Adult Swim Announces Inaugural Festival, Run The Jewels To Headline L.A. Event

Adult Swim – Run The Jewels x Rick and Morty

Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim has announced it is expanding its live music presence with the debut of the Adult Swim Festival, Oct. 6-7 at Row DTLA in downtown L.A., featuring screenings, comedy performances, interactive gaming and a musical lineup headlined by hip-hop duo Run The Jewels.

Produced by SGE Worldwide, more artists and other details such as capacity and stages are to be announced in the coming weeks. Row DTLA is a cultural district in the heart of the city’s downtown.

A representative for Adult Swim told Pollstar the event is in the early planning stages.

Michael Zorn / Invision / AP – Run The Jewels
Run The Jewels does its thing during the Budweiser Made In America Festival at Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia Sept. 3.

A limited number of discounted weekend passes are already on sale. “Adult Swim already does television like no one else. Now it’s time to bring that same unique approach to a one-of-a-kind festival experience,” Jill King, senior vice president of marketing and partnerships for Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang, said in a statement. “The Adult Swim Festival will feature everything fans love about us…great shows, cutting edge music, and a passionate community to enjoy it all together.”

Single-day passes and regular-priced weekend passes will be available in May.

The festival is in addition to previous Adult Swim-branded concert events including the Adult Swim On The Green tour, which brought food trucks, games, trivia as well as screenings and previews of new Adult Swim content. That tour played 12 markets in the second half of 2017, including Socrates Sculpture Park in New York City, Gore Place in Waltham, Mass., Wiggins Park in Camden, N.J., and Bull Run Center in Fairfax, Va.

There’s also the “Trashtacular” metal tour that just wrapped up and included Exodus and Municipal Waste playing venues including House of Blues Anaheim, Irving Plaza in New York and Neumos in Seattle Feb. 22, which sold out 650 tickets and grossed $16,250 as reported to Pollstar. That Adult Swim-branded tour was to herald the new season of the “Mr. Pickles” animated series.

Going back to 2007, the “Metalocalypse” tours featuring fictional “total brutal” cartoon metal band Dethklok, which also toured with prog metal band Mastodon at one point.

Also in 2007, the Adult Swim Hip Hop Tour featured Ghostface Killah and Witch Doctor.

The Adult swim Singles program has generated nearly 20 million soundcloud streams featuring more than 100 emerging or lesser-known artists and recently just debuted a “Run The Jewels x Rick and Morty” video called “Oh Mama” featuring the duo from the popular stoner cartoon series.

Recent artists featured on the Singles program include Deerhoof, Wolves In The Throne Room, Brian Eno With Kevin Shields, experimental saxophonist Colin Stetson, Julia Holter, Julianna Barwick, Dinosaur Jr. and many others.

The Adult Swim news comes as more cable networks delve into the live music space, with the Nickelodeon SlimeFest coming to the U.S. this year after events in the UK, South Africa, Australia, Italy and Spain.

This inaugural U.S. SlimeFest happens in Chicago June 9-10 with Flo Rida, LIam Payne, and Zedd at Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island. Tickets just went on sale.

SGE, producing Adult Swim Festival, does events including the Rockstar Taste Of Chaos tour, the Ozzfest Meets Knotfest Festival and others. Heather Vantrell at SGE is producer of the event.