping its Where The Action Is festival, which last year had moved from Stockholm to Slottsparken, ended with a double success.

A week before Way Out West, Luger’s first staging of Stockholm Music & Arts also sold out, drawing 10,000 per day Aug. 3-5 to the Swedish’s capital’s Skeppsholmen district, an island surrounded by the city’s beautiful waterscapes.

Despite losing Frank Ocean, Bobby Womack and jazz legend Ornette Coleman to late cancellations, the Way Out West lineup still had Blur, Kraftwerk, The Black Keys, Feist, Bon Iver Florence & The Machine, Wilco, Mark Lanegan Band, Mogwai, and Mazzy Star.

The lineup for Stockholm Music & Arts, a multi-faceted event that incorporates sculpture and painting exhibitions, street performers and more, included Antony & the Johnsons, Patti Smith, Björk, Rumer, Anna von Hausswolff, Emmylou Harris, and Buffy Sainte-Marie.

“Our ambition was to mix music and art in a more active way than we usually do and we managed to do that with quite good results,” explained Luger chief Ola Broquist, after the Stockholm media had heaped praise on it.