{"id":794689,"date":"2026-05-14T01:11:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T01:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/794689\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T01:11:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T01:11:19","slug":"is-houston-ready-for-another-major-music-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/794689\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Houston ready for another major music festival?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston has been without a major music festival since 2021, and the city’s live music fans<\/a> are yearning for a major festival to make Houston its next stop.<\/p>\n

Houston rapper Don Toliver<\/a> is set to bring his Octane Tour to Houston on May 14, but this past weekend, he headlined one of the three days at Rolling Loud Orlando. Rolling Loud has been an international hip-hop festival since 2015, stopping all over the world and featuring the biggest acts in rap as well as up-and-coming artists. With the amount of big names Houston has in hip-hop, like Toliver, fans are campaigning for the festival to come to Houston next year.<\/p>\n

As the TikTok above points out, Houston has the major artists to headline a festival like Rolling Loud, such as Toliver and Megan Thee Stallion. The city has plenty of up-and-coming rappers and established veterans to go along with its always-ready-to-represent OGs like Paul Wall and Bun B<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many doubters as to why we aren’t a destination for festivals like Rolling Loud attribute it to the tragedy that took place at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival in 2021<\/a>, where a fatal crowd crush incident occurred, killing 10 concertgoers and injuring many more. The Astroworld festival was a big event, and the last festival of its scale that we have had, but the incident and the fallout from it still linger in the city and follow Scott.<\/p>\n

“We had our own rolling loud, it was Astroworld and look what happened. Unfortunately, the lineups were crazy,” a commenter wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Houston had Astroworld from 2019 to 2021, featuring acts [name some of those big people that came to show the lineups were crazy]. But we also had festivals like Free Press Summer Fest, which ran for eight years and became one of the must-attend music events in Houston. Free Press started in 2009 with approximately 30,000 attendees, with the show growing each year and booking bigger and bigger artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking back at Free Press, it represents a bygone Houston. It evolved, growing from showcasing local artists into something that encompassed Houston’s music scene and artists with blockbuster national and international acts that made it a point to visit our humid city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just for some perspective, let’s look at some of the acts featured throughout the festival’s eight lineups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2012, Free Press featured Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, Major Lazer, Z-Ro, Diplo, Danny brown, Erykah Badu, and many more. 2014 featured Jack White, Vampire Weekend, Lauryn Hill, Wu-Tang Clan, Childish Gambino, Chvrches, Deftones and DMX.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For 2015, probably my favorite of the lineups, included Skrillex, R. Kelly (gulp), Weezer, St. Vincent, Chance the Rapper, Gary Clark Jr., Charlie XCX, Sturgill Simpson, ILoveMakkonen, and Yung Lean & the Sad Boys. The 2015 festival also put on a “Welcome To Houston” show that featured the icons of Houston rap, including Bun B, Slim Thug, Devin The Dude, Z-Ro, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Scarface, Lil’ Flip, and Lil’ Keke. \u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s wild looking back on the scale of Free Press and the artists that made up the festival. Unfortunately, flash floods prevented its final festival in YEARTK from completing, but it still lives in the hearts and minds of those who were lucky enough to get to experience it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Houston is a giant city, and it deserves to have cool things like major music festivals; it’s just a question of what it would take to make that happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston has been without a major music festival since 2021, and the city’s live music fans are yearning…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":794690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[324301,324300,4345,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-794689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-chronculture","9":"tag-chronstaff","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116570271872978251","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}