Paul Simon, Childish Gambino, Twenty One Pilots To Headline Outside Lands

Lester Cohen / Getty Images – Paul Simon
Paul Simon performs in Vancouver on the opening night of his 2018 farewell tour.

Outside Lands announced last week that Paul Simon – who concluded his Homeward Bound farewell tour with a Queens gig in Sept. 2018 — will headline the San Francisco festival when it returns to Golden Gate Park this August for a twelfth year. Now, the event has shared its full lineup, with Childish Gambino and Twenty One Pilots joining Simon as headliners for the festival, scheduled to take place from August 9 to 11.

Other high-billed acts include The Lumineers, Flume, Blink-182, Kygo, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Leon Bridges, Kacey Musgraves and Lil Wayne.

Additional noteworthy artists on the bill include Hozier, RL Grime, Ella Mai, Counting Crows, Flying Lotus (billed as “Flying Lotus 3D”), Mavis Staples, Bebe Rexha, Sheck Wes, Santigold, Better Oblivion Community Center, Toro y Moi, Bob Moses, Yaeji, Tierra Whack, DJ Koze and current Pollstar cover star Dean Lewis.

Simon’s booking is the buzziest of this year’s Outside Lands. Upon last week’s announcement, Simon shared a statement noting it’ll be his first time playing the iconic San Francisco park and touting “its sanctified musical heritage.”

And his excitement transcends the music. “I’m equally pleased to be playing in San Francisco with its well-deserved reputation for being in the forefront of environmental issues,” Simon said. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to be of service to this vital cause.”

Simon plans to donate net proceeds from the gig to a yet-to-be-named environmental organization. That’s in keeping with the door he left open to performing before embarking on his farewell tour. “I anticipate doing the occasional performance in a (hopefully) acoustically pristine hall, and to donate those earnings to various philanthropic organizations, particularly those whose objective is to save the planet, ecologically,” he told Variety in February 2018.

Simon grossed $31.1 million dollars in 2018, securing his place on Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart. That tour stopped in the Bay Area: On May 25, Simon sold out Oakland’s Oracle Arena, selling 12,146 tickets and grossing $1.4 million.

“Paul has the most incredible musicians in his band, and he is a genius,” Simon’s longtime UK agent Barry Dickins told Pollstar last summer in a wide-ranging interview. “This is a guy who is as close to perfection as you can get. Every little thing he checks, it’s unbelievable. The soundcheck is nearly as long as his show. He’s a perfectionist.”

Meanwhile, Twenty One Pilots and Childish Gambino are among this festival season’s most sought-after headliners. Both will perform at Chicago’s Lollapalooza the weekend before Outside Lands. Gambino also tops the bills for Coachella and Bonnaroo, and Twenty One Pilots will headline Boston Calling. Both artists appeared on Pollstar‘s Year End Top 200 North American Tours chart last year, with Twenty One Pilots grossing $10.2 million and Gambino grossing $8.5 million.

Twenty One Pilots will embark on a North American arena tour in May and June.

Presented by Another Planet Entertainment, Superfly Presents and Starr Hill Presents, Outside Lands has become one of America’s marquee festivals since its 2008 debut. The 2018 edition, headlined by The Weeknd, Florence + the Machine and Janet Jackson, sold 201,477 tickets and grossed $27.7 million. The prior year, headlined by Metallica, The Who and Gorillaz, was similarly successful, selling 210,042 tickets and grossing $27.9 million.

“Eleven years in, Outside Lands continues to grow and evolve with this year’s Saturday show being the single biggest sales day in the history of the festival,” Another Planet CEO Gregg Perloff told Pollstar last October on the heels of another successful Outside Lands.

Perloff specifically praised Grass Lands, the cannabis-centric attraction the festival launched in 2018, calling it “a big hit (no pun intended!) among this year’s festivalgoers.”

Grass Lands will indeed return in 2019, as will comedy and podcast hub The Barbary, sustainability area Eco Lands and more.

Three-day passes for Outside Lands go on sale on March 28 at 10 a.m. PT, beginning at $385 plus fees.

See the complete lineup below.

Courtesy of Another Planet Entertainment – Outside Lands 2019
Paul Simon, Childish Gambino and Twenty One Pilots top this year’s Outside Lands lineup.