Save Our Stages Fest Shares Schedule

Courtesy Save Our Stages Fest – Save Our Stages Fest
Save Our Stages Fest will host 35 performers at more than 25 indie venues this weekend.

Save Our Stages Fest, the three-day joint event by YouTube and the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), detailed its schedule Wednesday.

The festival kicks off with sets by artists including Finneas, Macklemore, YG, G-Eazy, Marshmello + Demi Lovato and Dillon Francis on Oct. 16. Friday performers will play from several noteworthy indie venues, including Los Angeles’ Troubadour, Minneapolis’ First Avenue and Seattle’s Neumos, and programming kicks off at 8 p.m. ET.

Saturday sports the weekend’s biggest lineup, running from 4 p.m. ET past 1 a.m. ET Sunday morning. Highlights include Foo Fighters from the Troubadour, The Roots from New York’s Apollo Theater, Miley Cyrus from the L.A.’s Whisky A Go-Go and Brittany Howard from Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium; other booked artists for Saturday include Jason Mraz, Phoebe Bridgers, Rise Against, Leon Bridges and Major Lazer.

Save Our Stages Fest concludes Sunday with stars such as Dave Matthews from The Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, Va., Reba McEntire from the Ryman, Brothers Osborne from Nashville’s Mercy Lounge and The Lumineers from The Boulder Theater. Sunday’s programming kicks off at 5 p.m. ET and runs for more than four hours.

Reggie Watts will host all three nights of the event.

“On our side, we have a team of people that are very passionate about live music, and all of us are really close to going to these independent venues,” YouTube head of artist partnerships and live music Ali Rivera told Pollstar last week. “When we saw the impact COVID was having on independent venues, we wanted to help. We knew our platform could make a difference. We have such a global reach, and we have tools available to fundraise.”

Viewers will be able to easily donate to the NIVA Emergency Relief Fund using the festival’s integration of YouTube Giving.

“We were able to spread the performances out across the country to show a real cross section of the variety of types of [NIVA] members,” added NIVA treasurer Stephen Sternschein, who is executive producing #SOSFEST. “Independent venues are so different. There are so many different kinds of rooms. A lot of people, I think, have kind of equated NIVA with the quote-unquote small club scene. The smallest rooms, the most intimate settings, that’s the top of the funnel for artist discovery and development, but our membership is much broader than that, and the ethos that comes from that approach permeates everywhere from a tiny place like Cain’s [Ballroom in Tulsa, Okla.] to a giant place like the Apollo Theater or the Ryman. It was important to us from a narrative perspective to tell a story that was as inclusive and diverse as our membership.”

Find the schedule for Save Our Stages Fest below.

Courtesy Save Our Stages Fest – #SOSFEST Schedule
The schedule for Save Our Stages Fest.